Special Opinion by Charles Landis
In the ES News, May 24, 2019, guest columnist Daniel Fountain writes about why he thinks some still get indoctrinated in the Lost Cause of the Confederacy. He argues it is because the United Daughters of the Confederacy and others have been untruthful about the history of the Confederacy. Mr. Fountain is a history professor, and he should have been more truthful.
There was no referendum on decision of Southern states to secede from the Union. 854 men, mostly wealthy plantation owners, were selected by the state legislators to attend conventions to decide on secession. 697 voted for and 157 voted against; thus a small group of rich and powerful men (697) decided for 9 million mostly poor people, not the voters.
My grandfather and five of his sons joined the Confederate Army. They had no vote in secession or to fight. Like most, all they knew was South Carolina fired on a Union fort in Charleston, and Lincoln had mobilized 15,000 troops and was going to invade the South. Slavery had been accepted for over 250 years, was legal under the Constitution, and the Supreme Court (Dred Scott) said slaves were property. Note. Until the Revolutionary War ¾ of the immigrants were indentured or bonded, and many did not live much beyond the indenture period. Some of my ancestors (from Palatine) came to America in boats where the death rate was higher than on slave ships.
My grandfather was severely wounded at Petersburg, and three of his sons were killed. There is a memorial to my grandfather, as captain of the Granville Graves of North Carolina, and the other fallen soldiers. My grandmother and three of daughters (aunts) were among the Daughters of the Confederacy who helped erect this and other memorials. One of my aunts went on to become administrative assistant to General Omar Bradley when he headed the Veterans Administration. There are countless testimonials to all the good works she did on behalf of veterans of every war from the Civil War to World War II and after. (Including FDR, General Bradley, and awards from veteran organizations).
Yes, slavery was the primary cause of the Civil War, but the primary purpose of Lincoln was to preserve the Union. Lincoln only freed slaves in states in rebellion. HE did not believe the black man was the equal of the white man. He was a segregationist.
A quarter of the Union Army were mercenaries from Germany, Ireland, and Scandinavia. My ancestor’s homes were looted and razed, their crops destroyed, and I have a letter written by grandfather telling of the hardships during the occupation reconstruction. They fought because they were being invaded. Period.
The memorials are not for the Lost Cause but for veterans and all the lost blood.
Paul Plante says
Whether any of the politically-correct holier-than-thous, and they are legion, will appreciate anything you have said in here, it is a well-written article that shines some light where light needs to be shined.
And the fact of the matter is that long before slavery came to these shores, and this has been said over and over and over again, it was COMMONPLACE in the known world going back to the times of the Romans and before.
As has been said many times, slavery is mentioned many times in the Christian Bible, which seems to put the imprimatur of the Christian God on the practice.
And long before the black folks, who were themselves enslaving others, the Saxons in England and the Danes were making slave raids in Ireland and Europe, where those slaves had skin of white, not black.
So thanks for shining some much needed light on this subject.
Piglet says
“Yes, slavery was the primary cause of the Civil War…” No, it was not. Just read the text of Lincoln’s speech at his inauguration in which he proposed a constitutional amendment to protect slavery forever. He made it clear, however, that he was going to jack up tariffs (largely paid for by the South for the benefit of Northern interests) and he was prepared to enforce their collection by force.
Falsely claiming the war was over slavery has allowed the victors to claim the mantle of moral superiority but it’s simply not true. The Emancipation Proclamation was made only when the war was going badly for the North and it was only intended as a military measure to try to get states in rebellion to return to the side of the Union. It freed slaves under areas not under Union control and it specifically excepted slaves held in areas under Union control. Does that sound like a war to liberate slaves?
Read Tom DiLorenzo’s books “The Real Lincoln: A New Look at Abraham Lincoln, His Agenda, and an Unnecessary War” and “Lincoln Unmasked: What You’re Not Supposed to Know About Dishonest Abe” to find out what really happened.
If people saw the war as a matter of political power, high taxes, centralized government, federal government corruption, etc., then they might get ideas about what’s happening today too, and we surely can’t allow that!
Chas Cornweller says
Like all wars, the War Between the States, or the Recent/Late Unpleasantness, the Great Rebellion, War for Southern Independence, War of Northern Aggression, Freedom War or War of Secession, War Between the North and the South, War of Brother Against Brother, the Second American Revolution, Mr. Lincoln’s War or Mr. Davis’s War; The Civil War began as an economic disparity and a division of ideologies. Like most wars often do.
It is a fact the South’s economic system was propped up and supported by a base of free labor. The North was lumbering toward the Industrial Age by using cheap and easily retained immigrant labor. Both north and south could be accused of exploiting free/cheap labor for its’ own economic means. But the fact of the matter is, Slavery was the causation for the rapid growth of large landowner plantations and the uber-rich of the lower portion of the new nation. These same landowning super rich were the ones elected to power in the Governments, both local and national, wrote and maintained the laws, and created the hierarchy of caste from local law enforcement, militia maintenance, plantation overseers and controlled a small, but thriving merchant and craftsman middle class and fomented a large, underprivileged and dirt-poor land squatting farmer system. It was these same rich, large landowning slave owners that created the scenario and later advocated for secession and enviable war with the rest of the newly formed nation of the United States. But, and here is the rub…it was the small, poor dirt farmer and the lower ranked merchants and craftsmen that actually donned that grey uniform and fought in that bloody contest from Manassas to Gettysburg to the Wilderness to Petersburg and the final capitulation at Appomattox. The Poor fought and died in that war. Not the rich landowner. So, for the rich land owners, economics was their motive. Slavery was but a symptom of a perverted economic system. Doomed to eventual failure (war or no war) and doomed to forever perpetuate a system of the downtrodden, the bullied, the disenfranchised and set outside the economic agglomeration that the rich had created for themselves early in the development of this great nation.
And ironically, when their war failed, and the South lost, it was the rich land owner who placed blame on slavery. Had you asked the common rebel soldier what his reason was for fighting, the answer would have either been, “the north invaded us and I’m protecting my homeland” or “I’m fighting for State’s Rights”. Slavery was not even on their radar. It was the failed cause that put slavery to the foreground. Why? Here’s what we know here. Plantation owners wanted the war. The poor whites who didn’t own much of anything except the land they farmed did the fighting. Afterward, the leaders who started the war deflected the pain and anger of those they’d manipulated into the fight by demonizing the free former slaves. They saved their necks at the expense of another race’s dignity. We still feel the repercussions of the racism born in that era. It’s really that simple. Later, the daughters (former wives as well) of the soldiers that perished, or the former rich landowning families banded together as the Daughters of the Confederacy and erected monuments all throughout the South and its villages and hamlets and large cities to commemorate the valor and the sacrifice of these brave soldiers. The irony of these actions coincided with the rise of a backlash against freed blacks in a series of laws and edicts known as Jim Crow. Just further demonizing African Americans, who, against their wills, fettered, stolen, locked in the holds of slaver ships, endured the Middle Passage, only to be forced to labor intensively under the brutal southern skies for little if any, wages and meager living conditions. This is how the economics and the prejudices of the day operated.
So, no, slavery was not the main cause of the Civil War. Man’s inhumanity to man was the main cause. Coupled with avarice, arrogance, and bold stance of superiority bolstered by a religion that not only seemed to justify this viewpoint, but actually, in some quarters, encouraged it. So, no, the poor of the south fought, suffered and died because the rich wanted more. Simple as that. And this cycle continues, even today. Too ignorant to question their leaders, too uneducated to understand the rest of the world and how the West has affected it and too poor in both resources and cohesion to fight the rich and powers that be and will continue to be. And the rich and powerful, forever throwing young men into the war machine for accursed gain.
Blue Hoss says
All races kept slaves all throughout history.
Most of the American slave ships and American slave-markets were run by Jews. But no one blames modern Jews. Because if anyone today says anything was “run by Jews”, they’re immediately dismissed as a crazy anti-Semite, regardless of whether or not it’s true.
When the Trans-Atlantic slave ships docked at African slave-markets to buy slaves, they bought slaves who were already slaves. It was Arab Muslims and Black Africans themselves who captured members of rival tribes and took them to the coastal slave-markets to sell to the Whites and Jews. White people didn’t go into Africa and kidnap free black people. They barely needed to get off their ships to buy slaves, it was like buying McDonalds at a drive-through. The slaves were already at the slave-market in chains, ready to go.
In the 16th – 18th century, Africans enslaved 1.5 million White Europeans in the Barbary Slave Trade. African Muslims raided up the coastlines of Europe, particularly the British Isles but even as far as Iceland, kidnapping and enslaving White European Christians. The men were galley slaves, and the women were sex slaves. This was more brutal than working on a plantation or as a domestic servant.
Native Americans and Jews owned Black slaves too, but no one seems to assign a collective guilt to modern Native Americans and Jews for their slavery. In fact, Jews were the biggest slave-owners in America per capita.
Whites were the first people to stop slavery in modern times, whereas slavery still continues in Africa to this day. In Mauritania slavery was only made a punishable offense in 2007!
Less than 2% of Whites in America ever owned slaves
Only 5% of the black slaves transported across the Atlantic actually went to the modern U.S. Most in fact went to Latin America to serve Hispanic slave-owners. But we don’t look at modern Hispanics as evil slave-owners.”
Liberals have one color.
Paul Plante says
Ah, dear friend and fellow American patriot Chas Cornweller, I lack the words with which to express the joy I feel when I scroll down the list of new posts and see your name in the honor roll, as is the case herein, where you bring up the subject of slavery, as if the only people to ever feel the shackles of a slave were those with black skin, and how far from the mark you are with that theory, my dear friend Chas.
Consider this, my dear friend Chas, from a piece titled “Slavery in Anglo-Saxon England” by Octavia Randolph, as follows:
These days are to be given to all free men, but not to slaves and unfree labourers: twelve days at Christmas; and the day on which Christ overcame the devil (15 February); and the anniversary of St Gregory (12 March); and the seven days before Easter and the seven after; and one day at the feast of St Peter and St Paul (29 June); and in harvest-time the whole week before the feast of St Mary (15 August); and one day at the feast of All Saints (1 November).
And the four Wednesdays in the four Ember weeks are to be given to all slaves, to sell to whomsoever they please anything of what anyone has given them in God’s name, or of what they can earn in any of their spare time.
– excerpt of Ælfred’s Laws from Alfred the Great, translated by Simon Keynes and Michael Lapidge
end quotes
Do you think he is talking about African American slaves there, my dear friend Chas?
Or is he talking about slaves with white skin?
Getting back to that essay we have:
This excerpt from the Laws of King Ælfred of Wessex (ruled 871-899) spells out required holidays granted along the most basic of divisions: free men, and slaves.
As in all of Northern Europe, slavery had a long history amongst the continental Angles and Saxons, which continued in their new island home.
Those captured in battle or in raids commonly became slaves (excepting persons of wealth, generally held hostage for a handsome redemption).
In early Anglo-Saxon times, slaves were often descendants of the conquered British population: the Anglo-Saxon word for “Briton” is used interchangeably for “slave”.
The commonest sort of slave in later Anglo-Saxon times was by far the penal slave, a person enslaved as criminal penalty from crimes committed.
In hard times, the poorer agricultural class found their only hope of sustenance in voluntarily submitting to slavery, and sold themselves and their families to survive.
end quotes
Is this ringing any bells for you, my dear friend Chas, as you tell us of these poor African Americans, who, against their wills, fettered, stolen, locked in the holds of slaver ships, endured the Middle Passage, only to be forced to labor intensively under the brutal southern skies for little if any, wages and meager living conditions, as if they were the only people to ever know servitude or hard times.
Getting back to actual history:
Slaves had limited legal rights under Anglo-Saxon law, and in his Laws King Ælfred shows an interest in encouraging them to better their stations by allowing days on which slaves are free to work as independent contractors.
The phrase allowing slaves to “sell to whomsoever they please anything of what anyone has given them in God’s name” is an interesting one, for since a slave by definition cannot own any thing (but only be owned) this merciful dispensation implies that slaves were not infrequently recipients of gifts.
Slaves had no wergild, or man-gold (worth).
But as “property”, slaves had value.
If a slave was killed, the slave’s valuation (generally a pound, the price of eight oxen), was to be paid to the aggrieved owner.
If the owner himself killed his slave, he incurred ecclesiastical penalties, but rarely legal ones.
Ælfred’s law code underscores the notion of property rights:
If anyone rapes the slave of a commoner, he shall pay five shillings to the commoner, and a fine of sixty shillings.
The slave is not recompensed, only the owner.
Rape amongst slaves was met with the severest penalties:
If a slave rapes a slave, castration shall be required as compensation
Although the rights of slaves were few, slave-owning was fraught with liability, since owners were legally responsible for the actions of their slaves.
Thus slave-owning was not to be entered into lightly.
Around the typical timber hall, slaves might be almost indistinguishable from other, free, labourers, performing the heavy hand work necessary to sustain its operation: the hauling of wood and water, tending to penned animals, scraping and cleaning of floors, dishes, and pots.
(Keep in mind, though, that by later medieval standards, all Anglo-Saxons of every rank worked comparatively hard. No man was a chieftain, lord or king without being a battle-hardened veteran and participating fully in physically protecting or expanding his riches. King’s wives spun, wove, and sewed their own, their husbands, and their children’s clothes, and personally oversaw and administered much of the royal household activities. An “idle” aristocratic class was hundreds of years away.)
end quotes
Do you find your consciousness being raised any, Chas?
Paul Plante says
I always like to think that when our dear friend and fellow American patriot Chas Cornweller comes in here and lays forth before us for our consideration what appear on the surface to be totally absurd or ridiculous premises, that he is doing so to test us, to see who has their wits about them in a Darwinistic kind of way, and not wanting to end up in the dustbin of history too prematurely, when dear friend Chas got to talking about who it was who fought for the South during the War of Northern Aggression, I went scurrying back to my history books, and most specifically, to a paper entitled “Wealth, Slave Ownership, and Fighting for the Confederacy: An Empirical Study of the American Civil War” by Andrew B. Hall, Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science at Stanford University; Connor Huff, Ph.D. Candidate in the Department of Government at Harvard University; and Shiro Kuriwaki, Ph.D. Candidate in the Department of Government at Harvard University. on February 17, 2019, where we have as follows on the subject, to wit:
Abstract
How did personal wealth and slaveownership affect the likelihood southerners fought for the Confederate Army in the American Civil War?
On the one hand, wealthy southerners had incentives to free-ride on poorer southerners and avoid fighting; on the other hand, wealthy southerners were disproportionately slaveowners, and thus had more at stake in the outcome of the war.
end quotes
Now, that seems at odds with the premise of Chas Cornweller that it was the poor folks fighting a rich man’s war, but let’as go some further to see what more there is to say on the subject:
We assemble a dataset on roughly 3.9 million free citizens in the Confederacy, and show that slaveowners were more likely to fight than non-slaveowners.
We then exploit a randomized land lottery held in 1832 in Georgia.
Households of lottery winners owned more slaves in 1850 and were more likely to have sons who fought in the Confederate Army.
We conclude that slaveownership, in contrast to some other kinds of wealth, compelled southerners to fight despite free-rider incentives because it raised their stakes in the war’s outcome.
end quotes
Yes, the data does seem to go the opposite way from what Chas is saying about who fought for the confederates during the War of Northern Aggression, and I am surprised that Chas would have been unaware of this paper when he made his post, which is why I think Chas is testing us to see who is asleep at the switch versus woke up.
Getting back to that paper:
Civil wars are pervading features of human society, despite their profound costs.
Between World War II and the new millennium alone, there were over 70 civil wars resulting in more than 16 million deaths worldwide (Fearon and Laitin, 2003).
These conflicts take lives, destroy property, and prevent the success of stable governments.
Underlying the macro-level phenomena of civil wars are the individual decisions of millions of people to participate in these violent conflicts.
What leads someone to abandon the political process and take up arms against the state, risking personal life, property, and security for uncertain gains?
end quotes
And there before our eyes is the essential existential question very relevant to our troubled times today that I think our dear friend and fellow American patriot Chas Cornweller was trying to lead us to – what leads someone to abandon the political process and take up arms against the state, which takes us back to that paper Chas Cornweller guided us to, as follows:
In this article we study this question in the context of the American Civil War, one of the most destructive civil wars ever fought and “the most horrific war in United States history” (Costa and Kahn, 2003, 520).
Motivated by historical research on this defining period in America’s development and insights from conflict studies about why individuals participate in rebellions, this article investigates how personal wealth and slaveownership affected the likelihood that southerners fought for the Confederate Army in the American Civil War.
Were wealthier white southerners — who were more likely to own slaves and therefore had higher stakes in the conflict’s outcome than poorer white southerners — more or less likely to fight in the Confederate Army?
Research drawn from political science and history offers countervailing views on whether wealth, in various forms, should increase or decrease the propensity to fight.
On the one hand, one of the most famous historical sayings about the American Civil War was that it was “a rich man’s war, but a poor man’s fight.”
The saying captures the claim that poorer white southern men, most of whom did not own slaves, were more likely to fight in the Confederate Army than their wealthier slaveowning peers.
Such a pattern would be consistent with research in political science arguing that individuals participate in conflict in part because they gain greater material benefits from fighting than from not fighting, at least when personal wealth is not closely tied to the outcome of the conflict (Berman et al., 2011; Collier and Hoeffler, 2004; Dasgupta, Gawande, and Kapur,
2017; Dube and Vargas, 2013; Fearon and Laitin, 2003; Humphreys and Weinstein, 2008; Miguel,
Satyanath, and Sergenti, 2004; Olson, 1965).
By this logic, wealthier southern men should be less likely to participate in the conflict, both because their wealth raises the opportunity costs to fighting and because of the potential diminishing marginal utility of money.
On the other hand, as we will argue throughout this article, the American Civil War was a case in which personal wealth raised individuals’ stakes in the outcome of the conflict, potentially leading wealthier southerners to fight more despite the opportunity costs associated with their participation in the conflict.
Historical work shows that free, white men of even modest means throughout the Antebellum South often invested their excess capital in land and slaves (McPherson, 2003; Wright,
1978).
The war was fundamentally fought over the institution of slavery.
We might expect that as white farmers in the Antebellum South became wealthier, their incentives to preserve slavery likewise rose, possibly making them more willing to fight for the Confederacy.
This logic is consistent with research throughout political science highlighting how individuals are motivated to fight due to grievances against the state (Cederman, Gleditsch, and Buhaug, 2013; Gurr, 1970; Humphreys and Weinstein, 2008; Paige, 1978) — in this case, grievances against a federal government they saw as threatening an institution that they had been socialized into and upon which their future livelihood depended.
end quotes
And with that last sentence stated, I will toss that ball back to Chas to see what he might make of it – that part about “threatening an institution that they had been socialized into.”