So, in honor of my current governor Bob McDonnell's declaration of April as Confederate History Month, I thought I'd note a couple of the more overlooked battles of the "War of Northern Aggression." The first is the Battle of Fort Pillow on April 12, 1864:
A Union report of that day:
All the wounded who had strength enough to speak agreed that after the fort was taken an indiscriminate slaughter of our troops was carried on by the enemy with a furious and vindictive savageness which was never equaled by the most merciless of the Indian tribes. Around on every side horrible testimony to the truth of this statement could be seen. Bodies with gaping wounds, some bayoneted through the eyes, some with skulls beaten through, others with hideous wounds as if their bowels had been ripped open with bowie-knives, plainly told that but little quarter was shown to our troops. Strewn from the fort to the river bank, in the ravines and hollows, behind logs and under the brush where they had crept for protection from the assassins who pursued them, we found bodies bayoneted, beaten, and shot to death, showing how cold-blooded and persistent was the slaughter of our unfortunate troops.War is hell, obviously. But there was something different about this battle. Most of the "unfortunate troops" that had been slaughtered--many of whom were murdered after surrender--were black. Nathan Bedford Forrest, the Confederate lieutenant general who ordered the attack on Fort Pillow and the future co-founder of the Ku Klux Klan, said:
"It is hoped that these facts will demonstrate to the Northern people that nigra soldiers cannot cope with Southerners."In his report to his superiors, Forrest wrote:
We captured 164 Federals, 75 negro troops, and about 40 negro women and children, and after removing everything of value as far as able to do so, the warehouses, tents, &c., were destroyed by fire.And the Union accounts of the forces inside Fort Pillow before the attack:
Our garrison at Fort Pillow, consisting of some 350 colored troops and 200 of the Thirteenth Tennessee Cavalry, refusing to surrender, the place was carried by assault about 3 p.m. of 12th instant.Such gentility. Such honor. Such...a remarkable disparity in the race of the dead.
That summer, at a battle known as "The Crater" near Petersburg, Virginia, a trapped regiment of black soldiers--along with many whites--threw down their weapons and surrendered under intense Confederate fire. The Southern response: "Take the white man, kill the nigger."
And so they did.
As I've noted before, there is a strand of libertarianism that defends the South, secession, and the Confederacy--some go so far as to hold the Defenders of the Lost Cause to be beacons of liberty. The federalist rhetoric employed by the Confederacy does not hold up to scrutiny, (ahem, Fugitive Slave Law). Furthermore, it is astonishing to me that federalist principles are held to be more meaningful than the plight of the millions of people in bondage--and, indeed, as they were invoked by the CSA to maintain that bondage--by modern day apologists, and audaciously in the name of "liberty."
Cloaking the murderous racism and slavery of the Confederacy in terms of liberty is offensive to me, and should be to all people who hold the integrity of the individual as something dear to them. Slavery is anathema to liberty, and the facts clearly show that the Confederacy was founded to preserve chattel slavery. Any good points Confederates may have made about federalism while furthering their crimes can never negate the original evil that undergirded the Confederacy's foundation and existence.
7 comments:
"Slavery is anathema to liberty", no doubt. But even if the confederacy was founded only to "preserve chattel slavery" (I might dispute the claim, but not forcefully), the war wasn't waged to end slavery but to defeat the confederacy (preserving the union).
I'm not sure that racism or slavery can completely explain the confederacy - especially since most southerners didn't own slaves at all. And when we seriously consider the bigotry and/or indifference of most Northerners, a month celebrating their victory over the south might be in similarly poor taste.
Lysander Spooner objected to the war: "Despite his abolitionism, Spooner thought the Civil War was a worse crime than slavery, since it cemented the principle, ‘that men may rightfully be compelled to submit to, and support, a government that they do not want; and that resistance, on their part, makes them traitors and criminals.’"...
And Lincoln infamously wrote: "My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that. What I do about slavery, and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save the Union (Letter to Horace Greeley, August 22, 1862)."
Slavery sucks, and i don't care for confederate history month (or for that matter black history month), but framing the conflict between North and South as a contents between slavers and liberators isn't accurate.
Of course most Southerners didn't own slaves, but neither were most Southerners the politicians that set the wheels of secession in motion.
People need to stop referring to and thinking about Virginia or Mississippi or the CSA or nation-states generally as sentient,feeling organisms. They are states--and thus react to the political pressures and actors which carry out that state's business. Certainly I'm not saying your average Johnny Reb was laying his life on the line to keep dem nigra's down, but the amount of money that slavery brought to the South--and the nation generally--is almost unfathomable and, as a result, both the primary economic and political interest of the South was its preservation.
Yes, the North fought the war to preserve the Union--I don't know anyone in their right mind who thinks that Lincoln or any other president would have just shrugged his shoulders and said "bye then."
But the casus belli was slavery, because that's what prompted secession. It's not like Lincoln woke up one day and said "Hey, let's invade Virginia." The South left and fired the first shots. That the North reacted in the way it did was as predictable as it was rational, if not morally unassailable.
Yes, Spooner and others have written against the war, and I find the resulting Leviathan in its wake most unfortunate, but today, at least, we still have the right of exit if we so choose. The same could not be said for your ancestors or mine, and the terror under which the lived is a testament to the cruelty embedded in the aftermath of the slave culture.
A friend told me about a book, which I feel I really must read, that treats the war as it probably should be: a big bloody mess fought by two governments with deeply flawed concepts of liberty and without illusions of the equality of the races. A "pox on both your houses" sort of treatment, if you will. I think this is the best way to look at the war.
I didn't treat the war as "slavers versus liberators," I am against the idea that a) the Confederacy is something to be proud of and b) libertarians so often fall back to defend the CSA as some sort of testament to liberty. I think both are misguided.
I don't use Lincoln as an example of a good libertarian, or a libertarian at all. However, his prosecution of war did, in fact, lead to the freedom of millions and that is nothing to sneeze at. That it was not his intent should indeed be remembered, but so too should the South's reasons for starting the war in the first place.
We agree on nearly every point. Your sentiment echo David Boaz's excellent post at Reason Hit & Run.
I don't want to anthrophormise the state or a collection of states. I'd even support the following analogy: 9-11 is to Iraq 2002, as Slavery is to the Civil War.
There were a number of factors that contributed to the south eventual secession; taxes, tariffs and inflation chief among them.
Our ancestors had it very bad, but i have serious question as to whether or not a military conflict was required to liberate them. I'm also not sure its fair to characterize the south as "starting the war" (the battle at Fort Sumter had almost no casualties at all - http://www.nps.gov/fosu/faqs.htm#fatalities). Had the north (Lincoln) pursued a diplomatic resolution (i.e. purchasing all of the slaves), the conflict might have been avoided with the same results (minus the casualty count and enmity) or better.
All in all, i think we agree - right?
I don't think that buying the slaves was a realistic option, not least of all because the poor Southern whites had been indoctrinated to believe that they were superior to blacks, so it would be altogether unlikely that there would be a particularly willing workforce to take the places of the emancipated slaves.
It sounds much better in theory than it does in practice. What, indeed, was the North going to do with them? mass deportation? what about the previously freed slaves? Did they get kicked out to a foreign country too?
The US had put off the war as long as it could. Furthermore, I don't think you can argue both that it wasn't all about slavery and that the war wouldn't have happened if we bought the slaves. Either it was worth killing over, or it wasn't. To those at the time, apparently it was.
It wasn't just Sumter. Mass desertions of officers and enlisted men, as well as the attempts to seize government property and military colleges around the South...the CSA had USA property throughout its territory. It was gonna come to blows one way or the other once secession was declared.
The South had too much invested to be bought off--and, again, if you buy the argument about buying off the slaves, it wouldn't have been enough anyway.
We can only speculate as to the practicality of purchasing freedom for southern slaves. The fact that many former slaves remained in the south and took up sharecropping, often working for their former masters, might count as a point in its favor. Markets work and slave labour isn't free labour (and there is some question as to wether its efficient labour). I'm not sure bigotry would prevent former cotton farmers from selling their slaves, and then offering them a meager wage to remain in their employe.
Since the exodus of southern slaves didn't paralyze the north after the war, I don't believe it would have absent the conflict. From what i've read, Lincoln was indeed entertaining the possibility of deporting former slaves after the war. Many might have welcomed the move, but thats just more speculation.
(This is fun. I could do this all day, but I won't force matters.)
Slavery was not the sole motivation for secessionist. Slavery was not the objective of the Civil War. These two points aren't incompatible with the fact that the war ended slavery. Diplomatic alternatives could have resulted in the eventual reunification of north and south, and the abolition of slavery.
Peacefully surrendering southern outpost in leu of an eventual solution was an option for the North. Theres always a price for peace, and the abolition of slavery didn't mean the end of southern agriculture. Segregation and racial injustice loomed large even after the war. I could be wrong, but its hard for me to accept that a full scale military invasion of the south was the only way to "save" the union and eventually bring an end to slavery.
I still think we agree on most of this stuff! Libertarians shouldn't hold up the confederacy as defenders of liberty - and Confederate history month is a really awful idea.
I said what I said out of a relatively decent knowledge of Reconstruction and post-Reconstruction South. I'll take these in order--
sharecropping: few issues. First, without additional rights protections, any purchase that resulted in the "freed" slaves working would essentially subsidize slavery via the federal government, further entrenching slavery, not destabilizing it. Second, those rights protections would be against the idea of the federalism, thus wholly unlikely, and by never codifying the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments, entrenching 2nd class citizenship. The contempt for blacks in the South did not start with the war, and given the length of time they resisted the Constitution as amended, I find it hard to believe they would have granted anything close to rights for blacks by 1964, let alone 1900.
Exodus: It was a long war and, after the Proclamation, they had time to adjust to the idea. Granted, plenty weren't happy, but if, as I would hope, the blacks wouldn't stay in their capacities in the South, they would come North and flood them with no education, no Reconstruction, and no service in the Army. Indeed, I think the North could have seen major revolts if the Northern exodus came sans war. (This is highly speculative, but I don't think any real stretch of the imagination.)
Separation & sale: I don't see how the Southern economy could survive with whatever price the USA would pay the CSA for their only source of plantation labor. Again, without the legal protections, blacks that stayed behind would remain de facto slaves without explicit legal protection, that would probably not come; and if they left, which seems to me the only logical choice if separation was maintained, the South would be left with no means of production. The money needed to pay just for the "property" held in slaves PLUS expected future economic product of their slave labor would either bankrupt the North or make it economically unfeasible. I am with those who criticize that the North wasn't a benevolent actor who cared about the humanity of the slaves. I don't think the North would pay that much money to flood their own job urban job markets with unskilled agrarian labor with no roots.
War/slavery/secession: no slavery, no secession; no secession, no war; ergo, no slavery, no war.
Some economic perspective of the slave trade: http://www.theatlantic.com/culture/archive/2010/01/again-with-the-black-confederates/33792/
I don't see how, in the American context, war could have ever been avoided. To say the problem was intractable is to understate the South's dependence on slavery. Taking my personal feelings out of it, it was only rational that they were so wedded to it. Was it Jefferson that talked about slavery being a wolf the South was holding onto by the ears? They shouldn't have them, yet they dare not let go?
It's not about evil versus good. It's about building a nation upon an intrinsic evil and the nation coming to terms with it well after they should have. That much wealth and an entire society built around that method of wealth and the white supremacy that maintained the mythology under which it operated, it's really a wonder that war didn't break out sooner than it did. Ultimate culpability for the evil of slavery rests with the whole nation, not just the South. But the South does bear a certain and unshakable responsibility to face its role in slavery. (The North does too, but to a different and lesser degree.)
But yes, I think we agree more than we disagree. :)
The economics of slavery is tricky business, maybe best discussed over a few drinks.
Slavery died most everywhere else around the planet without a civil war and I'm inclined to believe it would have run it's course in the US too, but I could be wrong.
I'll only pick with one other matter here. I don't think any living person has an obligation to face up to responsibility for the crimes of a century past. The victims and the perpetrators are similarly dead. That's not to say that their actions have no bearing on the present - but history is universally messy and guilt isn't inheritable.
(Responding from my iPad is just more fun!)
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