Printer-friendly versionThe Teaching Tolerance team had a confab earlier this week to plan ahead. Looking at a 2011 calendar, Sean Price, Teaching Tolerance’s managing editor, reminded me that the 150th anniversary of the start of the Civil War was fast approaching. Did we want to do something?
My first response? Frankly, no. As a former U.S. history teacher, I suspected that the next four years will present an unending opportunity mainly for military history buffs to strut their stuff. We would, I suggested to Sean, better serve teachers by focusing on the themes that spoke to racial justice.
But today, when I picked up The New York Times my eyes fell on “Celebrating Secession Without the Slaves,” and I learned that plans are well underway for an amnesiac’s commemoration of the great conflict. In Charleston, S.C., the first state to secede, “events include a ‘secession ball’ … (“a joyous night of music, dancing, food and drink,” says the invitation).” Montgomery, Ala., home of Teaching Tolerance, Rosa Parks and the Dexter King Memorial Baptist Church, plans a parade and reenactment of Jefferson Davis’ swearing in as president of the Confederate States of America.
The reality of slavery isn’t simply missing from the story—it’s actively being denied. In Georgia, the Sons of Confederate Veterans has gone all Greta Garbo with billboards proclaiming that, “’All we wanted was to be left alone to govern ourselves.’”
To claim that secession arose solely from a desire to be “left alone to govern ourselves” reveals how current political ideology—specifically from those who think our problems arise from too much government—can cause people to twist history and turn it on its end.
There’s no way one can honestly remove slavery—and its fundamental denial of the most basic human freedom—as a primary reason for secession.
Before your students buy this bunk, have them examine the evidence that comes straight from the very first sentences in the Declarations of Causes issued by three of the seceding states:
- “The people of Georgia having dissolved their political connection with the Government of the United States of America, present to their confederates and the world the causes which have led to the separation. For the last ten years we have had numerous and serious causes of complaint against our non-slave-holding confederate States with reference to the subject of African slavery.”
- In the momentous step which our State [Mississippi] has taken of dissolving its connection with the government of which we so long formed a part, it is but just that we should declare the prominent reasons which have induced our course. Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery—the greatest material interest of the world.
- [Texas] was received as a commonwealth holding, maintaining and protecting the institution known as negro slavery—the servitude of the African to the white race within her limits—a relation that had existed from the first settlement of her wilderness by the white race, and which her people intended should exist in all future time.
Or, have them read the words of Alexander Stephens, the new vice president of the Confederacy, as he justified secession: “The proper status of the negro … was the immediate cause of the late rupture and present revolution,” he said in his famous “Cornerstone Speech.” He went on to extol the new government in the South, “its foundations are laid, its cornerstone rests,” he said, “upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery—subordination to the superior race—is his natural and normal condition.”
But all they wanted was to be left alone—to oppress other human beings.
So, warning to teachers: We have four years ahead in which our students will be bombarded by lies, omissions and wishful thinking about the Civil War. Our job is to tell them the truth.
Costello is the director of Teaching Tolerance.
Comments
There is a well-reasoned
There is a well-reasoned document concerning the reasons the Civil War occurred.
Many people think the Civil War of 1860-1865 was fought over one issue alone, slavery. Nothing could actually be further from the truth. The War Between the States began because the South demanded States' rights and were not getting them.
The Congress at that time heavily favored the industrialized northern states to the point of demanding that the South sell is cotton and other raw materials only to the factories in the north, rather than to other countries. The Congress also taxed the finished materials that the northern industries produced heavily, making finished products that the South wanted, unaffordable. The Civil War should not have occurred. If the Northern States and their representatives in Congress had only listened to the problems of the South, and stopped these practices that were almost like the taxation without representation of Great Britain, then the Southern states would not have seceded and the war would not have occurred.
I know for many years, we have been taught that the Civil War was all about the abolition of slavery, but this truly did not become a major issue, with the exception of John Brown's raid on Harper's Ferry, until after the Battle of Antietam in September 1862, when Abraham Lincoln decided to free the slaves in the Confederate States in order to punish those states for continuing the war effort. The war had been in progress for two years by that time.
Most southerners did not even own slaves nor did they own plantations. Most of them were small farmers who worked their farms with their families. They were fighting for their rights. They were fighting to maintain their lifestyle and their independence the way they wanted to without the United States Government dictating to them how they should behave.
Why are we frequently taught then, that the Civil War, War of Northern Aggression, War Between the States, or whatever you want to call it, was solely about slavery? That is because the history books are usually written by the winners of a war and this war was won by the Union. However, after following my family around since I was just a year old to Civil War Living History scenarios in Gettysburg and elsewhere, I have listened to both sides of the story, from those portraying historical figures, both Union and Confederate. Through listening to these people and also reading many different books, including some of the volumes of The Official Records of the Civil War, Death in September, The Insanity of It All, Every Day Life During the Civil War, and many others, I have come to the conclusion that the Civil War was about much more than abolishing the institution of slavery.
It was more about preserving the United States and protecting the rights of the individual, the very tenets upon which this country was founded. I personally think that the people who profess that the Civil War was only fought about slavery have not read their history books. I really am glad that slavery was abolished, but I don't think it should be glorified as being the sole reason the Civil War was fought. There are so many more issues that people were intensely passionate about at the time. Slavery was one of them, but it was not the primary cause of the war. The primary causes of the war were economics and states' rights.
Slavery was a part of those greater issues, but it was not the reason the Southern States seceded from the Union, nor fought the Civil War. It certainly was a Southern institution that was part of the economic system of the plantations, and because of that, it was part and parcel of the economic reasons that the South formed the Confederacy. The economic issue was one of taxation and being able to sell cotton and other raw materials where the producers wanted to, rather than where they were forced to, and at under inflated prices. Funny, it sounds very much like the reason we broke from Great Britain to begin with. The South was within their rights, but there should have been another way to solve the problem. If they had been willing to listen to Abraham Lincoln, perhaps the war could have been avoided. Lincoln had a plan to gradually free the slaves without it further hurting the plantation owners. He also had a plan to allow them to sell their products anywhere they wanted to and at a fair price. They did not choose to listen to the President, however, so they formed the Confederacy and the Civil War began.
OUR GRAVEST and most imminent threat may well be the U.S. Government, the Federal Reserve and the media elites.
Thank you for that last
Thank you for that last sentence, which perfectly illustrates my point.
You have read more into my essay than I said. Nowhere did I say that slavery was the sole reason for the War, nor that Lincoln and the North entered to end slavery. Most historians agree that the initial impetus was, in fact, to preserve the union and that the abolition of slavery emerged as a war aim over time.
My attention was on the South's reasons for secession. They were explicitly about preserving an economic, political and social system sustained by slavery. That most Southerners did not own slaves is neither in doubt, nor relevant. The Southern aristocracy of cotton planters and slaveowners was a virtual oligarchy. In fact, poor Southerners were kept poor because of the monoculture that cotton production was, and the fact that the existence of slavery distorted rational economic decision-making.
The idea that the South was threatened by taxation without representation is a complete and utter canard. The South was not only represented in Congress, it was over-represented because its non-voting, non-citizen enslaved population was partially counted toward representation. The South's problem, by the 1860s, was that it was outnumbered and outvoted by the more populous free states in the lower house of Congress. It had lost the Presidency with Lincoln's election, an election in which it participated. And its sole ability to block unfavorable legislation, the "balance" in the Senate, was unlikely to stand with the entry of new states in the West.
The telling part of your argument is your conflation of today's concerns about taxation with antebellum taxation. The federal tax to which you allude, a tariff, was in fact not on the finished goods produced by northern factories. The tariffs in the period were on foreign imports. The South exported about 2/3 of its cotton crop to Europe (mainly England), and Southern planters liked to buy finished goods with their British pounds. The tariff was intended to promote domestic industries and give them a competitive edge. Southerners could have avoided this unwanted taxation by buying American.
We can have a legitimate discussion about taxes, but let's not distort this by talking about independence and tyranny. There was no tyranny of the South in these laws, there was simply the fact that its agrarian economy, and the heinous human slavery upon which it was built, was rapidly becoming less representative of the country as a whole. In a system built on majority rule, the South had become a political minority.
"Many people think the Civil
"Many people think the Civil War of 1860-1865 was fought over one issue alone, slavery. Nothing could actually be further from the truth. The War Between the States began because the South demanded States' rights and were not getting them."
No, it is not "further from the truth."
It is right smack dab in the middle.
The issue of "States Rights" is important to think about, true. And it is the United States who formed the union. But the issue of "States Rights" was trumped up as the sole or major reason because of one thing only: the desire of the white Confederates to keep black Americans in metaphorical and literal chains.
There is no other reason for trumpeting "States Rights" in the context of the Civil War. It's pretty weak beer to think that some mythic philosophic construct of "Union" and "States Rights" would be the sole reason, and it was not.
The reason for the argument for "States Rights" was a window-dressing for the real reason. You want to defend slavery by putting it in a fancy dress, but that's not going to win you points for honesty. It would be better if you just admitted that the common theme in the Declarations of Secession was the continuation of chattel slavery.
We stole Africans from their own countries, stole their identities, and put them into unpaid service that they could not quit except through their own deaths. Now we are trying to steal their dignity and their humanity by denying the obvious injustice of what was done for 400 years. That somehow it was all about "States Rights." I imagine that all the people you ignore - all the African Americans in this country right now that are *not* beholden to a Confederate government - would have quite a different story to tell you if you'd listen. I'm sure they weren't so enamored of a philosophy of "States Rights" - that perhaps they might want to tell you that they were people, like you, and that the entire concept of one person owning another was a monstrous, historically wicked injustice.
This is a subject that I have
This is a subject that I have broached for years. My pet peave is civil war re-enactments. It is all about authentic dress and civil war relics. They attempt to accurately portray the battles and events of that era. You never see any slaves. Very liitle black involvement in these events. I think that they should have something like a realistic slave sale complete with slaves and slave buyers in order to reflect what really went on during the time period. I think it would change the mood of these affairs to something more realistic.
It is the job of teachers to
It is the job of teachers to tell the truth. The arguments in favor of slavery were like so many contemporary arguments used to ignore the human dignity and rights of the children in the womb, the infirm, the elderly, and the other groups not favored by the mainstream and pop culture. Regardless, encourage the study of the truth and also encourage the reality that there were other causes for the split in addition to the despicable and utterly unjust cause of chaining and oppressing an entire race. When we can face the truth of historical oppression and current oppression whether politically correct or not, is when we can begin to heal this Society and truly seek justice not based on political ideology but on timeless truths about human dignity regardless of status. We need to face the truth--not lies--and tolerate it and live with it.