Historian suggests Southerners defeated Confederacy

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution ^ | August 24, 2008 | Jim Auchmutey

[Colonel Kangaroo]

Valdosta State professor pens ‘Bitterly Divided: The South’s Inner Civil War’

Generations of students have been taught that the South lost the Civil War because of the North’s superior industry and population. A new book suggests another reason: Southerners were largely responsible for defeating the Confederacy.

In “Bitterly Divided: The South’s Inner Civil War” (New Press, $27.95), historian David Williams of Valdosta State University lays out some tradition-upsetting arguments that might make the granite brow of Jefferson Davis crack on Stone Mountain.

“With this book,” wrote Publishers Weekly, “the history of the Civil War will never be the same again.”

Actually, historians have long fallen into two camps in explaining the Confederacy’s demise — one stressing the Union’s advantages, the other the South’s divisions. Williams gives vivid expression to the latter view, drawing on state and local studies done primarily in the past two decades.

The 49-year-old South Georgia native discussed his interpretations in an interview from Valdosta.

Q: You write that most Southerners didn’t even want to leave the Union.

A: That’s right. In late 1860 and early 1861, there were a series of votes on the secession question in all the slave states, and the overwhelming majority voted against it. It was only in the Deep South, from South Carolina to Texas, that there was much support for secession, and even there it was deeply divided. In Georgia, a slight majority of voters were against secession.

Q: So why did Georgia secede?

A: The popular vote didn’t decide the question. It chose delegates to a convention. That’s the way slaveholders wanted it, because they didn’t trust people to vote on the question directly. More than 30 delegates who had pledged to oppose secession changed their votes at the convention. Most historians think that was by design. The suspicion is that the secessionists ran two slates — one for and one supposedly against — and whichever was elected, they’d vote for secession.

Q: You say the war didn’t start at Fort Sumter.

A: The shooting war over secession started in the South between Southerners. There were incidents in several states. Weeks before Fort Sumter, seven Unionists were lynched in Tallahatchie County, Miss.

Q: Was the inner civil war ever resolved?

A: No. As a result, about 300,000 Southern whites served in the Union army. Couple that with almost 200,000 Southern blacks who served, and that combined to make almost a fourth of the total Union force. All those Southerners who fought for the North were a major reason the Confederacy was defeated.

Q: In the spring of 1862, the Confederacy enacted the first draft in American history. Planters had an easy time getting out of it, didn’t they?

A: Very easy. If they owned 20 or more slaves, they were pretty much excused from the draft. Some of them paid off draft officials. Early in the war, they could pay the Confederate government $500 and get out of the draft.

Q: You use the phrase “rich man’s war, poor man’s fight” several times. Does this history anger you?

A: I don’t think it would be unfair to say that. It seems like the common folk were very much ignored and used by the planter elite. As a result, over half a million Americans died.

My great-great-grandfather was almost one: John Joseph Kirkland. He was a poor farmer in Early County, no slaves. He was 33, just under draft age, and had five children at home. He went ahead and enlisted so he could get a $50 bonus. A year later, he lost a leg at the Battle of Chancellorsville.

Q: One of the biggest problems for the South was a lack of food. Why?

A: That does seem strange, because we think of the South as a vast agricultural region. But the planters were growing too much cotton and tobacco and not enough food. Cotton and tobacco paid more.

Q: You say the Confederate army stripped the fields of much of the produce and livestock there was, leaving civilians hungry. That sounds like Sherman’s troops marching through Georgia.

A: It was very much like that.

Q: When they couldn’t feed their families, Southern women started food riots. There was a big one in Richmond. Were there any in Georgia?

A: Every major city in Georgia had food riots. We’ve documented more than 20. In Atlanta, a woman walked into a store on Whitehall Street and drew a revolver and told the rest of the women to take what they wanted. They moved from store to store.

Q: The deprivations at home led to a very high desertion rate among Confederates. How bad was it?

A: By 1864, two-thirds of the Army was absent with or without leave. It got worse after that.

Q: There was a sort of Underground Railroad for deserters?

A: Yes. It surprised me that many Confederate deserters could count on the support of slaves to hide them and move them from one location to another.

Q: How important were black Southerners in the outcome of the war?

A: They were very important to undermining the Confederate war effort. When slaves heard that Abraham Lincoln had been elected, many of them thought they were free and started leaving plantations. So many eventually escaped to Union lines that they forced the issue. As other historians have said, Lincoln didn’t free the slaves; the slaves freed themselves.

Q: If there was so much division in the South and it was such an important part of the Confederacy’s downfall, why isn’t this a larger part of our national memory?

A: The biggest reason is regional pride. It gratified white Southerners to think the South was united during the Civil War. It gratified Northerners to believe they defeated a united South.

Q: Why do you think so much Southern identity has been wrapped up in the Confederacy? We’re talking about four of the 400 years since Jamestown was settled. It seems like the tail wagged the dog — and now you tell us the tail is pretty raggedy.

A: I think popular memory got wrapped up in race. Most white Southerners opposed secession, but they were also predominantly racists. After the war, they wanted to keep it a white man’s country and maintain their status over African-Americans. It became easy for Southerners to misremember what happened during the war. A lot of people whose families had opposed the Confederacy became staunch neo-Confederates after a generation or two, mainly for racist reasons.

Q: Has this knowledge affected your feelings about Southern heritage? Did you have an opinion about the former Georgia flag?

A: I had a graduate student who did his thesis on that. He looked into the origins of the 1956 state flag and concluded that the Confederate battle emblem was put there not to honor our ancestors but as a statement against school integration.

Q: So you saw no reason to defend that flag?

A: No, not in the least.

Q: Have the Sons of Confederate Veterans been to see you?

A: Yes. They didn’t really deny anything I had to say, but they weren’t real happy to hear it. I told them, “Well, I’m not making this up.”

[LowOiL]

I know that there are places in Alabama where secession was not favored - Fort Payne, Alabama still has a “Union Park” because the secession was generally not supported in that area.

Fort Payne recently christened the park "City Park" so it is no longer "Union Park"... Also in that park is a huge statue of a confederate soldier... This was dedicated while most folks still rode horses to the event (I don't know the exact date)... Also they presented statues of the 4 Alabama (band) boys during this dedication (this summer).

So I guess Fort Payne has subcumbed to the political pressures of PCism renaming that park. I for one did not notice that the city slipped this under the door mat... Everyone was in favor of paying homage to the group Alabama that they didn't notice the city was changing the park title in the same slick event.

Having lived most my life here and from a long blue lintage in the area, I can concur there was lots of pro-union folks in this area.. and few slaves back in it's day. Valley Head had a small plantation with a slave quarters to it, but county wise not many did.

[Who is John Galt?]

Lee's resignation of his commission in the US Army was perhaps the most dishonorable act of his life.

Give me a break - his action was completely honorable.

If he had stayed true to his oath, the Civil War might have been over in 6 months, with a minimal loss of life.

Care to name ONE military action that occured during the first "6 months" of the war, where General Robert Lee held any significant authority?

With all due respect, please read some history...

[Who is John Galt?]

Go look at the timeline of Virginia secession. Virginia joined the confederacy on April 23, 1861. The confederate legislature voted to move its capitol to Richmond on May 21. And finally, on May 23, Virginia ratified its act of secession. A month after joining the confederacy.

And, your point is?

[Bubba Ho-Tep]

Virginia entered into a unconstitutional compact before actually making its secession official.

[Who is John Galt?]

Virginia entered into a unconstitutional compact before actually making its secession official.

FYI:

AN ORDINANCE to repeal the ratification of the Constitution of the United State of America by the State of Virginia, and to resume all the rights and powers granted under said Constitution.

The people of Virginia in their ratification of the Constitution of the United States of America, adopted by them in convention on the twenty-fifth day of June, in the year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and eighty-eight, having declared that the powers granted under said Constitition were derived from the people of the United States and might be resumed whensoever the same should be perverted to their injury and oppression, and the Federal Government having perverted said powers not only to the injury of the people of Virginia, but to the oppression of the Southern slave-holding States:

Now, therefore, we, the people of Virginia, do declare and ordain, That the ordinance adopted by the people of this State in convention on the twenty-fifth day of June, in the year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and eighty-eight, whereby the Constitution of the United States of America was ratified, and all acts of the General Assembly of this State ratifying and adopting amendments to said Constitution, are hereby repealed and abrogated; that the union between the State of Virginia and the other States under the Constitution aforesaid is hereby dissolved, and that the State of Virginia is in the full possession and exercise of all the rights of sovereignty which belong and appertain to a free and independent State.

And they do further declare, That said Constitution of the United States of America is no longer binding on any of the citizens of this State.

This ordinance shall take effect and be an act of this day, when ratified by a majority of the voter of the people of this State cast at a poll to be taken thereon on the fourth Thursday in May next, in pursuance of a schedule hereafter to be enacted.

Adopted by the convention of Virginia April 17,1861.

Source: Official Records, Ser. IV, vol. 1, p. 223.

[ratified by a vote of 132,201 to 37,451 on May 23, 1861]

The secession ordinance was adopted April 17, citing the specific reservation of the right of secession that the State hade made, in writing (http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/const/ratva.htm), when it ratified the Constitution many years earlier:

We the Delegates of the People of Virginia duly elected in pursuance of a recommendation from the General Assembly and now met in Convention having fully and freely investigated and discussed the proceedings of the Federal Convention and being prepared as well as the most mature deliberation hath enabled us to decide thereon Do in the name and in behalf of the People of Virginia declare and make known that the powers granted under the Constitution being derived from the People of the United States may be resumed by them whensoever the same shall be perverted to their injury or oppression and that every power not granted thereby remains with them and at their will: that therefore no right of any denomination can be cancelled abridged restrained or modified by the Congress by the Senate or House of Representatives acting in any Capacity by the President or any Department or Officer of the United States except in those instances in which power is given by the Constitution for those purposes...

BTW, the action of the State convention was ratified by a 4 to 1 margin...

;>)

(Please see my FR home page for links to the source documents... ;>)

[LowOiL]

Fort Payne, Alabama still has a “Union Park” because the secession was generally not supported in that area.

"Union Park" was opened in 1910.. way after the civil war... in 1913 they put a huge confederate statue in the park...

Park is to the right area in this photo...

Most of the town by that time had huge influxes of people from the north that speculated that that town would be Birmingham (steel town)... The ingrediants were there (but they were inferior to B'ham, thus FP did not become Birmingham size wise)...

Why the name "Union Park" ? Well I don't know, but mom says the owner of that Hotel gave the property to make the park and he was a Yankee so perhaps he got to name it.. but it was named well after the war and after great Yankee influx in the area. It is odd that just 3 years after it's opening a huge statue of another one of my kinfolks was put up depicting a Confederate Officer.

[Who is John Galt?]

Virginia entered into a unconstitutional compact before actually making its secession official.

One simple question for you:

Are you suggesting that, if Virginia had waited a few months to confirm the action of the convention (which action was confirmed by approximately a 4-1 margin when voted upon), that the State's secession would have been 'legal,' and that you would therefore recognize the constitutional legality of the State's secession?

Hmmm?

You can answer 'yes' or 'no'...

;>)

[Colonel Kangaroo]

Article I, Section 10 says:

No State shall, without the Consent of Congress, lay any Duty of Tonnage, keep Troops, or Ships of War in time of Peace, enter into any Agreement or Compact with another State, or with a foreign Power, or engage in War, unless actually invaded, or in such imminent Danger as will not admit of delay.

But it does NOT say:

No State shall, UNLESS IT HAS SECEDED, without the Consent of Congress, lay any Duty of Tonnage, keep Troops, or Ships of War in time of Peace, enter into any Agreement or Compact with another State, or with a foreign Power, or engage in War, unless actually invaded, or in such imminent Danger as will not admit of delay.

Unless one wants to rewrite the Constitution thusly, it contains a flat prohibition against states exercising authority. Rewriting the document is the liberals way, a trap we should avoid.

What about the 10th Amendment? It reserves to the states and people powers not prohibited to them by the Constitution, but Article 1, Section 10 flatly and plainly prohibits actions of state sovereignty.

[Who is John Galt?]

Sorry, but your argument is simply idiotic...

[Ditto]

And what if a state joined the confederacy and allowed the CSA army to occupy into its territory before formally ratifying its act of secession?

If you believe unilateral secession is somehow constitutional, you must also admit then that Virginia violated the constitution by allowing "foreign troops" on it's soil before it had even had a vote on the secession question.

Even Rand thumping fundamentalist libertarians can't have it both ways, Mr. Gault.

[Who is John Galt?]

If you believe unilateral secession is somehow constitutional, you must also admit then that Virginia violated the constitution by allowing "foreign troops" on it's soil before it had even had a vote on the secession question.

You are assuming that a plebiscite is required, before a State may secede. Upon what do you base that assumption?

Hmmm?

Even Rand thumping fundamentalist libertarians can't have it both ways, Mr. Gault.

I don't have to 'have it both ways,' Dito...

;>)

[Ditto]

Your comments about the Unionists of Alabama is best exemplified by the story of Federal Judge Frank M. Johnson Jr., appointed by President Eisenhower in 1954. He was one of the very courageous Southern Republican judges appointed by President Eisenhower who broke Jim Crow's back. In Johnson's case, it was the Rosa Parks and the Montgomery Bus Boycott decision that ended segregation on public transit. He survived an assassination attempt after that decision. There were other Republican judges in the South then that made similar courageous decisions that upheld the Constitution over the racist entrenched Democrat establishment.

"Frank Minis Johnson Jr. was a back-country boy, and it explained a great deal about his fierce independence and stoicism. He was born in the small town of Haleyville on Oct. 30, 1918, the oldest of seven children of Frank and Alabama Long Johnson, who were farmers and teachers. His father later was a probate judge and became the only Republican in the Alabama Legislature.

The Johnson roots were in Winston County, in the remote hills of northwest Alabama. Long a Republican stronghold, the county rejected slavery and tried to secede from the state after Alabama left the Union in 1861. Styling itself the ''Free State of Winston,'' it tried to remain neutral in the Civil War, and eventually sent more men to fight for the Union than for the Confederacy.

Tough people!

[Ditto]

You are assuming that a plebiscite is required, before a State may secede. Upon what do you base that assumption?

Their had been no declaration either by convention, legislative action or public vote when Confederate troops were welcomed into their state. (None of those methods would have been legitimate BTW.)

The point is, they had accepted 'foreign troops' on their soil while they were still part of the United States. That is of course assuming they accepted the Montgomery government of Jefferson Davis as a legitimate nation. The rub with that is under the Constitution, they had no authority to recognize foreign governments.

So did they really believe in unilateral secession, or were they just playing legalistic games?

You know the answer. At least be honest about it.

[Colonel Kangaroo]

Idiotic? That's what the liberals and those who would usurp power from the people often say about strict construction of the Constitution. Strict construction, taking what the Constitution actually says over what we wish it would say, is often awkward, but is the safest guarantee of our liberty under the federal system. The Constitution flatly and clearly says that states may not exercise sovereign powers. You may cite extra-Constitutional authorities and opinions for what the Constitution plainly says, but if you do so I do not think you should pretend to be a strict constructionist.

[StoneWall Brigade]

Don’t forget to add General Morgan to the list.

[Christopher Lincoln]

There’s a fable common in libertarian circles according to which the Confederates were defending what they took to be their rights against the government. In fact, probably most of those who fought for the Confederacy did so precisely in obedience to government (this must have been true of Lee, who had no other reason for taking the Confederate side). The Civil War was just what it has been called: the war between the states - the states as opposed to the people.

[Citizen Blade]

Give me a break - his action was completely honorable.

Reneging on your oath as an officer in order to not piss off your social set back home is hardly an honorable decision.

Care to name ONE military action that occured during the first "6 months" of the war, where General Robert Lee held any significant authority?

Lee was offered the command of the Union armies. If he had command of the Army of the Potomac early on in the war, with its massive advantage in resources and manpower, the early days of the war would have gone very, very differently. Lee would not have dickered for months like McLellan, but would have driven on Richomond and probably have taken it in short order.

[Bubba Ho-Tep]

The secession ordinance was adopted April 17, citing the specific reservation of the right of secession that the State hade made, in writing

Crossing your fingers behind your back when you sign a contract does not relieve you of the obligations of that contract.

The interesting words in the Virginia Ordinance of Secession are:

This ordinance shall take effect and be an act of this day, when ratified by a majority of the voter of the people of this State cast at a poll to be taken thereon on the fourth Thursday in May next, in pursuance of a schedule hereafter to be enacted.

In other words, "We're going to do this right now and let the people vote on it to make it official in a month or so, after it's a done deal."

[Bubba Ho-Tep]

You can answer 'yes' or 'no'...

That's easy. The answer is "no."

Now one for you: In your unilateral secession-allowing mind, was Virginia officially seceded from the United States when it joined the CSA and allowed CSA troops onto its soil, despite the secession convention's acts not having been ratified by the voters as required?

[Non-Sequitur]

Lincoln made clear in the 1858 debates his attitude toward blacks

What was Stephen Douglas's attitude towards blacks in 1858? Or Jefferson Davis', Robert Lee's, or Thomas Jackson's in 1860? Just curious.