There have been more than 55,000 books and pamphlets written about the Civil War since 1861. Why another? The author, in his introduction suggests it’There have been more than 55,000 books and pamphlets written about the Civil War since 1861. Why another? The author, in his introduction suggests it’s because he has a reinterpretation, proposing that the Civil War was inevitable given the illiberal reactions of the south based on their justified fear of slave insurrection, rebellion, sabotage, and impact of the growing differences between between free and slave labor..
Ironically, racism was enhanced by the American Revolution as class differences disappeared and racial differences became necessarily more pronounced in order to make slavery palatable. “Blacks” were genetically “inferior” and well suited for being mastered was the claim. The social history of slaves and slavery really only got started in the sixties, and historians discovered that slavery was resisted, often quite violently. Ashworth proposes that slave rebellion played itself out politically and was a major contributor to the war.
It was the fear of slave rebellion and slave violence that moved whites to take actions that violated white liberties which helped fuel anti-slavery feeling in the north. Constant vigilance against slaves running away and then efforts to get them back (slaves often represented a considerable investment, perhaps the equivalent cost as a nice car in today’s dollars) resulted in pressure for the federal government to enforce the Fugitive Slave Clause of the Constitution and then later the stricter Fugitive Slave Act of 1850. As the number and membership of abolition societies grew in the north, actions by the south, including censoring the mails to (prohibit distribution of pamphlets, and the gag rule in the Senate intended to prevent petitions to eliminate slavery, began to identify antislavery with freedom of speech. (See also William Miller’s Arguing about Slavery: John Quincy Adams and the Great Battle in the United States Congress.) The murder of abolitionist Lovejoy in 1837 made things worse.
No slave society in history has managed to urbanize or industrialize and the distinction in that regard between the north and the south became ever more manifest. By the time of the civil war 90% of manufactured goods came from the north and barely 10% of the southern population was urbanized. The contrast between free labor and that of slaves also became more obvious. It wasn't that industrial slaves weren’t profitable. They were, but the potential for sabotage was much greater and the economic effects much more damaging while the implements required for an agricultural economy didn’t require nearly the economic investment. Not to mention that white labor deeply resented competing with slave labor and that “agitators” could much more easily organize slaves to revolt in an urban setting. According to James Henry Hammond, one of South Carolina’s most prominent statesmen, “whenever a slave is made a mechanic, he is more than half freed”. “The field”, another southerner concluded, “is the proper sphere of the negro”.
A further reason for the lack of urbanisation and industrialization was the self-sufficiency of the plantation. Since the need for labor on a farm was seasonal at best, but the slaves were property, and it was important to keep them busy, it became an economic necessity for owners to encourage slaves to raise their own food which in turn reduced the need for labor-saving equipment further reducing the impetus for industrialization while in the north wage-labor could be laid off when times warranted.
Support of non-slaveholding whites was important since they were needed to patrol areas and to provide assistance in case of slave revolt. In most southern states, whites were outnumbered, often by considerable numbers, so creating an image of the savage black man became essential, but at the same time the myth of Christian protection was created to salve their own consciences, i.e. that the black man needed saving and protection because he was “childlike.” In other words, slavery was “good for them.” An extension of this was that by having slaves do menial jobs, the free white man didn’t have to. And, of course, they could point to the founders of the republic, many of whom had owned slaves, so how could it be a bad thing? The slaves themselves were quite happy, they insisted, all suggestion to the contrary coming from northern agitators.
This review is getting a bit long, so I’ll end with this quote: In the following decades these attitudes began to change dramatically. It would be a pardonable exaggeration to claim that in the nineteenth century, the United States went from a belief that democracy was incompatible with wage labour (on a large scale) to an assumption that a successful free society and democratic government depend on wage labour and are scarcely possible without it. From the 1830s onwards the abolitionists were in the vanguard of this movement. The adjustment to the arrival of wage labour on a large scale would bring with it a new hostility to slavery. . . In the United States, the writer continued, “the wheels of fortune revolve too rapidly, and the rich and poor change places too frequently, to allow a foundation for such an agitation as this”. The driving force of the entire system was, of course, self-interest: the prospect of upward mobility gave the worker a huge incentive to labour. At this point the antislavery implications became apparent. The slave simply lacked these incentives. In the vast majority of cases he could never cease to be a slave. Moreover because his labour was given under duress, it could not, abolitionists were confident, energise an economy and foster its development. Nor was it properly respected. As a result “indolence” and “dissipation” ruled in the South. According to abolitionist Charles Beecher, “slavery degrades labor, discourages education, science, art; enfeebles commerce, blights agriculture, and continually works society towards barbarism”. As northerners re-examined the basis of their labour system and stressed the incentives available to wage workers (as to other northerners), in increasing numbers they found it difficult to ignore the antislavery implications....more
I stumbled across this book by accident. It’s fascinating, if often depressing. I’ve always maintained that if reenactors were really serious about auI stumbled across this book by accident. It’s fascinating, if often depressing. I’ve always maintained that if reenactors were really serious about authenticity, they’d issue live ammunition. Nevertheless, Horwitz, whose immigrant great-grandfather became obsessed with Civil War history, also caught the bug, and when they discovered a TV crew shooting a scene in the land next to their house in Maryland, decided to investigate what makes Confederate reenactors (they hate to be called that preferring terms like “living historians”) tick.
Unfortunately, many of them can’t get over the fact they lost. Refusing to call it the Civil War (they prefer “War Between the States” which it wasn’t called at the time) they revel in southern mythology which they pass along to their children in organizations like the Children of the Confederacy’s catechism. “Yankees hate children,” the kids are taught; slaves revered their masters; and the war had nothing to do with slavery, they just didn’t want the government to tell them what to do (ironic in light of southern demands that northern states enforce the Fugitive Slave Laws.)
Just to get a few things straight: 1. Nowhere in the Constitution is the right to secede mentioned; it’s in the Declaration of Independence. 2. Southern states all said in their proclamations of secession that their reason was slavery; to argue otherwise is disingenuous. 3. We could refocus the debate over slavery by redefining the issue as one about "property." Slaves were considered property. The Constitution protected property. Supreme Court decisions through 1857 consistently considered slaves to be property. The Founders wrote in many compromises in the Constitution to protect the rights of southern plantation owners (of which they could include themselves, most of them.) David Blight (Race and Reunion) has noted that slaves by 1860 were worth about $3.5 billion, an enormous sum then and of course the southern plantation owners didn't want to give up their property. The cotton business was booming and had doubled in value every decade for four decades before 1860. Ironically, one might posit that the southern states needed a strong federal government to enforce the Fugitive Slave Acts and it was states like Wisconsin and Pennsylvania who insisted on "states' rights by passing laws making enforcement of federal Fugitive Slave laws difficult. Southern states, in their declarations of secession documents, said the reason for secession was their desire to protect slavery (see South Carolina and Georgia esp., which also makes reference to slaves as property and their constitutional right thereto). Slavery and race have sullied this country for centuries; to whitewash it is rather sickening. As Bernard Malamud wrote in The Fixer: "There's something cursed, it seems to me, about a country where men have owned men as property. The stink of that corruption never escapes the soul, and it is the stink of future evil."
A constant theme is the power of symbols and nothing illustrates that more than his dispassionate recounting of the killing of Michael Westerman in Guthrie, Kentucky. Westerman was out driving in his red truck with a large rebel flag flying from the back. What the flag meant to those involved was far less important than what it meant to those who used Michael’s death as a rallying cry for their own particular agenda or hatred. Horwitz’s interviews reveal that Michael liked the battle flag simply because it matched his truck. To the kid who shot him, clearly unintentional through the side of his truck as they raced along the highway at 85 mph, it was only a symbol of the white bullies in town. Michael's glorification -- he has his own tribute website -- was not what Horwitz heard from others in town when he interviewed them. Much of the town’s reverence for the battle flag seemed to be exacerbated by the school board’s wish to change the mascot -- the Rebel, which served only to inflame teams they had to play. Ironically, Guthrie, in Todd County, Kentucky was on the Union side during the Civil War. In a further irony, Freddie Morrow who did the shooting, was sent to prison for life plus an extra four years for violating Westerman’s civil rights. More recently, the power of that symbol was demonstrated when that kid shot up the black church killing several people and calls have echoed throughout the south for and against removal of confederate symbols.
Lots of interesting stories.Horwitz writes well, with compassion, and with humor. My wife thought the book (we listened to it together) was a bit reminiscent of Bill Bryson. I agree he has the same sense of irony that has you smile except that in the case of this book that smile is followed by a quick grimace rather than a broad grin. Note that his interview with Shelby Foote is worth the price of the book.
Favorite quote: “Charlestonian Baptists were so religious they wouldn’t fuck standing up for fear someone might think they were dancing.” ...more
The Fourteenth Amendment, the longest and most complete, is without doubt the most significant. It was an attempt by the 39th Congress to constitutionThe Fourteenth Amendment, the longest and most complete, is without doubt the most significant. It was an attempt by the 39th Congress to constitutionalize the Civil Rights Act of 1865 that President Andrew Johnson had vetoed, the first veto of a major piece of legislation to be overridden by Congress. The first section included four significant clauses: the Citizenship Clause, the Equal Protection Clause, the Due Process Clause, and the Privileges or Immunities Clause (note "or" not the "and" of Article IV.) Each of the clauses has had enough of an impact to be worthy of being considered a new Constitution, the third if you count the Articles of Confederation as the first.
Barron v Baltimore(1833) had applied the Bill of Rights to federal jurisdiction only. Recent scholarship, epitomized by Curtis in this book is arguing that jurisprudence since the 1870's has ignored the history of the 39th Congress discussions that, he says, clearly intended to apply to Billof Rights to the states. Certainly the text would seem to so indicate. Section 1, following the first sentence that made freed slaves citizens (thus overturning Dred Scott, begins "No state shall..." On the face of it, that would seem to be as clear an indication as of intent as possible.
Nevertheless, the Supreme Court decisions, beginning with the infamous Slaughterhouse Cases, and the Cruikshank case refused to accept this and argued the due process clause still applied only to federal jurisdiction. Thus was the 14th amendment completely defanged leaving many of the Black Codes and segregation laws in place and making the Civil Rights Act of 1875 just a piece of paper. Justices Hugo Black (ironically former KKK member) and Frankfurter (former darling of the left who became a staunch advocate of judicial restraint) battled over the historical basis for the 14th. Black's dissents in cases made it clear that he believed the 14th was intended to apply the Bill of Rights to the states. Frankfurter and Charles Fairman belittled any opposition to their view that this position was nonsense. Frankfurter believed the Due Process Clause just gave the Supreme Court too much power, and I'm sure he is spinning in his grave at what was accomplished by the Warren Court that used the Due Process Clause to selectively apply much of the Bill of Rights to the states. Brown v. Board of Education, overturning the infamous Plessy decision of "separate but equal" notoriety would never have been possible without it.
Professor Curtis and others like William Crosskey challenged Frankfurter and Fairman and their view seems to have won, even though antagonism to application of the Bill of Rights under the 14th was rampant even in the eighties. Justice Clarence Thomas has taken an even more interesting approach arguing that the Due Process Clause has been used inconsistently to apply the Bill of Rights to the states and he maintains, referring to historical evidence, that the clear intent of the 39th Congress, under Bingham, Stevens, and Trumbell, and the Republican majority, was to use the Privileges or Immunities Clause to make the application. His concurrence in MacDonald lays it out very nicely.
Curtis has written an excellent summary of the history of the controversy including a thorough rebuttal to Supreme Court's jurisprudence in this regard in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Curtis points out that Slave Power suppression of free speech rights, the "gag rule" for example, and the suppression of due process through the Fugitive Slave Acts, before the Civil War radicalized the Republican Party, which, thanks to secession, gave them complete control of the Senate and the House. The attempts to push slavery into the territories of Kansas and Nebraska, the elimination of the Missouri Compromise, and their justifiable fear that Justice Taney might declare in the Lemmon v New York case then moving its way through the courts, that slavery could not be declared illegal in the states, all contributed to this radicalization. Clearly, their intent was to force the Bill of Rights on the states and overturn Barron (Bingham had even brought a copy of the decision to read on the floor of the House, many members not being familiar with it.
Good companion books to read with this one:
1. Michael Les Benedict, A Compromise of Principle: Congressional Republicans and Reconstruction 1863-1869 (New York: Norton, 1974)
2. Garrett Epps, Democracy Reborn: The Fourteenth Amendment and the Fight for Equal Rights in Post Civil War America (New York: Henry Holt, 2013), Kindle
3. Gerard N Magliocca, American Founding Son: John Bingham and the Invention of the Fourteenth Amendment ([Place of publication not identified]: New York University Press, 2016), Kindle ...more
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