My recent trip to South Carolina has made me resolve to be more gentle in my treatment of Southerners. In particular, while staying over night in Ashville, NC, I met a nice gentleman and his daughter from Atlanta. (I was a bit amused as my children introduced themselves to these folks as “Lincoln” (his full name) and “Harper Lee.” If I’d had a third child named “Sherman,” it would have been even better.)
Contributing even further to the improvement of my estimation of Southerners was an encounter with a guy named Mike at a bar in South Carolina. I was at a table watching the Colts game against the Raiders. Mike walked in and had a Colts hat on. There were only a couple of TVs showing the Indy game and the seats near those televisions were scarce. I was the only one at my table, so I invited him to have a seat if he wanted. Turns out he was a huge Tennessee Volunteers fan and followed the Colts because of Peyton. Anyway, he shared his onion rings and, unexpectedly, picked up the tab for one of my beers as he left. Very few things are better calculated to improve my disposition than onion rings and beer.
Still, the decency of modern day Southerners notwithstanding, I think it’s important to push back against myths about the Civil War that might tend to soften our views of that dark period in our country’s history. James Loewen has a column in the Washington Post deconstructing five myths about the Civil War: 1) The South did not secede for State’s Rights – if anything, they were against State’s Rights before Lincoln’s election when they were pushing for federal intervention on issues like being allowed to travel in the North with their slaves; 2) Secession was not about tariffs and taxes – those may have been an issue 30 years prior, but just before the Civil War, tariffs and taxes were pretty much set by the South and the Southern states were silent about them when explaining their reasons for secession; 3) while most Southerners didn’t own slaves, that doesn’t mean they weren’t fighting for its continuance – people too poor to own slaves aspired to some day become wealthy enough, and, with slavery, poor whites at least knew they were better than someone; 4) Lincoln did not go to war to end slavery – his personal hope was to have slavery end, but as an official matter, he was clear that if he could preserve the Union by not freeing any slaves, that’s the course he would take; and 5) Slavery would have died out on its own – it’s tough to prove a negative, but the entrenchment of slavery and the wealth it provided to the Southern elite makes it difficult to believe it would have died out on its own accord.
Interestingly there are a relatively large number very strongly seeking to rewrite history (at least as many of us have held it to be) by seeking to prove the Civil War was simply a matter of difference of opinions on several issues but slavery was not one of the important ones. Recently several videos and articles have been appearing and promoted to change the idea that the South took the action they did because of virtually every reason put forth for all these years. To many in the south the civil war injustices toward them (as they see it) are still very real things. As a Civil War buff, I enjoy studying and visiting various sites but the political side is a bit of muddled mess when viewed from either side. To some “The South shall rise again” is not just idle thinking.
I just can’t believe #5. While we definitely have a strong independent streak here in America, I just can’t see us not recognizing the inherint evil of slavery in a modern world.
Considering the fact that we (tacitly) allow slavery to exist today in the United States, why are you so incredulous, Paul C.?
varangianguard, what slavery are you referring to?
Personally, I can see #5, because I can see the ad campaign for it in my head as it might have been in the early 1900’s. Pictures of black families in St. Louis or Chicago barely making it, then pictures of slaves getting full meals and dressed in nice clothes. I could see some plantation owners basically saying it is more humane to have slaves then it is to let them suffer, uneducated & poor. Touching, really. :/
However, I don’t know enough about how the dust bowl affected the South to know if slavery would have survived the Great Depression. I could see it going either way.
This, from Wikipedia:
Instances of illegal slavery are still found periodically. The United States Department of Labor occasionally prosecutes cases against people for false imprisonment and involuntary servitude. These cases often involve illegal immigrants who are forced to work as slaves in factories to pay off a debt claimed by the people who transported them into the United States. Other cases have involved domestic workers.[142]
There have been incidents of slavery amongst illegal immigrants working in agriculture. The Immokalee region in southern Florida, which grows most of the tomatoes eaten in the United States during the cold months, has had many cases of slavery. Since 1997, several prosecutions have resulted in over 1,000 slaves being freed.[143]
The New York Times,[144] ABC News,[145] and The San Francisco Chronicle,[146] among others, have reported on child and teenage sexual slavery in the United States. There are also reports on children working in organized criminal businesses and in legitimate businesses under both humane and inhumane conditions.
In 2002, the U.S. Department of State repeated an earlier CIA estimate[147] that each year, about 50,000 women and children are brought against their will to the United States for sexual exploitation.[148] Former Secretary of State Colin Powell said that “Here and abroad, the victims of trafficking toil under inhuman conditions – in brothels, sweatshops, fields and even in private homes.” (italics are mine).
Much of this activity derives from people who are former immigrants themselves whose culture allow it, or who derive significant criminal gains from such activities.
Everything you just posted talks about how it is illegal, and when can be found with evidence, it is prosecuted.
I wouldn’t call that allowing it to exist. Could the government do more? Sure, just as it could do more about every single bad thing that happens. There is a compromise on how much freedom, time and money we can spend fighting these issues. We should constantly discuss where that compromise is and adjust it, but I wouldn’t say we allow slavery just because we have not eliminated it in every form 100% of the time.
Illegal or legal, it is still the same.
No policing agencies proactively follow these activities. It is all reactive. Someone has to complain first. In fact, many people ignore the most blatant signs of it because the services provided are cheaper. And, more people spend more time worrying about traffic law violators than they do about slavers.
What does that say about our society?
Right on, Doug. Another way to debunk the myths is to hear from the survivors of the Civil War. I was a journalist in then rural Stafford County, Va. in the early 1980s. I met older people whose grandparents had firsthand memories of the war and slavery. They all said the same thing: the war and its aftermath were a disaster that lingered on for almost 100 years. In Stafford, where the U.S. Army of the Potomac was based for three years, all public buildings were commandeered and torn down. That area now is covered by forests (and strip malls and subdivisions). War photos show every tree cut down for firewood. Some of the old families were still there in the 1980s, but their ancestors basically lost everything and had to start over. The focus of these people was on what they lost, and they viewed the war as a catastrophe. Sure they honored the bravery and tactics of Lee and Jackson, but there was always sadness and regret in the air. In the ensuing 25 years, I think we have lost that sensibility.
varangianguard: this is an absurd form of logic. The difference between institutional slavery and random pockets of illegal indentured servitude is akin to the difference between having murder in the US and genocide.
Paul C., sorry but this is “institutional” in the sense that it has significance in practice. It isn’t “random pockets”, but an (albeit) loosely organized string of criminal enterprises, which in a sense is little different from the methodologies of the African slave trade. Surely, it is lesser in scope than the African slave trade was, but you are mixing metaphors in your critique. What’s next? Some comparison to Nazism?
Calling it “indentured servitude”, as if that somehow lessens the reality that today it is instead really slavery, is the absurdity here. Most of these people have no hope of being released from bondage, save by rescue or arrest. That makes it significantly different from the concept of “indentured servitude”.
I’m frustrated with myself that I never realized who your children were named after. :)
Those five myths have been pretty firmly in place for quite some time; I remember being taught #1 and #2 specifically in American History classes in Elementary and high school in both Ohio and here in Indiana. It wasn’t until college that I learned more of the truth, and it wasn’t until James Loewen’s books that I really understood a lot more of it.