Posted on 10/20/2002 8:01:28 PM PDT by Aurelius
The Civil War could, and probably should, have been avoided, according to a new book authored by four Southern historians.
In the recently published "This Terrible War: the Civil War and its Aftermath," the authors weighed the war's brutality against its benefits. They came to the conclusion that the bloodshed was not "inevitable" and that slavery was not the key issue of the war.
In fact, the book says, slavery was in its waning days and was used as a propaganda tool by both North and South to stir up the public's emotions. The American Civil War, also called the War of Secession, was fought from 1861 to 1865. Eleven seceding states in the south waged battle with the Federal government, represented by the North.
At issue were opposing socioeconomic and political interests. The North was mostly industrial, and individual families operated the majority of its farms. The agrarian South, by contrast, relied upon large plantations that used slave labor.
While the death toll of the war is presumed to be much greater, military casualties were reported at a minimum of 623,000 dead, and a minimum of 472,000 wounded. Civilian deaths from sickness, exposure or imprisonment are estimated in the tens of thousands.
"The war was caused by political miscalculation, exaggerated rhetoric, public paranoia, and distorted popular fears in both North and South of the intentions of the either section, what one historian long ago called 'hyperemotionalism,'" said Daniel Sutherland, professor of history at the University of Arkansas and one of the book's authors.
"Even after secession, many Americans — not just Lincoln — did not think war inevitable, and they were genuinely surprised — not to say shocked and dismayed — when hostilities did come."
Sutherland told Discovery News that the real issue of the war was not slavery, but rather "the expansion of political power and maintaining the political balance of Congress through the addition of new representatives and senators."
He explained that both the northern and southern states wished to extend control over territories in the newly opened West. Slavery became a tool for either side attempting to gain control, as territory then was marked as either "slave" or "free." Only abolitionists, who were in the minority both before and during the war, viewed the issue in terms of racial injustice.
"Could (the) territorial issue have been settled without resorting to war? Of course," said Sutherland. "Could compromise have led to the end of slavery? Probably not, but remember that this was not the issue. Southerners feared it might become the issue — part of the exaggerated fears and unreasonable assessment of the other side — but it was not part of the public political debate."
Sutherland and his colleagues claimed that even if the South had been allowed to extend slave labor into the unorganized territories to the West and Southwest, slavery would have failed because these regions could not support staple plantation crops, such as cotton. According to the book, with or without war, economics, land and weather considerations would have limited slavery.
If not for the inflammatory rhetoric from both sides surrounding the issue of slavery — still an emotional topic today — the original secession dispute could have been resolved in a political forum by, for example, dividing up the land evenly, redistributing congressional seats or other legal measures, according to the book.
Paul Anderson, assistant professor of history at Clemson University, agrees with many of the book's theories and commented, "This book's greatest strength is that it deals with the terrifying messiness of the war, and the war's failure to answer some of the most important questions that it raised. Many of the supposed certainties in the war's legacy were more hollow than we like to think. The book is a welcome if disturbing and sometimes bitter commentary on that."
Anderson believes that slavery may have reached its natural limits in this country, but not necessarily abroad.
"Plenty of slaveholders had their eyes on other places — Cuba, South America — where there was no doubt slavery would and could flourish," said Anderson. "If they maintained parity in the Union, they might (have) eventually (been) able to secure these places through future expansion."
Good point. But Ulstermen who moved to those areas were moving into areas dominated by another British culture (or Dutch culture in the Hudson Valley, etc.). I don't know that the Ulstermen formed a majority in these areas. Perhaps they did in some local areas, such as southern Pennsylvania (half of them probably moved South along the Great Wagon Road to the Carolinas and Georgia).
Subsequent generations of the Scotch-Irish probably assimilated somewhat into the dominant local culture, whatever it happened to be. (To the extent that we Scotch-Irish can ever assimilate into another culture.)
Georgians were a blend of cultures also, including debtors from English prisons, Salzburgers from Austria (not in favor of slavery), Irish immigrants, and people moving down from points north, even New England.
Perhaps the Puritans mellowed and became somewhat more tolerant 200 years after branding, whipping, and jailing Quakers and Baptists during the early years of the Massachusetts colony. (Imagine my horror to discover that I had a Puritan ancestor who served in a witch trial.)
The Puritan mindset of self-proclaimed superiority and moral scold persisted for eons -- what was it that used to be said about the Boston Brahmans -- the Lowells speak only to the Cabots, and the Cabots speak only to God?
One can study American regional culture forever. But it's only half the story. The other half is what brings us together and keeps us together. Had the nation split in 1861, it might well have gone on to split again over the sort of city/country divisions which occur in virtually all countries without always becoming embittered. Whether anything much is gained by the process that couldn't be achieved through political action in a united nation is another question.
Asa you know, George Washington said otherwise.
"One people, one people, one people" is a constant refrain in the early years of the nation. It was only after the slave power decided slavery MUST be preserved that you see an attempt to discredit this idea, which culminated in the split of the Democratic Party in 1860.
Walt
"In this battle of giants the most imposing of them all was Daniel Webster, of Massachusetts, the best speaker of his day. He it was who stated the case for the Union and refuted the case of South Carolina in one of the most famous of American speeches.
His words enshrined the new feeling of nation-wide patriotism that was gathering strength, at least in the North. They show that New England in particular was moving away from the sectional views which had prevailed in 1812.A broader sense of loyalty to the Union was developing. "It is to that Union," Webster declared in the Senate, "we owe our safety at home, and our consideration and dignity abroad. It is to that Union that we are chiefly indebted for whatever makes us most proud of our country. That Union we reached only by the discipline of our virtues in the severe school of adversity. It had its origin in the necessities of disordered finance, prostrate commerce, and ruined credit. Under its benign influences these great interests immediately awoke, as from the dead, and sprang forth with newness of life. Every year of its duration has teemed with fresh proofs of its utility and its blessings; and although our territory has stretched out wider and wider, and our population spread farther and farther, they have not outrun its protection, or its benefits. It has been to us all a copi- ous foundation of national, social and personal happiness.
I have not allowed myself, Sir," he went on, "to look beyond the Union, to see what might lie hidden in the dark recess behind. I have not coolly weighed the chances of preserving liberty when the bonds that united us together shall be broken asunder. I have not accustomed myself to hang over the precipice of disunion to see whether, with my short sight I can fathom the depth of the abyss below: nor could I regard him as a safe counsellor in the affairs of this government, whose thoughts should be mainly bent on considering not how the Union may be best preserved, but how tolerable might be the condition of the people when it should be broken up and destroyed.
While the Union lasts we have high, ex- citing, gratifying prospects spread out before us, for us and our children. Beyond that I seek not to penetrate the veil. God grant that in my day at least that curtain may not rise! God grant that on my vision never may be opened what lies behind! When my eyes shall be turned to behold for the last time the sun in heaven, may I not see him shining on the broken and dishonoured fragments of a once glorious Union; on states dissevered, discordant, belligerent; on a land rent with civil feuds, or drenched, it may be, in fraternal blood!
Let their last feeble and lingering glance rather behold the gorgeous ensign of the Republic, now known and honoured throughout the earth, still full high advanced, its arms and trophies streaming in their original lustre, not a stripe erased or polluted, not a single star obscured, bearing for its motto no such miserable interrogatory as "What is all this worth?, nor those other words of delusion and folly, 'Liberty first and Union afterwards,' but everywhere, spread all over in characters of living light, blazing on all its ample folds, as they float over the sea and over the land, and in every wind under the whole heavens, that other sentiment, dear to every true American heart—Liberty and Union, now and for ever, one and inseparable! -—-
On the Indiana frontier a young man was moved by this speech. His name was Abraham Lincoln.
--A History of the English Speaking Peoples, Vol IV, P. 141 by Winston Churchill
The aggressor in a war is not the first who uses force, but the first who renders force necessary.
I hadn't thought about it before, but your observation is correct. I went to high school in Savannah, where even second-generation Savannians had a hard time being considered anything but outsiders. Your “dogmatically religious” comment is correct too.
I forgot to respond to your earlier question about why secession occurred in 1861 and not earlier or later. Some have attributed this to the aggitation of the abolitionists, which started around the 1830s and increased into the 1860s. This aggitation helped polarize the country and may have been what pushed us over the edge.
The nullification situation over tariffs was almost enough to cause South Carolina to break away in 1832-33. But it wasn't, and they didn't. The North nullified the runaway slave part of the Constitution during the 1850s, probably in part due to the abolitionists, and this contributed to increasing sectional animosity and secession.
So what was it about Sumter that rendered force necessary? The Davis regime knew what was going on. They knew what firing on the fort would do. Yet they did it gladly, choosing combat over negotiation.
To end slavery was moral cause enough.
In that terrible clash of one-time comrades in a nobly conceived Federation, the American people as a whole lost sight of the spirit and concept that went into the original plan of our Union. Had we kept to the spirit of 1787, there would have been no conflict; and neither the North, South, East or West, neither Massachusetts nor Virginia and South Carolina, need ever have felt threatened or compromised by their associations with one another.
It was in a decline in the popular understanding of what was really involved and achieved during the period between 1775 and the retirement of Washington in 1797, that the clash became inevitable. And it was a tragedy presaging the effects of the still greater decline in that understanding that has steadily preceded since the 1860s--the decline that has brought us to the days of Bill Clinton, situational ethics and the acceptance of the big lie and the politics of the thirty second sound-bite.
My prayer has always been that we may somehow reverse that decline in understanding--and still find within our body politic the will to restore the Republic, we once had. I have been deliberately general in my comments here; but those who understand the original principles and spirit of our Federal Union, will understand my point. Those who do not, will think me merely pontificating ex cathedra pronouncements.
William Flax Return Of The Gods Web Site
The founders, some prominent Virginians in particular abhorred slavery and wanted to end it eventually. The word is that abolitionists and slave rebellions so frightened the Virginians that they rejected abolitionism. There is some evidence for this.
But look at things the other way around. There's no evidence that, in the absence of any Northern abolitionists, Virginia actually would have abolished slavery any time soon. Votes would have been closer, and Southern abolitionist societies wouldn't have died off as soon, but it's likely that emancipation would have remained a distant prospect for Virginians, ever put off into the future, as the end of segregation was forever post-poned in the 20th century.
Northern states had abolished or were abolishing slavery. England had abolished it. France was abolishing it. Some kind of abolitionist movement in the North, but concerned with Southern slavery, was probably inevitable once people had come to think of slavery as wrong. With things changing elsewhere, either Southerners or Northerners would ask, why slavery remained in the American South. My bet is that eventually a Northern abolitionist movement would naturally have developed if Southerners didn't abolish slavery themselves.
Most Northerners weren't abolitionists. It was always a minority movement, but the violent return of runaways did shock Northerners, turning some citizens into abolitionists and many more into free soilers.
It may be that organized abolitionism crossed thresholds that made things more impassioned. For example instead of small groups of slaves making their way to freedom and being taken back to bondage, there were more slaves coming, and a publicity machinery to publicize their recapture. So emotions get taken to a higher pitch. But I'm skeptical about abolitionism being a cause and not an effect of other circumstances. I don't know how one could scientifically decide such a question.
And South Carolinians never showed even the limited degree of enthusiasm for abolitionism that Virginians did. Northern abolitionists may have made South Carolinians or Mississippians more passionate, but didn't turn them away from any plans to get rid of slavery.
I think we can see how things fit together and one thing led to another, but it's hard to see how the war could have been avoided. When you get regions becoming self-conscious and expansive, if their civilizations are different enough, they may be on a collision course.
But sometimes the lesson is that what happened could and should have been avoided. You have correctly identified several instances, but apparently don't recognise them as such.
It is almost a cliche to quote Santayana:
"Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it."
But the repeated failure to learn from history has been the greatest tragedy of the last 150 years.
"Ein Volk. ein Volk, ein Volk" was a constant refrain of Adolf Hitler. He used this concept, which existed only in the abstract and not in reality, to justify making aggresive war on an independent nation, just as was done on our continent 80 years earlier.
"Ein Volk. ein Volk, ein Volk" was a constant refrain of Adolf Hitler. He used this concept, which existed only in the abstract and not in reality, to justify making aggresive war on an independent nation, just as was done on our continent 80 years earlier.
Maybe he read the words of Washington, Jay, Marshall, Jackson, Webster and others, because they all said it too.
I saw this really interesting program on the History Channel the other night called, as I recall, "Rome's Lost Legions" about the destruction of 3 legions in 6 or 7 A.D. According to the show, Rome had a tenuous grip on Germany that they lost when Armenius (sp) crushed the 20,000 Romans. The point was, no Armenius -- no Charlemagne, no Louis XIV, no Napoleon, no Kaiser Bill, and no Hitler. The archeology was very interesting also.
Walt
Resolutions of the American Anti-Slavery Society:
Resolved, that secession from the United States government is the duty of every Abolitionists, since no one can take office, or deposit his vote under its constitution without violating his anti-slavery principles, and rendering himself an abettor to the slaveholder in his sin.Resolved, That the abolitionists of this country should make it one of the primary objects of this agitation, to dissolve the American Union.
Of course, the abolitionists were reacting to the moral evil of slavery, so one can argue that slavery was the real cause of secession more than the abolitionists were. I don't dispute that slavery was a major reason, perhaps the major reason, for secession.
Perhaps the ultimate cause of the eventual secession of the South was the joining together in the first place of two such disparate cultures. They were like oil and water in a way. As you said, if their civilizations were different enough, perhaps they were on a collision course.
Such a Union was doomed to fail unless a Solomon could be found, one wise enough to negotiate the end of slavery without ruining the Southern economy. We didn't find him.
Perhaps the abolitionists did at one point advocate a negotiated end to slavery with economic compensation to the slaveholders but had given up hope of ever achieving it. I'm sure there were some recalcitrant slaveholders who wouldn't go for such things.
To the extent that abolitionists started agitating, going to extreme measures like John Brown, and helping slaves to escape, they were acting against a peaceful negotiated end to slavery. Thus they share some blame for the WBTS. There is enough blame to go around for that. Slaveholders share in the blame too.
With slavery ending elsewhere in western civilization as you point out, I believe slavery would have eventually ended in the South. This is simply a belief on my part, perhaps an optimistic one. It might have taken 30-40 years for slavery to end, but it eventually would have. Perhaps the introduction of better farming methods, gasoline tractors, the introduction of industry to the South, or that missing Solomon-type leader would have accomplished it.
My other point about Armenius went down the memory hole.
The show on the History Channel made the point that Armenius tried to united the German tribes. He was a strong and obviously successful leader -- he was only 25 when he crushed the Romans in the black forest. But about ten years later he was murdered.
The German tribes never coalesed into a nation, never were a big player in European affairs, were always, as Churchill said, "either at your throat or at your feet."
In short, they were the precursors of the good ol' CSA.
Walt
The Nazis used slave labor quite effectively.
There might still some form of second class citizenship for blacks if the Slave Power had its way.
Walt
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