Confederate States Of America (2005)

What's wrong about this photo? Or if you're a true-born Southerner, what's right?

While scanning through some of the up and coming movies in 2005, I ran across this intriguing title; "CSA: Confederate States of America (2005)". It's an "alternate universe" take on what would the country be like had the South won the civil war.

Suffice to say anything from Hollywood on this topic is sure to to bring about all sorts of controversial ideas and discussions. I was surprised that they are approaching such subject matter, and I'm more than a little interested.

For myself, I was more than pleased with the homage paid to General "Stonewall" Jackson in Turner's "Gods and Generals". Like him, I should have like to believe that the South would have been compelled to end slavery out of Christian dignity rather than continue to enslave their brothers of the freedom that belong equally to all men. Obviously it didn't happen that way.

Would I fight for a South that believed in Slavery today? I have to ask first, would I know any better back then? I don't know. I honestly don't know. My pride for my South and my heritage would have most likely doomed me as it did so many others. I won't skirt the issue, in all likelyhood, slavery may have been an afterthought. Had they been the staple of what I considered property, I possibly would have already been past the point of moral struggle on the point and preparing to kill Northern invaders.

So what do I feel about this? The photo above nearly brings me to tears, as I highly respect Abraham Lincoln. I don't care if they kick me out of the South. Imagine if GW was in prayer over what to do about a seperatist leftist California. That's how I imagine Lincoln. A great man. I wonder sometimes what my family would have been like today. How many more of us would there be? Would we have held onto the property and prosperity that sustained them before the war? Would I have double the amount of family in the area? How many would I have had to cook for last week for Christmas? Would I have needed to make more "Pate De Fois Gras"?

Well, dunno about that either. Depending on what the previous for this movie are like, I may or may not see it. If they portray it as the United Confederacy of the KKK I won't be attending.

This generation of our clan speaks some 5 languages in addition to English, those being of recent immigrants to this nation. All of them are good Americans. I believe the south would have succombed to the same forces that affected the North. Immigration, war, economics and other huma forces that have changed the map of the world since history began.

Whatever. At least in this alternate universe, it's safe for me to believe that we would have grown to be the benevolent and humane South that I know it is in my heart. I can believe that slavery would have died shortly before or after that lost victory. I can believe that Southern gentlemen would have served the world as the model for behavior. In my alternate universe, it's ok that Spock has a beard. It's my alternate universe after all, it can be what I want.

At any rate, I lived up North for many years. Wonderful people and difficult people. I will always sing their praises as a land full of beautiful Italian girls, maple syrup and Birch beer. My uncle ribbed us once before we left on how we were going up North to live "with all the Yankees". Afterwards I always refered to him as royalty. He is, really. He's "King of the Rednecks". I suppose I'm his court jester.

I think ftD stepped off the deep end claiming that back in the time of the war the South had given up religious ideas for 'scientific' (evolution)", whatever that meant. I think ftD will have a hard time justifying his statement. I suspect he was trying to say that the South was evil and not Christian because it supported slavery. Is that what you meant, f?

Check out the statement by Stephens in the Cornerstone speech.

Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea; its foundations are laid, its corner- stone rests upon the great truth, that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery -- subordination to the superior race -- is his natural and normal condition. [Applause.] This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth. This truth has been slow in the process of its development, like all other truths in the various departments of science. It has been so even amongst us. Many who hear me, perhaps, can recollect well, that this truth was not generally admitted, even within their day. The errors of the past generation still clung to many as late as twenty years ago. Those at the North, who still cling to these errors, with a zeal above knowledge, we justly denominate fanatics. All fanaticism springs from an aberration of the mind -- from a defect in reasoning. It is a species of insanity. One of the most striking characteristics of insanity, in many instances, is forming correct conclusions from fancied or erroneous premises; so with the anti-slavery fanatics; their conclusions are right if their premises were. They assume that the negro is equal, and hence conclude that he is entitled to equal privileges and rights with the white man. If their premises were correct, their conclusions would be logical and just -- but their premise being wrong, their whole argument fails.

As I have stated, the truth of this principle may be slow in development, as all truths are and ever have been, in the various branches of science. It was so with the principles announced by Galileo-it was so with Adam Smith and his principles of political economy. It was so with Harvey, and his theory of the circulation of the blood. It is stated that not a single one of the medical profession, living at the time of the announcement of the truths made by him, admitted them. Now, they are universally acknowledged. May we not, therefore, look with confidence to the ultimate universal acknowledgment of the truths upon which our system rests? It is the first government ever instituted upon the principles in strict conformity to nature, and the ordination of Providence, in furnishing the materials of human society. Many governments have been founded upon the principle of the subordination and serfdom of certain classes of the same race; such were and are in violation of the laws of nature. Our system commits no such violation of nature's laws. With us, all of the white race, however high or low, rich or poor, are equal in the eye of the law. Not so with the negro. Subordination is his place. He, by nature, or by the curse against Canaan, is fitted for that condition which he occupies in our system. The architect, in the construction of buildings, lays the foundation with the proper material-the granite; then comes the brick or the marble. The substratum of our society is made of the material fitted by nature for it, and by experience we know that it is best, not only for the superior, but for the inferior race, that it should be so. It is, indeed, in conformity with the ordinance of the Creator. It is not for us to inquire into the wisdom of his ordinances, or to question them. For his own purposes, he has made one race to differ from another, as he has made "one star to differ from another star in glory."

http://members.aol.com/jfepperson/corner.html

SOURCE: Lerone Bennett, Jr., Forced Into Glory, Copr 1999, 6th printing 2002, pp. 184-8. (footnotes deleted)

The man Lincoln called his special friend, Ward Hill Lamon, had no particular sympathy for Blacks, but even he decried the laws of the state, saying that the Illinois Black Code was "of the most preposterous and cruel severity, -- a code that would have been a disgrace to a Slave state, and was simply an infamy in a free one. It borrowed the provisions of the most revolting laws known among men, for exiling, selling, beating, bedeviling, and torturing Negroes, whether bond or free."
The "revolting" Illinois Black Laws didn't seem to bother Lamon while he was living there. Nor did they bother Lincoln, who never said a word against the Black Laws, although they were enforced in Illinois every year he lived there and were not repealed until 1865.
Under provisions of this code, one of the severest in a Northern state, Illinois Blacks had no legal rights White people were bound to respect. It was a crime for them to settle in Illinois unless they could prove their freedom and post a $1,000 bond. John Jones, the most prominent Black in Illinois in Lincoln's day, pointed out that these provisions were in violation of the Illinois constitution, which declared "that all men are born free and independent and have an indefeasible right to enjoy liberty and pursue their own happiness." It was also, Jones noted, "a gross violation" of the United States Constitution which said "that the citizens of each State shall be entitled to all the privileges and immunities of citizens of the several States."
None of this disturbed Lincoln, who lived, without audible distress, with a Black Code, commonly called Black Laws, which said that any Black found without a certificate of freedom was considered a runaway slave and could be apprehended by any White and auctioned off by the sheriff to pay the cost of his confinement.
If a Black had a certificate of freedom, he and his family were required to meet reporting and registration procedures reminiscent of a totalitarian state. The head of the family had to register all family members and provide detailed descriptions to the supervisor of the poor, who could expel the whole family at any moment.
Blacks who met these requirements were under constant surveillance and could be disciplined or arrested by any White. They could not vote, sue, or testify in court.
No Negro was safe.
No Negro was secure.
Any Negro without certified freedom papers on his person was legitimate prey of kidnappers who roamed the streets of Lincoln's Springfield and other Illinois cities and towns. By the 1850s, and especially after passage of the Compromise of 1850, which Lincoln supported, kidnapping Negroes, with the aid and support of the state and the White population, had become a profitable business.
The way it worked, N. Dwight Harris said, was that two or three White men would form a Black-hunting gang. "One would establish himself at St. Louis, or at one of the other border towns, and work up a reputation as a seller of slaves. The others would move about the Illinois counties on the lookout for Negroes -- slave or free. The freebooters never stopped to inquire whether a colored person was free or not. The question simply was, could he be carried off in safety."
If the kidnappers didn't get him, the state would.
With Lincoln's active and passive support, the state used violence to keep Blacks poor. Most trades and occupations were closed to them, and laws and customs made it difficult for them to acquire real estate.
With Lincoln's active and passive support, the state used violence to keep Blacks ignorant. Schools and colleges were for the most part closed to Blacks. A law on the apprenticeship of children said "that the master or mistress to whom such child shall be bound as aforesaid shall cause such child to be taught to read and write and the ground rules of arithmetic... except when such apprentice is a negro or mulatto."
To make matters worse, the state taxed Blacks to support public schools that were closed by law -- and by the vote of Abraham Lincoln -- to Black children. The law, which Lincoln supported, specified that the school fund should be distributed on the basis of “the number of white persons under 20 years of age.” This disturbed a number of very conservative Illinois White people. In 1853, a year before Lincoln's Peoria Declaration, the Alton Telegraph praised Ohio for establishing schools for Black children and criticized Illinois for taking money from Blacks to educate White children. No one in the legislature paid any attention to this criticism, and Lincoln, the state's most powerful Whig politician, said nothing.

During all the years of what some historians call Lincoln's rehearsal for greatness, indentured servants, “a polite phrase,” Elmer Gertz said, "for the northern brand of slaves," were hemmed in by laws and restrictions similar to the ones in Southern states. They could be whipped for being lazy, disorderly or disrespectful to the "master, or master's family."
As for the pursuit of happiness, which Lincoln occasionally paid tribute to, Blacks could not play percussion instruments, and any White could apprehend any slave or servant for "riots, routs, unlawful assemblies, trespasses and seditious speeches." It was a crime for any person to permit "any slave or slaves, servant or servants of color, to the number of three or more, to assemble in his, her or their house, out house, yard or shed for the purpose of dancing or revelling, either by night or by day…."
What did Abraham Lincoln say about these violations of government of the people, et cetera, et cetera?
He said he was in favor of the violations -- that's what he said. Not only did he back the Black Laws, but he voted to keep the suffrage lily-White and to tax Blacks to support White schools Black children couldn't, in general, attend.
In 1848 Illinois adopted a new constitution that denied Blacks the right to vote and to serve in the state militia. To make sure everyone got the message, the constitution authorized the state legislature to pass legislation barring slaves and free Negroes from settling in the state. Article XIV of the new constitution read:

The General Assembly shall at its first session under the amended constitution pass such laws as will effectually prohibit free persons of color from immigrating to and settling in this state, and to effectually prevent the owners of slaves from bringing them into this state, for the purpose of setting them free.

In February 1853, one year before Abraham Lincoln praised the "White man's" Declaration of Independence at Peoria, the legislature made it a high crime punishable by a fine for a Black to settle in the state. If a Black violator couldn't pay the fine, he or she could be sold by the sheriff to pay court costs, making some Whites fear that the new law would bring back slavery.
The architect of this Negro Exclusion Law, which was, Eugene H. Berwanger said, "undoubtedly the most severe anti-Negro measure passed by a free state," was John A. Logan, who introduced the measure "solely to improve his political stature." During debate on the issue, Logan attacked White critics of his bill, which was called "An Act To Prevent the Immigration of Free Negroes into the State." Logan said he could not understand "how it is that men can become so fanatical in their notions as to forget that they are white. Forget that sympathy over the white man and have his bosom heaving with it for those persons of color." Logan looked around the hall and said words that many of his compatriots would say in the 1990s: "It has almost become an offense to be a white man."
Neither this speech nor his Negro Exclusion Law hurt the reputation of "Black Jack" Logan, who was later named a major general by Abraham Lincoln and who is celebrated today all over Chicago as a Civil War icon.
Most Illinois Whites supported the provisions of Logan's Negro Exclusion Law, but twenty-two legislators, eleven Whigs and eleven Democrats, voted against it in the lower house. There was also strong opposition in fourteen Northern counties, particularly from Quakers, Presbyterians, Congregationalists, and New England immigrants.
The severity of the Negro Exclusion Law shocked antislavery forces. Frederick Douglass was outraged by the "enormity" of an act that "coolly" proposed to "sell the bodies and souls of the blacks to increase the intelligence and refinement of the whites [and] to rob every black stranger who ventures among them to increase their literary fund." It seemed to Douglass that "the men who enacted that law had not only banished from their minds all sense of justice, but all sense of shame." Another editor who felt that way was Horace Greeley, who said in the New York Tribune that it was "punishment enough" for Blacks "to live among such cruel, inhospitable beings" as the White residents of Illinois, not to mention the additional burden of having to live under such a law. The New Orleans Bee said the law was "an act of special and savage ruthlessness." The Jonesboro Gazette in the land of Lincoln asked: "How long will the people of this hitherto Tree State' suffer this shameful enaction to disgrace their statute book?"
What did Lincoln say?
He didn't say a mumblin' word.
Despite his Jim Crow votes and Jim Crow style, Lincoln got up on platforms and said he believed that the Declaration of Independence gave Blacks the right to some of the rights enumerated in that document, including life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. If he believed this -- and the evidence goes the other way -- it was news to Illinois Blacks, who were denied the right to pursue anything in Lincoln's Illinois, except poor-paying jobs that Whites shunned until economic crises lowered the color of their expectations.

So, since the ratification of the Constitution were there states that banned slavery and were there slaves actually freed by their owners (at great personal cost to themselves?)

Why, of course. Take Chief Justice Roger B. Taney for example

"When Massachusetts neighbors criticized Supreme Court Justice Joseph Story for having upheld the fugitive slave law in Prigg v. Pennsylvania, he [nc - Story] wrote, "You know full well that I have ever been opposed to slavery. But I take my standard of duty as a judge from the Constitition." (Walker Lewis, Without Fear or Favor, p. 355)

Taney had early owned slaves, and in 1805 was assessed on three. With marriage his household expanded and we can gather some idea of its growing size from the fact that in 1818 he emancipated seven Negroes and in 1821 an eighth. He also joined with his brother Octavius in freeing two others they inherited from their father. Although he and Anne retained servants, they kept no slaves other than two who were too old to support themselves. Those that they freed were furnished with wallets which, in case of need, they could present for an allowance, paid in small coins as a protection against swindlers. (Walker Lewis, Without Fear or Favor, pp. 44-5)

"Taney already had emancipated most of his own slaves, and it is known that he made at least one substantial loan to enable a free Negro to purchase his wife's liberty." (Walker Lewis, Without Fear or Favor, p. 76)

"In other ways he [nc - Taney] showed his interest in the welfare of colored people. On one occasion he and Frederick A. Schley aided a free negro in the purchase of his slave wife by advancing the price of the slave and permitting him to bind himself to them for that amount. The negro repaid the money, and the family was given its freedom. During the same period Taney manumitted his own slaves, providing that they should become free some years hence, doubtless on the assumption that education for freedm was necessary before they could be trusted to take care of themselves. He continued to support those who were too old to earn their living, and to watch carefully over their interests. To each of the older servants he gave a wallet, which was brought each month to him or to a member of his family for replenishment. Some negroes knew too little of mathematics to be aware when they were short-changed by merchants, and there were merchants who in making change intimidated negroes into accepting less than was due them. As a protection against these abuses Taney gave his monthly allowances in small silver pieces with which the negroes were familiar, none of them exceeding fifty cents in value." (Carl Brent Swisher, Roger B. Taney, p. 94)

"[I]t would be propagating error to pretend that between 1819 and 1832 Taney had grown callous in his feelings toward negroes. Toward them personally he still had the same feeling of warm solicitude which he had revealed many times in the past, as was shown, for example, by his efforts on behalf of a negro boy named Cornelius. Cornelius, the slave of a Major Hughes, had been permitted by his master to earn small sums of money toward the purchase of his freedom, and to educate himself above the level of most slaves, so that he was able to write letters. Taney in some way became interested in the boy, and discussed with his friend William M. Beall, of Frederick, the possibility of buying the boy and setting him free as soon as he was able to earn the remaining amount necessary to cover the purchase price. "Major Hughes it seems," Taney wrote to Beall, "is willing to let Cornelius go for $450, and he has but a hundred and fifty of his own. Cornelius is a good boy and I am willing to aid him, and therefore send a check payable to your order." The purchase was made, and Taney not only made the boy a free person in effect from the beginning, but looked after him from that time on almost as if he were a member of the family. Yet, believing as he did that the problems of slavery were so intricate and so peculiarly local as to require local handling, he felt it his duty as Attorney General so to interpret law as to leave the control of the subject in local hands, even though some negroes suffered thereby. Doubtless he would have said, as he did say on other occasions, that even the negroes, on the whole, since they were in the country, were better off under the prevailing system of control than they would have been under a system or lack of system brought about by outside interference." (Carl Brent Swisher, Roger B. Taney, pp. 158-9)

"An essential precept (as we think) of the Catholic Church is confession for the remission of sins -- very humiliating to the pride of human nature; but the well-known humility of Mr. Taney made the practice of confession easy to him. Often have I seen him stand at the outer door leading to the confessonal, in a crown of penitents, majority colored, waiting his turn for admission. I proposed to introduce him by another door to my confessional, but he would not accept of any deviation from the established custom." (Father John McElroy, March 2, 1871, quoted in Samuel Tyler, Memoir of Roger Brooke Taney, p. 476) [italics in original]

"Chief-Justice Taney's religion was the moving principle of his life. It filled him with every Christian grace. Faith, hope and charity led him in the high career which we have been reviewing. The humblest received his kindness, while the great were charmed with his courtesy. The servants of his family could hardly understand his kindness, when they contrasted it with the treatment of their servants by others. In early life he manumitted all the slaves he inherited from his father. The old ones he supported by monthly allowances of money till they died. The allowances were always in small silver pieces -- none exceeding fifty cents -- as more convenient, and not so liable to be taken improperly by those with whom they might deal. Each servant had a separate wallet for their allowance, which was brought monthly to the member of the Chief Justice's family who attended to the matter." (Samuel Tyler, Memoir of Roger Brooke Taney, p. 478)

"In 1860, the distinguished law-writer, Mr. Conway Robinson, asked Chief-Justice Taney for his photograph in his judicial gown, to be presented-to two of the Judges of the Queen's Bench in England, whose acquaintance Mr. Robinson had made when in England. The Chief Justice, accordingly, had a large-size likeness of himself taken for the Judges. And, at the same time, he had two from the same negative put into gilt frames for his old negro servant-woman and his negro man-servant. At the bottom of one likeness was written: 'To Martha Hill, as a mark of my esteem. R. B. Taney. February 14, 1860, Washington.' At the bottom of the other: 'To Madison Franklin, as a mark of my esteem. R. B. Taney. February 14, I860; Washington.'" (Samuel Tyler, Memoir of Roger Brooke Taney, p. 479)

"We cannot consent to buy his safety by yielding to passion, prejudice, and avarice, the control of future discussions, on this great and important question. He must not surrender up the civil and religious rights, secured to him in common with others, by the constitution of this most favoured nation. Mr. Gruber feels, that it is due to his own character; to the station he fills; to the respectable society of Christians in which he is a minister of the gospel, not only to defend himself from this prosecution, but also to avow, and to vindicate here, the principles he maintained in his sermon. There is no law that forbids us to speak of slavery as we think of it. Any man has a right to publish his opinions on that subject whenever he pleases. It is a subject of national concern, and may at all times be freely discussed. Mr. Gruber did quote the language of our great act of national independence, and insisted on the principles contained in that venerated instrument. He did rebuke those masters, who, in the exercise of power, are deaf to the calls of humanity; and he warned them of the evils they might bring upon themselves. He did speak with abhorrence of those reptiles, who live by trading in human flesh, and enrich themselves by tearing the husband from the wife -- the infant from the bosom of the mother: and this I am instructed was the head and front of his offending. Shall I content myself, continued Mr. Taney, with saying he had a right to say this? that there is no law to punish him? So far is he from being the object of punishment in any form of proceeding, that we are prepared to maintain the same principles, and to use, if necessary, the same language here in the temple of justice, and in the presence of those who are the ministers of the law. A hard necessity, indeed, compels us to endure the evil of slavery for a time. It was imposed upon us by another nation, while we were yet in a state of colonial vassalage. It cannot be easily, or suddenly removed. Yet while it continues, it is a blot on our national character, and every real lover of freedom, confidently hopes that it will be effectually, though it must be gradually, wiped away; and earnestly looks for the means, by which this necessary object may be best attained. And until it shall be accomplished: until the time shall come when we can point without a blush, to the language held in the declaration of independence, every friend of humanity will seek to lighten the galling chain of slavery, and better, to the utmost of his power, the wretched condition of the slave. Such was Mr. Gruber's object in that part of his sermon, of which I am now speaking. Those who have complained of him, and reproached him, will not find it easy to answer him: unless complaints, reproaches and persecution shall be considered an answer." (Roger B. Taney, Gruber case, 1819)

You are the only one honest enough to at least admit slavery would have continued.

No, that's not quite true, either. There is a substantial opinion, possibly the majority opinion among scholars and not just on this board, to the effect that slavery was on borrowed time, even with the cotton gin, and that increased mechanization of the cotton fields would have spelled its end -- after all, think about machinery prices versus what it cost a man to keep 300 slaves, much less how much capital he had tied up in them. In 1860, the total value of capital tied up in slaves just in Texas was $160,000,000 gold, which Texas historian T. R. Fehrenbach, in Lone Star (the manual Texas history written 40 years ago), says was more than the value of ALL the improved real estate in the State. That's why compensated emancipation could never have worked -- the nation would have gone broke, buying all the slaves at market prices; and yet that was what Southern planters and farmers had paid for them.

The vast amount of capital involved was, at the end of the day, the anchor of the problem, and it would have provided the impetus -- under the competing theory -- for mechanization and "unlocking the value". Slaves would have been sold off to Brazil or whoever would give a price for them, in theory, and mechanical methods of harvesting substituted.

However, contrary to the happy theory, the actual difficulty involved in picking cotton so that it doesn't end up full of twigs and shards of the hard boll (which is hard and sharp and cuts fingers of less-than-dextrous manual pickers) is quite high. Mechanical picking degrades the cotton's maret value, so that hand-picked Egyptian cotton fetches better prices today than machine-picked American cotton, because of all the foreign matter that ends up embedded in the mechanically-picked cotton. Therefore, the market would have continued to offer a substantial premium for slave-picked cotton over bales picked by more "modern" methods, and the premium, plus the cost of equipment, would have presented a substantial continuing penalty to cash flow, offsetting whatever benefit the planters might have received from disposing of their expensive human capital. Worse, as they disposed of millions of slaves on the world market -- which by then had essentially shrunk to Brazil and the French, Spanish, and Portuguese colonial possesssions -- the price would have fallen dramatically, effectively raising the economic bar to making the transition.

Ergo, I don't share other people's optimism, born of a sincere wish no doubt, that slavery would have "faded away" as quickly as some historians have insisted in recent years.

I had a source for the revisionist study published just a few years ago that supports my POV on the durability and vitality of the terminal plantation culture, but I can't locate it now, unfortunately. I will point out in support of my contention that, despite emancipation, Texas Archeological Society investigators excavating the remains of slave quarters in some of the sugar-cane plantations in the Brazos Delta country of coastal Texas (they are also interested in the "freedmen's town" area of Houston) have found proof that the quarters continued to be inhabited by the former slaves for up to 25 years after emancipation, on the evidence of numismatic and cultural finds that provide termini post quem for occupation of both the quarters and the "big house".

PRESIDENTIAL QUOTE FOR THE WEEK

Roy Prentice Basler published the definitive collection of Lincoln quotes.

ALL LINKS go to the Complete Works of Abraham Lincoln, Roy P. Basler. Italics in original.

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