Getting the Facts Right: The Cause of the Civil War
26th January 2008
by gordo
A totally non-racist man celebrates his Southern heritage
Many Americans, especially Southerners, like to cling to the notion that the Civil War was fought over issues such as tariffs and states’ rights, rather than slavery. It’s easy to understand why. The Civil War is what defines the South. Some people in non-Confederate states like Oklahoma, Kentucky, Missouri, and West Virginia now try to claim Southern heritage, but generally speaking, a Southerner is a person from a state that tried to secede from the Union back in 1861. So it comes as no surprise that many Southerners say that slavery was not the main reason that the Confederate states left the Union.
But there are a couple of problems with this narrative. First of all, it’s not true. Second, separating the war from its cause allows the demagogues of the South to introduce racist symbols into official institutions. In the name of “heritage”, various flags of the Confederacy have been incorporated into the designs of state flags throughout the South, Confederate flags have been flown over state capitols, Robert E. Lee’s birthday is officially commemorated in Arkansas, Alabama, and Mississippi on the same day as Martin Luther King’s, and black children are forced to go to public schools named after Jefferson Davis (link link).
And all this is done in the name of heritage? Give me a break. The Confederacy lasted only four years. That’s not enough time to develop a heritage. At any rate, the only way that the demagogues can claim that the trappings of the Confederacy symbolize a vague sense of Southern heritage rather than White Supremacy is to pretend that the Civil War wasn’t fought over slavery. But there exists incontrovertible evidence that the Southern states tried to secede from the United States not because they objected to high taxes or because the Northern states didn’t respect some vague notion of “states’ rights”, but because they feared that the fugitive slave laws would soon be overturned, and that slavery would soon be abolished.
Here’s the proof that the Civil War was fought over slavery, adapted from a comment I left at Liberal Avenger:
The states’ rights issue was not the reason for secession. First of all, it begs the question, “states’ rights to do what?” Obviously, to permit slavery. No state would secede merely to establish the right to secede.
And the Southern states weren’t so enamored with the concept of states’ rights until the election of Abraham Lincoln, an abolitionist. Until then, they were happy to claim that the Northern states did not have the right to abolish slavery within their own borders. In 1850, the Southern states demanded that the Fugitive Slave Act be passed as the price of admitting California as a free state. This act forced the return of slaves who fled to northern states and territories, and imposed heavy fines on law enforcement officers who refused to arrest them, and on anyone who aided fugitive slaves. The law dictated that fugitive slaves would be arrested with no evidence beyond an owner’s sworn claim, and that the alleged fugitives would not be given a trial. In short, the law took away the Northern states’ rights to determine whether or not slavery would be legal within those states.
Also, the Southern states did not secede in protest of the Dred Scott decision, which was another blow to states’ rights. In fact, they applauded the decision, which stipulated that free states had to allow slave owners to take their slaves into free states and territories, and that these slaves would have the same status in the free states as they did in slave states.
But when Lincoln was elected, suddenly states’ rights became important enough to begin a war that killed more than 600,000 Americans.
***
The best way to determine what prompted the Southern states to secede is by reading their Declarations of Causes. Each Confederate state issued one, and they served the same function as the Declaration of Independence. Here are a few samples:
Georgia
The party of Lincoln, called the Republican party, under its present name and organization, is of recent origin. It is admitted to be an anti-slavery party. While it attracts to itself by its creed the scattered advocates of exploded political heresies, of condemned theories in political economy, the advocates of commercial restrictions, of protection, of special privileges, of waste and corruption in the administration of Government, anti-slavery is its mission and its purpose. By anti-slavery it is made a power in the state.
We had acquired a large territory by successful war with Mexico; Congress had to govern it; how, in relation to slavery, was the question then demanding solution. This state of facts gave form and shape to the anti-slavery sentiment throughout the North and the conflict began. Northern anti-slavery men of all parties asserted the right to exclude slavery from the territory by Congressional legislation and demanded the prompt and efficient exercise of this power to that end. This insulting and unconstitutional demand was met with great moderation and firmness by the South. We had shed our blood and paid our money for its acquisition; we demanded a division of it on the line of the Missouri restriction or an equal participation in the whole of it. These propositions were refused, the agitation became general, and the public danger was great. The case of the South was impregnable. The price of the acquisition was the blood and treasure of both sections– of all, and, therefore, it belonged to all upon the principles of equity and justice.
This is just stating the obvious: the reason for secession was the growing political power of the abolitionist movement. I especially like the assertion that the war with Mexico was fought in order to bring slavery to what is now the American southwest, and the whining about being prevented from spreading slavery.
Mississippi
Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery– the greatest material interest of the world. Its labor supplies the product which constitutes by far the largest and most important portions of commerce of the earth. These products are peculiar to the climate verging on the tropical regions, and by an imperious law of nature, none but the black race can bear exposure to the tropical sun. These products have become necessities of the world, and a blow at slavery is a blow at commerce and civilization. That blow has been long aimed at the institution, and was at the point of reaching its consummation. There was no choice left us but submission to the mandates of abolition, or a dissolution of the Union, whose principles had been subverted to work out our ruin.
South Carolina
An increasing hostility on the part of the non-slaveholding States to the institution of slavery, has led to a disregard of their obligations, and the laws of the General Government have ceased to effect the objects of the Constitution. The States of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New York, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Wisconsin and Iowa, have enacted laws which either nullify the Acts of Congress or render useless any attempt to execute them. In many of these States the fugitive is discharged from service or labor claimed, and in none of them has the State Government complied with the stipulation made in the Constitution.
Those States have assume the right of deciding upon the propriety of our domestic institutions; and have denied the rights of property established in fifteen of the States and recognized by the Constitution; they have denounced as sinful the institution of slavery; they have permitted open establishment among them of societies, whose avowed object is to disturb the peace and to eloign the property of the citizens of other States. They have encouraged and assisted thousands of our slaves to leave their homes; and those who remain, have been incited by emissaries, books and pictures to servile insurrection.
This is interesting, because it’s an argument that the rights of the northern states have not been sufficiently restricted.
Texas
The States of Maine, Vermont, New Hampshire, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Wisconsin, Michigan and Iowa, by solemn legislative enactments, have deliberately, directly or indirectly violated the 3rd clause of the 2nd section of the 4th article [the fugitive slave clause] of the federal constitution, and laws passed in pursuance thereof; thereby annulling a material provision of the compact, designed by its framers to perpetuate the amity between the members of the confederacy and to secure the rights of the slave-holding States in their domestic institutions– a provision founded in justice and wisdom, and without the enforcement of which the compact fails to accomplish the object of its creation. Some of those States have imposed high fines and degrading penalties upon any of their citizens or officers who may carry out in good faith that provision of the compact, or the federal laws enacted in accordance therewith.
In all the non-slave-holding States, in violation of that good faith and comity which should exist between entirely distinct nations, the people have formed themselves into a great sectional party, now strong enough in numbers to control the affairs of each of those States, based upon an unnatural feeling of hostility to these Southern States and their beneficent and patriarchal system of African slavery, proclaiming the debasing doctrine of equality of all men, irrespective of race or color– a doctrine at war with nature, in opposition to the experience of mankind, and in violation of the plainest revelations of Divine Law. They demand the abolition of negro slavery throughout the confederacy, the recognition of political equality between the white and negro races, and avow their determination to press on their crusade against us, so long as a negro slave remains in these States.
For years past this abolition organization has been actively sowing the seeds of discord through the Union, and has rendered the federal congress the arena for spreading firebrands and hatred between the slave-holding and non-slave-holding States.
By consolidating their strength, they have placed the slave-holding States in a hopeless minority in the federal congress, and rendered representation of no avail in protecting Southern rights against their exactions and encroachments.
The Texas Declaration of Causes has it all: racism, whining that the Northern states’ rights have been insufficiently restricted, and an assertion that God wants blacks to be slaves. And once again, the proximate cause given for secession is the growing political power of the abolitionist movement.
So there you have it. The secessionists themselves believed that the overriding purpose of secession was to perpetuate slavery.
***
Besides the direct evidence of the various Declarations of Causes, there is powerful circumstantial evidence that slavery was the issue that prompted the secession of the Confederate states. From the beginning of the Republic until the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment, slavery was the most divisive political issue in America. During the 40 years that preceded the Civil War, national politicians had their careers made or broken according to their stance on the slavery question. The great legislative debates of the day, which resulted in numerous agreements that included the Missouri Compromise and the Compromise of 1850, all centered on slavery. As the US expanded westward, states had to be admitted in pairs in order to ensure that there were an equal number of free and slave states.
In short, slavery was the overriding issue of the time. It’s no coincidence that the Southern states seceded immediately after an abolitionist was elected president. No prospect other than that of losing the institution of slavery could have induced enough desperation in the leaders of the South that they would take up arms against the populous, industrial Northern states.
January 26th, 2008 at 3:50 pm
For “A totally non-racist man celebrates his Southern heritage”
Read: “A loser puts his loserdom on display”
If he wants to celebrate his loserdom by declaring his allegiance to the memory of an inferior pack of losers - let him.
If you want to stop him just keep hammering home at him that he’s merely the latest in a long line of losers. They lost. People who lose are, entirely correctly, referred to as “losers.”
January 26th, 2008 at 5:18 pm
It’s interesting how Reagan picks up this subtleties and drive his southern campaign.
I really wonder who was the first to craft this entire notion of why the civil war was fought through southern eyes.
I mean this is obviously not some folksy myth, but complex legalistic argument. So somebody did crate this alternative explanation as a cover.
January 26th, 2008 at 7:21 pm
And speaking of commemorating one’s heritage, what about the African-Americans who were enslaved in the Confederate states or the Southern whites who opposed secession? Why is it only the ones who supported secession are the ones whose memory gets to be honored?
January 27th, 2008 at 1:56 am
Squashed–
U. B. Phillips was probably the most influential historian in this regard. Beginning just after 1900, he used primary sources to persuasively made the case that slavery was not as harsh as most people thought and that the slaves themselves actually realized great benefits from the institution, that slavery was an economic failure that would have faded away shortly after 1860 even if there had been no Civil War, that the South fought the Civil War primarily to defend states’ rights and a class structure that was tied to the plantations.
Phillips’ thesis that slavery had benefited the inferior Negro race had far-reaching implications. Not only did it vindicate the secessionists, but it also vilified the “Radical Republicans” who tried to force Southerners to give blacks equal status under the law. Phillips’ views quickly worked their way into popular culture, most famously in the epic movie “Birth of a Nation.” The movie was endorsed at the time by President Wilson. Partly as a result, the view that blacks were inferior and that giving them equality would lead to disaster was probably more common in the 1920s, especially in the North, than it has been a generation earlier. This led to a resurgence of the Klan, and there were more lynchings during this period than at any time since Reconstruction.
But the political dynamic began to change with the election of Franklin Roosevelt in 1932. Up until then, the Democratic Party had been the party of racism, and the Republican Party had been the party of Civil Rights. Roosevelt and Truman moved the Democratic Party away from its racist roots, and as a result the Democratic candidates had to face 3rd party challenges from Southern Democrats in 1948, 1960, and 1968.
In 1968, Nixon was used a “Southern Strategy” to appeal to racist Democrats, driving home the same themes that were presented in Birth of a Nation a half century before: you can’t help these people, they’re just a few steps removed from savagery, etc. Of course, Nixon had to state his case obliquely, with calls for “law and order” and attacks on welfare, since flagrant racism was by then out of fashion.
The first really overt use of the Southern Strategy was Reagan’s presidential bid in 1980. He began his campaign in Philadelphia, Mississippi, the site of the 1964 murders of three civil rights workers, with a speech on states’ rights. He appealed to stereotypes of blacks as lazy and criminal with his stories of a mythical “welfare queen” who had supposedly bilked the government out of hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Reagan won the support of the “Reagan Democrats”, who would have been called “Wallace Democrats” in an earlier era, and won every Southern state except Georgia. The GOP has effectively used the Southern Strategy ever since.
Tommy–
Historian James Loewen points out that one of the Confederacy’s greatest generals, James Longstreet, became an advocate for racial equality after the war. As a result, there are schools and parks throughout the South named for Robert E. Lee, Stonewall Jackson, and even Nathan Bedford Forrest, the first Grand Wizard of the KKK (link link). But Longstreet’s name is conspicuously absent.
Why don’t we hear about Southern Whites who stood up for racial equality? Because the people who want to make heroes of Jackson, Lee, and Jefferson Davis would rather have us believe that EVERYONE thought that blacks were inferior and that slavery was good, that’s why. Because when you realize that there were a lot of Southern whites who opposed slavery and supported equality, the Southern heroes suddenly seem a lot less herioic.
January 27th, 2008 at 7:05 am
[…] By the way, the CUNT website has the ubiquitous modeling pose that appears on 99.5% of right wing websites hawking T-shirts—skinny white woman with big boobs, wearing a tight T-shirt (maybe a big of belly skin) and otherwise sporting clothes that make you flinch because they are so tacky. It’s embarrassingly transparent. But then again, so are a lot of right wing artifacts, like the Confederate flag. […]
January 27th, 2008 at 10:09 am
In general, the southern attitude toward confederate flags (at least folks who I know), is a bit like 8 yrs old putting out a pirate flag.
It’s scary, in mischief rebel pride, sort of way. Of course there are part of southern culture that you don’t want to know when it comes to race relationship. It’s very much still the 70’s attitude.
January 27th, 2008 at 2:06 pm
I’m going to be laughing at that one for a long time. I grew up in a city (Tucson, AZ) where grown men walk around with cowboy boots and ten gallon hats, so I sort of understand the impulse to try to connect yourself to your heritage, even in superficial and silly ways.
But the cowboy gear isn’t offensive to any group of people. It doesn’t evoke slavery or Jim Crow or the Klan. So the pirate flag analogy works, but only to a point. If you’ve got a confederate flag bumper sticker, it’s either because you want to make an in-your-face to every black person who sees you on the road, or it’s because you just don’t care about what anyone else thinks or feels.
February 4th, 2008 at 2:19 pm
The myth of the lost cause was started just a little after the war as part of reconstruction, it was necessary to give the southern states a reason for fighting other then slavery because if everyone knew the truth then they would hate the south. By making up this states rights thing it gave them purpose and made them seem like less bad guys and that was more acceptable to be brought back into the union.
Now if we could just get rid of the myth of the lost cause and teach history how it happened I would prob hate the south a lot less and actually find it bearable to live down there or travel for extended periods there.
February 4th, 2008 at 3:15 pm
” I would prob hate the south a lot less and actually find it bearable to live down there or travel for extended periods there.”
Since you obviously don’t know diddly about the South, the root causes of the Civil War, think States’ Rights was some kind of latter day “made up” reason and probably think all Southerners run around in a 72 Ford pickup with a gun rack and a “Forgit Hell!” bumper sticker it would suit everybody down here just fine if you’d keep your blue belly butt right where it is, Chris.
Don’t do us any favors…
February 4th, 2008 at 5:56 pm
Wow brt decides to get snippy on this one.
My only question is why is a traitor like Lee given a statue at West Point? Sure, he was a top grad from there, apparently not top enough to win an actual war but a top grad on tests, but he betrayed his country and sided, militarily with an entity NOT The United States of America. I oppose the death penalty in all cases, but honestly, if you have one…why was that loser (Lee) swinging from a rope, exactly?
February 4th, 2008 at 8:05 pm
I read an analysis of the Confederate Constitution awhile ago. They pointed out that the Confederate Constitution was rather identical to the USA’s. There were two significant differences.
1 It codified slavery.
2 It gave LESS rights to the states than the USA’s constitution. Although they called themselves “Confederates”, they were actaully more Federalist than the US Government.
So much for the notion that the war was fought over states rights. Don’t believe me, google the two constitutions and read them yourself.
Plus, on every states rights versus federal rights issue that went to the Supreme court back then, the states rights people nearly always won the case. Remember Dred Scott? In plantation societies, only the oldest son can inherit the entire farm. The second and 3rd sons had to find other employment. That’s why most of the grads at West Point were southern, and most of the government bureaucrats were southern, and that’s also why the Supreme Court was mostly made up of Southerners. The south pretty much owned the direction of our government back then but the writing was on the wall for one issue and one issue only. That issue was slavery. They knew they were losing that issue. And thats why they went to war. (It may not have been the reason why individual soldiers went to war. Their reasons may have been much more noble. But soldiers don’t make those decisions, not then and not now. The ruling classes make those decisions and they decided to go to war. The Profit motive. Slaves, Oil, whatever.)
It would be devastating for most southerners to come to terms with that. Hence the revisionism.
February 4th, 2008 at 8:16 pm
Chris–
I used to live in Jacksonville, FL, and I met a whole lot of Southerners who are wonderful people, including some who had Confederate flag bumper stickers, hats, etc. And if you talk to the descendants of slaves who live in the South, you’ll find that many are proud to call themselves Southerners.
BRT–
As I point out, the southern states were happy to ignore states’ rights when it came to enforcing fugitive slave laws. If there had been any consistency in their support of states’ rights, it would be a lot easier for me to think of it as something other than a made up reason. As for “never forgit”, I found a news story you might like:
South Postpones Rising Again For Yet Another Year
Clif–
I’m afraid we disagree as to what should have happened to the Southern leaders after the Civil War. I tend to side with Lincoln, who wanted to re-connect with the South as quickly as possible. After all, preservation of the union was one of the reasons that the northern states fought the war.
I wouldn’t put up a statue of Lee or any other Confederate general at West Point, but I understand that many see it as a sign of reconciliation. I’m certainly less offended by that than by naming a state park after Nathan Bedford Forrest.
February 4th, 2008 at 8:17 pm
As for the Confederate flag. The flag with the stars and bars WAS NOT THE Confederate national flag until nearly the end of the war. (The last 4 months I think.) The National Flag of the confederacy was quite different. The flag used today as the so called flag of the Confederacy was the Battle flag, NOT the National flag.
So that flag, not only being a symbol of treason against the USA, was a symbol of war.
IT WAS NEVER the rightous symbol of southern heritage that the revisionists make it out to be now.
So if you want to use the symbol of the Confederate Nation, then use the main flag of the Confederacy — NOT the stars and bars. That’s a symbol of war, of hatred, of treason and of racism. The battle flag was also the symbol of the Klan and fell into disuse as the power of the Klan melted away. It returned as a symbol of the anti Civil Rights movement. That’s the recent history of that heinous symbol, an atrocious symbol up there with the swastika.
February 4th, 2008 at 8:26 pm
I said in my post above that it would be devastating for most southerners to come to terms with the real reason for that war, which was slavery. I should have said it would be devastating for many southerners to come to terms with that real reason. There are millions of very decent people in the south, as there are everywhere. I don’t mean to impugn them all with one wide stroke.
February 4th, 2008 at 8:32 pm
I read long ago that at any one time, only 1/3 of the US population supported Washington during the Revolution. Another 1/3 were tories who wanted to stay with the King, and another 1/3 could care less what happened.
Any statistics on how many southerners actually supported the south? I know thousands of southerners fought for the Union, and some entire towns passed resolutions against succession. And in some of those towns, nearly all the young men got on their horses and rode north.
Any stats on that?
February 5th, 2008 at 12:06 am
Gordo,
I actually do agree with Lincoln on the end strategy and how the leaders were handled. I do not agree with putting up monuments to these leaders, statues and the like. The battle flag is not something that should have been later moved onto state flags and the such. Symbols of treason and of traitors are just that. That is all I was really saying.
February 5th, 2008 at 3:19 am
Lee was no more a traitor to this country than George Washington was a “traitor” to the Crown for leading the rebellion against the British in this country’s war of independence.
Furthermore he embodied the very finest this country has to offer in leadership, ethics, military strategy, scholarship, grace, compassion for his troops, the slaves he released before the war began and even his enemies. Above all Lee was a gentleman-revered by his troops and admired by his opponents.
The slanderous comments to the contrary here demonstrate exactly what kind of willfull and disgraceful ignorance abounds in the left wing world. It’s totally useless for any fair minded person with even a basic knowledge of the subject to argue with you arrogant small minded nitwits.
Read, learn or STFU…
February 5th, 2008 at 7:29 am
BRT–
Actually, what happened was that Lee was executor of the will of George Washington Parke Custis, his father-in-law. The will stipulated that Custis’ slaves be emancipated, but Lee was in financial trouble, so he kept them instead. He even took a leave of absence from the Army in order to oversee operations at his newly-acquired slave plantation.
Lee sold about a half dozen slaves instead of emancipating them, and had runaways flogged and their backs rubbed with salt. He did not emancipate his slaves until 1862, after keeping them for five years. (link)
Mark–
I think that if you include the blacks and the Indians, there might have been 1/3 of Americans who were loyalists. It’s hard to find any figures, though.
February 5th, 2008 at 10:37 am
brt,
George Washington WAS a traitor to the crown. I don’t know a lot of historians who would tell you otherwise. Duh!
Robert E Lee was a traitor to the United States of America. He joined a NON-American military and fought AGAINST the United States. Oh, and he got his ass handed to him to boot. He was lucky that Lincoln was president and not 99% of the rest of the country as I don’t think he would have faired too well with anyone else at the top after he was crushed.
February 6th, 2008 at 9:19 pm
btw, the battle flag is actually popular enough to replace the first national flag and enter the second and third flag.
-
random bits.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flags_of_the_Confederate_States_of_America
At the First Battle of Bull Run, the similarity between the Stars and Bars and the Stars and Stripes caused confusion and military problems. Regiments carried flags to help commanders observe and assess battles in the warfare of the era. At a distance, the two national flags were hard to tell apart. In addition, Confederate regiments carried many other flags, which added to the possibility of confusion. After the battle, General Pierre Gustave Toutant de Beauregard wrote that he was “resolved then to have [our flag] changed if possible, or to adopt for my command a ‘Battle flag’, which would be Entirely different from any State or Federal flag.”[13] He turned to his aide, who happened to be William Porcher Miles, the former chair of Committee on the Flag and Seal. Miles described his rejected national flag design to Beauregard. Miles also told the Committee on the Flag and Seal about the general’s complaints and request for the national flag to be changed. The committee rejected this idea by a four to one vote, after which Beauregard proposed the idea of having two flags. He described the idea in a letter to his commander General Joseph E. Johnston: “I wrote to [Miles] that we should have two flags — a peace or parade flag, and a war flag to be used only on the field of battle — but congress having adjourned no action will be taken on the matter — How would it do us to address the War Dept. on the subject of Regimental or badge flags made of red with two blue bars crossing each other diagonally on which shall be introduced the stars, … We would then on the field of battle know our friends from our Enemies.”[14]
February 7th, 2008 at 2:08 am
Squashed–
One thing I hadn’t known until I followed that link: what passes for the Confederate flag today was never used, either as the national flag or as a battle flag. Instead, it’s a combination of the second Confederate Navy Jack and the battle flag of the Army of Northern Virginia.
So much for “heritage”.
July 27th, 2008 at 12:15 pm
Great post. Your assement is dead on…too bad southerner cannot or will not listen.
Billy Yank
November 9th, 2008 at 1:05 pm
There have been a lot more atrocities done under the banner of the Stars and Stripes than the Stars and Bars. You can start with the extermination of the native Americans. Also don’t forget that the slavery was legalized and existed under the Stars and Stripes much longer than the Stars and Bars.
BTW, I am not sides in this issue just pointing out the facts.
November 9th, 2008 at 1:16 pm
“Oh, and he got his ass handed to him to boot.”
Check your history, pal. Lee kicked ass against every general Lincoln could scrabble up until his forces became hopelessly outnumbered and outsupplied.
Check the notes of Yankee soldiers at the time about their respect for “Bobby Lee”…
(Saying this fully realizing that some left wing blue belly will wear his fingers out Googling up a batch of negative comments about Lee, then we’ll be firing web links at 40 paces.)
November 9th, 2008 at 2:29 pm
Well, duh, when you compare 4 years to 232 years, the one in existence for 232 years is obviously going to rack up more atrocities.
Freely acknowledged by this Northerner (though my family wasn’t even in this country at the time). Credit Grant for recognizing what his predecessors did not, that victory would not be achieved in a single battle, but rather in a long campaign of maneuver and attrition. Had McClellan grasped that in the spring of 1862, when he was within sight of Richmond, the war might have ended sooner and the the great victories of Robert E. Lee would never have happened.
It is also a sad irony in that if Lee had fought for the Union instead of the Confederacy, the war would have ended much sooner and the Southern States would not have experienced the devastation that they did, particularly in 1864-65. Then again, maybe that is what it took to put an end to the secessionist movement.
November 9th, 2008 at 9:01 pm
Actually, one of Grant’s predecessors realized that right away. Before the war, General Winfield Scott outlined a plan that Grant more or less adopted several years later, but McClellan convinced Lincoln that the South could be defeated in a relatively short campaign. He was sort of the Rumsfeld of his day, and thank goodness Lincoln wasn’t as stubborn as Dubya.
But while Grant’s campaign proved effective, he wasn’t the first Union general to defeat Lee on the field of battle. Lee was beaten soundly by Meade at Gettysburg, a battle that also featured the defeat of Jeb Stuart’s vaunted cavalry at the hands of George Armstrong Custer.
January 21st, 2009 at 9:02 pm
Missouri tried to stay neutral during the Civil War, but was attacked and occupied by the Union Army. The Missouri State Guard held off the Union Army while the Governor escaped from the capitol in Jefforson City to Neosho, Missouri. Missouri then seceded from the union citing “Terrorist actions of the United States government”. Missouri was a Slave state and for the most part, a Pro-Confederate state. The Governor had legally seceded, and at one time, the Missouri State Government was based out of the country of Mexico.
January 22nd, 2009 at 4:59 am
Phantom–
Sorry, but there’s no way to legally secede from the Union without the consent of the federal government. Interesting info about Missouri’s role in the war, though.
January 22nd, 2009 at 9:46 am
Quite true, though Meade’s victory was a defensive one that he did not exploit afterwards. The story goes that he telepgraphed Lincoln after the battle, “The enemy has been driven from our soil.” to which Lincoln fumed “It’s all our soil!”
Where Grant differed from his predecessors is that he pressed on in his offensive against Lee even when Lee won the battle. After the Wilderness, the soldiers in the Union Army were expecting to retreat from Virginia again, like they had after every other so-called march on Richmond. When Grant ordered them to march further on into Virginia though, they, and Lee, realized that Grant was simply not going to quit.
February 19th, 2009 at 11:52 am
This is the most hodge-podge article I have ever read. You’re an idiot.
February 22nd, 2009 at 8:22 pm
John–
That’s the vaguest comment I have ever read. You’re an idiot.
March 26th, 2009 at 2:53 pm
Ok lets think about this for a second. Lets say you wanted to quit a club persay, would you ask that club and leave it up to them to decide whiether you can leave or not. No you wouldn’t. If you didn’t want to be associated with that club then why would you still follow their rules.
Thank you. If people would accually look back into history instead of mimicing what their biased 8th grade History teachers said, they would know that no blacks were ever brought into America in a ship flying any of the Confederate Flags. The Confederate Flag flew over slavery for four years, the American Flag flew over it for eighty-five years. Also, at offical KKK rallies the American Flag and the Christian Flag must be present, the Confederate flag is optional. I despise the KKK and any hate groups that use my countries flag, my religous flag and my ancestors flag for their purposes.
But if you want to go into detail the so called “confederate flag” that todays people are familiar with never flew over slavery. The first, second, and third National Flag did, but the Army of Northern Virginia’s battle flag which was square and the Navy Jack or the rectangle flag we all know never flew over anything but the soldiers defending their homes, and trying to whip the Union Armies into leaving them be.
Daniel
March 27th, 2009 at 10:45 am
The Civil War has been over for over a hundred and fifty years. There is no reason to enshrine one of the defeated army’s battle flags, unless one has a direct reason to advocate a return to what the defeated army stood for, and that was almost completely a rebellion over a “state’s right” to enable chattel slavery. That rebellion lost bad. Time to get over it; the issue is settled.
The never was a right to unilaterally secede from the Union in the first place. There is no place in the Constitution that allows for anything even remotely similar. A rebelling South attempted to add such a passage by force of arms and got its ass kicked good and proper for it.
The South attacked first by the way. So who was the aggressor? The South started the war and the South lost.
The Reconstruction wasn’t nearly as bad as is commonly portrayed down south either or the planters would not have retained their properties to become sharecropping landlords. A huge amount of the trouble was the direct responsibility of the Confederate troops returning home in the first place. In place after place they looted instead of settling in to rebuild, and they looted and terrorized everyone they encountered. Most of the rabble during Reconstruction was native. That was even true of Sherman’s march from Atlanta to the sea. Such nobility!
The South reaped a whole lot less than it sowed, and some down there still have the gall to bitch about it. Thankfully they keep dying off and younger, brighter, more open minds are filling their place.
March 29th, 2009 at 9:28 pm
Dutch–
Absolutely right.
Daniel–
What you’re saying is that it’s OK to simply disobey laws that you don’t agree with. Believe that if you want, but understand that there are consequences associated with lawbreaking.
As for what you say about slavery, the fact is that the Confederacy began as a reaction to the election of Lincoln, an abolitionist. And as I pointed out, the Confederate states each gave a list of grievances as a rationale for leaving the Union, and the belief that hostility toward slavery in the northern states would soon lead to abolition was cited again and again. No matter how much you try to dance around the fact, the flag is a symbol of the Confederacy, and the reason the Confederacy was formed, according to the Confederates’ own documents, was to protect slavery.
April 18th, 2009 at 8:58 am
Who ever wrote this had to be an ignorant black person who is a raciest too. The writer of this doesn’t need to write about something when they don’t have the whole story. The civil war wasn’t about slavery until 1863 when he decided to use the slavery issue as propaganda by freeing all of the slaves in the confedarcy but he didn’t free the slaves in the north. This was used as propaganda to get the abolinitionist to be for the war but the slave states wouldn’t be against it since they didn’t have to get rid of their slaves. To say that the civil war was about slavery very ignorant. Even if the confedarcy was for slaves they would have got rid of slavery soon because they would have followed the examples of Europe which also had slaves at the time. Before you write another one of these learn something about it.
April 18th, 2009 at 9:02 am
Lincoln also started the war when he invaded the confederacy and wouldn’t leave your very ignorant
April 18th, 2009 at 8:36 pm
Brother–
The first shot of the Civil War was fired by cadets at the Citadel, who were under the command of a Confederate officer:
As for slavery being a cause of the war, I presented plenty of evidence for slavery being the primary cause of secession in the original post. Try actually reading it before you respond to it.
June 25th, 2009 at 10:26 pm
The following comes from an article titled “The Case Against Secession, published on the Claremont Institute web page.
http://www.claremont.org/
“As William Freehling has argued, the supposed right to break up the government when the minority does not get its way is really nothing but blackmail. The attempted dissolution of the Union in 1860 and 1861 was the final act in a drama that had been under way since the 1830s, only this time the blackmailer’s bluff was called.
In 1833, the minority threatened secession over the tariff. The majority gave in. In 1835, it threatened secession if Congress did not prohibit discussions of slavery during its own proceedings. The majority gave in and passed a “Gag Rule.” In 1850, the minority threatened secession unless Congress forced the return of fugitive slaves without a prior jury trial. The majority agreed to pass a Fugitive Slave Act. In 1854 the minority threatened secession unless the Missouri Compromise was repealed, opening Kansas to slavery. Again, the majority acquiesced rather than see the Union smashed.
But the majority could only go so far in permitting minority blackmail to override the constitutional will of the majority. At the Democratic Convention in Charleston, held in April 1860, the majority finally refused the blackmailer’s demand - for a federal guarantee of slave property in all U.S. territories. The delegates from the deep South walked out, splitting the Democratic Party and ensuring that Lincoln would be elected by a plurality
Modern claims that secession was about states rights (other than the right to hold slaves), or that it had some thing to do with tariffs, is balderdash. A reading of almost any Southern writings from the Civil War period establishes the fallacy of that claim.
And regarding whether or not R.E. Lee was a traitor to his country, there’s just no other way to sum it up. Whether or not he was an accomplished general is beside the point. General W.T. Sherman summed it up with his remark (I have to paraphrase this but it’s pretty close): “To Lee, his Virginia was everything. He stood on the porch, fighting the flames, while the rest of the house burned.” After the assassination of Lincoln, the North was in a fury, and there were calls for the execution of Lee (and other Confederates). U.S. Grant put a stop to that. He, under instructions from Lincoln, had promised that there would be no retribution, and Grant, who was probably the most popular man in the North at the time, threatened to resign from the Army if any attempt was made to execute Lee.
As far as James Longstreet is concerned, he was held responsible by the South for the Confederate loss at Gettysburg, even though on the morning of July 3rd, he did his best to talk Lee out of that last charge that nearly destroyed Pickett’s division. He was, after the war treated abominably by the South, and he didn’t deserve that.
The South lost the war, and if they’d been less arrogant and taken a hard look at the situation, they would have seen it was a lost cause. Their belief, first, that the North wouldn’t fight, and second, that one Confederate soldier was equal to five Yankee soldiers was groundless. They lacked the man power to go up against the North, they lacked the money, and they lacked the supplies needed to prosecute the war successfully. It’s true that the South won their share of battles, that the rebels were hard fighters. But had not Lincoln been saddled with so many “political generals” for so long, I believe the whole thing would have been over a lot sooner.
Had Lincoln lived, it’s probable that reconstruction would have gone much more smoothly. However, since five days after Lee’s surrender at Appomattox, the president was murdered by a Southern coward, the reins were pass to Andrew Johnson who loathed the South. A tragic situation for the South, but given the circumstances at the time, probably unavoidable.
June 26th, 2009 at 12:26 am
I have to agree with that. I’ve always thought that a similar self-delusion prompted the Japanese to bomb Pearl Harbor, rather than just accept the fact that they’d never be allowed to dominate East Asia as the United States had dominated Latin America. They wanted to be the sole power in the East, and so they convinced themselves that the US and the European powers wouldn’t be willing to undertake the sacrifice necessary to stop them. And they convinced themselves that if the US did challenge them, their genetic and cultural superiority would make up for their deficiencies in manpower supply.
June 26th, 2009 at 8:19 pm
Wow, this is one of those threads that always manages to spring to life again.
Here’s an interesting bit of historical info I came across when reading a travel guide I bought for Belize:
“When Lee surrendured to Grant…many Southerners decided to escape Yankee rule forever and head for Latin America. Some 7,000 Confederates abandoned the United States for isolated colonies where they hoped to recreate the Old South - complete with plantation houses,…and droves of black workers out in the fields. Most of these voluntary exiles went to Brazil, where slavery was still legal. But around 1,500 decided to try their luck in the wilds of British Honduras.”
“The Confederates’ stated aim was to withdraw from the rest of the world to recreate an antebellum fantasy. But the realities of Belizean frontier life caught up with them quickly. Conditions were much harsher than many had expected;… Even more galling, black employees could simply walk away if pressed too far.”
June 27th, 2009 at 2:33 am
That does NOT describe a traitor by any stretch of the term; probably the only thing Sherman ever got right.
Defending home and hearth against an aggressor is the very essence of what made this country great and anyone who believes otherwise is
an idiot or a liberal (redundant).
The overwhelming majority of the Confederate Army never owned a slave and could care less about the issue except perhaps to ponder the
irony of that kind of claim coming from people who were responsible for bringing them to this country in first place; stacked like cord
wood in a ship’s hold where hundreds if not thousands died and were tossed unceremoniously over board.
The South didn’t “go up against the North”. Confederate soldiers went up against an Army that invaded their home land, fought valiantly and won a LOT more than “their share” of the battles; particularly in the early period before superior numbers, materials and ruthlessness like Sherman’s “burn everything in our path” Prance to the Sea finally wore them down.
And gordo, if the North had better generals, why couldn’t Lincoln find one?
Grant rode an overwhelming tide of superior forces to it’s logical conclusion. “Grant”ed he was patient and tenacious, knowing the inevitable outcome and he was very gracious in his treatment of Lee.
Perhaps that was because, unlike some of the nitwits here, he recognized that “traitor” was the very last term anyone with a sense of values, fairness and respect for a brilliant and compassionate general would ever use to describe Lee’s motivation, his leadership and his performance on the battlefield.
June 27th, 2009 at 3:03 am
Well, Custer DID kick JEB Stuart’s ass at Gettysburg. In general, though, the South had better officers at the beginning of the conflict, which is why the war wasn’t over in just a couple of years.
I think that military people tend to be a lot more open-minded than the rest of us when it comes to questions of motivation. I think that comes from the fact that just about every military person I’ve known has had complex reasons for signing up. Patriotism is always in the mix, but so is adventure. Things like family tradition and economic security often play a part as well. I even knew a guy who flew some dangerous missions in Vietnam and who spent his entire professional life in the Air Force who signed up partly because he didn’t want to get drafted into the Army. The bottom line is, it’s hard to condemn someone else’s motivation when your own motivation isn’t cut-and-dried.
As for Lincoln, Grant, and Johnson not punishing the South, you can’t really claim that Southerners can’t secede and are therefore Americans, then say that they’ll have to live as a subjugated territory after that. Once there was no longer threat of the war re-igniting, it became impossible to justify many of the harsh measures that Republicans in congress were pushing for. And as a practical matter, it was obvious from the beginning of reconstruction that the long-term prosperity of the country as a whole depended to a large extent on fully re-integrating the South.
I am curious about one thing though: how is it that the vast majority of Southerners bore no responsibility for slavery because they had not personally owned slaves, whereas all Northerners were collectively responsible for the slave trade because of the involvement of a few Northern merchants? That doesn’t seem right, especially given the the fact that slavery was an inescapable feature of Southern life at the time, and the Confederate soldiers took up arms to defend a new country that had been formed in response to the election of an abolitionist.
June 27th, 2009 at 9:00 am
And as I’ve written before Gordo, but which Bedrock always dodges, is the fact that the slaveholding aristrocracy of the South made race based appeals to poor, non-slaveholding whites, with inflammatory rhetoric about how their daughters would married to or be raped by Negroes.
Another thing is that the lifestyle of the plantation aristrocracy was the goal to aspire to in the South. So, you could count on some poor whites to defend the political and economic system because they hoped one day they could reach the same level. Just like you get Libertarian losers today who are marginally employed and unmarried and living in their parents’ basements who believe the estate tax should be abolished because they are deluded into thinking that one day they will have wealthy estates.
June 27th, 2009 at 9:09 am
A bit off topic, but I wanted to share with this excerpt with Bedrock from the diary of James Henry Hammond when he was governor of South Carolina:
I announced and set apart the 3rd day of October for Thanksgiving. In my Proclamation I invited the State to worship “God the Creator and His Son Jesus Christ the Redeemer of the World.” The Jews of Charleston took great offence, announced themselves displeased at being apparently excluded, and called on me for an explanation through the public papers and by private letter. I informally answered them through Col. Pinckney, Sec. of State, in Charleston that it was an oversight. But they wanted some public notice and apology. They refused to open their Synagogues and…addressed me a long and impertinent Memorial and protest…Publicly it will end here, but privately [the Jews] will be thorns in my side.
So much for Bedrock’s mythical Christian America of the pre-ACLU days where public expressions favoring Christianity were not controversial.
June 27th, 2009 at 9:55 am
Yet another good reason not to discuss the civil war with the brainless…
June 28th, 2009 at 4:41 am
Maybe you’re right, Bedrock, but we don’t want to discriminate against you just because you’re brainless.
July 3rd, 2009 at 7:22 am
Maybe all you spineless carpetbaggers should stay north of the Mason-Dixon Line. We don’t need your ilk here and will make sure you feel very un welcome. You supposed progressive intellectuals need to learn history. How many slaves lived in yankee states? How many black men fought to save the confederacy? Ever hear of H.K. Edgerton a black member of the Sons of Confederate Veterans. Who rounded up slaves in Africa to sell to slave dealers?
Deo Vindice
The South Will Rise Again!
July 3rd, 2009 at 6:18 pm
J. Hunt–
Well, you DID need us to end slavery and apartheid. And you still need us to pay your bills. Here’s where the Confederate states rank in terms of freeloading off the federal government:
2nd — Mississippi
4th — Louisiana
7th — Alabama
10th– Virginia
14th– Arkansas
16th– South Carolina
19th– Tennessee
27th– North Carolina
Georgia pays about as much in tax money as it receives, and Florida and Texas make small net contributions to the nation as a whole.
And where does all that money come from? Primarily, from these states:
New Jersey
Nevada
Connecticut
New Hampshire
Minnesota
Illinois
Delaware
California
New York
Colorado
Notice the pattern? The old slave states still depend on the labor of others. And the states that beat them are the ones handing out the subsidies.
Thanks to the Dred Scott decision, there were a few Southerners who were able to keep slaves in the free states. And it’s true that there were a couple of slave states whose leaders were smart enough to realize that secession would only result in a lot of unnecessary bloodshed. But the overwhelming majority of slaves were in the Confederate states.
How many Jews served as Capos in the concentration camps? Does the fact that some of them served the Nazis excuse the Holocaust?
The slave trade was banned in 1808. So in 1860, how many Northerners had been involved in kidnapping slaves from Africa? Hint: the number is very close to zero.
Now here’s a question for you: what does any of that have to do with the fact that the Confederacy was formed and the Civil War was fought primarily to ensure the continuation of slavery?
Right. Any day now.