Confederate "Heritage" Month 2016, April 10: The martial South and the slave patrols

John Hope Franklin pointed out the effect of the everyday life of the slavery system in creating an authoritarian and martial atmosphere among planters and throughout white Southern society in Slavery and the Martial South Journal of Negro History 37:1 (Jan 1952):

The planter was forced to regard arms as a necessary adjunct to the machinery of control. The lash might be used generously or sparingly, depending on the temperament of the master and the tractability of the slave. There was always the possibility, moreover, of resorting to more deadly weapons. If the slave resisted the "mild" discipline of the lash or undertook to return blow for blow, how else could the master maintain his complete authority except through the use of, or the threat to use, the weapons whose possession was forever denied the slave?

Going about armed with knives and guns became the daily habit of many masters and overseers. And if the armed conquerors, in moments of anger, sometimes turned their weapons against each other, it was no more than was to be expected among an aggregation of armed men. The rule of tyranny by which they lived naturally fostered an independence and self-sufficiency-one is tempted to call it an individual sovereignty-that would, on occasion, burst out in all its fury in their quarrels with each other.

If the relationship between master and slave was that of a superior and a subordinate, a despot or tyrant and a powerless subject, or an armed victor and a vanquished foe, it can almost be described as a state of war. At least it is possible to recognize the martial spirit that pervaded the entire plantation atmosphere. The conduct of the master toward the slave was determined by rules and considerations not unlike those that characterized a military situation. [my emphasis]

Speculations about collective "character" are always dubious, at best.

But Franklin here is not making such an argument. He is pointing out specific patterns of behavior in Southern society that contributed to the practical consequences that ensued. And the periodic outbursts of panic over slave revolts interacted in a poisonous way with this martial state of mind:

The slave was never so completely subjugated as to allay all fears that he would make a desperate, bloody attempt to destroy the institution to which he was bound. Fear and apprehension were relative matters in the ante bellum South; but they were always present. If the slaves seemed satisfied and did not appear to be up to some deviltry, such as running away or revolting, the fears, while still present, were not easily discernible. But if there was even the slightest rumor of an uprising, the entire countryside was not only terrified, but the alarm was sounded. All whites - loyal Negroes, too - were expected to do their share to prevent death and destruction from stalking through the land and to restore the natural foe to his natural condition. [my enphasis]

Franklin connects this phenomenon directly to the formation of the slave patrols, which were a key tool for giving the nonslaveowning whites a psychological stake in the slave system:

Despite the fact that the plantation sought to be self-sufficient and succeeded in many respects, the maintenance of a stable institution of slavery was so important that owners early sought the cooperation of the entire community. This cooperation took the form of the patrol, which became an established institution in most areas of the South at an early date. There were many variations in the size and organization of the patrol. Rather typical was the South Carolina patrol that was established by law in 1690. The law set up patrol detachments of ten men under the captain of a militia company. All white men were eligible for patrol service. In 1819 all white males over eighteen were made liable for patrol duty, the non-slaveholders being excused from duty upon reaching the age of forty-five.

This kind of militarization of Southern civil government and social life meant in practice that at the start of the Civil War, the South had an initial advantage in military preparedness because more Southern men had current military training of some sort.

Bertram Wyatt-Brown gives a couple of examples of how this violent and authoritarian mentality played out in daily practice:

It was a matter of personal reputation to prove oneself a master of events to one's family and household, as well as to the world at large. For instance, when Robert E. Lee of Arlington, Virginia, discovered that two young slaves bad run away to Pennsylvania, he had them sought after and returned. An anonymous critic informed the Northern public, through the New York Tribune, that Lee had personally supervised their flogging. Lee was responsible for some sixty-three slaves, not all of whom could be usefully employed at the Arlington plantation. He sent some to eastern Virginia, particularly the rebellious ones, who would have less opportunity there to flee northward. Perhaps, as Douglas Southall Freeman claims, that was the extent of his reaction to the runaways' offense. Wesley Norris, one of the pair, gave a grim account of the whipping, however. He said that Lee bad watched the proceedings with eyes black with fury and had ordered brine poured into the wounds. Whether this and like reports are to be believed, it must be remembered that even the gentlest masters-and Lee was reputedly one of them-found occasion when there seemed to them very little choice about the use of coercion. It would not do for any slave to take flagrant advantage of a master's delicacy of conscience. To push too hard against the institution or against an owner's sense of self-esteem was to threaten the social order as it was then understood. Failure to react appropriately could be misinterpreted, not only by the compliant slaves but by the white community, too. The moral problem was itself built into the Southern ethic. One simply could not be made to look inept, powerless, or squeamish. For these reasons, in a case about which there can be no doubts, the Rev. Charles Colcock Jones of Liberty County, Georgia, had a slave girl flogged until she revealed the name of the individual who had fathered a mulatto child she had given birth to. The gentleman in question had been the elderly clergyman's secretary, a member, temporarily, of the household. Jones was incensed at this breach of the rules regarding hospitality, and his torture of the mother to confirm his suspicions was the consequence.

This shows an integral side of what the title of Wyatt-Brown's book from which that quote is taken, Southern Honor: Ethics and Behavior in the Old South (1982).

Confederate "Heritage" Month 2013, April 21: Celebrating treason on behalf of slavery

I post here occasionally in response to Bro. Wade "Sword of Vengeance" Burleson, whjo uses his blog to spread John Birch Society politics along with the Good News of the Gospel.

Bro. Sword-of-Vengeance indulges in a bit of neo-Confederate history himself, further illustrating his general political-social outlook, in The Charitable Spirit of R.E. Lee Toward His Enemies Istoria Ministries Blog 03/09/2012, encouraging the neo-Confederate canonization of the military leader whose armies killed far more American soldiers than any group with "Al Qa'ida" in its name ever did. "The world would be a better place were we all able to exhibit Lee's charitable spirit toward those who consider us their enemy," he writes.

Robert E. Lee, the Christ figure of the Lost Cause

The world would be a better place if there weren't people like Robert E. Lee in it who was willing to fight a bloody four-year war to defend slavery.

Along the same lines is his post on one of those convicted of participating in the assassination of Abraham Lincoln: The Challenges of Life Reveal True Character: Samuel Mudd and His Imprisonment at the Dry Tortugas 05/20/2012. To put it mildly, not everyone takes such a benign view of Mudd's role in the assassination as Bro. Wade does; see, for instance: Doug Linder, The Trial of the Lincoln Assassination Conspirators (2009) UMKC website, including the article on Dr. Samuel Mudd; Edward Steers Jr., His Name Is Still Mud (1997) and Blood on the Moon: The Assassination of Abraham Lincoln (2001); and, the long review by Phillip Stone of Blood on the Moon and two other books in Journal of the Abraham Lincoln Association 27/1 (Winter 2006).

Bro. Wade goes to some lengths to dismiss any involvement of Mudd in the assassination plot, e.g., "Both Dr. Mudd and his wife swore to their graves that Dr. Mudd had no knowledge of the President's death when he treated Booth's leg, and even had he known, he would have been obligated by the Hippocratic Oath to treat the assassin." It would presumably come as a surprise to Hippocrates that his oath also forbade notifying the law that an assassin who had just shot your country's leader was in your house. As Phillip Stone writes:

In light of this [repeated previous] exposure to Booth [on the part of Mudd - something Bro. Wade also minimizes], it is not credible that Dr. Mudd, even in the pre-dawn of April 15, while examining and treating someone in his home, did not recognize Booth, a famous actor, a particularly handsome man, and a man with whom he had had an extended conversation less than four months earlier. Even with a false beard, and certainly in the ensuing hours of daylight, Booth would have been recognizable. The suspicion that Mudd was not telling the truth is corroborated by his claim that he left these strangers in his home with his wife and children, went to town for supplies, learned of the assassination and even Booth's involvement, but said nothing. Later, he started to realize that it was indeed Booth at his house. When he returned home, he told his wife, but because of her fears of being left there alone again if he should return to town to tell the authorities, he waited until the next day. Even at that point, he provided the information only through his cousin. The most dramatic news in Dr. Mudd's entire life was breaking around his own home and, even after realizing who Booth was, he delayed going to authorities. Steers has it right: These are the actions of a man who knowingly treated and sheltered Booth. [my emphasis]

But to admirers of the Lost Cause, Lincoln was the evil Yankee dictator, quite a different man from the Christ-like traitor Robert E. Lee. So it's not surprising that Lost Cause advocates jump to the defense of his murderers.

Tags: abraham lincoln, confederate heritage month 2013, john wilkes booth, robert e lee

Confederate "Heritage" Month 2012, April 30: Once more with John Calhoun and "Calhounery"

We'll end up the Confederate "Heritage" Month series for this year on a somewhat lighter note.

I've posted more than once this month about John Calhoun, his life, his political theory, his reactionary political heritage. As it happens while deciding what to use as the final post, I came across an article by the humorist Roy Blunt Jr. with the title, "Where's the Big Idea?" and the eye-catching subtitle, "Communism didn't originate in South Carolina for a very good reason" The Oxford American Winter 2005.

Blount relates how an interviewer "took me severely to task for having written ... that Southern culture had not produced much in the way of abstract thinking." The interviewer offered John Calhoun as a prime example of the contrary.

Blount was suprised, because he mainly knew Calhoun from his theory of nullification. "That seemed to me a strategem, rather than an idea in the large, ethereal egghead sense," he says. But he started doing come research on the old traitor.

He came across some of the same things that came up here this month, including Calhoun's class theories that led Richard Hofstadter to label him "the Karl Marx of the master class."

But I read up on Calhoun, and learned that he was regarded widely - not just in the South - as the most brilliant political philosopher of his day. Personally, he struck people as a thinking machine. Varina Howell Davis, wife of Jefferson Davis, called him "a mental and moral abstraction." He was haggard and unhealthy-looking, too, so who am I to question his bona fides? A century later, some political historians argued that Calhoun's critique of Northem capitalism anticipated the thinking of Karl Marx. Maybe that's why Southem intellectualism ground to a halt: the twentieth century would have made even less sense if communism had been from South Carolina, for the wealthy, and called Calhounery.

He definitely has a point. In fact, instead of using the phrase "the theology of the Great God Free Market", I may shorten it to just "Calhounery". That's a word that should be an active part of the American political vocabulary.

Blount still wasn't convinced about abstract thinking in the South, though:

Eurocentric philosophy has come to realize only fairly recently, and with great aha's and alarums, that objective rationality is not the default position of the human mind, much less the bedrock of human affairs. In the South, nobody ever thought it was. The South doesn't produce ideas, it produces rhetoricians, yarn-spinners, visionaries, musicians, demagogues ... all sorts of people Plato would have expelled from his Republic.

Blount comes up with an angle on one of the few things I liked about Robert E. Lee:

Consider Robert E. Lee's most famous remark, as he watched his troops win overwhelmingly at Fredericksburg, slaughtering bluecoats by the thousands: "It is well that war is so terrible, or we should grow too fond of it."

A great utterance. But when you think about it, what does it mean? Was General Lee saying that if war were less terrible it would be worse, because we'd get too attached to it? A more logical, proactive utterance would have been, "Boys, war doesn't get any better than this, and it's still too terrible. Let's quit." But of course that wouldn't have done. (How often, in real-life situations, has sweet reason done?) The only thing I can figure is that Lee was warning us against big-time college football.

Again, he has a point!

But in the end, he decided John Calhoun was what blogger Charlie Pierce might call a colossal dick (though Pierce reserves that label for Rick Santorum):

In Virginia a while ago, I came upon a many-volumed encyclopedia of Southern
history printed in 1909. It said that John C. Calhoun "was upholding the rights of the Southern people against the assaults of the abolitionists. The charges made by the latter against the system of slavery he denounced as false. On the other hand, he never grew weary in the work of telling how the Southern people were generously lifting upward the entire body of negro slaves to a higher and nobler plane of life."

On the other hand? What's "on the other hand" about that? Sounds like two sides of the same hand to me. But then "the one hand, the other hand" doesn't make any sense unless the hands are connected by a particular body, and particular bodies tend to be partial to themselves. The body in this case was that of "the Southern people," slaves not being considered, even after forty-four years of retrospect, to be part of that category. We know better than that, now; and heaven help us for what we don't know better than, yet.

Tags: confederate heritage month 2012, john calhoun, robert e lee, slavery, white racism

The heritage of Southern Unionism

I just came across this article about Southern Unionists, which talks about the number of Southerners who served in the Union Army during the American Civil War, "The Confederate Spin on Winfield Scott and George Thomas", by Francis MacDonnell Civil War History Dec 1998 (print edition). Lost Cause true believers like to refer to the Civil War as "the War Between the States", to emphasize their argument that the war was not a civil war involving classes between different sections of the same society, but rather a war of one nation (the US) against another (the Confederacy).

Gen. Winfield Scott was a hero of the Mexican War who was in command of US forces at the time Southern states started seceding, beginning in 1860. Both he and Gen. George Thomas stayed loyal to the United States and refused to join with the secessionists.

MacDonnell looks at Confederate propaganda directed at two prominent Southern Unionists and at how such propaganda directed against particular individuals like them helped fuel public hatred and violence against other Southern Unionists:

The consequences of Confederate spin often proved more grave for ordinary Southerners who stood by the Union. Secessionists harmed Scott and Thomas's reputations but not their persons. Enraged Confederate soldiers shot dead helpless black men, refusing them the right to become prisoners, at Olustee, Florida; Poison Springs, Arkansas; Fort Pillow, Tennessee; Plymouth, North Carolina; Petersburg, Virginia; and Saltville, Virginia. While longstanding racial hatred clearly played the most important part in such excesses, tacit encouragement from the Davis administration and Confederate press also contributed to the violence. The Confederate government and newspapers characterized freedmen in Union arms as criminal insurrectionaries not entitled to the usual protections guaranteed by the laws of war. White Unionists also found their lives in jeopardy. For example, in Gainesville, Texas, vigilantes hanged at least forty-two suspected Unionists; at Fort Pillow, Nathan Bedford Forrest's men killed white Southerners, so-called "home-made Yankees" in the Thirteenth West Tennessee Cavalry; at Laurel Springs, North Carolina, Confederate soldiers murdered fifteen Unionists ranging in age from thirteen to sixty; in Kinston, North Carolina, George Pickett ordered twenty-two North Carolinians captured in Union uniforms hanged for desertion.

After the war, devotees of the Lost Cause pointed to Lee's fidelity to Virginia as unmistakeable proof that an honorable man's primary loyalty belonged to his state rather than his nation. As Alan Nolan has observed, Lee helped sustain such views by describing his decision to fight for the South as a matter of duty and compulsion. Yet raw numbers suggest that Southerners who made the "other choice" greatly affected the course of the War. Ninety to one hundred thousand whites and approximately 98,000 blacks from Confederate states entered the Federal ranks, making a total of over 188,000 militant Southern Unionists. Scholars estimate overall enlistments in the Confederate Army at between 750,000 and 900,000 men. Thus, as many as one out of five Southerners who fought in the Civil War were Union soldiers. As Richard Current has noted, the 90,000 to 100,000 whites who enlisted in the federal army constituted a double loss for the Confederacy, denying desperately needed troops for the secessionist cause and at the same time strengthening the invading yankees. Given the obvious menace posed by internal division, one can hardly be surprised at the industriousness with which Confederate publicists worked to defame Unionists, especially two of the most consequential ones. (my emphasis)

Another thing to keep in mind when hearing about neo-Confederates claiming that celebrating the Confederacy and Jim Crow racism is just a matter of "honoring their heritage".

The heritage of the patriotic Americans who fought for their country instead of the slaveowners revolt certainly deserves to be honored. The Confederate cause does not. Thomas' comments from 1867 are worth noting:

At the start of the war, Winfield Scott was the most celebrated Southerner to side with the Union. By the conflict's end, that distinction belonged to George Thomas. Thomas knew that his decision to bear arms against the South had subjected him to savage attacks by supporters of secession. In a March 2, 1867, piece in the Army and Navy Journal, he expressed anger at the way former Confederates had successfully stigmatized Unionism: "[l]oyalists to the whole country are called d--d Yankees and traitors, and over the whole great crime with its accursed record of slaughtered heroes, patriots murdered because of their true-hearted love of country, widowed wives and orphaned children, and prisoners of war slain amid such horrors as find no parallel in the history of the world, they are trying to throw the gloss of respectability, and are thrusting with contumely and derision from their society the men and women who would not join hands with them in their work of ruining their country." Thomas wrote out of personal experience, for his own actions and character were the subject of a vicious campaign of rumor-mongering, distortions, and lies. Such attacks continued, even intensified, after his death. (my emphasis)

Tags: civil war, george thomas, robert e lee, us civil war, winfield scott

Confederate "Heritage" Month 2004, April 6: Robert E. Lee (2 of 2)

The source page I've been using for this series of posts has been transferred to the Edward Sebesta's Temple of Democracy Web site: Confederate Heritage Month. It also allows links to individuals days' material. Which for April 6, is more on Robert E. Lee and African-Americans postwar.

What is provided there is a bit of testimony of Lee's before Congress in 1866, in which he endorses the notion that he would like to see Virginia get rid of its black citizens. But the idea of mass expulsion of black Americans (it's only the last decade or so we've started calling it "ethnic cleansing") was always unrealistic. Prior to the Civil War, many Northerners endorsed the idea of voluntary colonization of free blacks "back" to Africa, which was the origin of the nation of Liberia.

But few actually went. And the notion that colonization was a solution for more than a small minority of African-Americans was one that generally rejected by black Abolitionists. Lee's postwar advocacy of the idea really was little more than an expression of racial hostility and contempt. Alan Nolan in Lee Considered (1991) described Lee's postwar position this way:

In regard to blacks, Lee's public and private assertions were also in conflict. Publicly, he was protective and benign. Everything would be all right if the North did not "stir up" the blacks. Dependent on their labor, the South would, of course, employ them. Privately, he was bitter toward the freedmen and intervened personally to their detriment. In truth, Lee and his fellow Southerners were groping for a new method of white supremacy and exploitation of the blacks. With Northern complicity, the Southern effort was eventually to succeed; the outcome was a hundred years of near-slavery: disenfrachisement, Black Codes, Jim Crow, and suppression.

Tags: confederate heritage month 2004, lost cause, reconstruction, robert e lee

Confederate "Heritage" Month 2004, April 5: Robert E. Lee (1 of 2)

Today's Okaloosa NAACP quote is also about Robert E. Lee's attitude toward slavery. But I'm not going to quote that one here. It's available at the NAACP site. And I want to add some value to some of these as I call attention to them.

So I'll mention today why Robert E. Lee is particularly important in the neo-Confederate pseudohistory. It's because he became the favorite symbol of the Confederacy for unreconstructed white Southerners after the war, more so than Jefferson Davis, who was kind of a stiff and was never all that terribly popular anyway. Lee's image was invested with a myth of Southern benevolence, extending even to the false claim that he had been a prewar opponent of slavery.

Alan Nolan in "The Anatomy of the Myth" in The Myth of the Lost Cause and Civil War History (2000), writes of Lee:

The [Lost Cause] legend's image of Lee is at odds with the facts. He was not anti-slavery as the image claims; he was a strong believer in the institution. His secession, following Virginia, was not inevitable, but a calculated act of will in highly ambiguous circumstances. His aggressive, offensive generalship cost his army disporportionate, irreplaceable, and excessive casualties, which led to his being caught in a fatal siege. Contrary to the legend of his magnanimity, he was hateful and bitter toward the North during and after the war. His persistence in continuing the war after he realized the South was defeated was costly in the lives of his men as well as the Yankees and not necessarily a creditable act. In the postwar, peiod, he was less of a healer than he was a conventional advocate of Southern positions.

I'll also emphasize here that I'm posting this stuff because I actually am interested in the history of the Civil War and what it means for American democracy. The neo-Confederate crowd isn't. They're pushing a pseudohistorical version of the past to promote a racist and anti-democratic program in the present. The only past they're interested in "honoring" is that of Southern segregation still in living memory of so many of us.

Tags: american civil war, confederate heritage month 2004, lost cause, robert e lee

Confederate "Heritage" Month: April 4

The Okaloosa NAACP's featured item for April 4 is from the same book on Robert E. Lee quoted in my previous post.

It's from a letter of Robert E. Lee's of March 12, 1868 (emphasis in red from the Okaloosa page):

I rode out the other day to Mr. Andrew Cameron's and went into the field where he was plowing. I took great pleasure in following the plows around the circuit. He had four in operation. Three of them were held by his former comrades in the army, who are regularly employed by him, and, he says, much to his satisfaction and profit. People have got to work now. It is creditable to them to do so; their bodies and their minds are benefited by it, and those who can and will work will be advanced by it. You will never prosper with the blacks, and it is abhorrent to a reflecting mind to be supporting and cherishing those who are plotting and working for your injury, and all of whose sympathies and associations are antagonistic to yours. I wish them no evil in the world-on the contrary, will do them every good in my power, and know that they are misled by those to whom they have given their confidence; but our material, social, and political interests are naturally with the whites. Mr. Davis's trial was fixed for the last of this month. If Judge Chase's presence is essential, I do not see how it can take place, unless that of Mr. Johnson is to be postponed. I suppose that will be decided to­day or tomorrow, and then I shall ...

The site also recommends Lee Considered: General Robert E. Lee & Civil War History (1991) by Alan Nolan. I agree with their recommendation. Nolan gives attention to aspects of Lee's life that have been badly distorted in the Lost Cause mythology.

Tags: confederate heritage month 2004, lost cause, robert e lee, racism

Confederate "Heritage" Month: April 3

The item for April 3 from the Okaloosa NAACP's site focus on Robert E. Lee's post-Civil War attitudes toward the newly liberated slaves. They feature a quote from Recollections and Letters of General Lee (1904) by his son Robert E. Lee, Jr. The incident described by the younger Lee here (in Chapter 8) is apparently in 1865 after the war, when Lee was dining at the house of a formerly prosperous Southern family (the Okaloosa page's emphases shown here):

So we sat down to a repast composed of all the good things for which that country was famous. John and I did not seem to think there was too much in sight-- at any rate, it did not daunt us, and we did our best to lessen the quantity, consuming, I think, our share and more! We had been for so many years in the habit of being hungry that it was not strange we continued to be so awhile yet. But my father took a different view of the abundance displayed, and, during his drive back, said to Colonel Carter:

"Thomas, there was enough dinner to-day for twenty people. All this will now have to be changed; you cannot afford it; we shall have to practise economy."

In talking with Colonel Carter about the situation of farmers at that time in the South, and of their prospects for the future, he urged him to get rid of the negroes left on the farm--some ninety-odd in number, principally women and children, with a few old men--saying the government would provide for them, and advised him to secure white labour. The Colonel told him he had to use, for immediate needs, such force as he had, being unable at that time to get whites. Whereupon General Lee remarked:

"I have always observed that wherever you find the negro, everything is going down around him, and wherever you find a white man, you see everything around him improving."

Tags: confederate heritage month 2004, lost cause, racism, robert e lee

Confederate "Heritage" Month: April 1

Our quote from today from the Okaloosa NAACP Web site is about Robert E. Lee, patron saint of the Lost Cause. It's from a private letter Lee wrote to his wife in 1856, and is essentially the only basis for the much-repeated claim that Lee was anti-slavery before the Civil War. He wrote:

In this enlightened age, there are few I believe, but what will acknowledge, that slavery as an institution, is a moral and political evil in any country. ... I think it however a greater evil to the white than to the black race, & while my feelings are strongly enlisted in behalf of the latter, my sympathies are more strong for the former. The blacks are immeasurably better off here than in Africa, morally, socially & physically. The painful discipline they are undergoing, is necessary for their instruction as a race, ... How long their subjugation may be necessary is known & ordered by a wise Merciful Providence. There emancipation will sooner result from the mild & melting influence of Christianity, than the storms & tempests of fiery Controversy ... While we see the Course of the final abolition of human slavery is onward, & we give it all the aid of our prayers & all justifiable means in our power, we must leave the progress as well as the result in his hands who sees the end; who Chooses to work by slow influences; & with whom two thousand years are but as a Single day.

Note that Lee envisions the gradual elimination of slavery by about, say, the year 3856. After a couple more millenia of Christian patience and the "mild & melting" but "slow" influence of religion. With all deliberate speed, we might say.

This justification of slavery as a necessary evil for the slaves' uplifting and "instruction as a race" was actually still a conventional justification for slavery at that time in Upper South states like Lee's Virginia. But, as Lee himself was surely aware, most Southern apologists for slavery had long since abandoned that paternalistic line, and praised slavery as a positive good and an eternal institution essential for "white supremacy."

Tags: confederate heritage month 2004, lost cause, robert e lee, slavery