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Anthropoid -> RE: Was the south right? (8/29/2008 1:31:08 PM)
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Having grown up in the Ozarks, spent a lot of time roaming the hills in TN, AL, GA, and lived in Atlanta most of my adult life, I too am proud to be southern.
But I would never say I was proud to be Confederate. If any of you have ancestors who actually fought in the war, I can understand you not making such a distinction, but that is the way it is for me: no implied judgement of anyone else.
Indeed, it never even dawned on me when this thread got going but I'd like to suggest to everyone that we read the Title of this Thread a bit differently. Jonah named it "Was the South Right?" I myself have been responding to this thread as if it was in fact labelled "Was the CSA Right?" and it never even dawned on me that this erroneous equivalence was being made by some--erroneous in my mind at least.
I would never say that "The South" was wrong, because "The South" included a whole lot of individuals who were opposed to slavery even before the war, who did not support secession, and who did not willingly support the war. The Confederates, i.e., those who supported secession, supported the war and therefore (whether they were aware of it or not) were supporting slavery are the population, the culture, and the tradition in which I find great repugnance. As Randomizer points out the consequence of CSA victory for which Confederate soldiers, citizens and leaders fought would have been continued slavery, thus by definition a "Confederate" (though not necessarily a "Southerner") fought for slavery.
I realize that some of your ancestors likely fought in CSA military, supported secession, and supported the war, and I'm sorry to have to point out: they were wrong. Irrespective of whether there were racists who supported slavery in the North, the Orient, Russia or Quebec, they were wrong. Indeed, all of them who were not radical abolitionists were by degrees wrong. Abolitionism began nearly 100 years before the ACW, and still there were fence-sitters and out-and-out proponents of the horrific institution: ALL OF THEM, including Mr. Lincoln and the other pragmatists who refused to take a hardline against slavery prior to the war were wrong. It is simply WRONG for a human being to be considered rightful property of another human being, I don't care the cultural context it is, and was WRONG.
As I've argued above, none of us have an ancestry that is populated solely with heroes and Saints. Being a bastard, I myself do not know a lot about my ancestors, but I have no doubt that many of them did some very "wrong" things. However, that does not matter to me. It is for me to live my life as virtuously as I can, and I do not need my ancestors acts, whether imagined or real to buttress who I am and what I believe in.
"The South" also still exists today. The CSA does NOT exist today, and has not existed for over 150 years. It was defeated, dismantled, and prevented from reforming through military occupation, and driven into remission by a reconstruction effort. Indeed, the vestiges of that tradition have certainly reintegrated into "The South" and continue to echo down through time. But the post war "South" is an entity built on the ashes of the pre-War south and the Confederacy which hijacked it from the Union. It would be over the top for a devout Republican to be proud of his Whig ancestry, and I find it similarly incongruous for people to associate their Southern cultural identity and love of southern homeland with the CSA. To continue to do this serves no benefical purpose that I can see, but I do know that it is very, VERY widespread in the contempoary southern U.S. states.
My own tenant, a lovely old lady in her 80s, very anti-war, verging on pacifistic, kept a reproduction of a portrait of a Confederate officer on her apartment wall, most likely an ancestor. My wife: educated through most of grammar school and all of secondary school in Florida, initially echoed many of your views that the ACW was NOT about slavery, and was about northern opression of states rights. My masseuse back in Atlanta, a lady from Virginia, had a similarly proud and somewhat impudent response in a discussion about this game and the merits of the south; And these were all WOMEN who are not nearly as proud as your average man! I find it all rather over the top, though essentially harmless.
It is not like the threat of some new "neo-White Supremacist movement" necessarily threatens to form on the ghost of Confederate Pride that is so very common in The South today; seeing that Confederate Officer on the wall in the apartment rented from me by that kind old lady from Missisippi was not quite as chilling as seeing a picture of Herman Goering or Heinrich Himmler on the wall in a German cottage in 2008, but I must be honest with you (and strictly for the sake of being honest, not with any intention of being insulting or antagonistic) that is exactly the DIRECTION of my response.
For many of us who find it impossible to overlook the atrocity that is slavery, looking at the CSA and the war they provoked with anything except a mild repugnance is extremely challenging. This is not necessarily a manifestation of factionalism or pride in being "better than them" as a Unionist. I grew up in frickin' Missouri! If anything my "roots" are simply American, not Union/Northern, and not CSA/Southern. In any event, I just don't understand how any of you guys can so readily disarticulate the CSA from slavery, formulate "but . . ." and "what-if . . ." and "the Union was no better . . ." and "it wasn't really about slavery . . ." type arguments in defense of the memory of the CSA.
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Perhaps the seceding states did have legitimate grievances and perhaps some of those were worthy of resorting to violence for resolution (although I do not to believe this to be the case), all Southern war aims whether just or not, become polluted by the specter of continued slavery.
The existence of inter-state or inter-sectional differences did not warrant provoking a war, and I agree with Randomizer that the primary aim of the CSA was to perpetuate slavery, the primary macro-economic form of income for most of the states which joined the CSA.
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One can debate the rightness of using questionable methods to defend a perceived right but how can one defend using any means at all to perpetuate a stated wrong.
This is why in my view Jonah’s original question is answered; the Southern cause was morally, ethically and unequivocally wrong.
I would clarify that, to say "the Southern cause" refers to the majority view in the South of 1861--i.e., to be more precise the "Confederate Cause"--but we need not liken this "South" of 1861 to a "South" of 2008. Indeed, as I've pointed out above, it is more accurate to refer to the question of "Was the CSA right?" instead of "Was the South right?" The South of 1861 and the CSA are virtually, but not entirely synonymous; there were abolitionists, in the South prior to the war, though very rare and generally careful in their rhetoric. Moreover, there were plenty of dissenters in the CSA who were NOT willingly supportive of that nations cause. Thus it is not entirely accurate to equate the war between the CSA and teh USA as being a war by "The South" of 1861 and The North of 1861. Part of studying history is to be as objective, and dispassionate about studying who "we" have been, so that we can more conscientiously act to become who we WANT to be in the present and future.
dolphinsfan, I agree with the general idea you express that: in many ways the modal sentiments in the north were no less racist than in the south. But the fact that slavery was still legal and practiced in Maryland, KY, and MO, states which joined the Union more as an act of pressure from the Union than as an act of loyalty to the Union, does not really prove much about whether the CSA was "right." All it suggests is is that the Union was not an entirely "right" with respect to the injustice of slavery.
The issue at hand in my mind is not whether one entity was totally right and one totally wrong. The issue is about relative "rightness." The Union enfolded three states in which slavery existed at the start of the war for pragmatic reasons of defeating the CSA. Indeed, at wars initiation, the idea of an Emancipation Proclamation was not even being imagined among most northern leaders; certainly among abolitionists, but as I've pointed out these folks remained fringe elements in 1861.
The EP only happened later, and primarily for _pragmatic_ reasons, i.e., strategic expediency of mobilizing more Black troops; a homefront PR drive to gain the strong backing of the abolitionists segments for the war and to quell the anti-war "lets just settle for peace and end this needless war" crowds in the north; promoting dissent and unrest in Southern plantations and Black CSA slave regiments; and also for diplomatic reasons, i.e., to undermine CSA efforts to gain diplomatic recognition in Europe. At the end of the day, the Union was little better than the CSA because it only very begrudgingly made that final step of declaring all slaves to be free.
Let me repeat that: the CSA was wrong, but the Union was only little better than the CSA because it only very begrudgingly made that final step of declaring all slaves to be free, ONLY when it became obvious that to not do so would be a strategic blunder that might allow the CSA to prevail, achieve a peaceful settlement that included its autonomy, and thus broke up the U.S.A.
_THIS_ the preservation of the Union was the primary goal for which the majority of Union leaders most definitely were fighting from beginning to end of the war . For most Union leaders--including Lincoln but certainly not his Secretary of State and U.S. Treasury Secretary, and as some of you have pointed out: not necessarily Sherman or Grant or many other key Union figures--the goal of eradicating slavery was not a primary goal at any time until such time as making the Emancipation Proclamation became a strategically USEFUL part of the war effort.
I can thus summarize my view of "why" the ACW fairly briefly: There are a number of peripheral or ultimate causes for why the war occurred and that depends on putting 1861 into the context of the previous decades. However, the proximate causes: Lincoln won, influential men in some Southern states felt that this was an imminent threat to their way of life--most notably their economic fortunes which were primarily based on a slave plantation system--and in a risky gambit declare themselves to be separate. These first few adventurous leaders/states gradually managed to convince other states that were largely dependent on slavery to join in, and by spring 1861 we have a new nation formed up, the CSA. This is the proximate cause for the war: the south seceded based on a perception that their economic well-being, namely slavery, was under threat. The Union as a population was of a mixed mind about slavery, but most did not want to push the issue. Indeed, the backlash and negative repurcussions of taking the fringe abolitionist stance of declaring the Emancipation Proclamation was not even viable for Lincoln until such point as the progress of the war had put the Union into a state of desperation in its efforts to force the CSA to rejoin the Union.
In short, the Union was not really at any time "fighting to free the slaves," it was fighting to keep the Union intact. Freeing the slaves became a means to this ends partway through the war.
The CSA was also not ever "fighting to free the slaves;" indeed, it seceded as a way to avoid the Union's ongoing pressure to constrain, reduce, and phase out slavery, or if you will, the Unions continued efforts to thwart southern States rights to define slavery as they chose.
You also mention that several brigades of African Americans fought for the CSA. My only questions here: was there a CSA equivalent of an "Emancipation Proclamation?" Did the CSA decide part way through the war to decree that all slaves were free? Were these African brigades even free? If they were granted or promised freedom, was it in some way contingent on their service as soldiers, and/or the victory of the CSA? Would their freedom won through fighting for the CSA have necessarily insured eventual freedom for any of their immediate or distant kin?
Lets not get bogged down in these "well the Union was almost just as bad . . ." arguments. There were abolitionist ELEMENTS in the Union at wars start; such elements were virtually unheard in the South: to speak open abolitionist rhetoric in one of the Southern states in 1860 would very likely have resulted in harassment if not violence.
MOST people in the Union and CSA were racist, and indeed most were either ambivalent about slavery and its unethicality or else they thought it was perfectly right. Your point about asking Union soldiers from ALL OVER the northern states about whether they were fighting to free the slaves is apt: there would have been a variety of responses.
There would have been a DISTRIBUTION of responses among Union soldiers at any time between 1860 and 1866
Some would have said:
(1) No! No way, those N!%%@(s should be free! They're sub-human!
(2) Some would have said, well I suppose it would be for the best if slavery were ended forever.
(3) Some would have expressed zealous abolitionism
Whatever the actual distributions of these attitudes among Union soldiers, Union citizens, and Union citizens in 1860 through 1866 might have been, the key point here is not that "there were racist slavery supporters in the north." The key point is that the distributions of attitudes we logically would expect in the Union states would be sufficiently dissimilar from those we would expect in the CSA states taht we would not attribute them as being "the same."
The distribution of responses to this same question would not look the same if we queried a sample of CSA foot soldiers, citizens and leaders in 1860 or even 1866.
If a sample of Union soldiers had rendered distributions of
(1) 55% "Pro-slavery"
(2) 25% "Ambivalent"
(3) 20% "Abolitionist"
A sample of CSA solders almost certainly would have rendered a distribution of
(1) 75% "Pro-slavery"
(2) 24% "Ambivalent"
(3) 1% "Abolitionist"
Indeed, I'm sure there were quite a few CSA foot soldiers (e.g., the couple tens of thousands of African troops you mention) who would have fit into the 1% of those who would have argued that slavery should end, and they were not fighting to preserve it.
I would also not doubt one bit that a fairly large proportion (the 24% I hypothesis in the above paragraph) would have expressed ambivalent opposition. But the largest fraction of men who took up arms for the CSA (as well as the largest fraction of loyal citizens of the CSA and her leaders) whether they were plantation owners or not (which virtually ZERO non-comms or enlisted in the CSA military would have been) would logically have expressed a pro-slavery attitude. We can be confident in such general speculations about such distributions through a careful read of letters, newspaper and other publications, etc.
As Randomizer has pointed out, Slavery was an INTEGRAL part of Southern SOCIETY at the time. Even those working-class Southern whites for whom slavery actually worked at cross-purposes to their success as a laborer would have generally felt a strong natal loyalty to the institution because it was so enmeshed in the culture of the time.
Now, I've said a lot here that may well have riled up some of you guys, and I most definitely do not want to turn this into a flamefest. We've all been quite civil so far. Some of you guys with Southern backgrounds have been very respectful, polite, and generously honest. I have nothing but respect for you in this regard, and I'm not trying to make you feel bad or insult. I am just trying to reciprocate your generous honesty. I honestly find the CSA to be repugnant--not the individual foot soldiers, nor necessarily even the officers or Chiefs of Staff--but the cause for which these men fought, whether knowingly or in delusion.
As justifiably proud as you may feel of your Southern roots, and as erroneously proud as you feel for the CSA-disembodied from its fundamental identity as an Apartheid State fighting for its privilege to perpetuate, and indeed expand slavery---those of us who do not have such lineal links, and who cannot avert our gaze from the horror of American slavery pre-1864 have an equally, if not greater negative response to the CSA and the institution it would have enshrined had it not been defeated.
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