Brag Bowling, a former senior official in the SCV and the media’s go-to guy for quotes reflecting the Southron perspective, recently published a piece in the NYT’s Disunion group blog about Fort Sumter. It was largely a rehash of cliched Lost Cause talking points on the subject, and when he started getting called out on them in the comments, he put the word out to his comrades on Facebook — twice — to log on and make comments in support of his piece.

It’s not about history; it’s about winning the news cycle.

In all fairness to the Confederates the editorialist should have mentioned that most CS soldiers were not slave holders. In addition, primary source materials show that a great many if not most of the Confederates considered themselves fighting for the Constitution, and against Northern aggression – not for the continuation of slavery specifically (if at all).

A substantial proportion of Confederate soldiers, while not hold legal title to slaves, came from slaveholding households. Roughly a third of households in the Confederacy contained at least one slaveholder, although the actual proportion varied greatly be region.

More important, you’re making the common error of confusing the motives and beliefs of individual soldiers — which were many and varied, as they are today — with the objectives of the government they fought for. There is no question why South Carolina and other states (including mine) seceded; they had convinced themselves it was necessary to protect the future of the institution of slavery. We know this because they said so themselves.

You also claimed that

the CS government enacted (in part) Patrick Cleburnes’ Proposal to arm the slaves and give them their freedom in exchange for service seems to me to show that the Confederate authorities were prepared to let slavery go in order to secure their independence.

Not true. The Confederate Congress did eventually authorize the enlistment of slaves, but — contrary to both Cleburne’s proposal and Lee’s wishes — offered no emancipation in return for such service. The authorizing legislation was explicit on that question. Even as the vote passed, in the middle of March 1865, with the concussion of Federal guns rattling the windows of the capitol in Richmond, Confederate legislators continued to view even limited emancipation — of the black Confederate soldiers themselves — as too high a price to pay for their national survival.

Finally,

Both sides hold a great deal of responsibility and collective guilt for the crime of slavery, once Constitutionally legal throughout the Union.

This is true, across the broad sweep of American history. But if you look at the United States as it was on the eve of war, the “crime of slavery” was almost entirely an attribute of the states that would form the Confederacy, and the Border States. The Lincoln Administration was willing to fight a war to preserve the Union; the Confederacy was willing to fight a war to preserve the “peculiar institution.” And they both ended up doing exactly that.

The Civil War era must be understood on its own terms and not as an anticipation of what came later. No one at the time knew how things would turn out. To see Lincoln as the father of Big Government or the Confederate States as a forerunner of 20th century totalitarian regimes is wrong.

To understand how people thought in the 1860s, you have to look at what went before. For instance, when General Hooker spoke of the country needing a “dictator,” he was thinking of Napoleon or Caesar, not Hitler or Stalin. When critics attacked the arrests of suspected Confederate sympathizers in the North, they thought of the Bastille, not Dachau.

Why did the southern states secede? I think we have to take them at their that it was to preserve “the peculiar institution”. If they had abolished slavery, they would have had no reason to secede.

I fully concur that the Federal government’s motivation was preserving the Union, but the “sine qua non” for the Confederacy was slavery. They would never have seceded if they were not trying to preserve slavery.

It’s like saying “it wasn’t the fall that killed him, it was the landing”.

I have been researching Civil War history for more than ten years and have read literally thousands of pages of diaries, letters and memoirs, mostly of Confederate soldiers, and most of them from enlisted men and lower grade officers. I can honestly say that I have never read a single soldier who wrote that he was fighting to keep slaves in bondage. Not one. Every mention I have ever read of the reasons the writer was fighting was for national independence and to repel the Northern invaders.

An argument might be made that among Southern politicians slavery was a reason for the Civil War, but no credible case can be made that the common Confederate soldier gave a wit about slavery. Slavery may have been one of the reasons for Southern secession but slavery had nothing to do with the subsequent war. The Southern men that did the fighting didn’t fight to keep slavery. I haven’t read enough Northern soldiers’ writings to have an opinion on why the common Billy Yank fought.

Thanks for your comments.

Regarding your statement, “Very few northern men enlisted with any interest in ending slavery at all, but that doesn’t remove slavery as the cause of the war,” my response is as follows:

Lincoln said that if he could save the Union without freeing any slaves, he would do it.

The Union was not (at first) fighting to end slavery, though it became an abolition effort later. In addition, the adoption of an anti-slavery position by the North effectively kept European powers from entering the war on the side of the Confederacy, which Northern leaders were deeply concerned about and Southern leaders actively sought to bring about. After the Emancipation Proclamation there would be/could be no European military assistance for the Confederacy.

Consider the following: If the South had seceeded simply because, for example, they were unwilling to continue the economic relationship with the industrial North that they considered contrary to their benefit (or whatever reason), do you suppose the North would have opposed their secession with force?

The point I am making here is that the North fought to “save the Union” – that was the war aim of the North. The South fought for its independence – that was the war aim of the South.

So, saying that “the Civil War was about slavery” – period – is a total oversimplification and not historically defensible. To return to your original construction, I will restate my position here… “the cause of the War was not slavery, but rather the secession of the South from the Union.”

Was slavery one of the reasons why the South seceeded? Yes! Was it the sole reason? No.

While there is no denying that slavery was a key foundational component (some southerners considered it the central pillar) of Southern society prior to the war, the (albeit too late and incomplete) acceptance of Cleburne’s Proposal (March, 1865) shows that the Confederate Government and military leadership (including Lee who supported the measures) were prepared to make extreme changes – including jettisoning slavery.

They were prepared to do this for one reason only – to secure their independence. The fact that the Proposal was suppressed and rejected when first presented (Jan. ’64) is not relevant.

The term “Second American Revolution” to describe the War is entirely appropriate.

Regards,
Daniel

I am curious. Are you familiar with the Fugitive Slave Act? That was an imposition of Federal law over States’ Rights that Southerners seem to have been perfectly comfortable with. Seems like they were willing to ignore States’ Rights when it suited them.

Confederate soldiers were neither criminals nor demons. Their reasons for enlisting and fighting were varied. That the Confederacy was established in order to preserve slavery is certain, but that doesn’t mean that individual soldiers enlisted for that reason. Very few northern men enlisted with any interest in ending slavery at all, but that doesn’t remove slavery as the cause of the war.

I concur that Cohen’s conclusions and the comparison of Lee to Rommel (and implication that Jefferson Davis was Hitler), which fulfills Godwin’s Law, make the column basically useless.

Humbly submitted,
David Navarre

It’s disingenuous to claim that the South enacted Cleburne’s proposal “in part.” The part they refused to enact was the emancipation part, choosing instead to leave that up to the states (who would not have gone along with it otherwise). This, despite even Robert E. Lee’s recommendation that they be freed if they served under arms.

In other words, all they did was act out of absolute desperation at the 11th hour to try to stave off the inevitable, and EVEN THEN they were not willing to grant slaves freedom outright, since that would have defeated the whole purpose of going to war in the first place.

David

There were a lot of things involved in the coming of the Civil War, but it seems to me that slavery is the dark and bloody thread running through nearly all of that part of history’s tapestry. For instance (I apologize for not including quotes – more information can be found in Jame MacPherson’s Battle Cry of Freedom:
1. Even though all Southerners didn’t support slavery, there was still a frenetic insistence on the part of many Southern leaders that slavery be extended into the new territories, so that property in slaves (this phrase, or others like it, was very commonly used) would be secure. Even if the new land wouldn’t allow cotton to be grown, they thought that slaves could harvest hemp, dig for gold, etc. This was clearly expressed by some of the “border ruffians” who fought in “bleeding Kansas” – they said they wanted to kill or drive off all the free-soil settlers.
2. Southern opposition to homestead grants for settlers in the new territories was expressed in the same terms – they didn’t want any more Yankee settlers who’d oppose slavery.
3. Some Southerners, with varying degrees of support from the Federal & State governments. tried to annex Cuba and Nicaragua to give slavery more room for expansion.
4. The secession documents specifically mentioned that slavery was the sticking point; Alexander Stephens, who shortly thereafter became the Confederacy’s Vice President, affirmed that the Confederacy was founded on the principle of Black inferiority.
5. Part of the economic disparity between North and South that made Southerners so resent tariffs and internal improvements, which they saw as only benefiting Yankees, was because the South had too much capital tied up in land and slaves to allow for the same rate of industrial expansion.
6. “States’ Rights” doesn’t exist on it’s own – it’s a means, not an end, and whether it’s moral or not depends on the end it’s serving, and the right to own human beings as chattel property IS NOT a moral end.
ON THE OTHER HAND:
Any Yankee slave trader (for whom the phrase “d–d Yankee!” seems to have really been invented) was much more responsible for slavery and the coming of the war than some young Southerner who simply signed up because he wanted to repulse the Northern invaders.
Yes, there were many brave and good men who fought for the South, who might not themselves have intended to fight specifically for slavery (See above).
When it came to Black equality, Northerners certainly didn’t universally cover themselves with glory during the war OR Reconstruction
Lincoln was right; all Americans, North and South, needed to acknowledge their responsibility. David Von Drehle says: “Two fallacies prop up the wall of forgetfulness (about the war’s causes). The first is that slavery somehow wasn’t really that important…But slavery was important…And the fact that it ended is important too. The second fallacy is that this was only the South’s problem and that the North solved it…As long as this belief persists…Americans whose hearts lie with Dixie will understandably continue to defend their homes and honor against such Yankee arrogance.” (Time, 4/18/11, p. 51.) I think we Yankees need to remember this more sincerely, and more often, and not give ourselves airs.