Historian suggests Southerners defeated Confederacy

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.”

In much of the South, the Confederates brought extortion, political oppression and lawlessness, while the Union army restored a degree of law and order and peace. In many areas of the South, Reconstruction was a delightful picnic in the park compared to the rebel reign of terror.

I'm back from my nine-mile hike out west.

I'm sure that you remember my post about the murders of former Confederates in East Tennessee after the war. Link.

East Tennessee was not the only place that suffered from violence and political shenanigans. Here from the Brooklyn Eagle of August 16, 1861, is an article that appeared in the Portland Argus about the destruction of the Bangor (ME) Democrat newspaper. The article was written by the Democrat's editor [italics as in the paper, bold red mine]:

Freedom of the Press

Mr. Marcellus Emory, editor of the Bangor Democrat, published an account of the outrage on his paper, in the Portland Argus. Being already apprised of the purpose to attack his office, he says:

I caused a written notice to be served on the mayor by two of our prominent and leading citizens, informing him of the fact that my office and property were threatened with destruction by a mob, and claiming and demanding of him protection for them. In the notice I tendered him for that purpose the services of able bodied men to the number two hundred. The mayor made neither response nor reply to this notice, nor did he give to the citizens by whom the notice was served, or to me, or to any of my friends the least assurance or encouragement that he would attempt to give the protection claimed and demanded.

On Saturday morning a call appeared in the Whig and Courier for a "Union" Meeting in Norombega Hall, to be holden that evening. I was not present, but am credibly informed that Wm. H. McCrillis, representative to the Legislature from this city and Charles S. Crosby, County Attorney, made inflammatory speeches. And here it should be said, to the honor of Henry E. Prentiss, Esq., that he attempted to make a speech opposing the effort there being made to create a mob spirit, but his voice was powerless amidst a tempest of hisses. The meeting accomplished the object for which it was designed by those who originated it.

On Saturday and Sunday nights it became evident that my property was to receive no protection from the Mayor. I took such precautions as were necessary for its security. To-day I proceeded as usual on Mondays to print and mail my issues for one week. During the forenoon there were no indications, that I saw, of mob violence. I left my editorial room about 12:25, to go to my dinner, my boarding place being about a half of a mile distant. Whilst eating, the fire bells were rung. After finishing my meal, I set out to return to my office. Soon after I met two gentlemen in a buggy, who informed me that my office had just been sacked, and all my property thrown into the street. Proceeding directly forward, on coming out of Central street, I saw the work of destruction, and there too, I saw the first mob that had ever met my eyes. West Market Square and surroundings were filled with nearly two thousand people. In the middle of the Square was a large fire, on which the multitude were engaged in heaping my tables, stands, cases and other material. The Wheelwright and Clark blacks were surrounded with the wreck of what had, an hour before, constituted one of the largest and finest printing offices in the State.

I made my way through the crowd to the stairway, which I found filled with the mob. They made no resistance to my ascending the long stairway. I found my office door besieged by a large number of persons armed with crowbars and like implements. As I approached the door they fell back. Whilst feeling for my key, one of their leaders, a man who has been honored with a position on our city police, demanded that I should instantly open the door. I then turned round and faced the mob, telling them that that office was rightfully under my control, but that if they saw fit to resort to violence, they could probably overpower me. I was unarmed. Before opening the door I told them that my object was to secure my account books, notes, bills, and private papers, and that I should give them the feeble protection in my power. I then opened the door and set about my business, the mob following me in, and seizing indiscriminately whatever they could lay their hands on, and throwing it out of the windows into the street. The work of destruction was soon complete. I then left the office, the mob following me down the stairs. As I reached the sidewalk, there arose from the infuriated mob, "Hang him! Tar and feather him! Kill him!" It was then felt, for the first time, how little there is in the terrors and threats of a mob for him who is conscious of having discharged his duty to the public and himself. The mad crowd were thirsty for the blood of one who had been long and incessantly toiling to save them from the fetters that are being forged for their free limbs. His works may yet bear their fruits.

As I made my way through the dense crowd, friend after friend gathered around me for my protection. Their words of sympathy sank deep into my soul, whilst the demonic cries for my blood fell unheeded on my ears. But one circumstance disturbed my equanimity. And that was like the sting of an adder. When I was beyond danger and among friends, the Mayor, who, regardless of his oath of office, would give me no protection for my property, who made no attempt to disperse the mob, who did not even order the reading of the riot act, who did not even lift a finger to preserve the peace of the city, although days and hours before warned of the threatened attack – when I was beyond danger. He suddenly conceived an anxiety for my personal safety, and suggested that I had better hurry away.

Thus hath the freedom of the press been stricken down here in Maine, not from any patriotic impulse, but through the wicked instigation of a band of politicians who would willingly subvert all law and order for the maintenance of a mere party dogma.

Though anarchy seems to be coming down upon our unhappy country like night, yet I do not despair. I still believe there is yet virtue and intelligence enough in the people to maintain their liberties and protect a free press, which is their best guardian.

By this act of mob violence my all, the result of four years of unremitting toil, has been swept away: but I still have health, strength and youth, and a heart to struggle on in defense of the people’s rights.

Really? So where are they in the Constitution? You're the one insisting that the document says what it says and no more, but now you're telling me that there are things in it that aren't present in the text.

Here you go:

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New York

http://www.constitution.org/rc/rat_decl-ny.htm

That the Powers of Government may be reassumed by the People, whensoever it shall become necessary to their Happiness; that every Power, Jurisdiction and right, which is not by the said Constitution clearly delegated to the Congress of the United States, or the departments of the Government thereof, remains to the People of the several States, or to their respective State Governments to whom they may have granted the same...

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Rhode Island and the Providence Plantations

http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/const/ratri.htm

3d That the powers of government may be reassumed by the people, whensoever it shall become necessary to their happiness:- That the rights of the States respectively, to nominate and appoint all State Officers, and every other power, jurisdiction and right, which is not by the said constitution clearly delegated to the Congress of the United States or to the departments of government thereof, remain to the people of the several states, or their respective State Governments to whom they may have granted the same; and that those clauses in the said constitution which declare that Congress shall not have or exercise certain powers, do not imply, that Congress is entitled to any powers not given by the said constitution, but such clauses are to be construed as exceptions to certain specified powers, or as inserted merely for greater caution.

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Virginia

http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/const/ratva.htm

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...

Each of these ratification documents was accepted as submitted...