Vanderbilt professor maligns UDC,Confederate Heritage in Editorial

The Tennessean ^ | 20 November 02 | Jonathan D. Farley

[Non-Sequitur]

So what's your point? Are you saying that slavery wasn't evil? Are you suggesting that from the Northern point of view the Civil War was all about freeing the slaves? Are you calling Lincoln a racist and condemning him for it? It's just a disjointed connection of partial quotes. Like Seinfeld, it's a post about nothing.

[Triple]

Slavery was practiced legally in the 'Union" even after the close of the war for southern independence.

If you don't believe me, I suggest you actually read Lincoln's emancipation proclamation.

[Robert Drobot]

Spot on!

[x]

There was some talk of secession in Massachusetts during the Jeffersonian era, especially at the time of the War of 1812, but I don't think it was as common as you say. It never got very far, but if it had, particularly during the War of 1812 the result could possibly have been war. After that war it was Virginia and other Southern states that asserted the permanence of the union.

Wild threats of unilateral secession, in Massachusetts or in South Carolina, don't prove that it was legal or would have been accepted as legal by the rest of the country. It was a way of expressing dissent or making one's voice heard through threats.

The Kentucky Resolution seems to have more to do with nullification than with secession. The problem with such unilateral declarations by states is that they could say whatever they liked and it's hard to know how much validity to give their claims.

Arguably, the country could have survived the secession crisis without war. What happened was that the rebellious state governments bound together to form a government that was intent on power and expansion at the expense of the union. That came to a head at Fort Sumter and sparked the war. Had the standoff continued longer peacefully, it might have been resolved politically.

There is something monstrous about South Carolina's immoderation and ingratitude. They had wanted the fort. Fort Sumter was built to defend them. The Federal Government built the fort, and may have built up the island on which it stood. The fort was no threat to them. Calling them "squatters" and firing on them was an act of great arrogance, irresponsibility and stupidity. If an amicable divorce had been possible before, it wasn't going to happen afterwards.

Had South Carolina worked peacefully, it's less likely that there would have been a war. Had the rebel states not formed their own federation, but waited until disagreements could be resolved politically, it's possible, maybe even probable that there would have been no war. But the existence of a competing national government determined to expand made war inevitable.

[Non-Sequitur]

If you don't believe me, I suggest you actually read Lincoln's emancipation proclamation.

Yeah. That's what the 13th Amendment was all about.

[wastoute]

Actually, Ft Sumter was part of a chain of coastal defenses that was built by Congress. Not quite the same as "one asked for, and built for South Carolina".

[WhiskeyPapa]

The neo-rebs don't really want Mr. Lincoln to speak; they always shut him up too early:

This is from 1863:

"But to be plain, you are dissatisfied with me about the negro. Quite likely there is a difference of opinion between you and myself upon that subject. I certainly wish that all men could be free, while I suppose that you do not.

....peace does not appear as distant as it did. I hope it will come soon, and come to stay; and so come as to worth the keeping in all future time. It will have then been proved that, among free men, there can be no successful appeal from the ballot to the bullet; and that they who take such appeal are sure to lose their case, and pay the cost. And then, there will be some black men, who can remember that, with silent tongue, and clenched teeth, and steady eye, and well-poised bayonet they have helped mankind on to this great consumation; while, I fear, there will be some white ones, unable to forget that, with malignant heart, and deceitful speech, have strove to hinder it. Still let us not be over-sanguine of a speedy final triumph. Let us be quite sober. Let us dilligently apply the means, never doubting that a just God, in his own good time, will give us the rightful result."

8/23/63

And this is from 1864:

"I am naturally anti-slavery. If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong. I can not remember when I did not so think, and feel...

In telling this tale I attempt no compliment to my own sagacity. I claim not to have controlled events, but confess plainly that events have controlled me. Now, at the end of three years struggle the Nation's condition is not what either party, or any man devised, or expected. God alone can claim it. Whither it is tending seems plain. If God now wills the removal of a great wrong, and wills also that we of the North as well as you of the South, shall pay for our complicity in that wrong, impartial history will find therein new cause to attest and revere the justice and goodness of God."

4/4/64

And this is from 1865:

"it is also unsatisfactory to some that the elective franchise is not given to the colored man. I would myself prefer that it were now conferred on the very intelligent, and on those who serve our cause as soldiers."

4/11/65

Abraham Lincoln was a great and good man and all the neo-reb lies in the world won't change that.

Walt

[varina davis]

Twice actually. In 1862 he came to grief at Antietam in Maryland.

Guess you must mean Sharpsburg.

[varina davis]

Check out the professors home page for a very revealing photo!

Thanks! That says it all.

[Non-Sequitur]

No, I mean Antietam. It's a bit north of Bull Run and quite a bit east of Stone's River.

[varina davis]

Slavery was not on the decline, and it would have ended in the south only over the dead bodies of the slave owners.

Do you mean, Non, over the "dead bodies" of 3 to 6 percent of the entire Southern population -- which included free black slave owners. The remaining percentage of Southern farmers picked their own cotton.

[varina davis]

I guess we missed the 'live in peace' part after y'all shot up Fort Sumter.

If y'all hadn't illegally occupied a Southern fort and refused to negotiate, it wouldn't have happened.

[Non-Sequitur]

The 6 percent of the slave owners, plus their wives and kids and so forth. In some states, like Mississippi, that accounted for almost half the population. Throughout the south as a whole about 26% of all people came from slave owning households. That's why they fought to protect it. One in four drew direct benefit from the institution.

[varina davis]

The sesesh aimed to get what they wanted at the point of a gun.

Amazing! That also seemed to be the mind-set of the American Colonists about a century before.

[Non-Sequitur]

If y'all hadn't illegally occupied a Southern fort and refused to negotiate, it wouldn't have happened.

It was an Army facility. Property of the federal government, built on land deeded to the government by the legislature of South Carolina, and paid for by the United States. There was nothing illegal about the army being there. And there was nothing illegal about them wanting to remain there.

[WhiskeyPapa]

The sesesh aimed to get what they wanted at the point of a gun.

Amazing! That also seemed to be the mind-set of the American Colonists about a century before.

But when you think of one group you think of the Declaration of Independence, and the other you think of the whip, branding iron and shackles.

Walt

[wastoute]

Did you ever wonder what if the South had won...? Would this thread be about how the North had to be invaded to save the Irish? Would we be dragging quotes from Jeff Davis out about how he just couldn't stand to see the Irish being treated that way any longer? Slavery was doomed without the Civil War and anyone who doesn't know that is being willfully ignorant. You don't send a $6,000 slave into an Iron Works where he is worthless after he loses an arm. Now an Irishman at .25 cents an hour, that is different. You don't send a $6,000 slave to work 16 hours a day busting rock for railroad grades with a sledge hammer where he gets snake bit and loses a leg, you send a Chinaman to do that.

I can see the quotes now, old Jeff Davis sobbing into his hanky just blubbering how the thought of those Chinamen suffering was keeping him awake at night.

[Triple]

So, you concede that slavery was legally practiced in the "Union" until December 1865, long after the end of the war for southern independence.

(The 13th was not ratified until December 6, 1865.)

[wastoute]

...and another thing, go look at the good perfesser's web site. Anybody who wants to hang up a bigger'n life size photo of Che Gueverra to idolize is somebody I would just about knee jerk want to be on the opposite side of an issue on general principles. This'un here is not much different.

My wife got her degree in history at the U. of Colo. in the '70s. She asked me to go to a lecture one day with her because the prof. was "very good". Up to that point I had alwyas just bought the South/Bad North/Good party line. This fellow in 90 minutes really showed how it was one hell of a lot more complicated than that. He showed out of all the issues slavery was just a small part, Industrialization was changing the face of America, agrarianism was not going to be sustainable in the face of a wave of Industry advancing in the North. The riches of the West were just beginning to be tapped and transportation to the Gold of California was one of the most important issues facing Congress for decades before the War. Just research the Bills and debates that were in Congress at the time. The most important factor that the War was fought over was whether a railroad West would go through Ohio or Atlanta. I heard a powerful argument that day that pretty well convinced me. Sure, my ancestors sang the songs and marched off to war as soldiers always have, knowin just only so much as the folks callin' the shots wanted 'em to. But when looked back at with the full knowledge of history we are expected to do better than they did. Even Longstreet himself said that had the South freed the slaves at the begining of the War it would have not turned out the way it did. The Norhtern soldier wouldn't have gone South without that motivation, but, as they say "Who benefits"? The railraod went through Ohio and Southern agrarianism was destroyed forever.

[WhiskeyPapa]

...and another thing, go look at the good perfesser's web site. Anybody who wants to hang up a bigger'n life size photo of Che Gueverra to idolize is somebody I would just about knee jerk want to be on the opposite side of an issue on general principles. This'un here is not much different.

Unfortunately for you, the content of the professor's column is spot on.

But as you can't assail -that- you attack him.

Walt