Sesquicentennial Opinion---Are the Sons of the Confederate Veterans and the NAACP Talking Past Each Other?

Slavery Was The Central, But Not The Only, Cause Of Civil War, Robert E. May, Charleston Post and Courier, January 18, 2011.

One hundred and fifty years ago, South Carolina seceded from the Union and put the nation on the path to its bloody civil war. The NAACP and media commentators argue that plans by the Sons of Confederate Veterans and other groups to commemorate the Sesquicentennial of the origins of the Confederacy ignore slavery's role in the Civil War. Confederate celebrators rebut that the Rebs fought for noble causes like states rights and defending home and family against Northern invaders, and that the North hardly went to war to end slavery. Lincoln waited until mid-war to issue the Emancipation Proclamation. Why can't neo-Confederates and their critics find common ground? The problem is that both sides simplify the past. Let me explain.

Lincoln hated slavery, but he and his Republican party insisted they had no intentions of using federal power to dismantle slavery in southern states. Republicans knew the Constitution had clauses protecting slaveholders' interests, although it avoided using the actual term "slavery." Lincoln, a lawyer, did not believe his party had the right to violate the Constitution, and knew the clauses had been included so Southern states would ratify the document in the first place. Neither Lincoln nor his party endorsed the abolitionist John Brown's raid on Harpers Ferry to free the slaves.

On the other hand, the Constitution did give Congress governance over U.S. territories. The most divisive disputes between the North and the South before the Civil War had to do with slavery in the territories.

The Civil War came because Lincoln and Republicans opposed slavery expansion, though Southerners had other grievances like Northern non-compliance with the Fugitive Slave Act. Initially, Republicans worried about slavery spreading westward ("Bleeding Kansas"). By Lincoln's inauguration, they had won the West for freedom. No western territories became slave states after 1845, but several including Kansas became free states. Slavery could, however, still go southward towards the tropics.

In fact, it was already heading that way. Not only did Lincoln's predecessors as president try to purchase the slaveholding island of Cuba for the U.S., but American adventurers called "filibusters" had been trying to conquer it. Just a few years earlier, Mississippi's former governor and Mexican War hero John A. Quitman, who owned several plantations himself, plotted an expedition to make a slave state of Cuba. William Walker, a Tennessee native, conquered Nicaragua and then became president and legalized slavery there. When Central American armies expelled him, he dedicated himself to re-conquering Nicaragua, announcing publicly he was doing it for the South.

Lincoln understood the threat, telling Republicans to block a last-ditch deal to preserve the Union by guaranteeing slavery in territory the U.S. "hereafter" acquired in Latin America. He warned them to prevent "compromise of any sort on 'slavery extension' "because if it passed "filibustering and extending slavery recommences." He undoubtedly knew from newspaper headlines that just weeks earlier a Honduran firing squad had executed Walker during yet another attempt to conquer Central America.

To emphasize slavery expansion rather than slavery in the states is not to excuse neo-Confederates from dealing with slavery. One need only read what Southern leaders said in 1860, their secession ordinances, or the Confederate Constitution, to see how absurd it is to divorce slavery from the Civil War. The Confederate Constitution mandated that in all territory "the institution of negro slavery, as it now exists in the Confederate States, shall be recognized and protected." Late in the war, when desperate proposals were floated for arming and freeing slaves to stave off military defeat, Southern politicians protested it would negate the whole reason the war was fought.

As Robert Hunter, the Confederate Senate's president pro tempore exclaimed, "What did we go to war for, if not to protect our property?" The ultimate purpose of slavery's expansion was, of course, to perpetuate and strengthen the "peculiar institution" in the South itself, by giving the South more political power and more land for plantations. Many Southerners believed that if slavery didn't expand, it would die. So did Lincoln and the Republicans.

Slavery had more, not less, to do with secession than most people think, but not in the simplistic way Civil War causation is usually interpreted. For the Sesquicentennial to get it right, both neo-Confederates and their critics need to explain to the American people that the war was over slavery as refracted through the issue of territorial expansion, southward as well as westward. Until they get it right, they will continue talking past each other.

Robert E. May, Professor of History at Purdue University, is the author of The Southern Dream of a Caribbean Empire, 1854-1861 and Manifest Destiny's Underworld: Filibustering in Antebellum America.

Text Source: Post and Courier

News---Shhhhhh! Secession Because Of The Election Of An Anti-Slavery U.S. President

One State Takes a New Look at Causes of War, Katharine Q. Seelye, New York Times, November 29, 2010.

The 150th anniversary of the Civil War is prompting some states to change the way they confront their unsettling past. During the centennial of the Civil War starting in 1960, Georgia celebrated the Confederacy and the view that the state had seceded in a valiant act of defending states’ rights against Northern aggressors.

This time around, state historians are taking a different approach, declaring that Georgia seceded to defend the institution of slavery. On Jan. 19, the date in 1861 when the state seceded, the Georgia Historical Society and others plan to dedicate a historical marker at the old statehouse in Milledgeville. The marker, citing Georgia’s secession ordinance, will say that the state seceded in response to the election of Abraham Lincoln, who was “anti-slavery.”

This may be one of the first official recognitions in the state, at least in modern times, that slavery was the overarching reason for secession, said Todd Groce, president of the historical society. While some pro-Confederate groups may disagree with this conclusion, he said, mainstream historians do not. “The marker is based on overwhelming evidence from the 1860s,” Mr. Groce said, “not based on what the apologists said in the 1890s, when former Confederates were backfilling about states’ rights.”

The historical marker is one of 15 that are being installed for the sesquicentennial under a partnership between the historical society and the state. Most tell of less heralded events, including the disaster at Ebenezer Creek, where hundreds of fugitive slaves drowned, but one will note the burning of Atlanta, which has not been marked until now. The markers tell their stories in about 100 words. “After that,” Mr. Groce said, “people lose interest.”

CWL wonders if The Lost Cause will ever become a lost cause. The Sesquicentennial will provide some interesting developments as the Sons of Confederate Veterans squares its own 'heritage violation' of the causes of the Civil War as understood by those who voted for secession.

Caption: Camille Love, Atlanta’s director of cultural affairs, above, with Yakingma Robinson, an official at the Atlanta Cyclorama and Civil War Museum, which is being refurbished.

Text and Image Source: New York Times, November 29, 2010

Points of View---What Did Presidents Washington, Jefferson, Jackson, Tyler Have To Do With The Civil War?

Four American Presidents: What Did They Have to Do With the Civil War? , The Annual Symposium of the Museum of the Confederacy and hosted by the Library of Virginia on Saturday, February 20, 2010.

The Museum of the Confederacy is more than exhibits. It encourages scholarship, education, and adds to the public's consideration of Confederate flag issues, slavery and Confederate biographies. CWL's visits to the MOC and conversations with its employees leaves the impression that the institution is not a bastion of neo-Confederate apologetics, unlike the recent incarnation of the Sons of Confederate Veterans.

Typical of the MOC's mission is its 2010 symposium, Four American Presidents and What Did They Have To Do With The Civil War? The summaries of the speakers' remarks follow and are from the CSPAN Video Library's wwwsite. The wwwsite's link is below the descriptions. The four 60 minute segments are worth the investment of CWL's readers' time. Audience questions and presenters' answers are included.

Anne Sarah Rubin discussed President George Washington and how his career, thoughts, and actions relate to the origins of the Confederacy and the coming of the Civil War. The unresolved disagreements about the status of slavery and the nature of the federal union created situations that presaged the dissolution of the union in 1861 since its founding. Professor Rubin focused on the way that the image of President Washington was used to justify and legitimize actions. She responded to questions from members of the audience. Anne Sarah Rubin is the author of A Shattered Nation: The Rise and Fall of the Confederacy, 1861-1868 and Seventy-Six and Sixty-One: Confederates Remember the American Revolution.

Peter Onuf discussed President Thomas Jefferson and how his career, thoughts, and actions relate to the origins of the Confederacy and the coming of the Civil War. The unresolved disagreements about the status of slavery and the nature of the federal union created situations that presaged the dissolution of the union in 1861 since its founding. Professor Onuf talked about President Jefferson's soci-political philosophy of nationhood and contrasted it with the Southern philosophy. He responded to questions from members of the audience. Peter Onuf is the author of Jefferson's Empire: The Language of American Nationhood (University Press of Virginia, 2001) and editor of Jeffersonian Legacies (University Press of Virginia, 1993).

William Freehling discussed President Andrew Jackson and how his career, thoughts, and actions relate to the origins of the Confederacy and the coming of the Civil War. The unresolved disagreements about the status of slavery and the nature of the federal union created situations that presaged the dissolution of the union in 1861 since its founding. William Freehling, a senior fellow at the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities and Public Policy, is the author of Prelude to Civil War: The Nullification Controversy in South Carolina, 1816-1836 and The Road to Disunion in two volumes.

Edward Crapol discussed President John Tyler and how his career, thoughts, and actions relate to the origins of the Confederacy and the coming of the Civil War. The unresolved disagreements about the status of slavery and the nature of the federal union created situations that presaged the dissolution of the union in 1861 since its founding. Edward Crapol is the author of John Tyler, the Accidental President, published by The University of North Carolina Press.

What Did Four Presidents Have To Do With the Civil War?

Top Image: Virtual Tourist
Second Image: 18th Massachusetts

CWL---1858: The Year The Civil War Became Inevitable?

1858: Abraham Lincoln, Jefferson Davis, Robert E. Lee, Ulysses S. Grant and The War They Failed to See, Bruce Chadwick , Sourcebooks Inc., 355 pp., notes, bibliography, index, 2008, $24.95

1858 offers clear and concise descriptions of key political and social events that shoved the states into rebellion and resistance. Adventurous and even compelling at times, 1858 moves the reader through twelve months of political and social turmoil. Chadwick explores not the mundane but the exceptional.

Not familiar to most Civil War readers is Jefferson Davis' 1858 visit to Maine in order to recuperate from herpes and build a coalition of Northern Democrats in a bid to establish a presidential candidacy in 1860. The Southern press pilloried him to the point that when he returned he retracted his statements. Ironically, these retractions put him into a position where he would be offered a presidency in 1861, that of the Confederate States of America.

In one six page chapter, Chadwick offers a cogent and balanced description of the Dred Scott Decision, one of the most important U.S. Supreme Court event in U.S. history. His ability to put into place the origins, personalities, issues, and outcomes of this event is exceptional. As a Advance Placement U.S. History test reader, CWL reflected that this chapter would be a fine contribution to student resources.

Though CWL is quite familiar with the Lincoln-Douglas debates, the Oberlin Ohio Rescue and John Brown's escape with slaves from Missouri to Canada, Chadwick offers the essentials in a manner that captures the excitement and underscores their place in bringing the states to the brink of rebellion in 1860. After reading 1858, Civil War buffs may have a new appreciation for the events leading to the Secession Winter of 1860-1861. Some readers may need to keep in mind that all soldiers in the ranks had lived through and had argued over the events of 1858.

Though a Pennsylvanian, CWL has not be able to work up any enthusiasm for James Buchanan, 15th president of the United States. Chadwick's 1858 covers the Buchanan presidency in nine chapters that fall between chapters on Davis, Lee, the Lincoln-Douglas debates, the Oberlin Rescue, Seward's Irrepressible Conflict speech, and John Brown's rescue of slaves from Missouri. Read consecutively the Buchanan White House chapters make the case for this Northern Democrat holding Southern Democrats' interest higher than his own section and possibly allowing the conflict to become truly irrepressible.

Some quibbles: The subtitle is unclear; nine of 17 chapters deal with the Buchanan White House, two deal with Lincoln and Douglas, and single chapters deal with Lee, Davis, Seward, Sherman, The Dred Scott Decision, John Brown's Raid on Missouri and the Slaveholder's raid on Nicaragua. Mysteriously, U.S. Grant is mentioned only on four pages in the book but is in the subtitle. Buchanan has nine chapters but has no mention in the title at all.

CWL suggests that the subtitle be changed for the paperback edition: 1858--The Year the Civil War Became Inevitable for Davis, Lee, Douglas, Lincoln, Seward, Sherman and John Brown. Or 1858--Blood Before The Civil War's Dawn: The Men Who Pulled the Trigger on the War.

Chadwick assumes the reader has no detailed understanding of the period; 1858 is written for the general audience. For the paperback edition, a chronology for the year should be added as well as a brief chronology of the 1846-1860 era. A list of characters would also be helpful for the general audience. Also, the index needs some attention. The entry--Forney, John--lists 6 pages with three subtopics. John Forney has a whole chapter, Number Nine, pages 135-140 but these pages are not listed under the entry--Forney, John--in the index. Some proofreading needs to be done. Notes 159, 160 and 161 are the same font size as the text font; these note number should be the superscript font size, just like the other 744 notes.