The South Still Lies About the Civil War & Slavery

The first part....about the South....reminds me that racists usually don't see or acknowledge their defect, so the slavery issue might get glossed over somewhat in Southern states.

Seeing the U.S. today, racism in all its forms, subtle or blatant, is certainly still alive and well. But what stands out more is the states' rights thing, the "you can't tell us what to do, the federal government is the problem" etc.

The main reasons we fought the Civil War? When we entered it, Lincoln was steering the ship down the middle and trying to avoid the shoals of slavery; but the South wasn't buying it, calling him and his "like" the "Black Republicans".

Slavery; states' rights; and, to be sure, so much of the War was fought on southern soil, a big part of the reason why the war lasted nearly four years, despite the North's dominance in industry and population. The Southerners knew their own territory better than the Northerners.

And, in the beginning of the War, the South had the leadership in the field: Robert E. Lee, Johnston, Stonewall Jackson. But Johnston and Jackson were killed before the end of 1863. And the North was saddled with McClellan, a great organizer of troops who was unwilling to commit them in the field, and never pressed his advantage, always believing the South had twice its real numbers in soldiers. Then Lee put his foot in it at Gettysburg while lower-ranked Union officers like Chamberlain helped turn the tide of war at Little Round Top. Eventually officers like Grant and Sherman stepped up and things started to swing for the North.

Shelby Foote in Ken Burns' "The Civil War" (and many writers of the War) have quoted Southerners when they answered a Northerners' "why are you fighting?":

"Because you're down here." (Invading the South.)

Never underestimate someone's resolve when it comes to defending his home.

 

It's hard to gauge the Civil War because so much of it on both sides has been rewritten by revisionists. A lot of people don't know that while Lincoln was huge in freeing slaves he also didn't think whites and blacks could live together and urged them to move to Latin America.

 

Lincoln's famous quote from his first inaugural:

Meanwhile, Davis spends a whole speech talking about slavery without ever mentioning slavery.

 

Texas should secede again and build a fence along the northern border to keep you stupid yanks out.

 

gotta stir up that guilt!

 

The Civil War was complicated and any shorthanded post analyzing the cause (including this one) is doing the era a disservice.

That said, slavery. Here's Lincoln writing to a guy from Georgia who would eventually become the Vice-President under Jefferson Davis:

Here's a passage from his second inaugural address:

Even in Lincoln's famous response to Greeley, the issue is framed around slavery. Lincoln did not say "if I could give the states some rights and preserve the union..." That Greeley letter is remarkable on a number of fronts, but please remember that Greeley was a newspaper guy and Lincoln knew what he wrote was going to be widely publicized. He tried to walk a line between the personal and political. The last line of the letter that comes immediately after the famous passage says:

And how to reconcile the Greeley response with the House Divided speech, or are they really in conflict?

Also, this excerpt from a letter to Joshua Speed:

Every one of Lincoln's famous pre-presidential speeches are directly built on the slavery issue. From his first great speech, The Lyceum Address in 1838 to the "House Divided" speech to the Lincoln-Douglas debates to the Cooper Union Speech, which launched his presidential campaign in a big way and is, I think, the greatest speech in American history.

Lincoln was a great politician and some of his more national addresses, particularly after he becomes the nominee and president, reflect his calculation and couching especially early on as he tries to avoid war. He takes refuge in the notion that the Constitution will not allow him to abolish slavery, but merely allows him to prevent the spread. The first inaugural speech is a great example. Here's an earlier one:

And on the territorial question:

As noted, other speeches and writings show a man much more willing to express himself on the morality of the slavery question and how it affects the United States:

It is clear Lincoln was against slavery both for moral reasons and what he thought it would mean for the Union:

There are many more Lincoln quotes and many more quotes from other northerners and southerners that support the idea that slavery drove the Civil War. Likewise, there are many documents that go to States' Rights and other issues, but it is hard to argue that those are anything except rationales for slavery.

Yes, Abe wanted to preserve the Union and did what he could to make that happen, but that did not mean he was going to accept the status quo. The Union was not going to be divided--it would become one or the other and he was determined to make it whole politically and morally.

To sum up, here's historian Eric Foner:

Oh, and Lincoln also said this about slavery:

The best book by far on this topic is William Lee Miller's Lincoln's Virtues: An Ethical Biography which is essentially an intellectual history of the evolution of Lincoln and his beliefs. The book goes through his election and a sequel,
President Lincoln: The Duty of a Statesman continues the story with Miller looking at the changes the stresses of the presidency brought to bear on Lincoln. Miller also wrote a really good history called Arguing about Slavery: John Quincy Adams and the Great Battle in the United States Congress which examines the fight Adams had to make to overcome the "gag rule" which prevented the mention of slavery on the floor of Congress. All three are worth reading, but the first Miller book is the best book on Lincoln and slavery I have ever read.

 

Pretty much.

If anyone believes the war was about states rights or whatever, I have to disagree.

It was about slavery.

 

It was about slavery, but that doesn't mean people from the south can't be proud of their traditions, culture and heritage. There shouldn't be a problem in recognizing and teaching that.

 

True. But when that pride manifests itself in a way that intentionally exalts slavery or Jim Crow or discrimination, it does become an issue.

 

I agree. That should never be part of what is celebrated. Things like adding the confederate flag to state flags was only done to resist civil rights, and is not acceptable in my opinion.

 

Many of those people in those states are descendent from slaves. I am sure they are proud of getting subjugated and beaten, so a few white guys would have nice mansions and cotton. You can teach it, but be objective about it.

I took texas history and they tend to romanticize the settlers too much. They wanted slaves and cotton and the Mexican government didn't want it. I wonder what would happen if a bunch of Mexicans came to America and said we want to grow some weed and the American government didn't want that?

 

It was about the state's right to have slavery. Texas independence was also about slavery because it was the main right that was at issue.

 

Who exactly is getting "subjugated and beaten"? There are no slaves still alive today, and there are hate crime laws in place to punish any type of activity. I like how you also stereotype white guys in your post as if all whites were in favor of slavery.

Sometimes I wonder if people like yourself just want all white people today to go find a black person and apologize to them and give them something for free as a reparation.

My ancestors never owned slaves and weren't even around during slavery, so please don't paint me with that brush, friend.

 

Seems an apt time for some Faulkner...

"The past is never dead. It's not even past."
--Requiem for a Nun

[T]o the sheriff Lucas was just another ****** and both the sheriff and Lucas knew it, although only one of them knew that to Lucas the sheriff was a redneck without any reason for pride in his forbears nor hope for it in his descendants.
--Go Down, Moses

 

after they stole it from the guys who stole it from the guys who stole it from the guys who were there first...

 

Wars are started by politicians and governments and the causes are easier to define(in theory). You can never truly know the motives a man takes up arms to fight unless he specifically states them. My point being that you can't condemn every southerner that fought against the union anymore than you can approve of every northerner that fought against the confederacy.

My great great great grandfather took a rebel stand. As far as I know, he didn't any have slaves or very much money. No one really knows where he came from though and that's been extensively researched for years.

He was captured once and traded back in a prisoner exchange. He was shot at Chickamauga and captured again. He escaped from a yankee prison camp and was subsequently labeled a deserter. At some point in there, he headed to Texas, but died on the way. I can neither condone nor condemn his actions because I do not know his motives. I am proud of him though, for being a such tough sonabitch to survive 2 prison camps and yankee bullet and for being smart enough to finally head for the promised land of Texas.

 

Not only do I not believe this, I actually suspect a lot of Southern writing and rhetoric anytime slavery was brought up in the 70 or 80 years prior to War would prove to be the most damning rebuttal to that claim.

 

I don't disagree, but I only bring up the Southern pride stuff, because I think it is the root of the waffling on the cause of the civil war cited in glynch's article. An oversimplistic 'it was slavery' answer causes cognitive dissonance -- I want to proud to be Southern but slavery is shameful, how do we eliminate the dissonance of these two ideas? The solution to cognitive dissonance is rationalization, so you recognize that 'it was slavery' is too simplistic an answer, so you posit a more complicated/sophisticated answer centering around states' rights. The sophisticated answer dampens the cognitive dissonance and allows the Southerner to simultaneously be proud to be a Southerner and condemn slavery as shameful without those two ideas being in stark disagreement. Then, I think many people who do not identify with the South then misinterpret that answer as a coded defense of slavers or at least an historical revisionism, which I don't think it usually is intended to be. To which any man would react with yet more defiance, some of it probably regrettable.

And none of it would really be necessary except that the Southerner still feels under attack because he's not allowed to be proud. I think articles that affirm the worth of the South despite the evils of slavery would be a lot more effective at finding agreement on our national legacy then another article like this that wants to bring yet more 'education' to the Southerner about his history.

 

It seems . . . The main right the States wanted . . . was the ability to decide on their own whether or not to keep slaves.

Rocket RIver