Yes indeed.
Posted on 08/25/2008 9:11:18 AM PDT by 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.”
"..., that I do not consider the proceedings of Virginia in ’98-’99 as countenancing the doctrine that a state may at will secede from its Constitutional compact with the other States. A rightful secession requires the consent of the others, or an abuse of the compact, absolving the seceding party from the obligations imposed by it." - James Madison, 1832
I'm pretty sure that Madison read the Constitution, and the Constitution in 1832 was identical to the Constitution in 1860. So obviously people of the time both read the Constitution and believed the Southern acts of unilateral secession to be wrong.
OR: Series 4, Vol. 1, pg. 203
So what's your assumption as to how a state may be taken out of the Union? Can anyone do it? Can I get together with a few friends, call ourselves a convention, declare our state seceded (maybe with a ratification vote down the road at some point, even though you don't think it necessary), and then invite foreign troops in?
I wonder what people would say about an Iraqi-American general who, at the beginning of the build-up in 2003 resigned his commission in the US Army and went back to Iraq to take command of its forces.
From his debates with Lincoln Douglas’ attitude was not in way more enlightened than Lincoln’s.
One difference was that Lincoln was willing to have all blacks move/be moved to another country, Liberia, Panama, somewhere in Africa.
Robert E. Lee:
“Robert E. Lee’s Opinion Regarding Slavery
This letter was written by Lee in response to a speech given by then President Pierce.
Robert E. Lee letter dated December 27, 1856:
I was much pleased the with President’s message. His views of the systematic and progressive efforts of certain people at the North to interfere with and change the domestic institutions of the South are truthfully and faithfully expressed. The consequences of their plans and purposes are also clearly set forth. These people must be aware that their object is both unlawful and foreign to them and to their duty, and that this institution, for which they are irresponsible and non-accountable, can only be changed by them through the agency of a civil and servile war. There are few, I believe, in this enlightened age, who will not acknowledge that slavery as an institution is a moral and political evil. It is idle to expatiate on its disadvantages. I think it is a greater evil to the white than to the colored race. While my feelings are strongly enlisted in behalf of the latter, my sympathies are more deeply engaged for the former. The blacks are immeasurably better off here than in Africa, morally, physically, and socially. The painful discipline they are undergoing is necessary for their further instruction as a race, and will prepare them, I hope, for better things. How long their servitude may be necessary is known and ordered by a merciful Providence. Their emancipation will sooner result from the mild and melting influences of Christianity than from the storm and tempest of fiery controversy. This influence, though slow, is sure. The doctrines and miracles of our Saviour have required nearly two thousand years to convert but a small portion of the human race, and even among Christian nations what gross errors still exist! While we see the course of the final abolition of human slavery is still onward, and give it the aid of our prayers, let us leave the progress as well as the results in the hands of Him who, chooses to work by slow influences, and with whom a thousand years are but as a single day. Although the abolitionist must know this, must know that he has neither the right not the power of operating, except by moral means; that to benefit the slave he must not excite angry feelings in the master; that, although he may not approve the mode by which Providence accomplishes its purpose, the results will be the same; and that the reason he gives for interference in matters he has no concern with, holds good for every kind of interference with our neighbor, -still, I fear he will persevere in his evil course. . . . Is it not strange that the descendants of those Pilgrim Fathers who crossed the Atlantic to preserve their own freedom have always proved the most intolerant of the spiritual liberty of others?”.
As for the others, I leave that to you to research.
Another difference is that Robert Lee was willing to put his money where his beliefs were, and actually paid passage to Liberia for some of his former slaves. Obviously Lee had no problems with the idea of the Burke's moving to Africa with their children. And considering that William Burke was able to attend a Monrovia seminary, somehing he could never have done in Virginia, and become an ordained Presbyterian minister then it's clear that in their case moving to Africa was quite a step up over slavery in Dixie.
Robert E. Lee’s Opinion Regarding Slavery
You might want to go back and really read that in detail. What, exactly, was Lee's opinion of slavery? Well, he thought it was "a greater evil to the white than to the colored race", so it's clear who he's more concerned for. He goes on to state that slavery was "necessary for their further instruction as a race...", though what more they had to learn as a race after 250 years of bondage Lee didn't say. He was of the opinion that blacks were "...immeasurably better off here than in Africa..." so obviously Lee didn't think slavery was all that bad if a life here a his property was better than freedom in Africa. And as for the institution itself, Lee believed it would end when God willed it, be it 2 years or 2,000. And most of all, the fate of slavery should be left to the Almighty and that man should do nothing to hasten it's end. Except pray. And his opinions didn't change much, because seven years later he was still saying that he considered "...the relation of master and slave, controlled by humane laws and influenced by Christianity and an enlightened public sentiment, as the best that can exist between the white and black races while intermingled as at present in this country..."
The fact of the matter is that Lee's opposition to slavery was tepid at best, and non-existent at worst.
As for the others, I leave that to you to research.
I have. Both Davis and Jackson were slave owners and believed in the institution.
Well, you did ask.....and I did read what I posted (why would I not?).
Two points: one, From his comments Lee evidently understood something you missed, that slavery harmed the South by it’s very existence and two, Lee wasn’t filled with a desire to war to prolong the practice. Indeed his views are hardly different from the founding fathers like Jefferson and Washington. Both owned slaves and believed in the institution.
I believe that is a bit of an overstatement. Had Lee truly believed that slavery harmed the South then he would not have been so strongly opposed to taking any steps to end it. He was content to leave it in divine hands, regardless of how long it took. Those are not the sentiments of a man who viewed slavery as overly harmful.
Indeed his views are hardly different from the founding fathers like Jefferson and Washington. Both owned slaves and believed in the institution.
True. However nobody is making the claim that Jefferson or Washington was opposed to slavery, either.
Beyond the fact that state sanctioned slavery, the ultimate in oppressive government, was the cornerstone of the Confederacy, Confedederate rule was characterized by usurpation and heavy-handedness. Lincoln is attacked for his Constitutional behavior, but Jeff Davis's irregularities are given a pass. And since today the bigger problems come from a bloated federal government, the oppressions of local Confederate are also given a pass. Not all state oppressions are from the federal level. It was no comfort to a poor victimized farmer that his abuse was the product of local corruption and greed.
In Virginia's case, it's secession declaration: "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." Virginia was admitted to the confederacy weeks before it had legally seceded from the Union.
Yes indeed.
And he took full advantage of that position.
I guess it does save time. Like not bringing forward arguments does for you.
Only if you assume that a plebiscite was somehow required to authorize secession.
Care to cite some references? (BTW, it will be extremely entertaining to see you trying to justify 'the right of State secession via plebiscite'... ;>)
Virginia's secession declaration. It clearly states it's contingent on a vote by the citizens of the commonwealth. Such a vote didn't take place until after they were admitted as a confederate state, after they had taken hostile actions against the federal government, and after they had allowed confederate troops on their soil.
What do you know about "strict construction?" Anything at all? I tell you what, sport - provide a specific citation from the US Constitution that prohibits State secession.
Go for it...
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.
I agree - and the Constitution nowhere "actually says" that State secession is prohibited.
The Constitution flatly and clearly says that states may not exercise sovereign powers.
"The Constitution flatly and clearly says that states may not exercise sovereign powers" - so long as they remain members of the union. Once a State retires from the union, that prohibition is obviously no longer applicable.
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.
Hey, sport, I tell you what: I will gladly limit myself to the specific written terms of the US Constitution of 1860 - which no where prohibits State secession.
Have at it...
So what you are saying appears to be that State secession was completely Constitutional, but these folks screwed up the paper work.
Congratulations.
You know the answer. At least be honest about it.
I will be completely honest about it - perhaps you should consider that position as well:
...the principle on which all our political systems are founded, which is, that the people have in all cases, a right to determine how they will be governed.
William Rawle, 1829
Or are you blowing smoke as usual?
;>)
Pardon me, because I have a 9-5 job: but how long has it been since you posted any kind of verifiable historical reference for your idiotic arguments? Days? Weeks?
I suggest that you start with the US Constitution - you obviously have never read it...
;>)
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