How the South belatedly won America's civil war

BBC News UK ^ | 01/20/2006 | By David Cannadine

[oxcart]

Greetings from North Carolina, where I'm spending the next few months as a visiting fellow at something called the National Humanities Center. It's located mid-way between the three cities of Raleigh, Durham and Chapel Hill, which together form one of the fastest-growing communities in the United States, along with the region that includes Charlotte, the largest city in the state.

Here's an example of what is known as the "New" South, which is booming as never before. For some time economic power has been shifting in this country, away from the old, industrialised North East towards states that were once far less prosperous than they have recently become. And over the last three decades this change in the distribution of wealth resources and people has also had major implications for American politics and American government.

For much of its history, North Carolina was one of the poorest southern states. The first English settlers arrived in 1585, but they survived barely two years, and it was not until late in the 17th and early 18th centuries that immigration began in earnest. But the soil was unwelcoming, farming was hard, and the colony never achieved the level of prosperity, dominated by great plantations, that characterised neighbouring Virginia and South Carolina.

North Carolina was also backward in other ways: it was reluctant to join the American Revolution, and it was one of the last states to embrace the union after freedom from the British had been won. And although it was a slave-owning state, it was also slow to sign up with the Confederacy on the outbreak of the Civil War. But a quarter of all the southern troops who died in that conflict came from North Carolina, and by the end of the war, the state was a shambles. So, as the 20th century dawned, North Carolina was a poor and under-resourced region, where nearly 20% of whites, and nearly 50% of blacks, were unable to read.

But by then, North Carolina had become home to one major industry, and that was tobacco. In 1881, a machine was invented which could roll cigarettes automatically, and soon after Durham became a great centre of tobacco manufacture, dominated by the Duke family who established the American Tobacco Company in 1890.

They were among the largest employers in the town, they built enormous factories and warehouses, and in 1924 they endowed the local college with a massive gift of $40m, which ever since has borne the Duke name, and is now one of the best universities in the country.

There are many ironies here. The Duke family had made their money by manufacturing a product which often killed people, if consumed in sufficient quantities. Yet Duke University, which they had transformed by their benefaction, has in recent times become renowned for its medical centre, which seeks to save and prolong lives. Such can be the contradictions of capitalism and of philanthropy.

Despite the job opportunities which the tobacco industry created, for both blacks and whites, North Carolina continued to languish down to World War II and beyond. And all this time, North Carolina was a segregated state, along with the rest of the South, with separate schools and buses, and cafes for blacks and whites.

Industry collapse

It's hard to imagine that that such a state of affairs still existed within the lifetime of many Carolinans living today. But it did.

To make matters worse, from the 1980s onwards, the cigarette industry went into decline, and this took away a major source of employment. The economic base of Durham seemed on the brink of collapse, and the great tobacco warehouses now stood silent and derelict. This is hardly a cheering story, and North Carolina was hardly a cheering place when I first visited America during the early 1970s. There seemed no good reason to go there.

In fact, I only encountered the state indirectly. For one of its senators, Sam Ervin, was the chairman of the Senate Committee which was then in the process of investigating the Watergate affair, and he waged a vigorous and ultimately victorious battle against President Nixon, who sought to withhold evidence by claiming executive privilege.

The committee hearings were televised, and they were riveting daytime drama as Ervin became a national celebrity, not only for his decent and determined conduct against a crooked and conspiring president, but also for his folksy humour and pithy observations.

Yet by then Sam Ervin was becoming an example of a fast-vanishing breed: the Southern Democrat. From the early 1930s until the late 1960s, the Democratic Party had dominated American politics, after a long period of Republican ascendancy, and the architect of that dominance had been Franklin Roosevelt.

One of Roosevelt's greatest achievements had been to put together an election winning coalition of northern workers and big city bosses, along with representatives of the white, segregationist South. As such, it was a coalition that was contradictory to the point of instability, but from Roosevelt to Lyndon Johnson, it was somehow held together, and Senator Sam Ervin was a quintessential example of its southern component.

No longer backward

But by the time of Watergate, something had already happened in American politics which portended the break-up of this Democratic coalition, (especially the Southern element in it) and that was the passing of the Civil Rights Act by President Lyndon Johnson in 1964.

Johnson's Civil Rights Act was not only overdue and admirable but a rare example of a politician doing something he believed in but which was not consistent with his own, or with his party's, political self-interest

Johnson himself was a Texan, and a product of the segregated, graft-ridden world of southern politics. Yet once he gained the White House he became persuaded that segregation had to end, and that blacks should finally receive full political rights. He duly deployed his formidable political will, and brutal operating skills, to berate, persuade and coerce a reluctant Congress into passing the Civil Rights Act. To this day, it remains one of the greatest pieces of legislation ever sponsored by an American President, and whatever Johnson's failings and errors in his mis-conduct of the Vietnam War, this measure must always stand to his credit.

Yet even as he exerted himself to secure its passing, Johnson conceded that the Civil Rights Act meant the Democratic Party would lose the American South for a generation: for while the newly-enfranchised blacks would vote Democrat, the southern whites would increasingly turn to the Republicans. And that is exactly what has happened.

One indication was that in 1972, North Carolina elected its first Republican Senator in the 20th Century. His name was Jesse Helms, and for the next 30 years he was a powerful conservative force in the nation's capital, fighting against restrictions on smoking and on guns. Today, in Washington, there's scarcely a Democratic senator from the old South left.

Johnson's Civil Rights Act was, then, not only both overdue and admirable, it was also a rare example of a politician doing something because he believed it to be right, but which was not consistent with his own, or with his party's, political self-interest.

Loft apartments

It's not only Johnson's civil rights legislation which has transformed the old South during the last 30-odd years. For at the same time, the economic balance of power in the United States has tipped away from states like Pennsylvania, Connecticut and Ohio, and towards the sunrise and sunshine states of the south and the west.

Places like North Carolina are no longer derided as marginal, backward and poor. Instead, they have become extremely attractive to young and old Americans alike; to those wishing to make their careers (and often their fortunes) in IT, or medical research or bio-technology, or to those who wish to retire from the cold North East to warmer climes. Hurricanes like Katrina notwithstanding, the major growth areas in the United States are now in places like North Carolina, and here in Durham. The once-derelict tobacco warehouses have recently been re-born as ritzy lofts (I'm living in one myself) and fashionable restaurants and boutiques.

Such prosperity has never happened in the South before of course, and as Katrina did so vividly show, this isn't true every where. The old poor South does linger, in Louisiana, Alabama and Mississippi, and there are still substantial areas of poverty in the Carolinas and in Georgia. Be that as it may, the South is richer than it's ever been, and it's also become politically more influential as a result.

But as Johnson had both foreseen and feared, this enhanced political clout is no longer mobilised in support of the Democrats. For in recent decades the South has been a major force in the revival of the Republican Party.

One indication of this is that the Texas of Lyndon Johnson is now the Texas of George Bush and of his father. Another is that it is now scarcely conceivable that an American president could be elected who's based in the North East.

That would probably be true even if he was a Republican, and it would be still more true if he (or she) was a Democrat.

John Kerry found that out the hard way in 2004. Will Hillary Clinton be taught the same lesson in 2008? If she is, it will be one more indication that the American South has finally, peacefully and belatedly won the American civil war.

[dakine]

Real Southern Democrats are more conservative then today's Repubs....

[onyx]

LOL!

[detsaoT]

Confederate diehards are just about as patriotic as a UN worshipping Liberal. If the South had won, we wouldn't be The United States, we'd be two different nations.

(a) the South has contributed more soldiers to post-Civil War battles than any other area. If that's not "patriotism," then I'd love to hear what your definition is.

(b) if the South had won, there would be two different nations, yes. Who knows what would've really happened, though. The CSA might still have collapsed and the states end up back with the USA.

(c) this is what the liberals I work with keep telling me is going to be the best thing to ever happen to us:

I can't say that I disagree, sadly.

[Rebelbase]

" Confederate diehards are just about as patriotic as a UN worshipping Liberal."

Spoken out of naivety.

Sons of the South have fought for the United States of America in every military engagement since the Spanish American War, where former Confederate General Joeseph Wheeler, now US Major General Wheeler exhorted his troops upon routing the Spanish: "Come on boys, we’ve got the Yankees on the run now!"

[Shooter 2.5]

Nope. Not even close.

Oswald did it.

[Leisler]

Mitt has zero chance.

[Rebelbase]

Ha, Ha, Johnny Wilkes is coming to pay you a visit tonight.....

[LauraleeBraswell]

" Sons of the South have fought for the United States of America in every military engagement since the Spanish American War,"

that's cause the North won.

[Rebelbase]

You went to school to figure that out?

[advance_copy]

The most important factor in the rise of North Carolina was the development of cheap air conditioning. That has far more to do with it than Lyndon Johnson.

[kalee]

ping

[kjo]

Only you and Walter Cronkite believe Oswald did it.

[PAR35]

by Barr McClellan

Who has family deeply embedded in the current Bush administration, and to the campaign which is trying to defeat the Republicans in the Texas Governor's race.

[Arkinsaw]

North Carolina was also backward in other ways: it was reluctant to join the American Revolution, and it was one of the last states to embrace the union after freedom from the British had been won.

They were jealous of their liberties. That was not backwardness.

[Old Professer]

Touquevillian dreaming on a snowy day...

[banjo joe]

Yeah, that must have been why when Johnson pushed the act he said it will guarantee the Dems black votes for years to come.

I've read that the old bustard actually used the dreaded and forbidden "N" word.

So much for 'social consciousness'.

[ovrtaxt]

I own a piece of land in north GA. When I went there to buy it, I was there with a friend and his dad, who is in the real estate business in MA. He was amazed at the growth. I could tell he was a little taken aback at us backward southern goobers.

Not what he expected lol!

[Godebert]

"Confederate diehards are just about as patriotic as a UN worshipping Liberal."

Every male in my family has served in the military from the Revolution to the present. I doubt you could say the same of your New Yorkers.

[Darkwolf377]

Yep, he did, I've seen the quote in three separate places. That's why when Jesse said LBJ was his idea of a great president I almost gagged.

[banjo joe]

One of my unfulfilled ambitions in life is to travel down to his gravesite on the Perdenales and piss on it.

Get McNamara while you're at it -- once that old bustard is gone that is.

Anyone read that failed-his-way-upward's book?

They KNEW they wouldn't win VN the way they were 'prosecuting' it -- but sacrificed thousands of lives on both sides so they might keep their jobs -- which they didn't, of course.