He cites an important early historical work elaborating the Emancipation Cause narrative:
Although not as widely popular as the Union Cause, the Emancipation Cause was well represented in postwar writings. Henry Wilson’s massive History of the Rise and Fall of the Slave Power in America, published in three hefty volumes between 1872 and 1877, laid out a direct challenge to the Lost Cause. A leading Republican during and after the war, Wilson attacked slaveholders who had “organized treasonable conspiracies, raised the standard of revolution, and plunged the nation into a bloody contest for the preservation of its threatened life.” Like Douglass, Wilson considered emancipation rather than reunion to be the great triumph of the conflict — a triumph that "opened the continent to the forces of a fresher energy and a higher civilization." Seldom read or cited by historians, Wilson’s trilogy is less well known than the standard Lost Cause texts. [my emphasis]I thought it would be a good conclusion to this year's series of posts to quote from Vol. 1 of Wilson's book. This section deals with the Virginia legislature's debate over slavery in 1831-2, which was held in the wake of Nat Turner's slave rebellion;
But the most eloquent and effective speech of this great debate was made by James McDowell, afterward governor of the State and a representative in Congress. It was a masterly portrayal of the ruin and demoralization wrought by slavery in his native State. Its wonderful and almost magical effect upon the convention is a matter of tradition in Virginia to this day. In describing the panic and terror wrought by the Southampton insurrection [Nat Turner's], and in reply to a member who had characterized it as a petty affair, he declared that it drove families from their homes, assembled women and children in crowds, in every condition of weakness and infirmity, and every suffering that want and terror could inflict, to escape the terrible dread of domestic assassination. " Was that," he asked, "a ' petty affair,' which erected a peaceful and confiding portion of the State into a military camp; which outlawed from pity the unfortunate beings whose brothers had offended; which barred every door, penetrated every bosom with fear or suspicion; which so banished every sense of security from every man's dwelling, that, let but a hoof or horn break upon the silence of the night, and an aching throb would be driven to the heart? The husband would look to his weapon, and the mother would shudder, and weep upon her cradle! Was it the fear of Nat Turner and his deluded, drunken handful of followers, which produced such effects? Was it this that induced distant counties, where the very name of Southampton was strange, to arm and equip for a struggle? No, sir, it was the suspicion eternally attached to the slave himself, — a suspicion that a Nat Turner might be in every family, that the same bloody deed might be acted over at any time and in any place, that the materials for it were spread through the land, and were always ready for a like explosion. [my emphasis in bold]Tags: confederate heritage month 2010, neo-confederate, slavery, us south
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