I think that there is honestly a blind spot in these Southern political leaders where they just don’t get why folks are upset about them celebrating their treasonous past. The simple fact is that their predecessors took up arms against the United States to preserve their right to own people. Sure, they had their reasons. Everyone has their reasons when they take up arms against others. With a time machine, maybe we could have a great time listening to the folks who fired on Sumter and the folks who destroyed the World Trade Center argue about who had the greater justification. But, as it’s my country fired upon in both cases, I’m nationalistic enough not to care too much about the particulars of their respective grievances.
Now we have the governor of Mississippi rushing to the defense of the governor of Virginia’s decision to revive a celebration of the Confederacy in that state. The linked article suggests that people are upset that it’s “insensitive.” My objections to the Confederacy isn’t that remembering it hurts my feelings. Rather, I have these old fashioned notions that both treason and owning people is wrong. Combining the two is really wrong. And getting sentimental about the combination is appalling. I’m happy enough to let bygones be bygones, but if elected officials from Confederate states insist on bringing up the past unpleasantness, it should be to apologize and to thank the northern states for bringing a forcible end to their peculiar institution.
Haley Barbour doesn’t think celebrating the taking up arms against the United States means “diddly.” He goes on:
I don’t really see what to say about slavery, but anybody that thinks that you have to explain to some people that slavery is a bad thing, I think that goes without saying,” Barbour said.
Goes without saying? Then why, pray tell, did we have to fight the bloodiest war in our history to get your predecessors – who you want to celebrate – to remain part of the United States rather than defect, primarily for the purpose of continuing the practice and expanding it into the territories?
Please excuse me. This “Lost Cause” crap just drives me nuts.
I agree, however, I do think that the states should have the right to fully separate from the union.
I can’t call it treason for any other reason than they were unsuccessful. I can call it hateful, stupid, abhorrent, and a bunch of other nasty things, and I agree we shouldn’t celebrate it.
Still, I feel that if a group of states had a legitimate concern & felt they could manage better on their own, they should be free to leave without war.
First, as you note, it’s not even Treason in Defense of Slavery Month so much as Treason in Defense of Expanding Slavery into Areas Where It Had No Facile 18th Century Economic Justification Simply To Preserve a Regional Political Advantage Based in No Small Part on Counting People You Wouldn’t Allow To Vote Until 1964 As 3/5 of a Voter Month. Second, the whole Lost Cause mythos is like the product of 150 of FOX News writing the history; if “everyone” “knows” slavery was wrong, it’s not because they got an accurate picture of it from their school texts, let alone much of any picture of the Compromise of 1877 and the ugly reinstitution of racism across the country for the following hundred years. If this is so completely understood these days, how does Bob McDonnell manage to miss it entirely?
Finally, I’m always tempted to demand Old Northwest Territory Heritage Month, where we could chop down any remaining old-growth trees and burn Prophetstown to the ground.
Doghouse Riley, I *heart* you.
Ive spent quite a bit of time on and off in the South when my brother was stationed in Charleston SC and I have always spoken to whatever nativesof the region are around who will chat with me.. SC is still the real American South.Its like the changes after the the civil war havent set in yet. Theres still a feeling that if it werent for ‘do-gooders’ ‘our negros’ would be happy to continue their lives as they had been except theyre getting these ideas from liberal outsiders.. The ‘outsiders’ are the probelm for so many white southerners. But they dont see themselves as the ‘white Southerners ‘.They see themsleves as ‘the South’ They see themselves as the culture..
This is the same remarkable attitude ,I discovered in Mexico when I went to university there in Mexico City learning immersion Spanish.I had a chance to speak to the educated set in their own language,and I was the only ‘gringo’ in an all Spanish-speaking rooming house where we all took our meals together ..way to go to learn the culture and the language. The intelligensia in UNAM( university of Mexico) and many of the boarders blamed outsiders for Mexicos 3rd world status ,and when they talked about future of Mexico it left out everyone who was poor or begging on the street. They just werent part of the culture..And the USA was the big scapegoated cause of all of Mexicos woes. This is when I learned that all of the SW USA is rightfully Mexican territory,so there is no such status as ‘illegal’ for Mexicans in the USA.The USA owes Mexico ‘bigtime’.
And now we turn to the American South.How people define themselves and whom they see as ‘true to the culture’ will give a clear view into the culture of those who speak for all and seek to control the agenda for all. Traditional Southern politics is now what we see as the american conservative movement in the USA. The accent isn’t necessarily all southern any more,but they are inspired by people like Haley Barbour,who summed the culture issue up yesterday on CNN.They’re culture believers and the problem for them is ‘foreigners’,from north of the Ohio River,with their liberal agenda.
Again just my personal views..I hope im not monopolizing massons blog with my personal views..Just tell me.
States (or their barely majority ruling politicians) wanting to pick up their toys and go home because they aren’t getting their way reminds me of something. What could it be?
I was immersed in the southern nostalgia thing yesterday at Shiloh battlefield, in Tennessee. Because the National Park Service doesn’t allow full-scale battle reenactments, what you get instead are “demonstrations”, where one side of the conflict shows how maneuvers were done, fires the weapons, etc.
At the visitor’s center (where the Union was driven back to on the first day, and from where they launched their successful counteroffensive the second day), was one lone tent with half a dozen Union reenactors.
I then proceeded to the Hornet’s Nest, where the pivotal battle of day one took place. There was a field filled with overflow parking of spectators. On the opposite field was a large Confederate encampment, a couple hundred infantry reenactors, artillery, about thirty cavalry, etc. The announcer kept correcting himself to say “War Between The States” instead of Civil War. The word “slavery” was not spoken, of course.
It’s easy to be nostalgic for something if you leave the bad aspects out of it. Look at the uniforms! Reflect on the sacrifice, the valor! Maybe I could buy that, if they weren’t still hanging black people from trees almost a hundred years later, preventing them from voting a hundred years later, etc. It’s a joke that it wasn’t about slavery. It was SO about slavery that they continued to carry on a lot of the bad aspects of it for almost a full century. And those that were doing it were–surprise– using the same rebel flag to represent their cause.
Doug, I’ve posed this before without response, so I’ll try again.
What do you say about the glorious non-treasonous Northern states of Delaware, Kentucky, Maryland, Missouri, and West Virginia? I mean, if your assertion that the Civil War was entirely about slavery, how do you explain these states staying in the Union? Or the Union’s tolerance of their slavery status? The Union certainly *did not* bring an end to “their” particular institution, witnessing these states as proof.
My take is that, as usual, the narratives aren’t perfectly clean, because they can’t be. The outcome of the Emancipation Proclamation was wonderful, but Lincoln didn’t issue it with the secession, rather when it became politically expedient after Gettysburg. The Union is not the perfect Knight in Shining Armor. Less tarnished than the South, sure.
Not all of the slave states seceded. But the ones that did secede did so in defense of slavery – and particularly in defense of expanding slavery into the territories. Just because some of the slave states weren’t willing to commit treason to protect the practice doesn’t serve to mitigate for the acts of the states that were.
The Union wasn’t fighting to abolish slavery. The Union was fighting to keep the Union intact.
And what bugs me isn’t so much the acts of people from 150 years ago. It’s people today actively trying to white wash and celebrate those acts
Doghouse –
Ironically, the south wanted slaves to count as a full person – for the purpose of enumeration for getting members of the House of Representatives.
Not that they were going to get to vote, of course.
It was the free north that wanted the fraction to be as small as possible – hence, the ‘3/5 compromise’. Ideally, the north would have wanted it to be zero, to limit the national political power of the south.
Mike,
All of these descriptions are grossly over-simplified. Want to learn more? You’ll have to Wiki several key phrases.
West Viriginia was created in 1864 as a de facto recognition of an area mainly not interested in seceding from the Union. That area was an integral part of Viriginia, occupied early by Union forces, but most of the area ended up in guerrilla warfare for most of the rest of the war.
The rest had big arguments over whether to stay or secede. Kentucky fell into the Union camp when the CSA invaded to occupy a strategic defensive position on the Mississippi River at Columbus. Some Kentuckians created a provisional Confederate state government, but it faltered after the defeat at Perryville.
Missouri’s state government tried to secede, but was prevented forcibly from doing so, including the removal of a sitting state governor.
Maryland (by 1861) was split between southern and northern sympathizers, but actions of the (slave-holding) governor prevented secession. Delaware was similar to Maryland, and all elections held during the war had to be monitored by Federal troops to prevent fraud and/or bloodshed.
All the states listed had residents who joined the rebel cause. Kentucky and Missouri effectively had both Union and Confederate membership.
I think Missouri’s slave owners had their slaves confiscated in Union-held areas, and it was the 13th Amendment that ended slavery in Missouri. Maryland changed their state constitution in 1864 to abolish slavery. I think Delaware waited until the 13th Amendment. Kentucky officially ratified the 13th Amendment in 1976 (nice).
The Civil War was really a continuation of a fundamental argument over political power that originated during the debates over the Articles of Confederation. The argument continued into (and after) the Constitutional Covention (and seems to be rearing its ugly head once again). Much of that power rested in an agreement stating that southern states could count three-fifths of their slave population (who weren’t enfranchised, so their votes were controlled by the slave owning elites, btw) for the purposes of determining representation in the House of Representatives and the Electoral College. This provided disproportional control of the House, the position of Speaker, and the Supreme Court for southern representatives. The Presidency was also heavily comprised of men from southern states (this also has returned since 1976).
The Civil War was most certainly about slavery, and the power that its perpetuation brought to a minority of southerners. Attempts to change that balance of power brought on the impetus for secession, nothing else. State’s Rights is a canard. Secession was based upon the exploitation of other human beings for the aggrandizement of a minority of persons who were enriched by a system that had been condemned since 1808 in the rest of Europe (though some Muslim areas still haven’t given up on the idea).
A war is never won until the victor has wiped the enemy off the face of the earth and removed their names from the records of history.
Just look at the continuing hatred in the Middle East between the jews and everyone else. That will never end.
God supposedly said thou shalt not kill (murder, whatever the new intrepation is said to be). Perhaps she knew something about humans?
The civil war was about keeping the union together, states rights, slavery, economic protection (ending slavery would have played havoc with tobacco and cotton plantation profits) and which level of government was entitled to make laws concerning what happens in the states. It was also about the well to do using the poor and undereducated to go off and die for them and their ideals and property.
Nothing has changed since then. War is still about the well to do using the undereducated to fight for their property, income and political power. Big corporations, Ike’s military industrial complex he warned us about, profit from our wars and perhaps drive us to war to protect their oil fields, etc. And republicants, most of whom and their families never served in a war and never will, keep up their patriotic drumming and trying to scare people by saying the opponent will weaken America!! As for me, I ain’t gonna study war no mo, ain’t gonna study war no mo!!
Peace. Unless you try to take my rats!!!!!
VG- My point exactly is that the issues are over-simplified. Doug and I have this every now and again because I rah-rah the Founders, at which he points they accepted slavery in the compromise to create the Union. He rah-rahs the North (which I agree with, btw), but I point out again the compromises necessary to advance the Union’s cause. We tweak each other, sure, but there’s meaning behind it. Mainly, idealists tend to see things as all-or-nothing. It’s reassuring perhaps, and certainly I’m guilty of trying to find these things as clean explanations. Even calling it a mere extention of the fundamental argument over political power is an over-simplification. What can you do? We’re blogging while pretending to work.
The Founders left this issue hanging, poorly IMO. That is their failing. We should learn from that kind of mistake. Looking at government, we don’t. That is our failing.
Hahahahahahah to your last two sentences.
Not sure if refining it to an argument over power is a over-simplification. Power is one of the base motivations in human behavior, isn’t it?
Who is this ‘we’, VG? Try to get the infernal buggers to READ THE BILL prior to voting on it gets hoots and hollers. If the Founders, with their single page documents left things hanging, what are we doing today with our several thousand page bills?
Of course it’s all about power. Humans love power, as long as it appears to serve their interests.
Doug:
I now know how to get you’re goat: whistle Dixie.
Nobody I know defends slavery. Good riddance to it. But some people I know plausibly defend secession. That the two were confounded is undeniable and regrettable. It makes it hard to think about the merits of secession alone, apart from its discreditable occasion.
You want simple facts? How about this: Virginia didn’t secede until Lincoln wanted to take up arms against the Confederacy. Was Robert E. Lee treasonous?
A Yankee blogger can have a scotoma, too.
I usually just lurk, but have to insert a book recommendation: Confederates in the Attic, by Tony Horwitz. It’s about ten years old by now, but it’s an amusingly disturbing exploration of how Southerners continued to venerate the Confederacy at the end of the twentieth century.
Love that book.
I’ve said it before: at a certain length every internet discussion becomes a haphazard epistemology debate.
Were the “reasons” for the Civil War varied, complex, and nuanced? Sure. Everything is made up of holes, as a physics prof once told me. This is an argument against assigning “reasons” to anything, not against analyzing something according to our common ground of experience. That’s why Doc Johnson kicked the rock. Without the issue of slavery, and specifically the expansion of slavery in perpetuity for political advantage, there’s no Civil War. It wouldn’t have been fought over Tariff policy, or agrarian vs. industrial society, or the quickening pace of modernity; a million men would not have bled and died over academic arguments about Federalism, no matter how attractive it is for some today to grab that justification. The Civil War was fought over chattel slavery, and we’re fully justified in saying so today. Bob McDonnell did not minimize slavery’s impact on the war. He ignored it, until he was called. Yes, but… is an apologist’s argument.
By the way, Virginia may not have seceded before the Union responded militarily to the seven states already in rebellion, but this does not mean it did so for that reason; secession had been bouncing around Virginia’s legislature since Lincoln’s election, but there was a strong undercurrent of respect for its position as the font of the States uniting, concern for its geographical position, and its western counties’ disinterest in dying to preserve the wealth of its eastern planters. If there was some major move to emancipate its slaves which just missed a quorum call it’s escaped my notice.
If one wishes to discuss secession, a review of Indiana Lt. Gov. Morton’s speech about the “right to secession” delivered on the 22nd of November 1860 might prove valuable.
I had not read (or even heard about) that speech before. Thanks, V. I couldn’t find a great link to it, but here is a Google Books link to the Life of Oliver P. Morton. At page 87, the speech is quoted.
“Any people, anywhere, being inclined and having the power, have the right to rise up and shake off the existing government, and form a new one that suits them better. This is a most valuable and most sacred right – a right which we hope and believe is to liberate the world. Nor is this right confined to cases in which the whole people of an existing government may choose to exercise it. Any portion of such people that can, may revolutionize, and make their own, of so many of the territory as they inhabit.”
Abraham Lincoln
January 12, 1848.
“Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it”
-Sign above Jim Jones throne at the Peoples Temple, Jonestown, Guyana, 1978
Have fun Doug when the country collapses. The South tried to solve some of the endemic problems in our government that you want to attribute to slavery. The issues of central banking are now in full bloom. Try to learn a little more history before you blog. People will think you don’t know what you’re talking about.
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Yes, that’s the problem, exactly. I don’t know enough history. Thanks for that valuable suggestion.