When my eighth-grade Georgia history teacher informed the class that the Civil War was not about slavery but about “states’ rights,” the class as a whole took it as a fascinating revelation, one that showed that Lincoln was ultimately not as noble as we had been told up to that point, and that the Civil War itself was fundamentally not a conflict between a good side and a bad side, but rather a conflict between two different philosophies on the relationship of the individual states to the federal government. The goal of this article is not so much to argue about consensus among historians; one needs only to read the statements of secession that South Carolina, Georgia, Mississippi, and Texas issued to understand that the fundamental reason for the Confederacy’s existence was the protection of slavery. What is fascinating, and ultimately troubling, is that so many Southerners have never arrived at this obvious conclusion, or if they have, they have gone to great length to represent the Confederacy as something other than what it obviously was: a plainly evil regime.
A few days ago the governor of Virginia, Bob McDonnell, breathed new life into this debate when he issued a proclamation declaring April to be Confederate History Month. The proclamation invited Virginians everywhere to “reflect upon our Commonwealth’s shared history,” and “to understand the sacrifices of the Confederate leaders, soldiers and citizens during the civil war”—all without including the slightest mention of slavery.
Here is my request to all intelligent people currently living in the South: It’s time we put an end to this idiocy. It’s time Southerners stop pretending that the Confederacy’s main goal was anything other than trying to preserve slavery; it’s time Southerners stop white-washing the lives of people like Stonewall Jackson and Robert E. Lee—yes, they are no doubt fascinating people and brilliant generals, but they fought for a cause that, by any reasonable standard, was evil. That’s that. I don’t care how wise and charismatic you may consider Robert E. Lee to be; when you get down to it, the man fought and killed for the cause of slavery. And if someone ever tries to argue that, somehow, the Confederacy was not that bad or that it was not primarily concerned with preserving slavery, please consider the words of its vice-president, Alexander Stephens: “Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea; its foundations are laid, its cornerstone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery—subordination to the superior race—is his natural and normal condition.”
Why a region of the country that consistently considers itself to be far more patriotic than any other frequently expresses sympathy with a secessionist cause that fought in the name of a horrific institution, I will never understand. I can only hope it is due to ignorance and wishful thinking, to Southerners hoping that the Confederacy really was not that bad, that its existence is not a horrific blot on the history of the South, that it can be defended or justified. And I sympathize with this problem, to some extent. After all, what country does not have awful sins in its past? It can be hard to acknowledge that the country you love was once on the side of evil. But moral responsibility and maturity require that Southerners awaken to this reality. We can’t pretend that the country or geographical region or whatever it is that we love so much has had a perfect, spotless history, much less when the blemishes on that history are things as colossal as segregation and slavery.
Over 140 years ago, in our nation’s most difficult trial, the good guys prevailed. It’s time Southerners accepted this and moved on.
— Peter Ianakiev is a second-year in the College majoring in political science.
I cannot even begin to express how pathetic this “Memo” is. As a Chicago graduate, history major, and current AP US History teacher I am amazed that you would stretch the governor of Virginia’s boneheaded decision to celebrate Confederate history without mention of slavery, to the point where you completely glaze over the historical realities and social complexities of our nation’s founding.
A strident belief in state’s rights versus federal power has been a long standing debate in American life extending into the colonial era. Your hasty disregard for this fact is unfortunate and reveals a root cause of Southern indignation about perceived Northern “bias” even a 150 years after the end of the conflict.
Yes slavery was an important, critical element of Confederate political philosophy. But slavery and state’s rights are NOT the same thing.
Actually, Southerners were only concerned about States’ Rights when such a position helped to protect slavery. When federal power seemed a better safeguard for their “peculiar institution,” they were perfectly happy to demand it be used. The Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 is the obvious example, but it is also worth remembering that Southerners bolted the 1860 Democratic convention, split the party, and ensured the election of Lincoln, because their northern colleagues refused to include a demand for a federal slave code for the western territories. (Such a step would have made it completely impossible for Northern Democrats to feel that the territories should be able to settle the issue themselves via popular sovereignty. The Southern demand was that they affirm an overtly pro-slavery stance.) In truth, Southerners were completely inconsistent about States’ Rights before secession; they were completely consistent about slavery from around 1830 on. I could give several more examples, as my Ph.D. and college teaching experience has allowed me to study these questions in real depth.
This essay is a breath of fresh air in that it refuses to buy into the “Southerners were misguided but noble” myth. The only way to accept that is to believe that Reconstruction was a mistake, that freeing the slaves and amending the Constitution to make the freedpeople citizens was not worth the fight. There was nothing noble about the “Lost Cause.” It was about slavery, and it was treasonous.
How is it possible that a polisci major isn’t aware of the division between state policy and execution of that policy by the military? A general’s job is to do what the political officers tell him to do and give military advice when requested. They aren’t responsible for state policy. As Michael Waltzer puts it, a just war can be fought justly and an unjust war can be fought justly. I don’t know enough about the confederate generals’ conduct to make this judgement. But this article makes the mistake of saying that because a war is unjust (assuming it is so), its generals deserve blame. Again, I can’t believe a polisci major would hold to such an obvious fallacy. For shame.
Unfortunately, this continues to perpetuate the problem:
“It [the Civil War] was about slavery, and it was treasonous.”
Slavery is integral to any discussion about the Civil War. But the tension between states rights and federal power is exploited throughout American history for numerous causes. Long before the South seceded, it was New England that had threatened to secede before the conclusion of the War of 1812. Maryland and Virginia bicker over interstate trade under the Articles of Confederation. Jefferson Davis has difficulty retaining Georgia in the confederacy because it’s governor is so ardently a proponent of states rights.
I would hope your college teaching and Ph.D. would have allowed you the ability to perceive that I was not attempting to defend slavery, term it “noble,” or lend credibility to the decision of the Southern states to leave the Union. Rather, I was hoping to remind us all that the question of how federalism should be expressed is a truly open question before the Civil War and a (largely) closed one after. Slavery is the touchtone upon which this fundamental question of American governance is settled. In some ways I am shocked that someone so learned could so easily dismiss an argument that searches for greater nuance, not less. This is an error, which ironically, happens to be the same one that plagued Governor McDonnell.
This essay is cursory at best and myopic at worst and contains about as much “fresh air” as any eighth-grade history course taught north of the Maxon-Dixon line at virtually any point in the last 150 years. Please go wave your Ph.D. in front of someone else unless you’re willing to examine sophisticated arguments not merely “specialized” ones.
@Westfahl,
Read:
James M. McPherson, This Mighty Scourge. New York: Oxford University Press, 2007
Mr. Westfail: simply speaking, I feel sorry for the students who are subjected to your misguided attempts at “nuance.” The only reason I “waved my Ph.D.” was to show that scholarship has moved beyond what you are peddling in your AP courses. You are completely ignoring my demonstration that southerners didn’t care about the principle of states rights unless it protected slavery. Taken to its extreme, that meant asserting states rights to the point of secession. Secession was an attempt to destroy the nation. It could be nothing other than treason. But if federal power had afforded a better path for perpetuating slavery, they would have stayed within the Union. There is simply no rational basis on which to make the claim that a concern for the balance of federalism was part of the secession movement. It is a fantasy, and it is an attempt to whitewash (pun intended) the past to make yourself feel better.
This is a topic much on people’s minds right now. A good popular treatment was in an op-ed piece in today’s Times by Jon Meacham. Unfortunately, this format does not allow me to include the link.
Mrs. Huntsomemore: “simply speaking” appropriately describes your unmoving contention.
“There is simply no rational basis on which to make the claim that a concern for the balance of federalism was part of the secession movement.”
How would you explain President Jackson’s (a Southern, white, slave owner) intervention in the nullification crisis that nearly led to Civil War 30 years earlier without somehow establishing a link to the question of federalism? Again, I hope you understand that I personally think the question of slavery is of the highest importance, that it is morally reprehensible, a motivator (perhaps the primary one) for many in the North and the South, and that it should be addressed in full and with great scrutiny at any level of academic investigation.
But how can you claim that one issue alone has a monopoly of causation on the greatest conflict and crisis in American History? Surely that cannot be the bones of good history?! Is the whole of American History before 1860 merely “How the South’s sole purpose was to preserve by any means the peculiar institution?” (Perhaps a title for your next course???)
Are we (as people) that simplistic? Must everything be reduced to a “popular treatment?” And I do truly mean that. Ask any elementary student (likely any adult!) why the Civil War was fought and I will bet large sums of money that they do not respond with “To resolve long-standing questions of federalism.” The whole ‘slavery was the cause of the Civil War’ is, if anything, the popular, long “peddled” historical narrative.
Most Southern whites did not own slaves. What’s more, most slaves were owned by a small minority of wealthy plantation owners. Why would the so many Southern subsistence farmers (most of whom were deeply poor, and had no chance of becoming wealthy, slave-owning plantation owners) have chosen to fight for the Confederacy?
Believe me, I want my students to engage with multiple points of view on a given topic and work actively to prevent themselves from being locked in (though not unexposed) to traditional “moralistic” interpretations of history or any other individual interpretation for that matter. I hope you understand that history thrives when you have multiple perspectives contributing to the narrative not just one agenda.
At John Smith:
As someone who comes from the South, I can tell you that confederate generals are far from ignored. Streets, schools, parks, and building are named after these men, and they are not ignored in classroom lessons. The issue in this article is not necessarily to condemn the actions of confederate officers, but to condemn McDonnell’s Confederate History Month proclamation and condemn the idea that many southerners seem to have, which is that the issue of slavery can be almost entirely ignored or effectively diminished if we just shout “It was all about state rights!” loud enough.
I’m not necessarily disagreeing with your unjust war/just fight ideas, I’m just saying that I don’t think that they really apply to the article’s message.
This is a great discussion following a terrific piece. I’m canadian and I’ve been teaching in the south for 15 years. I found the article refreshingly blunt and simplistic. Teenagers here parrot the ‘nuanced’ and ‘balanced’ arguments that they get from their history teachers. Every issue in the south has a simple answer: outlaw abortion, keep gays in their place, vote ‘family-values’, lower taxes, hate the government, etc. except the civil war. The civil war was fought for a ‘complex web of constitutional issues that cannot be reduced to any one factor’. Bull. Those weren’t constitutional lawyers riding around terrorizing their countrymen. On the upside, this phony intelectual movement is actually on the wane even in South Carolina. Generational shift and population movement is the only cure.
Mr. Westfail: that’s Dr. Huntsomemore (?) to you… ;) The Nullification controversy actually proves my point. Why would South Carolina leaders, including VP John C. Calhoun, whom Jackson saw as a dangerous rival, go to the extent of trying to “nullify” rather than overturn the so-called “Tariff of Abominations”? Because they thought it would set a precedent that might allow the federal government to act against slavery in the future. See the work of William Freehling. And the secessionist impulse grew from that South Carolina tradition, rather than from Jackson’s Democratic tradition, which might more properly be termed western than southern.
When I referred to Meacham’s piece as a “popular treatment,” I only meant it was non-scholarly. It has nothing to do with how it might be received. Unfortunately, the popular position is to buy the states’ rights canard, simply because northerners haven’t cared enough about their Civil-War heritage to beat it back. It is one of those “zombie lies” that refuses to go away, no matter how often it is refuted.
Obviously, most southern whites did not own slaves. But, just as they did not control the economy, neither did they control the political system. In places like western VA, eastern TN, etc., there was little slave holding and outright resistance to secession. Again, you are undermining your own case with your own examples. And don’t underestimate the antebellum southern version of the American dream (“someday, when my ship comes in, I’ll buy me some slaves, too”). And the concept of “Herronvolk democracy” explains a lot of poorer whites’ allegiance to a system that was clearly detrimental to their interests. But underneath that all is the institution of slavery. Yes, there were many causes of the Civil War, but the underlying issue behind each of them was slavery. The timing of secession by the various states tracks exactly with how dependent the states’ economies were on slave labor.
Maybe Westfahl went to this school because it was easier to get in back then, but there’s a reason they didn’t become anything more than a high school teacher in the south.
John Smith, your separation of moral judgment between a political system and those who choose to actively support it is bold but ultimately makes little sense. Why should we separate the actions of politicians from the actions of generals? Each makes the same choice about whether or not to support a cause.
While it may not be fair to hold every soldier responsible for the larger political goals of the war, it is certainly fair to expect the likes of Robert E. Lee to choose to fight for and defend causes they believe in.
Lee and the other generals opted to actively work, through their military skills, for the preservation of slavery. They do not have some special moral exemption because they were generals rather than politicians.
Let us be clear: At issue in the antebellum South was a dictatorship of the slaveocracy, bent on preserving its perogative to maintain a system of unfree – though thoroughly capitalistic – labor. There was a time, as Westfahl suggests, when “states’ rights” were progressive; but by the 1850s this had become a worn ideology, shorn of all emancipatory content.
Ms. Hunter is quite correct to bring up the Fugitive Slave Act, which was an unprecedented use of Federal authority. The Act was resisted by slaves who fled to Pennsylvania, where they were aided an legally defended by a young Thaddeus Stevens, who would later in life come to lead the Radical Republicans through the heroic period of Reconstruction. But Stevens, for his resistance to Federal law, was tried for high treason with the Southern slaveocracy clamoring for “Justice.”
But Ms. Hunter is I believe mistaken to say that the South instigated the war. Perhaps at the surface level this is what happened, but this neglects the fact that opposition to slavery was not automatic but required the development of anti-slavery ideology and politics. It took the abolitionists and the newly formed Republican Party to *make* slavery the issue, and to unify the populus around the bloodiest – and most idealistic – war every fought by the United States.
It is a result of these struggles that we now have civil rights that (formally) protect the individual as absolute sovereign of his or her existence. Ideologues for states’ rights haven’t gotten the memo that, when considered in terms of freedoms, such pseudo-rights should be discarded in the dustbin of history.
I have grown up in Missouri, researched Missouri history, wrote my thesis paper on the social repercussions of the Civil War in Missouri, and I can tell you that most of them fought for reasons other than the preservation of slavery; which is true about most border states. The fact is that few Southerners, whether in border states or in the South, owned slaves. The reason this article is “refreshingly blunt and simplistic” is because it glosses over much of the history, and uses a wide swaths of the paint brush to do so. The fact that all “Southerners” (as defined in this article: bigots, secessionists, racists, undeniably insensitive…) are lumped together just shows the residual cultural differences, some of which contributed to the war. The author should find a hot tub time machine, go back in time, and try to get a little more realistic understanding of the war.
From the declaration of secession in Texas…
“…in this free government *all white men are and of right ought to be entitled to equal civil and political rights* [emphasis in the original]; that the servitude of the African race, as existing in these States, is mutually beneficial to both bond and free, and is abundantly authorized and justified by the experience of mankind, and the revealed will of the Almighty Creator, as recognized by all Christian nations; while the destruction of the existing relations between the two races, as advocated by our sectional enemies, would bring inevitable calamities upon both and desolation upon the fifteen slave-holding states….”
To Virginia…
“The people of Virginia in their ratification of the Constitution of the United States of America, adopted by them in convention on the twenty-fifth day of June, in the year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and eighty-eight, having declared that the powers granted under said Constitition were derived from the people of the United States and might be resumed whensoever the same should be perverted to their injury and oppression, and the Federal Government having perverted said powers not only to the injury of the people of Virginia, but to the oppression of the Southern slave-holding States.”
To 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…”
To South Carolina…
“…A geographical line has been drawn across the Union, and all the States north of that line have united in the election of a man to the high office of President of the United States, whose opinions and purposes are hostile to slavery. He is to be entrusted with the administration of the common Government, because he has declared that that “Government cannot endure permanently half slave, half free,” and that the public mind must rest in the belief that slavery is in the course of ultimate extinction. This sectional combination for the submersion of the Constitution, has been aided in some of the States by elevating to citizenship, persons who, by the supreme law of the land, are incapable of becoming citizens; and their votes have been used to inaugurate a new policy, hostile to the South, and destructive of its beliefs and safety.”
To the Vice-President of the Confederacy itself…
“The constitution, it is true, secured every essential guarantee to the institution while it should last, and hence no argument can be justly urged against the constitutional guarantees thus secured, because of the common sentiment of the day. Those ideas, however, were fundamentally wrong. They rested upon the assumption of the equality of races. This was an error. It was a sandy foundation, and the government built upon it fell when the “storm came and the wind blew.” Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea; its foundations are laid, its corner- stone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery subordination to the superior race is his natural and normal condition. This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth…”
For the full source, check out Ta-Nehisi Coate’s “The Ghost of Bobby Lee”
You’re really a Political Science concentrator?
The critical thinking must have left the department in the last two years.
-AB, c/o ’08
WestFAIL – Judith Hunter pwn3d you. Ask your students what that means.
To JD from Missouri: You are missing the forest for the trees. People in Missouri who went to war for a myriad of local reasons would have never had the opportunity had the South not seceded. As has above been argued far more eloquently than I can, the South would have had no reason to secede if not for a threat to the institution that the vast majority of the economy was based on: Slavery. Missouians no doubt took advantage of the war to accomplish any number of ends, but as the discourse of the time in the halls of power clearly indicates (thank you Saalim), the principal interest for secession was defending their economic interests which meant defending slavery.
The fact that most whites were poor, barely subsistence farmers was a part of the system; as can be seen in the history of South Africa and continues in the South to this day, the rich whites defend themselves against the discontent of the poor whites with the simple fact that “at least you are a human being.” The poor whites are on the same side as the rich ones, and thus the brutal systems of exploitation that existed in even the white community was able to sustain itself.
Also, to stick it too everyone’s favorite AP teacher a little more, the fact that the War had repercussions beyond abolition does not mean that its causes were anything more or less. Having only recently been subjected to the exam, I know full well the correct essay response to the civil war is a narrative of State’s Rights that begins with the unanswered questions of the Constitution and is resolved after the Civil War. Again, though, you are confusing results, preconditions, and catalysts. The issues of State’s Rights were settled, but they were settled after a war brought on by slavery. There was rhetoric extant to support secession that was unrelated to slavery (but still related to economics), but it was not put to actual use until slavery was seriously threatened.
In this discourse ‘nuance’ is basically tantamount to obfuscation. State’s Rights, then as now, are used as an excuse for supporting institutionalized dehumanization of an entire category of people. There are probably men who fought and died for the Southern cause who were not tied to slavery or who were not racist. This does not disprove anything; it simply makes the Confederate leaders’ actions all the more tragic, criminal, and reprehensible, as the defense of their bigoted, racist, disgusting form of economic production led to the bloodiest war (percentage-wise) in American history. It is not something to be proud of.
It is interesting to consider the South’s motivation for secession (slavery or States’ rights) but doesn’t this discussion ignore the obvious: the Confederacy was an enemy state of the United States, attacked and killed American millitary personnel and sought in its founding to destroy our republic?
To honor Confederate ‘heroes’ is to honor traitors and enemies of our country. It dishonors brave Americans who died protecting our nation from these villains.
High-minded discussions aside, the article is right.
Rohn,
Southerners attacked American personnel. However, the killing of Union soldiers did not occur until Union soldiers attempted to invade Virginia…So, it is confusing when you say “attacked and killed American personnel.” I’m glad the South lost, but the Confederacy was actually defending what it believed to be its own sovereign territory.
One only need to look to the fact that Lincoln was a racist and had no intention of freeing slaves until later in the war to see that the idea that the Civil War was about slavery is complete and utter propaganda. I don’t believe in owning other human beings but in truth..because the Union won we are ALL slaves. We are slaves to our federal masters in Washington, D.C. who believe “might makes right”. We would have liberty and freedom from federal tyranny had the South won. It’s interesting to note that it was the Union generals (like Sherman) who engaged in acts that, were they committed today, would be considered war crimes. The Constitution was destroyed in 1865 by the Tyrant-in-Chief Abraham Lincoln. It’s really a shame that Lee didn’t invade Washington, D.C. and burn it to the ground following it up with the summary execution of every leader in Washington. I’m not from the south but the Federal Government is out of control with a lust for power. The good guys lost and our Republic was transformed into the American Empire for the last 150 years. It is sheep like ignorance that would call confederate soldiers traitors..they were enemies, enemies of an evil federal tyranny still going on today. I’m honestly these days ashamed to be an American.
Jonathan, what is wrong with you?
Lincoln was a life-long abolitionist. Every prominent Lincoln historian will tell you this. His initial hesitation to free the slaves was a product of political and military necessity to preserve the Union and prevent the border states from seceding. He was a moderate western politician, but he always was a life-long abolitionist.
Wow this guy really has it out for southerners huh? I know that a majority of the south was racist (and mostly it’s government) but the fact is that Lincoln was a war criminal and had he not been assassinated he would have been sent to trial for the atrocities he commented while in office. He arrested hundreds without reason and detained them with no trial (not soldiers but doctors and lawyers) as well as ordered the destruction of dozens of southern cities that had no military value. Lincoln offered the south a chance to keep the slaves and return to the union but they did not accept….obviously there was more to the civil war hen slavery. Lincoln was a criminal like so many others to have his job. I’m not saying the south was the good guys but lets face it…the victor rewrites history and most of the trash we are spoon fed in middle school and high school is incredibly biased. The south wasn’t evil and the north wasn’t the black mans hero…in fact weren’t there dozens of riots up north opposing the war and the freedom of slavery. What’s this next guys article? Letter to The native Americans: don’t be mad at the Europeans they didn’t do anything wrong! Lol
The Chicago moron