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Civil War Myths by William E. Quinn It is good to see renewed interest in that darkest period of our nation’s history during this Sesquicentennial of the War Between the States. With the exception of the Revolutionary War, no war has more defined the United States of America. The state of our government and political systems today are largely the result of the events and outcome of that war. There are a lot of myths circulating today about the war and causes thereof. There is a simple explanation for most of them. “To the victor belongs the spoils,” and the spoils included writing history to show the winner’s point of view. The first text books to emerge in the fall of 1865 represented these views, as they were written and published in the North under scrutiny of the victorious, Republican-dominated Federal government. Thus was born political correctness in this country. U.S. children have been taught since that day that the war was fought to free the slaves. This moral explanation is to justify 620,000 Americans killed on the battlefield, plus another 60,000 civilian deaths (mostly Southern and not including those who perished during Reconstruction). The U.S. government spent $8 billion on the war, with $4.3 billion being financed at 7% interest. This national debt would have bought all the slaves in the U.S. with money left over. The economic devastation (again mostly in the South) was another $20 billion. I hope to educate the readers on the most common myths and present the actual facts. These are facts, not opinions, put forth by many reputable historians who have thoroughly researched the original documents, writings, and recorded speeches applicable to this great conflict. But, you won’t find them presented by our school system text books, or in documentaries produced by the liberal TV media. Myth # 1 - Civil War The first myth exists in the title of the war as it is called today – the Civil War. A civil war is one in which a certain faction of a country strives to overthrow the government by force. The Southern states did not try to overthrow the U.S. government; they seceded from it peacefully. War would not have occurred had Abraham Lincoln not tried to reinforce the U.S.held forts at Charleston, South Carolina, Pensacola, Florida, and Galveston, Texas. When I was growing up, Southerners did not call it the Civil War. Instead, they referred to it as the War Between the States (most common title), the War for Southern Independence, or as my grandmother referred to it, the War of Northern Aggression. War Between the States was also used by those more-or-less neutral on the subject, such as Westerners. The Congressional Record of Mrach 2,1928 records Senate Joint Resolution No. 41 wherein Congress recognized the title “War Between the States” as proper. During and immediately after the war, most Northerners usually referred to it as the Southern Rebellion, the War of the Rebellion, or simply the Rebellion. But, the history text books following the war referred to as the Civil War, which has been taught to six generations, becoming the official title. Myth # 2 – The cause of the war was slavery As a former incident investigator for a large southeastern utility I can tell you there is rarely just one root cause for a major adverse event. In fact, there are usually four or five causes. In the final analysis of most wars you will find money, greed, and hunger for power as the chief instigators. The War Between the States (WBTS) was no exception. The primary cause was protectionist tariffs on imported goods, with the Morrill Tariff of 1860 being the immediate catalyst for the Deep South states seceding. During the infancy of the country, the U.S. Congress passed tariff legislation as a means of raising revenue to run the country and was the main source of revenue, up to 95% at one point. There was no income tax in those days. It was initially fairly low – in the 5-10% range. By the end of the War of 1812, the cotton gin had boosted the production and exportation of cotton exponentially. Cotton became the primary export product. Since cotton was being exported from Southern ports to European markets, those ships returned to these ports with goods produced in Europe. (Anyone in the freight business knows the economic consequences of dead-heading, the term for transporting goods in one direction and returning empty.) So, the South was providing most of the revenue needed to run the country. Starting in 1816, tariffs were also used to protect the young manufacturing industries in the Northeast. Through a series of tariff acts from 1816 through 1828, the rate was raised to 50%. After S.C. nullified the 1828 “Tariff of Abominations” and threatened secession, a compromise worked out by Henry Clay reduced the rates to around 20%. This is where they stayed until 1860 when the Morrill Tariff passed the U.S. House of Representatives, calling for a 67% increase in the tariff rates. This would have boosted the South’s share of the total U.S. tax base to around 90%. With no hope of defeating the tariff in the Senate and President-elect Lincoln strongly supporting it, the Deep South states chose to secede, rather than subsidize the industrial North. Another major catalyst to the 7 Deep South states seceding was the election of Abraham Lincoln in November, 1860. He ran on a Republican platform, of which he was the principal architect, which would expand the role of the Federal government into a strongly centralized unit with complete autonomy over the states. The Southern states had always believed in the sovereignty of the states. Another plank in this platform called for the federal government to subsidize companies in order to complete massive public works projects such as railroads and canals, with the vast majority of these projects in Northern states. Naturally, this would take a lot of money, and that money would come from tariff revenue paid by the Southern states. The Republicans also called for a national bank that could print money whenever it saw the need. (We can see how that works today.) Most Americans today think Abraham Lincoln was a popular President elected by a majority of the people, a myth unto itself. The opposite is true. He received less than 40% of the popular vote in a 4-way race for the office. He didn’t win a single Southern state, but managed to pull a majority of the electoral vote by winning the heavier-populated Northern states. So, Lincoln was strictly a sectional President, representing the Northern states. The South saw Lincoln’s election as not only financial doom, but also an end to principles they had stood for since the birth of the nation as spelled out in the founding documents. They had fought the continual encroachments on their constitutional liberties for decades, but now they saw their political power slipping away. As the Declaration of Independence stated they saw it “…necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the 2 separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them.” They seceded from the United States of America and formed the Confederate States of America. Cultural differences between the two regions of the country were another root cause for the WBTS. These differences were recognized as early as 1775 during the Second Continental Congress when a number of attendees discussed forming “two grand Republics.” The cultural differences were religious, demographic, geographic, and professional. New England was settled by Puritans from England and remained mostly “pure English” until after the war. Although many immigrants arrived in the North during the two decades preceding the war, they landed mostly in New York. New Englanders were the original “Yankees” and tended to look at the rest of America west and south of the Hudson River as inferior. You might say they had a “holier than thou” attitude. That attitude is best displayed by Noah Webster, the Massachusetts author of the Webster Dictionary, when he wrote in his diary, “O New England! How superior are thy inhabitants in morals, literature, civility, and industry.” Another example is the first American geography book written in 1790 by Jedediah Morse, a Connecticut Puritan preacher. He depicted America outside of New England as inhabited by lazy and ignorant Germans and Scotch-Irish in the Middle States and weak morally-depraved Southerners in the South. In the early part of the 19th century, the “Age of Enlightenment” swept across the Atlantic from Europe and landed on the Northern shores. Puritanism soon gave way to Transcendentalism, Unitarianism, and Abolitionism. Northerners of these persuasions constantly railed against the Southern people as barbaric, uncivilized, and uneducated. Apparently they missed the fact that Charleston was the most cultured city in the country, at one time having more theaters, literary societies, and charitable organizations than any city in the U.S. The Southern states were composed of immigrants from not only England, but also France, Ireland, Germany, Spain, and other European countries. Their religion was mostly orthodox Protestant – Baptist, Methodist, Presbyterian, Lutheran, etc. There were also Catholic and Jewish citizens. Although the demographic makeup of the two regions has changed considerably over the last 150 years, particularly in the Northeast, in 1860 the South was a much more diverse culture. The Southerners were also much more understanding of other religious backgrounds. Judah Benjamin, a Jew, became a member of the Confederate Cabinet. This is in stark contrast to Ulysses S. Grant’s policy of not allowing Jewish soldiers in the Union ranks. The Northern states were fast becoming industrialized and heavily populated, with the population concentrating in cities. In 1860, the Northern population was around 20 million. The South remained an agrarian society, relying mainly on agriculture as its economic base. In 1860, their population was around 9 million including 4 million slaves. It is a fact of nature that people who live in close proximity look to the government for more protection, oversight, and control while people living in more sparsely-populated areas prefer to be left to their own devices and resist government controls. Thus was the situation in 1860 with the Northern states pushing for a stronger, more centralized Federal government, while the South held on to their beliefs of the less government the better, and what government was necessary should be controlled by the people at the lowest levels, commonly referred to as states rights. These cultural differences were a continual source of strife between the two regions. They added fuel to the fire in arguments within the chambers of Congress, in newspaper articles and written correspondence, and in public speeches, finally reaching a boiling point in 1860. 3 Slavery was also a root cause of the war, but not as significant as the others. I would assign it as a contributing factor, except for the fact that the Deep South states seceded partly because they mistakenly believed Abraham Lincoln would be persuaded by the abolitionists to abolish slavery. Lincoln did eventually issue his Emancipation Proclamation halfway through the war, but it was not because of abolitionist pressure. It was purely a political and military move. Up until he issued the proclamation, he continually supported the right to own slaves. In his first inaugural address he stated, “I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so.” When Lincoln drafted the proclamation in late summer of 1862, the Federal armies had been on the defensive for months. In the Virginia theater, Lee and his Army of Northern Virginia had pushed the Union Army of the Potomac from within five miles of Richmond to defending their own territory and capitol on the north side of the Potomac. In Tennessee, the Confederate Army was recovering from spring losses at Ft. Donelson and Shiloh and was trying to retake all of Tennessee. Sentiment for the South was strong in England and it was looking like that nation would soon recognize the Confederate States of America and possibly lend its navy to ending the blockade of Southern ports. Lincoln issued his proclamation in late September after the Union army stopped Lee’s northward advance at Sharpsburg, Md. He hoped to accomplish two things – keep England out of the war because they were anti-slavery, and create a slave uprising on the Southern plantations. England did remain neutral, but no slave revolt took place. Plus, the proclamation did not free the first slave as it only targeted slaves in Confederate states where Lincoln had no jurisdiction. Myth # 3 - The Southern states started the war by firing on Ft. Sumter Here are the events leading up to the firing on Ft. Sumter: December 20, 1860 – South Carolina secedes from the Union. They immediately communicated with President James Buchanan, assuring him they would not try to take over the U.S. forts in S.C. as long as the U.S. government did not try to reinforce them or otherwise change their status. December 26, 1860 – Major Robert Anderson, commander of the U.S. garrison at Fort Moultrie on Sullivan’s Island moved his men to Ft. Sumter, immediately in front of Charleston harbor. This move was not authorized by Washington, but nether-the-less shocked the South Carolinians. On the same day, a delegation from South Carolina arrived in Washington to seek removal of Major Anderson’s garrison, negotiate a settlement of federal property within the state, and make an offer to pay South Carolina’s portion of the federal debt. News of Anderson’s move terminated the negotiations, as this was interpreted as a hostile threat on the part of U.S. A few days later U.S. Secretary of War, John B. Floyd, resigned his position when President Buchanan did not order Anderson back to Fort Moultrie and restore the former status. Early January, 1861 - The US government attempted to reinforce and provision Ft. Sumter utilizing the civilian merchant ship Star of the West. South Carolina fired on it when it entered the harbor and the ship reversed course and left. 4 January 31, 1861 – Isaac W. Hayne, S.C. Attorney General, is sent by Governor Francis Pickens to Washington to negotiate a peaceful transfer of Ft. Sumter to S.C. and settlement of all questions related to property. Even after an offer to buy the fort, he received no satisfactory response from President Buchanan. January through mid-April, 1861 – Mayor Anderson and his men received food, mail, and other provisions from Charleston. February 1 – Texas becomes the 7th state to secede. All Deep South states have now seceded and convene on February 4 to adopt a constitution and form a national government. Jefferson Davis is elected president on February 9 and inaugurated on February 18. March 4 1861 – Abraham Lincoln is inaugurated as President of the U.S. By now the Confederate States of America are fully functional with a constitution, an elected Congress, President, Vice-President, and Cabinet. During March, US Secretary of State Seward, communicating through US Supreme Court Justice John Campbell, repeatedly assures the Davis Administration that Ft. Sumter will be evacuated. That same month, CSA President Davis sent three commissioners to Washington to seek recognition of the Confederate States as a sovereign nation, establish friendly relations between the two countries, and to negotiate the transfer of Southern forts and other property to the CSA. Lincoln refused to meet with them. Lincoln also refused to meet with Napoleon III, who offered to act as an independent negotiator between the two parties. April 8 - Lincoln notifies Governor Pickens of SC that a naval expedition would arrive at Ft. Sumter to supply the fort, by force if necessary. April 11 – CSA General Beauregard gives Major Anderson one last chance to surrender the fort. April 12 – Early that morning the US fleet of 8 warships with 26 guns and 1400 soldiers are sighted entered Charleston Bay. General Beauregard gives the order to fire on Ft. Sumter and the bombardment began. The Federal fleet remains safety out in the harbor. War has begun. Now I ask you, who started the war? In answering that question I ask you to reflect back to 1962 when the Russian fleet was sailing toward Cuba with nuclear missiles and President Kennedy established a naval “quarantine” around the island. (He used the less antagonist word quarantine instead of blockade, which was an internationally-accepted act of war.) Had the Russian fleet not turned back, Kennedy was prepared to start WWIII rather than have foreign missiles that close to our shore. Now you understand the situation the South was in. Myth # 4 – The Southerners were traitors Whether or not the people of the South committed treason depends on whether it is illegal for a state to secede, with legality resting in the Constitution. Unfortunately, the Constitution is not explicit on this subject. The word secede does not exist in this document, not even within the Bill of Rights (first 10 Amendments). However, the Constitution does not forbid it either. Southerners felt that Amendment IX and X gave them the right of secession. Amendment IX states: “The enumeration in the Constitution of certain rights shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people,” and Amendment X, called the states right amendment, states: “The powers not delegated to the United States by the 5 Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.” Until the WBTS, it was generally believed by most Americans that the states had the right to secede. Since the 13 colonies had successfully seceded from England, with those rights declared in the Declaration of Independence and later confirmed by the Articles of Confederation, it was understood those rights still existed under the Constitution. Three states – New York, Virginia, and Rhode Island - had the foresight to explicitly reserve the right to leave the Union when they ratified the Constitution. Even Abraham Lincoln upheld the right to secession in 1848 when he stated, “This is a most valuable, a most sacred right…Nor is this right confined to cases in which the whole people of an existing government may choose to exercise it. Any portion of such people, that can, may revolutionize, and make their own of so much of the territory as they inhabit.” That was before he became the leader of the Republican Party with grand designs for expanding the role of the Federal government and the pocketbooks of Northern businessmen. Secession was threatened by various states on many different occasions during the first seventy years of the nation’s history, four times by the New England states. The first time was in 1803 over the Louisiana Purchase, which they considered a dilution of their political power. President Thomas Jefferson’s reaction to this threat was “If any state in the Union will declare that it prefers separation to a continuance in union…I have no hesitation in saying, ‘let us separate.’” Jefferson was the political opposite to the New Englanders. New England again threatened to secede in 1807 over a loss in trade caused by the Embargo Act. In 1814, those states went as far as convening the Hartford Convention to vote for secession, which failed by two votes. The last time they tried it was in 1845 over the annexation of Texas. Proof that secession was an accepted right lies in the fact that not a single Confederate was tried for treason after the war ended. Jefferson Davis was captured by the Union army and languished in a Federal prison for two years and finally released. The Federal government knew they didn’t have a case against him, but they didn’t mind violating his constitutional rights by holding him that long without a trial. Myth # 5 – All Confederates were slave owners Now I realize the vast majority of East Tennesseans know this is not true. But you would be surprised at the number of people in other parts of the country who know little about the South think it is. After all, wasn’t that why they went to war! The truth is only about 20% of white Southerners owned slaves. Another truth is not all slave owners were white. There were free blacks and Native Americans (mainly Cherokees) who owned black slaves. Generally, the slave owners in the Confederate army were the officers (not meaning all officers were slave owners). Since slave owners were the wealthier and most educated segment of the population, many of them having attended military schools, it was natural for them to be voted in or appointed as officers. Plus, many of them provided the funds to outfit a company or even a regiment. I had ten ancestors in the Confederate army and not one of them owned a slave. None of them rose above the rank of sergeant. But, they were all independent farmers of modest income and basic education. Myth # 6 – Only Southerners owned slaves 6 When the American Revolution started in 1776, slavery existed in all 13 colonies. At that time the number of households owning slaves in Connecticut was one out of four, about the same as South Carolina in 1860. After the Revolution, slavery gradually diminished in the Northern states, mostly in a north to south direction, so that by 1860 it only existed below the Mason-Dixon line. New Jersey was the last state to abolish slavery, and many historians contend the trend would have continued into the border states, whereas Delaware and Maryland would have abolished it within a few more years, followed in a few more by Virginia, Kentucky, and Missouri. The reasons the Northern states abolished slavery were mostly economic. There weren’t many large farms that required a considerable amount of labor. And with the rising immigration in the North, free labor was becoming more readily available at extremely low wages. It came to the point that it was cheaper to free the slaves and hire the labor when needed than to feed, cloth, and house them. Also, with the Age of Enlightenment which started in New England and spread west and south, attitudes toward slavery changed. Another fact that disproves this myth is not all slaves in the South were owned by Southerners. Many wealthy Northern businessmen owned cotton plantations in the South. Most of these also owned textile mills in the North, so it was good business for them to grow their own cotton. A good example is the cousin of Harriet Beecher Stowe, author of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, who owned a plantation in Louisiana. In fact, she later admitted after the book was published this was the only plantation she ever visited. She also patterned her character Simon Legree after her cousin’s overseer. In Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation, he exempted twelve parishes in Louisiana from the proclamation. That was because so many of the plantations there were owned by Northerners. Myth # 7 – The Rebel Flag is a symbol of racism and hatred The Confederate Battle Flag, commonly called the Rebel Flag, is a Christian symbol representing the Cross of St. Andrew, patron saint of Scotland. When the apostle Andrew was crucified, his executioners didn’t bother to dig a hole and place the cross upright. Instead, it was laid on its side and propped up. That’s why St. Andrew’s cross is diagonal. This symbol was used in the flag to express the Christian views of Southerners, and easily recognizable because many Southerners were of Scotch or Scotch-Irish descent. It is unfortunate that some racist organizations in the South, such as the KKK, have used this flag as a symbol of defiance. While these groups only represent a very small fraction of Southerners, the media has tried to depict them as representative of white Southerners in general. The liberal movie media constantly portrays the flag in negative scenarios, such as on the back window of a pickup truck used in a hate crime. It is also unfortunate that many Southerners are ignorant of their history and abuse the Confederate Flag by putting motorcycles, burlesque female figures, and even swastikas in the center of the flag. The latter to me is the grossest violation of the flag, especially considering Adolph Hitler studied Abraham Lincoln’s attack on states rights as he designed his plan for dissolving the German states and establishing the Third Reich. There are many other myths associated with the WBTS and the South in general and I could write a book on them. But, I only wanted to educate the readers on the most common and widespread ones. I hope I succeeded. 7 Bibliography Adams, Charles. When in the Course of Human Events. Lanhan, Md: Rowman & Littlefield, 2000. Aiken, Dr. David. The Better Men and Women of the Antebellum South; Confederate Veteran Journal, Volume 68, No. 6. Columbia, TN; Sons of Confederate Veterans. May/June, 2011. Articles of Confederation, Article II. Cisco, Walter Brian. The March to Secession; Confederate Veteran Journal, Volume 69, No.3. Columbia, TN: Sons of Confederate Veterans. May/June, 2011. Congressional Record, March 2, 1928. DiLorenzo, Thomas J. The Real Lincoln. Roseville, CA: Prima Publishing, 2002. Foote, Shelby. The Civil War – A Narrative. New York, NY: Random House Inc., 1958. Kennedy, James Ronald. Lincoln, Federal Supremacy, and the Death of States Rights; Confederate Veteran Journal, Volume 70, No.3. Columbia, TN: Sons of Confederate Veterans. May/June, 2012. Scruggs, Leonard M. The Morrill Tariff; Confederate Veteran Journal, Volume 69, No. 6. Columbia, TN: Sons of Confederate Veterans. November/December, 2011. Stokes, Karen. Fort Sumter and the Siege of Charleston; Confederate Veteran Journal, Volume 70, No.1. Columbia, TN. Sons of Confederate Veterans. January/February, 2012. The Constitution of the United States. The Declaration of Independence. Wilson, Dr. Clyde. Those People, Part 1; Confederate Veteran Journal, Volume 69, No.1. Columbia, TN. Sons of Confederate Veterans. January/February, 2011. Wilson, Dr. Clyde. Those People, Part 2; Confederate Veteran Journal, Volume 69, No.2. Columbia, TN. Sons of Confederate Veterans. March/April, 2011. www.archives.gov/exhibits/featured_documents/emancipation_proclamation/transcripts.html. 8