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.”
Care to cite any of his public writings? Of course not. You wouldn't want to quote anything the gentleman said in public.
As you correctly note, Mr. Madison may well have been "the man who, more than any other single individual, was responsible for creating the document in the first place." And when he was selling "the document" to the American people, prior to ratification, he noted, in writing, in public, that the States would be justified in using military force (State militia) to oppose the new federal government by force, if the States thought it appropriate to oppose unconstitutional federal actions in that manner.
You can find it in The Federalist Papers. I've quoted the passage to you before. Apparently you have a short memory...
Now, if what you actually meant was "I am John Freakin' Galt and my interpretation of the Constitution is the only correct one. Bow down before me, you lesser mortals.." then you should have come out and said it. Maybe we can find you a football stadium somewhere, put up some Greek columns, and then you can display your mighty ego for all?
(Maybe your memory isn't so short - you seem to be carrying some kind of grudge... ;>)
Let me spell it out for you, one more time. The Constitution is written law. It means precisely what it says; nothing more, nothing less. Other documents from the same period support that interpretation. No where does the Constitution (as it existed in 1860-61) prohibit State secession. You disagree - which (IMHO) ranks you with the 'Roe v. Wade' types and their mysterious 'right of privacy,' and every other extreme liberal who seeks to 'amend' the Constitution via 'interpretation.'
Congratulations...
"Illegality?" Wrong - that is precisely the issue. Otherwise, you are straining at gnats, and swallowing camels, when it comes to constitutional law...
Are you actually referring to my belief that the court may not rewrite the Constitution at will? As John Taylor noted nearly 200 years ago (IIRC), the word 'supreme' is used twice in the Constitution, once in reference to a federal court, and once in reference to the Constitution itself. Are you suggesting that five members of a court are 'supreme' over the United States Constitution? Or would you agree with Thomas Jfferson, James Madison (and yours truly ;>) that the Constitution is 'supreme' over the court?
You've got two choices, sport - tell us where you stand. Is the court 'supreme,' or is the written law of the land 'supreme?'
The ratification documents constitute the 'signature page' of the Constitution. You would apparently completely ignore any reservations contained therein. I would not.
Your approach seems to be closer to the D@mocrats' approach. Congratulations...
Sorry, but I hear uninformed, pig-ignorant opinions a dozen times a day (and that's on a good day). If you can't back up your opinions with fact, maybe you should modify your opinions...
LOL! No contract is valid without signatures - and the ratification documents of the States constitute the 'signature page' of the United States Constitution.
Don't like the written ratifications of the States of New York, Rhode Island and the Providence Plantations, and Virginia? Fine - kick them out of the union!
;>)
(But that's not what you want, is it? ;>)
What you are in fact claiming is that Virginia unilaterally amended the Constitution.
Wrong - the Constitution no where prohibited State secession (and the 10th Amendment actually reserved that right, in writing, to the States). Virginia was only taking extra precautions (apparently someone there had an idea of where things might go) to ensure that the State's rights were recognized.
The Constitution no where prohibited State secession - and apparently Mr. John William Noell was unaware of the Tenth Amendment.
Thanks for the reference - it's the first I've heard of the gentleman. He reminds me of any number of RINOs...
Once a State had "retired" from the union, it was obviously not bound by those restrictions.
And in the end, the secessions produced nothing more lasting than hot air and a trail of misery.
Yes, I've heard it before here, on more occasions than I care to remember - 'Might Makes Right.'
You're adding words to the Constitution again. There's nothing in the Constitution that limits its authority as the supreme law of the land to the a period of time that states remain in the Union.
Oh, give me a break.
What I'm getting at with my awkward logic and prose, Lincoln got at clearly and more succinctly when he said no government contained provision for its own dissolution.
Sorry, my friend, but how freaking WRONG can you be? Allow me to refer you to Article V of the United States Constitution:
The Congress, whenever two thirds of both Houses shall deem it necessary, shall propose Amendments to this Constitution, or, on the Application of the Legislatures of two thirds of the several States, shall call a Convention for proposing Amendments, which, in either Case, shall be valid to all Intents and Purposes, as Part of this Constitution, when ratified by the Legislatures of three fourths of the several States, or by Conventions in three fourths thereof, as the one or the other Mode of Ratification may be proposed by the Congress...
There is ABSOLUTELY NOTHING that prevents the States from convening in a Constitutional Convention, and TERMINATING the existing federal government. I know that it is news to most Americans, but the federal government is a creature of the States; and the States and their people can completely eliminate it whensoever they choose...
Where is the provision for state secession in the Constitution in 1860? ...I see a 10th Amendment yielding the powers that have not been prohibited to the states.
there you go!
;>)
But Article 1, Section 10 has prohibited actions of sovereignty to the states so the 10th Amendment does not negate Article 1, Section 10. Where then in the Constitution is there a negation of the restriction contained in Article 1 Section 10?
Wrong - Article 1, Section 10 does not prohibit "actions of sovereignty;" it prohibits certain specified ('enumerated') actions - not including State secession...
I've been meaning to tabulate the actions of Lincoln’s government against newspapers, editors, writers, and publishers, but I haven't gotten around to it. By this I mean suppressions and arrests by the federal government rather than destruction or intimidation by mobs, which are interesting enough on their own. It wasn't just Maine where mob action took place. Heaven knows there were many, many mob actions all over the North like the one I posted above. This tabulation that I'll do some day is a huge task, and I just haven't had the time to do it.
Some books on the subject might be of interest to others here. A book that documents a large number of mob and government interferences with the press is Lincoln and the Press by Robert S Harper, published by McGraw-Hill in 1951, but it's out of print. Appleton's American Annual Cyclopaedia and Register of Important Events of the Year ____ lists some of the suppressions, etc. but is not complete [Example of Appleton's from 1864; see pages 393 and 394]. The war year issues of Appleton's have been out of print since shortly after the war. More modern books include Lincoln's Wrath, Fierce Mobs, Brilliant Scoundrels and a Presidents Mission to Destroy the Press by Manber and Dahlstrom and Blue and Gray in Black and White, Newspapers in the Civil War by Brayton Harris.
With respect to Lincoln and Burnside, I assume that you are talking about Burnside’s seizure of the Chicago Times in direct violation of a federal court order. A crowd of 20,000 Chicagoans gathered to protest Burnside’s action, and the Illinois legislature denounced the general. I wonder whether this strong protest by Illinois citizens and politicians and the illegal nature of Burnside’s action were what led Lincoln to rescind that particular seizure. [Link].
Did Lincoln rescind any of the numerous other press suppressions by the federal government? I'm aware that Burnside rescinded his suppression order against the New York World at the same time as he rescinded that for the Chicago Times, i.e., after Lincoln objected to Burnside's order that suppressed both papers.
I'll be glad to quote his writings.
You can find it in The Federalist Papers. I've quoted the passage to you before. Apparently you have a short memory...
Can you quote the passage from the Federalist Papers where Madison clearly states that unilateral secession is allowed? Or where he outlines the process for secession at all?
The question of whether secession is allowed or not isn't the issue. I agree that the Constitution does not prohibit it so there is no reason why it should not be allowed. The question is how secession is to take place. You take the position that only the leaving states had any rights that needed to be respected or any say in the matter. Madison disagrees. He clearly states in his letters that secession requires the consent of all the parties affected. His view that all states are equal parties to the Constitution seems contrary to your Orwellian view that some states are more equal than others. And I'll accept Madison's interpretation over your's, for the obvious reasons.
Now, if you have other documents from the period that seem to specifically support the concept of unilateral secession then by all means, trot them out.
You disagree - which (IMHO) ranks you with the 'Roe v. Wade' types and their mysterious 'right of privacy,' and every other extreme liberal who seeks to 'amend' the Constitution via 'interpretation.'
Your not-so-humble opinions to the contrary notwithstanding, you would be incorrect.
Not at all. The question you posed is why anyone would believe a referendum would need to be held before secession could take place. The answer is obviously Virginia did, or else it would not have placed the requirement in the secession documents. The underlying legality of her actions, or the fact that Virginia ignored the requirements she herself laid out are irrelevant. It's the method she believed was necessary to accomplish her act that is the question. Obviously had Virginia only talked to you ahead of time you would have straightened them out.
I would disagree with your contention that you are the person tasked with deciding what is Constitutional and what is not.
The Constitution is indeed supreme - over all the branches of government as well as the states themselves. Article III gives the the jurisdiction for interpreting and applying the Constitution to the Supreme Court. The fact that you may disagree with their interpretation does not make you right and them wrong. Nor does it mean that their decisions are in keeping with the intent of the founders in every case. But their decisions are binding. It is an imperfect system but what is the alternative? Hard as it may be for you to understand, not everyone is blessed with the same...unique view of the Constitution as you have. So what do we do? Allow Congress to have 535 interpretations? Allow the states to have 50? Leave it in the hands of the President? Or give it all to you?
The 'signature page' of the Constitution followed Article VII where men like James Madison, George Washington, Alexander Hamilton, John Rutledge, and ben Franklin signed it. The ratification documents were just that, assent to their decision and their declaration to ratify and abide by the Constitution. Their acceptance was not conditional. It was not "we accept only if such and such is included". Any assumptions and any recommendations that they made did not alter the Constitution as ratified by the convention and which they assented to. New York declared that standing armies should not be kept. The fact that a standing army was established per the Constitution did not invalidate its ratification because the ratification documents do not trump the Constitution itself.
Your approach seems to be closer to the D@mocrats' approach. Congratulations...
I wouldn't have pegged you for a Democrat.
I'm pretty sure Congressman Noell had heard of it. He had been a member of the bar before entering politics.
But I doubt he thought of that amendment as a "Get Out of the Union Free Card" or a secret ace up the sleeve of secessionist movements or an Easter egg or Christmas present hidden by the First Congress for lucky rebel children to find.
If somebody has time and patience, maybe they could check and see whether secession came up as a topic when the 10th Amendment was proposed, debated, voted on, and ratified.
- Those listed in post 209. These books deal with freedom of the press during the war.
- Vol. 1., The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government by Jefferson Davis. Good description of the Southern view of the US Constitution. This book is on the web, I think.
- The Politically Incorrect Guide to the Constitution by Kevin R. C. Gutzman. A description of the Constitution by a lawyer with a Ph.D in American history.
- Days of Defiance, Sumter, Secession, and the Coming of the Civil War by Maury Klein. A well written description of the months leading up to the war.
- Portals to Hell, Military Prisons of the Civil War by Lonnie R. Speer. A fairly balanced account of the individual prisons on both sides.
- Volumes I and II, Civil War Extra, A Newspaper History of the Civil War ... from the collection of Eric C. Caren. Introduction by Brian C. Pohanka. These volumes contain full page copies of newspapers from both sides. They will give you some idea of the history that is available in the newspapers, often forgotten or ignored by historians.
There are resources available on the web. Here is a starter set:
The Official Records. Actual title: The War of the Rebellion: a Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies. Copies of communications of the armies and government officials. [Link]
- The Congressional Globe. The records of the US and Confederate Congresses, the Continental Congress, and other collections. Click on the search option and select which set of records you want to search. [Link]
- The Federalist Papers. [Link]
- The Antifederalist Papers. [Link]
- Elliot's Debates. Ratification Conventions of the Constitution and the Kentucky and Virginia resolutions of 1798 and 1799. [Link]
That's obvious. The question is whether the Constitution sanction departure by secession or whether the departing areas will have to make good their leaving by revolution, the way we departed from the mother country in 1776.
Yes, I've heard it before here, on more occasions than I care to remember - 'Might Makes Right.'
Yes and closely related is the thought that right makes might. The slave empire had neither right nor might on its side.
There is ABSOLUTELY NOTHING that prevents the States from convening in a Constitutional Convention, and TERMINATING the existing federal government. I know that it is news to most Americans, but the federal government is a creature of the States; and the States and their people can completely eliminate it whensoever they choose...
That's obvious too. How else did the nation, the people the United States, move from the Articles of Confederation to the Constitution? This isn't Democratic Underground, we know the basics of American history over here. But that way of changing the laws of Union does not negate Lincoln's belief that there was no internal Constitution provision for dismemberment of the pre-existing Union by unilateral state actions.
Wrong - Article 1, Section 10 does not prohibit "actions of sovereignty;" it prohibits certain specified ('enumerated') actions - not including State secession...
A gang of rebels can get together and say anything they want- even that they've "seceded. But that will not free them from the Constitutional restrictions that would prevent a secession from being more than a irksome political drama. The Constitution, not a gang of state politicians, is the supreme law of the land.
The only one of those that I’ve read were the Federalist Papers and that was back when I was in high school. I may reread that and add all of those to the list as well. Thanks.
You're welcome. From what I've read, East Tennessee was the worst area in the Confederacy for Union supporting individuals. Union supporting guerillas started burning bridges in East Tennessee in 1861, and Confederate and state forces responded [Link and Link2].
When Lincoln faced a similar situation in Maryland, he illegally suspended habeas corpus and ignored court orders. He suppressed newspapers, arrested judges and other people, and refused to give reasons to the Maryland legislature about why he had arrested people. He eventually he arrested many of the legislature itself. What happened to government of the people, by the people, and for the people?
I've read somewhere that the repressions of Union supporting East Tennesseans when Confederates were in charge were not that different from what Southerners went through under Union armies. It was not all peace and light under Union armies. Well, perhaps it was for Union supporters, but not for Confederate supporters.
The South wasn't perfect. There was bad administration in Arkansas by Confederate general Hindman. Davis replaced him -- moved him to a field command IIRC and put someone else in charge of civilian affairs. There were also problems for some Union supporting Germans and North Texans in Texas during the war. Union supporters were often treated poorly.
After all, the examples provided were from 1864. How many pro-Union newspapers even survived to be suppressed in the South by 1864. The fact that such dissent and controversy even remained in the North three years into the war is a positive advantage over general conditions in the Confederacy.
I've seen the claim that 300 newspapers were suppressed or mobbed in the North. I don't know whether that figure is correct, but I suspect it is. I haven't tried to document the 300 figure, but there are many specific Norther papers noted in the books I mentioned above and on the web. Also, how do you count things like the prohibition of all Democratic papers from entering a state like was mentioned in the 1864 Appleton's? How many Democrat papers were there in the North? How do you count papers that were suppressed more than once for different infractions?
Only 1864? 1861 was a particularly bad year for Northern newspapers when the government was throwing editors in jail and intimidating and stopping newspapers. The message for newspaper editors was clear. You were either going to toe the Lincoln line or you might end up in jail for months with no charges against you.
There were not a large number of Union supporting papers in the South. Black and White in Blue and Gray says that maybe 90 papers stopped publication in the first year of the war in Texas and Virginia, but I imagine most of them were small town papers whose readers and editors had left for the war. I've found half a dozen or so Union supporting papers that were destroyed by mobs of Southerners. Some of these happened in the months before the war. There were far more destructions of papers by mobs in the North.
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