The South, Revisionist, and Slavery!
One of my regular readers emailed me for my story on Friday about the controversy over the statue of Lincoln in Richmond Virginia. He stated that my views were typical simplistic liberal views on the Civil War. While I agreed with many of his points, in the end it didn't change my central theme, the South lost the war, the war was all about slavery, and some Southerners would like to change history to make them feel better about it.
I responded to his email and wanted to reprint that email here for others to read (Some content was culled from other sites, and I have slightly edited the material). Yes, I was being simplistic on Friday, so here's a little more detail:
"...Claiming that many Southerners were fighting for states rights is not white-washing, it's the truth. They may have chosen a particularly repugnant issue in slavery to center their defense on..."
First of all, thank you for reading my blog. Second, thank you for taking the time emailing me your thoughts.
I didn't take the time to write in the detail that you have and yes, most of your points are well stated and in fact I agree with many of them. Identification at that time with one's state was more significant than identification with the union of states (this is still true in many parts of the South). That and a strong desire for local control were reasons that many fought in the war. There was also a huge factor of social pressure that drove many enlistments.
The single most important issue (as you stated) was the State's Rights perspective of slavery as a local decision. The Civil War was the culmination of over 50 years of intense political conflict over the matter. It was the issue that caused the South to succeed in the face of Lincoln's 1860 election victory.
The issue of defining slaves as property even split the Democrats in the year preceding the election. As the campaigns got under way, Republican unity proved to be a great bonus. They chose to downplay divisive questions of slavery and abolitionism, and emphasizing economics, particularly the tariff in Pennsylvania and internal improvements, like a Pacific railroad. They also ran against corruption in Buchanan's administration, which tainted many Democrats as well. The Republicans chose not to focus on slavery because they were already identified with abolitionist (incorrectly I might add), and defined as the party that was opposed to slavery (correctly).
As election day grew closer, and Lincoln's election by a solid North seemed certain, a near-hysteria gripped much of the South. Whites feared slave insurrections, and rumors filled the Southern newspapers, creating additional support for disunion. Republicans chose to disregard warnings that Lincoln's election would lead to secession, and refused to issue any kind of conciliatory statement to the South. Of course, nothing short of declaring themselves in favor of continued slavery would have sufficed.
Lincoln actually lost the popular vote when compared to the total of his opposition (1,864,735 to 2,821,157 - Lincoln got almost no votes in the South), but won the election because he won 180 of the 183 electoral votes in the Free States, while losing all 120 votes in the Slave States. The Democrats split along North/South lines with two candidates, and a third party candidate had great success in the South. A wonderful summation of the events leading up to the 1860 election and the causes of the war can be found at this page.
For over 50 years slavery defined political conflict in this nation, and after the Missouri Compromise of 1820 it was a drumbeat that came to a head in Kansas. The "Bleeding Kansas" conflict of 1855-56 was all about slavery and served as a precursor to the coming war between the states. In 1857 the fires were further stoked by the Dred Scott case. The final straw was John Brown's raid on Harper's Ferry, Virginia (October 16, 1859). The raid sent shock waves through the South. Despite Republican disclaimers, southerners readily linked the party to abolitionism and the violent overthrow of slavery. Similarly, northerners, swept up in the renewed Lincoln-Douglas contest, paid insufficient heed to the intensity of anti-Union feelings in the South.
There may have been other issues, but none so defined the national conscience of the time then the matter of slavery. Yes, it was more complex then my brief comments, but in the end it was still all about slavery. The attempts by Southern revisionist and others to try and glorify the cause as something other then what it was, simply avoids the realities of what provoked the war, and led to another 100 years of indirect institutionalized slavery through segregation...mj
1:22:01 PM 
|
|
