I'm concerned with the way he uses neo-Confederate/Lost Cause history to provide an ideological frame for his contemporary (1933) application of segregationist ideology.
In Owsley's pseudohistory, the Radical Republicans after the Civil War "preached to the naive and childish blacks" of the South, "incendiary doctrines calculated rouse the wildest passion so revenge against their former masters." They promised the freed slaves "that the property of the white would all be confiscated and given to the Negro." Congressman Thaddeus Stevens and other Radicals, Owsley says, "promised to give the Negro social and political justice - at the cost of Southern white extermination, if need be."
These claims are examples of what is known in technical terms as bald-faced lies. More colorful and informal terms also come to mind.
But I wonder if Wendell Berry would find it a case of "racist by association" if we associate Owsley with those of his own words in this essay.
The South during this period suffered from "Negro rule," which is apparently Owsley's synonym for democratic governance in which African-Americans were officially regarded as equal citizens to whites. The suffering of the persecuted whites was world-historical, in Owsley's Lost Cause version: "The South thus reconstructed probably had no counterpart in the history of the world." There's actually a touch of truth in that. The formal extension of the vote to white males and the moves toward democratic land reform were far more advanced democracy than that seen in most of Europe or other parts of the world at the time. But that's not what Owsley means.
Owsley's pseudohistory here serves to justify his warning discussed in the first of these three posts that if the Yankees didn't stop pointing to injustices of Southern segregation - in Owsley's view that was being done by a conspiratorial alliance of Herber Hoover Republicans and the Communist Party! - then the Ku Klux Klan would start murdering Southerns blacks and it would all be the Yankees fault. Here's how he projects that justification for white racist violence back into Reconstruction:
The white man, especially the small farmer and the poorer classes, returned the hatred of the Negro with interest. The slave-holder of former days was more tolerant of the Negro's irresponsible acts, for he regarded the Negro as a juvenile race badly advised; but being human, he came to distrust and n many cases to hate the Negro. Despite the military support given the Negro governments, retaliation was frequent and violent. ...No, there is no language from Owsley in this essay to indicate that there was anything regrettable about this, except the sneering reminder that "the Negro" had better learn his lesson or the "white race" will again discipline "him severely." He continues directly:
The Negro should have learned then that in the end the relationship good or bad between himself and the white race of the South must be settled between them and that no outside power could dictate permanently the terms of this relationship. He was quickly disfranchised by indirection - and constitutionally, for the Supreme Court has not been able to void the legislation by which it was done - driven from politics, brought under rigid social discipline, in short completely subordinated socially, economically, and politically. The white race disciplined him severely for his conduct during reconstruction.[my emphasis in bold; italics in original]
At length, however, with outside interference largely removed, old friendships were renewed between the races; new ones were formed until something of the old affection which had existed between the black man and white man returned. His condition gradually improved; though he has never yet been given back the ballot nor allowed to sit on juries. The experience of reconstruction was too bitter to be soon forgotten. It has formed and will continue for many years to form the background of Southern social and political attitudes. In considering any political action either state or national, the Southern white first considers how that action will ultimately affect the relationship between the races. It has crippled and at times destroyed the political value of the South in the national councils; it has created and will indefinitely perpetuate the solid South, solid against the Republican Party. [my emphasis]If we understand that by the "experience of reconstruction" Owsley means the thoroughly dishonest Lost Cause pseudohistory of Reconstruction, that last quote is accurate. Lost Cause ideology about the Civil War and in particular about Reconstruction was the framework for segregationist and white-supremacist politics in 1933.
And I also wonder if Wendell Berry would find it a case of "racist by association" if we associate Owsley with his own words in those quotations.
Tags: confederate heritage month 2011, frank owsley, frank owsley, john calhoun, reconstruction, southern agrarians, us south, white racism
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