What Motivated Southerners To Defend The Indefensible?

RICHMOND - It's only a two-hour drive from the White House on Pennsylvania Avenue to the White House here on Clay Street.

It took four years and more than 600,000 lives to make that same journey during the second American Revolution, now officially known as the US Civil War.

It's odd that this nation's bloodiest war, a war between brothers, stretched from 1861 until 1865 when the capital of the COnfederate States of America in Richmond is only 100 miles south from the capital of the United States of America in Washington.

Thousands of Americans annually visit Civil War battlefields, museums and monuments.

Enthusiasts study in passionate detail the leaders, military strategy and battles of the Civil War.

My fascination with the Civil War has less to do with military engagements than with the motivations of up to 1.5 million Southern men and boys wiling to die to tear the nation in two in defense of slavery, an utterly indefedsible institution.

Had the conflict, also known as the War of the Southern Planters, been fought only by Southern slave owners, it would have been over in weeks rather than years.

As it was, brilliant and charismatic Confederate Generals such as Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson led armies of poor, non-slave-owning Southerners into battle and came dangerously close to winning the war.

My mother's and father's ancestors were Southerners who fought for the Confederacy. I'm pleased that their side lost.

As a young man I fought for passage of civil rights laws that would eliminate the vestiges of slavery and the continued denial of equal rights to black Americans. What, I wondered, could my Confederate ancestors have been thinking?

I did not find the answer during my tour of the White House of the Confederacy or in the next-door Museum of the Confederacy.

A curator at the museum understood my state of perplexity but could only tell me that it's impossible to judge the decisions of my Confederate ancestors based on todays standards.

Although slavery was central to the decision by the Southern states to break away from the Union, many causes over the years led to conflict.

Sectional rivalry developed as the North became industrialized and gained population with European immigration.

The North wanted to build roads, canals and railroads to accommodate growing industries. Without personal or corporate taxation, revenue was raised by tariffs, which protected Northern products and increased prices of imported goods needed by the nonindustrialized South.

Southerners felt they were being gouged by their Northern brethern. They also felt that the states, not the federal government, had the authority to regulate commerce and other affairs. They also felt that the states had the right under the Constitution to separate from the Union, an idea that had strong supporters in both the North and South.

Deciding whether new territories and states would be slave or nonslave became a North-South fight for power in Congress and within the federal government.

Northern abolitionists demonized the Southerners and backed them into their own regional corner. Many Americans in the early years of the nation felt stronger regional and state pride than national pride.

Lee, who did not want to break up the Union, declined an offer to command the Union Army. He chose fight for Virginia and the South.

There must be lessons to be learned from the Civil War that can be applied to current and future conflicts.

Another Black Nationalist who thinks that the war was about slavery and that Southerners are all racists, even today.

Hmmm, all Southerners are racists? Well let us see what two ex-slaves had to say on the subject since they were closer to the problem than you or I ever could be:

In many parts of New England a very erroneous impression prevails regarding the attitude of the white people; I mean the white people of the south toward the Negro.

The general idea seems to be that the average southern white man sallies forth every morning with a bowie knife between his teeth, and the first Negro he meets, proceeds to lay him open in the back, broil him on a bed of hot coals and thus whet his appetite for breakfast. I found too, that this impression is largely the result of the thoughtless and altogether unnecessary talk of many southerners visiting the North, who seem to feel it encumbent on them to disavow the very friendly relations that exist between these two races in many parts of the South, by expressions of indifference, and intolerance, that in many instances are never manifested at home.

As a matter of fact, the southern family was noted for the very humane manner in which they treated their slaves, and some of those servants as well as the descendents of others, are in the service of the family at this very day.

Somehow the impression has gotten abroad that the ordinary form used by the southern white people in addressing a Negro is "n****r." Now, it is well known that this term is never used by the better class, for, "Though I be a native here and to the manner born," I can truthfully say I have never, in a lifetime of fifty years, once had the term applied to me personality; and curiously enough, the only time I ever was offended by it happened in the North.

Sam Aleckson

I was persuaded that when I came North I would have the glories of the superior manners and the very quintessence of refinement shown to me; but instead of that, give me dear old Georgia people and "plantation manners" every time in preference. That is what I say.

My God! What will become of the negroes of Philadelphia, Pa. I have seen more wicked men to-night than I have ever seen in South, and may God have mercy upon my race of people. I fear that hell will be the home of thousands of them, after having an opportunity to become enlightened. It seems to me that they are destroying the benefits which they could have derived from their education, judging from their conduct to-night. I have seen and heard, with my own eyes and ears, every word that is written here.

I thought I would see better things by coming North, but it appears to be worse instead of better.

Robert Anderson

It would seem that not only did those who came before you actually live the problem but they also understood the necessity for putting their words on paper for their posterity and your education. All Southerners racist? Whoops!

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