Download How Should 21st Century Americans

Welcome to the Archives of
The North Carolina
Heritage Foundation
An Institute for the Study of
North Carolina History and Culture
Executive Director:
Timothy D. Manning, M.Div.
160 Longbridge Drive
1
Kernersville, North Carolina 27284-6333
Cell: (803) 420-5355 / [email protected]
How Should 21st Century
Americans Think about the
War for Southern Independence?
by
Clyde N. Wilson
Given at the 13th Annual Gettysburg Banquet of the J.E.B. Stuart
Camp, SCV, Philadelphia on 03 November 2007.
We human beings are peculiar creatures, half angel and half
animal, as someone has said. Alone among creatures we have a
consciousness of ourselves, of our situation, and of our movement
through time.
We have language, and by symbols can
communicate knowledge to one another and
across generations.
We can learn something about
humans from the Divine Revelations in the
Bible. We can also learn something by
scientific examination of our physical
selves. But most of what we know about
human beings is in our knowledge of the
past. As a philosopher puts it: we must live
forward but we can only think backward. I
am, of course, making a plea for the
importance of history, or to be more exact, historical memory,
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something that is undergoing catastrophic destruction today in the
United States.
People without knowledge of their past would be scarcely
human. What makes us human is the culture we inherit. It has
been truly said that we are what we remember. Let me emphasise:
What we remember determines what we are. What we take from
the past is crucial to our identity. And it follows, as Dr. Samuel
Johnson said, that there is hardly any worse crime against
humanity than to falsify its records.
John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton, (10 January 1834 – 19
June 1902), known as Sir John Dalberg-Acton, and usually referred to
as Lord Acton. He took a great interest in the United States,
considering its federal structure the perfect guarantor of individual
liberties. During Lincoln's War to Prevent Southern Independence, his
sympathies lay entirely with the Confederate States of America, for
their defense of State's Rights against a centralized government that,
by all historical precedent, would inevitably turn tyrannical. His notes
to Gladstone on the subject helped sway many in the British
government to sympathize with the Southern people. After the South's
surrender, he wrote to Robert E. Lee that "I mourn for the stake which
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was lost at Richmond more deeply than I rejoice over that which was
saved at Waterloo." [At the end of this essay the editor has added the
full text of Lord Acton's letter to Robert E. Lee and Lee's response to
that letter.]
Every society of any worth has revered those who
preceded. Romans, in their period of greatest freedom and
achievement, kept their ancestors by the fireside as minor gods.
The Greeks at their highest point thrived in a belief in a Golden
Age of Heroes that preceded their own lesser times. It is right that
we of the Sons of Confederate Veterans honour our forebears
because they are ours--- but not only because they are ours.
We sons of Confederate soldiers are especially fortunate
in our forefathers. They not only won a place in the hearts of us,
their descendants. They also won the lasting admiration of every
one in the civilized world who values courage, skill, sacrifice, and
an indomitable spirit in defense of freedom. That is why our battle
flag, which is being suppressed in these United States, appeared
spontaneously at the fall of the Berlin Wall and among peoples
celebrating their liberation from the Soviet Empire.
Our forefathers are admired by the world to a degree seldom
granted to lost causes. I find that thoughtful Europeans speak
respectfully of the Confederacy, as did Winston Churchill.
Foreigners have a great advantage in judging the right and wrong
of the War Between the States. They do not start out with the
automatic assumption that all the good is on one side and all the
bad on the other.
Lord Acton, an English historian who published many
deeply-researched volumes on the history of liberty, wrote to
General Lee in 1866. The defeat at Appomattox, Acton said, was a
blow to the entire civilized world because it had reversed the
progress of humanity toward constitutional liberty. And Lee
replied:
All the South has ever desired was that the Union, as
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established by our forefathers, should be preserved and that the
government, as originally organized, should be administered in
purity and truth.
General James Johnson Pettigrew (July 4, 1828 – July 17, 1863)
was an author, lawyer, linguist, diplomat, and a Confederate general
in the Linoln's War to Prevent Southern Independence. He was a
major leader in Pickett's Charge and was killed a few days after the
Battle of Gettysburg during the Confederate retreat to Virginia.
General James Johnston Pettigrew, on his way here to
Gettysburg with the Army of Northern Virginia in the spring of
1863, wrote of the Confederacy, "Our reputation, next to the
Greeks, will be the most heroic of nations." What this brilliant and
learned man, who lost his life in the campaign, meant was, that in
the long perspective of history, the action most exemplary of
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heroism was the stand of the small Greek city-states against the
mighty Persian empire in the 5th century B.C. Next to that, most
worthy of admiration in the long perspective of history, would be
the outnumbered soldiers and people of the South in their
resistance to another giant invading power. The world has for a
long time conceded a measure of truth to Pettigrew's prediction. If
not in second place, our Confederate fathers stand very high in the
history of heroism in a noble cause.
People without a past describe an ever-increasing part of
the American population. Thanks to the government, it is
projected that in a very few years a majority of inhabitants of the
U.S. will be post-1965 immigrants and their descendants. People
with no inherited connection to the American past---to the
Revolution, or the winning of the frontier, or even to the sacrifices
of World War II. Along with this, there is a campaign going on to
wipe out the historical memory of Americans and replace it with a
made-up history that is suitable for a multicultural empire. If we
sons do our duty, I can foresee a time when Confederate heritage
will be the only American heritage left.
My interest in this question became intense during the
controversy over the battle flag on the South Carolina capitol
dome. During that controversy, a press conference and television
appearance was orchestrated by spokespersons for some 90
professional historians in the state. Here is what they said: the War
of 1861--1865 was about slavery and nothing but slavery, the
Confederate flag is a symbol of racism and treason, and that is not
just their opinion, they declared, but rather an unquestionable truth
established by unanimous experts.
There are a hundred different things wrong with this
statement. It is a misuse of history to reduce such a large and
complex event as The War to such simplistic terms. Historical
interpretations change over time and in other generations the
prevailing interpretation of the War was very different.
Furthermore, so-called expert opinion cannot settle questions of
value and meaning in human experience, which must always
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remain open for further understanding.
And what do we mean when we say a war is "about"
something? Was the conflict not also "about" economic interests,
as was believed by a former generation of historians much more
learned than these, or cultural conflict, or constitutional questions,
or issues of invasion and defense?
Still further, the opinion so declared was not all that expert.
Very few of the noble 90 signers of the statement have any real
fundamental knowledge of The War period. Most of their
expertise was pretty remote, some not even in American history.
Some of them had only been in South Carolina a short time—
coming from weird places like Burma or California. They were
expressing a party line, identifying with a view that they have been
told that all wise and good people adhere to. This was not an
informed historical judgment but a political fashion statement.
When you hear that all experts agree about something, you know a
party line is being enforced, because there is always room for
difference of opinion where people are actually thinking. These
self-styled experts were telling South Carolinians that we are a
stupid, deluded people, that our historical memory is false, our
ancestors were despicable, and we should be instructed by better
and wiser people like themselves. Our flag and our monuments are
nothing but supports for a lie and they should be and soon will be
done away with.
This is the view of Confederate history that dominates
academics today. We are being expunged from history. We are to
have no part in the story of America except one little dark corner
labeled slavery and treason. When SC ETV presented a program
on the siege of Charleston, it was not told from the viewpoint of
the people of South Carolina heroically dealing with invasion but
from the viewpoint of the invader. South Carolinians are merely a
problem the good invader is eradicating. The recent History
Channel production on Sherman's March was from the same
perspective.
What those historians are invoking is the current doctrine of
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“the Lost Cause Myth,” which claims to explain that everything
favourable that anyone believes about the Confederacy is false
manufactured propaganda. According to this rendering, your and
my ancestors were evil people who tried to destroy the best
country on earth to preserve slavery. Not only were they evil, but
they were weak and stupid. They made a pathetic effort that was
inevitably defeated. Then after the war, our evil ancestors, it is
claimed, made up a mythology about a supposedly honourable and
heroic Lost Cause which never really existed. In other words they
covered up their bad deeds and failure with a pack of lies.
Remember that this anti-South historical onslaught is
something recent. FDR, Truman, Eisenhower, and Carter did not
mind being photographed with our battle flag and expressing great
admiration for Robert E. Lee.
These people who want to trash our heritage display a
familiar pattern—that of the conqueror wiping out the identity of
the conquered. They want to substitute their political agenda for
our real and true heritage. We, indeed all Americans, hunger for
bread and they give us a stone. They replace our historical
memory with ideology.
This fashionable interpretation among academic historians
today is fully laid out in a Gallagher and Nolan book called "The
Lost Cause Myth and Civil War History." According to this work,
Confederate soldiers were not really brave and sacrificing, nor
were they usually outnumbered; there were no real issues other
than slavery; there was nothing to the Southern constitutional
position or Southern complaints of economic and cultural
aggression; Lee was not a great general (he lost didn't he); the
Southern people did not really support the Confederacy but were
only dupes of a few large slave-holders; Southern women did not
really support the Confederacy either but were in secret rebellion
against their domineering menfolk.
This idea involves a basic misuse of the concept of myth.
History that is not true is not a myth, it is simply false. A myth is
neither true nor false, it is art. All people conceive of their history
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to some degree in a mythological way. A myth may not be
precisely accurate in detail but it sums up a truth imaginatively to
facilitate its understanding and its transmission over the
generations. Pedants may examine Magna Carta and tell us that it
is really not much of a beginning for democracy. They miss the
grain of meaningful truth contained in the traditional
understanding. There is no history without an element of art.
Facts are necessary but in themselves amount to little until
arranged and given meaning. There is nothing wrong with myths
if they are substantially true and preserve a valuable cultural
inheritance.
For a long time, from the late 1800s through much of the
20th century, Americans enjoyed a comforting myth about the war.
North and South agreed that it was a great tragedy, with good and
bad on both sides, that had fortunately resulted in a stronger, united
country. This myth was consecrated here in Gettysburg in the joint
reunions of blue and grey. Southerners pledged future allegiance
to the U.S. and accepted Lincoln as a good man who would not
have allowed a harsh Reconstruction. Northerners accepted
Confederate heroes as American heroes. Army bases were named
after Confederate generals, American fighting men carried their
Confederate flags to the far corners of the world in World War II,
and every Hollywood star at least once played an admirable
Confederate character. This was a good myth---a myth of
reconciliation and harmony that allowed the national memory to
cope with an immense and ugly event.
Those days are gone forever, though many of our SCV
compatriots seem to think that it is still the 1950s and have not
realised that they live in a world of Political Correctness (which is
a polite name for Cultural Marxism). Remember, this is not an
argument over historical interpretation. This is about who we are.
We now have the opportunity to refresh our understanding
of what happened in 1861--1865 and start once more defending our
fathers as they should be defended. We created the Stephen D. Lee
Institute for this purpose---to make the case not only for the
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Confederate soldier but for his cause. It is useless to proclaim the
courage, skill, and sacrifice of the Confederate soldier while
permitting him to be guilty of a bad cause. I hope you have heard
of the Institute and that what you have heard is favourable. We
have marshaled a small but distinguished and redoubtable group of
scholars to present anew the issues of America's greatest conflict.
We are telling the truth about the war and the truth redeems our
Confederate ancestors.
Dr. Clyde N. Wilsons book From Union To Empire: Essays in the
Jeffersonian Tradition is available from the NCHF. Jeffersonian
Democrats, also known as Southern conservatives, were once a
numerous and common American type. They are seldom heard from
any more, but for nearly forty years Clyde N. Wilson has been
examining American history and current events from just such a
viewpoint. Wilson, as historian and columnist Joseph Stromberg
writes in the foreword, is "the kind of conservative who is a stalwart
defender of federalism and republicanism, and the liberties associated
with them. Such conservatives are few and far between these days….
What comes of this is the creative deployment of a Southern
perspective on American history—one that yields interesting and
important insights." [357pages. HB]
Victors write the history and the first prevailing
interpretation of any great event is that the winners were the good
guys and the losers the bad guys. With the passage of time and
research by trained and supposedly dispassionate historians a more
complex and balanced picture emerges. It is seen that the winners
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were not always angels and that the losers actually had something
to be said for their side.
This kind of revisionism has appeared in regard to the
English Civil War, the French Revolution, the Russian Revolution,
and World War I, among others. It governed the understanding of
the Civil War for much of the 20th century. But notice how the
professional historians I am talking about, the devotees of the Lost
Cause Myth as explanation of The War, have absolutely reversed
the progress toward a balanced historical perspective. They have
reverted to the primitive propaganda of the South as guilty of all
that is bad in history.
It was necessary for them to do this to support their
political agenda, because the weight of facts is on our side.
There is a concerted effort underway by so-called
professional historians to deny and denigrate the extraordinary
heroism and sacrifice of the South in that war. I do not think they
will get very far, as the facts are overwhelmingly against them.
But Southerners, in trying to be good fellows and good Americans,
have been a little too ready to accept the notion that the war was a
gentlemanly and relatively fair contest. It was nothing of the sort.
We give the Yankees much more credit than they deserve.
So, they have broken the truce. There is an upside to this.
We are now free to tell the truth—and the truth in every case
supports the good name of the Confederate soldier. So, no more
Mr. Nice Guy.
The Southern understanding of the Constitution was never
refuted, and it can’t be. It was simply crushed. Preserving the
Union. You cannot preserve the Union, or government of, by, and
for the people, by a massive military invasion that destroys the
constitutional, democratically elected governments of nearly half
the states and converts them into conquered provinces with puppet
governments and their citizens deprived of rights.
The most basic simple fact about the war is that it was a
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war of invasion and conquest. Once you get clear on this basic
fact, all other truths tend to fall into place. This is no secret. It is
plain in the record. The Northern war party openly declared that it
was a war of conquest, to crush resistance to government, to
promote a powerful state, and to keep the South as a captive source
of profits. People love Lincoln’s pretty words because they put a
happy face on a great crime.
The Lincoln Fable
Those who complain about myths distorting our
understanding of history are the same people who adhere to the
biggest and most false and destructive myth there is---of Lincoln as
a Christian saint and humane democratic leader. Lincoln was a
corporate lawyer and clever political operative who always put
himself and his party before any other consideration. He brought
on war because he thought it would be a quick victory—the worst
blunder in American history. Far from being a military genius, his
decisions repeatedly prolonged the war, which he almost lost
despite having four times the resources of the South. As Tom
DiLorenzo’s books, which have now been read by hundreds of
thousands of people, show, Lincoln’s first priority was always the
economic interest of Northern capitalists. Even most of those who
supported Lincoln despised and belittled him, cynically using his
martyrdom for their own purposes. Even his assassination takes on
a different light when you know how he sent Dahlgren to
assassinate Jeff Davis. Certainly Frederick Douglass was correct
when he said that nothing Lincoln ever did was determined by the
interests of the slaves.
I believe that many Americans are rethinking Lincoln today
because they are dissatisfied with the all-powerful central
government and see where it was created.
Prisons, We now have enough research to be able to say for
certain that the Union prisons were as deadly as propaganda told us
the Confederate prisons were. There is a difference. The death
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rate in the Southern camps was due to supply problems, especially
lack of medicine which Lincoln had made contraband, climate, and
a large criminal element preying on their fellows. Deaths in the
Northern camps were inexcusable and look very much to be the
result of deliberate policy.
Walter Brian Cisco in War Crimes Against Southern Civilians
flawlessly documents The United States war crimes against both
black and white civilians of the Southern States. He rips the carefully
constructed facade off Lincoln's "Army of Emancipators." Far from
being an army of liberators, USA troops burned, raped, ravaged, and
terrorized civilians from east to west. The brutality long
overshadowed by federally-sponsored propaganda of Andersonville
and Fort Pillow is at last revealed by newspaper accounts, letters, and
diaries, many from Washington's own National Archives. "We
believe in a war of extermination," said U.S. Brigadier General Lane,
whose demonic exploits include the arrest and deaths of wives and
teenaged girls whose only crime were their blood ties to Confederate
guerrillas, the expulsion of tens of thousands of civilians from whole
Missouri counties and the complete destruction of their property.
U.S. officers oversaw the pillaging and burning of Southern cities,
even allowing them to exhume graves in search of valuables. Free
African-Americans as well as southern whites suffered the loss of
homes and property, many their lives. The arrival of the U.S. military
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meant rape and abuse for women of color. Regardless of color or
gender, no Southerner was spared.
Mr. Cisco's scholarly work is available through the NCHF and a
must-read for serious students of the war and professional historians.
Politically correct history cannot hide the sins of the past, and a true
examination of facts must occur before an accurate understanding of
America's most tragic war can take place.
War Crimes. The Union conduct of the war was criminal from the
very beginning. The first troops across the Potomac looted and
stole and the crimes grew in scope and ferocity as the war went on.
The people of Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, howled in outrage
when McCausland set their town afire. But many towns in the
South, and innumerable homes, churches, and schools, had already
been looted and burned by the blue soldiers. The civilians of
Charleston endured a bombardment by some of the heaviest
artillery in existence for over two years. Our Confederate
ancestors were not guilty of anything like that. Even when
Quantrill made his retaliatory raid on Lawrence, no women were
harmed. When Sheridan visited Europe after the war he shocked
the Prussian high command with his attitude toward Southern
civilians. In the run-up to the Spanish War, the American press
howled in outrage over the brutal Spanish general "Butcher"
Weyler---without mentioning that he had learned his trade as an
attache with Sherman.
But our Lost Cause Myth historians claim that total war
was begun when Stonewall Jackson advocated ruthless battle. So
they equate Jackson's policy toward armed invading soldiers,
which was never implemented, with the Union's deliberate,
systematic war on women and children and private property.
Moral equivalency? I don't think so. If you haven't yet done so,
get Brian Cisco's book on war crimes.
Recently a military historian, a supposed conservative,
wrote that the American people had rallied under the attack of 9/11
just as they had rallied after Fort Sumter and Pearl Harbour. Think
about it. Two massive sneak attacks by foreign enemies are
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equated with the reduction of Fort Sumter as assaults on real
Americans. Jeff Davis is put in the dock with Tojo and Osama ben
Laden.
This historian's ignorance and malice is all too
commonplace. Fort Sumter was preceded by a gentlemanly
warning, involved no civilians and no casualties, and the garrison
were not made prisoner, but were allowed to go home with
honour. And the only deception involved was by the U.S.
government. One wonders that Southerners were allowed to fight
alongside real Americans in World Wars.
Leslie's illustration in 1893 depicting northern statist kneeling on the
soil of South Carolina as in worship while U.S. Major Anderson
raised the U.S. flag on Fort Sumter on 27 December 1960. Such
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reverence for the symbol of a government was new on American soil
but is common today as statist place their hands over their hearts, and
pledge their hearts and obedience to their government.
Furthermore, his assumption about the Northern public's
support of the war is wrong. We are led to believe that the
opposition consisted of a few Copperhead conspirators and the
New York City draft riots. Not true. Northern opposition to the
war was much more widespread, more respectable, and more
articulate than that. This is the biggest untold story in American
history. It was a Republican party war. Lincoln and his supporters
knew that their support was shaky and they saw conspirators under
their beds every night. We know about the suppression of
newspapers and arrest of dissidents by the government without any
due process. What does it tell us that detention of the Chief Justice
and of a former President were seriously considered? Dissent was
suppressed not only by the military but by violent mobs of Lincoln
supporters. Lincoln bought support with patronage on a scale
previously unimaginable in the United States.
I am told that in the main gentleman's club in Philadelphia,
Lincoln supporters were made so uncomfortable that they resigned
and formed their own. Why did at least 300,000 Northerners avoid
the draft in one way or another? And why was it necessary to
import an equal number of foreigners to fill the ranks?
A serious argument can be made that Lincoln would have
lost the election in 1864 if it had not been conducted at bayonet
point in the border states and many other places. Further, the
supposed "loyalty" of the Border States has been greatly
exaggerated. Why did all the Border States including West
Virginia start electing ex-Confederates to public office as soon as
the army left?
Here is something else to keep clearly in mind as a vital
part of the history of the South. It took 22 million Northerners four
years of the bloodiest warfare in American history to conquer 5
million Southerners. We mobilized 90 per cent of our men and
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lost nearly a fourth. Not only our self-government but more than
half of our property was lost. The war impoverished the South and
enriched the politically connected in the North. Foreign visitors to
the North said that they could see little sign that there was even a
war going on.
Our fathers were true heroes. Man for man they marched
harder, risked their lives more often, fought better, endured
impossible hardships, and won many battles against superior
forces. Let me give you a comparative statistic. About 12,000
North Carolinians lost their lives in World War II. If we project
the loss of men in the Confederate War against the larger
population of World War II, it would require 300,000 North
Carolina deaths to equal the State's loss of men in the 1860s. No
other group of Americans has EVER made a sacrifice that
remotely approaches that of the South in its war for independence.
Losses of the North in that war and of the United States in any war
are negligible in comparison. Very late in the war, when defeat
seemed inevitable, Northern generals were complaining that the
Confederate soldier refused to give in and admit defeat, that
Southern women remained indominitable in spirit, and that
Southerners from the richest to the poorest were determined to
keep on.
One of the popular themes among the South-hating
historians today is to dwell on evidence of disaffection in the
Confederacy. Of course, as in all human groups subjected to
tremendous pressure, there were some slackers. But the real story
of the Confederacy is in how little disaffection there was among a
people subjected to such great sacrifices. What would have been
the morale of the North if it had suffered a comparable extent of
occupation, devastation and death as the South had by 1863,
instead of enjoying a quiet and prosperous homefront. Imagine
New York (instead of New Orleans) and Chicago (instead of
Memphis and Nashville) occupied. Imagine Cleveland and
Buffalo (instead of Charleston and Mobile) blockaded and under
siege. Imagine Pennsylvania and Ohio (instead of Virginia and
Tennessee) overrun and ravaged. Imagine Washington (instead of
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Richmond) under constant attack. Imagine privation and sacrifice
instead of prosperity the order of the day everywhere, thousands of
civilian refugees, and nearly the whole male citizen population
under arms. What would the Northern morale have been in 1863?
Under such conditions the Southern people remained
overwhelmingly game.
We are too quick to be generous in our accounts of the war,
and thus detract from the honour due our forefathers. One
example, the great Union victory at Gettysburg. Some victory!
Lee's army maneuvered freely on enemy territory for several
weeks, even though the nearest Union army outnumbered him
greatly and there were several other sizable Union armies within a
few days' march. The Confederate army spent three days attacking
a much larger force on its home territory and barely failed of
victory. Then we stopped attacking and went home. Lee's army
trekked back to the Potomac with vast herds of cattle and hogs, a
50-mile long wagon train, prisoners, and wounded, in knee deep
mud without any serious harm from the larger, supposedly
victorious, army, and remained an undefeatable fighting force for
more than a year longer. Some Union victory.
Are Grant and Sherman great generals? A great general is
one who wins victory by skill, with economy of force. What kind
of people regard Sherman's nearly unopposed March of destruction
against a civilian population as a great military feat and something
for a nation to be proud of?
Another bit of the Gettysburg story. Something like 10,000
black men, bond and free, accompanied the Confederate army to
Pennsylvania---and back. The British observer Col. Fremantle
observed one of these men marching a Yankee prisoner to the rear.
He wondered what the abolitionists in London would think if they
saw that.
Finally, as your patience is almost totally exhausted, we
come to slavery and the noble crusade to free the suffering black
people. How can the war be "about" slavery when the government
formally declares that it is not fighting to free the slaves but to
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preserve a nation.
And it would seem that the vast majority of Northern
soldiers doing the fighting agreed. Certainly no Confederate
thought he was fighting just to preserve slavery. In fact, at the end
of the war many Southerners would have willingly given up
slavery to secure independence.
New Yorker Nativists lynching blacks during the “Draft Riots” of
1863. American Nativistism, whose origins were in New England,
were northern white supremist who hated non-whites, Jews and
Roman Catholics and consistently laboured to keep them out of their
States.
Lincoln made a pretty speech about how all men were
entitled to the fruits of their own labour. But what does this mean
when a black person who becomes free in Kentucky is forbidden
by law to even live in Illinois? In such circumstances Lincoln's
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statement is morally irresponsible. Especially since he also said
that he did not know what to do about slavery even if he had the
power and the only solution he seriously considered was to send
the black people somewhere else to exercise their God-given
freedom.
I know a descendant of a Confederate soldier whose
ancestor, a Methodist minister from Pennsylvania, taught a school
for free black children in Springfield, Illinois. He was literally
driven out of Springfield and went to Tennessee where he was
hospitably welcomed and became a devoted Confederate.
Anyway, Lincoln's party did not dwell on the fact that
slavery was bad, they dwelled on the badness of slaveholders who
blocked the economic progress of the North. Lincoln's platform
did not call for an end to slavery but rather demanded that the
territories be kept for white people only, a restriction on slavery
which did not free a single person.
Any benefits that may have accrued to the black population
of America from the war were incidental to the interests of the
ruling elements of the North. There is no treasury of righteousness
there. Overwhelmingly, the Yankees despised and used the black
people. The North never did anything before, during, or after the
war for the primary purpose of helping the black people.
One of the bad historians that I have described whines that
somehow, even though he and other brilliant experts have declared
the truth over and over, yet people still continue to admire the
Confederacy. Why they still write novels and songs about Lee,
and even about his horse! Why doesn't anybody write about Grant
and his men like that? It must be because so many of us poor
deluded fools still believe in that Lost Cause.
Here is our great advantage. Our Confederate ancestors are
truly admirable, and decent people all over the world know it. We
need to defend them. I hope you will join us in the counter-attack.
*
*
*
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*
Dr. Clyde N. Wilson [send him mail] is Professor of History at the
University of South Carolina and editor of The Papers of John C.
Calhoun.
END
The Acton-Lee Correspondence
Lord Acton to Robert E. Lee
Bologna
November 4, 1866
Sir,
The very kind letter which Mrs. Lee wrote to my wife last winter
encouraged me to hope that you will forgive my presuming to
address you, and that you will not resent as an intrusion a letter
from an earnest and passionate lover of the cause whose glory and
whose strength you were.
I have been requested to furnish private counsel in American
affairs for the guidance of the editors of a weekly Review which is
to begin at the New Year, and which will be conducted by men
who are followers of Mr. Gladstone. You are aware, no doubt, that
Mr. Gladstone was in the minority of Lord Palmerston's cabinet
who wished to accept the French Emperor's proposal to mediate in
the American war.
The reason of the confidence shown in my advice is simply the fact
that I formerly traveled in America, and that I afterwards followed
the progress of the four years' contest as closely and as keenly as it
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was possible to do with the partial and unreliable information that
reached us. In the momentous questions which have arisen since
you sheathed the sword, I have endeavoured to conform my
judgment to your own as well as I could ascertain it from the report
of your evidence, from the few English travelers who enjoyed the
privilege of speaking with you, and especially from General
Beauregard, who spoke, as I understood, your sentiments as well
as his own. My travels in America never led me south of
Maryland, and the only friends to whom I can look for instruction,
are Northerners, mostly of Webster's school.
In my emergency, urged by the importance of the questions at
issue in the United States, and by the peril of misguided public
opinion between our two countries, I therefore seek to appeal to
southern authorities, and venture at once to proceed to
Headquarters.
If, Sir, you will consent to entertain my request, and will inform
me of the light in which you would wish the current politics of
America to be understood, I can pledge myself that the new
Review shall follow the course which you prescribe and that any
communication with which you may honor me shall be kept in
strictest confidence, and highly treasured by me. Even should you
dismiss my request as unwarranted, I trust you will remember it
only as an attempt to break through the barrier of false reports and
false sympathies which encloses the views of my countrymen.
It cannot have escaped you that much of the good will felt in
England towards the South, so far as it was not simply the tribute
of astonishment and admiration won by your campaigns, was
neither unselfish nor sincere. It sprang partly from an exultant
belief in the hope that America would be weakened by the
separation, and from terror at the remote prospect of Farragut
appearing in the channel and Sherman landing in Ireland.
I am anxious that you should distinguish the feeling which drew
me aware toward your cause and your career, and which now
guides my pen, from that thankless and unworthy sympathy.
22
Without presuming to decide the purely legal question, on which it
seems evident to me from Madison's and Hamilton's papers that
the Fathers of the Constitution were not agreed, I saw in State
Rights the only availing check upon the absolutism of the
sovereign will, and secession filled me with hope, not as the
destruction but as the redemption of Democracy. The
institutions of your Republic have not exercised on the old
world the salutary and liberating influence which ought to
have belonged to them, by reason of those defects and abuses of
principle which the Confederate Constitution was expressly
and wisely calculated to remedy. I believed that the example of
that great Reform would have blessed all the races of mankind
by establishing true freedom purged of the native dangers and
disorders of Republics. Therefore I deemed that you were
fighting the battles of our liberty, our progress, and our
civilization; and I mourn for the stake which was lost at
Richmond more deeply than I rejoice over that which was
saved at Waterloo. [Emphasis supplied by the editor.]
General Beauregard confirmed to me a report which was in the
papers, that you are preparing a narrative of your campaigns. I
sincerely trust that it is true, and that the loss you were said to have
sustained at the evacuation of Richmond has not deprived you of
the requisite materials. European writers are trying to construct that
terrible history with the information derived from one side only. I
have before me an elaborate work by a Prussian officer named
Sander. It is hardly possible that future publications can be more
honorable to the reputation of your army and your own. His
feelings are strongly Federal, his figures, especially in estimating
your forces, are derived from Northern journals, and yet his book
ends by becoming an enthusiastic panegyric on your military skill.
It will impress you favourably towards the writer to know that he
dwells with particular detail and pleasure on your operations
against Meade when Longstreet was absent, in the autumn of 1863.
But I have heard the best Prussian military critics regret that they
had not the exact data necessary for a scientific appreciation of
your strategy, and certainly the credit due to the officers who
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served under you can be distributed and justified by no hand but
your own.
If you will do me the honor to write to me, letters will reach me
addressed Sir J. Acton, Hotel [Serry?], Rome. Meantime I remain,
with sentiments stronger than respect, Sir,
~ Your faithful servant
John Dalberg Acton
Robert E. Lee to Lord Acton
Lexington, Vir.,
15 Dec. 1866
Sir,
Although your letter of the 4th ulto. has been before me some days
unanswered, I hope you will not attribute it to a want of interest in
the subject, but to my inability to keep pace with my
correspondence. As a citizen of the South I feel deeply indebted to
you for the sympathy you have evinced in its cause, and am
conscious that I owe your kind consideration of myself to my
connection with it. The influence of current opinion in Europe
upon the current politics of America must always be salutary; and
the importance of the questions now at issue the United States,
involving not only constitutional freedom and constitutional
government in this country, but the progress of universal
liberty and civilization, invests your proposition with peculiar
value, and will add to the obligation which every true
American must owe you for your efforts to guide that opinion
aright. Amid the conflicting statements and sentiments in both
countries, it will be no easy task to discover the truth, or to
relieve it from the mass of prejudice and passion, with which it
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has been covered by party spirit. I am conscious the compliment
conveyed in your request for my opinion as to the light in which
American politics should be viewed, and had I the ability, I have
not the time to enter upon a discussion, which was commenced by
the founders of the constitution and has been continued to the
present day. I can only say that while I have considered the
preservation of the constitutional power of the General
Government to be the foundation of our peace and safety at
home and abroad, I yet believe that the maintenance of the
rights and authority reserved to the states and to the people,
not only essential to the adjustment and balance of the general
system, but the safeguard to the continuance of a free
government. I consider it as the chief source of stability to our
political system, whereas the consolidation of the states into
one vast republic, sure to be aggressive abroad and despotic at
home, will be the certain precursor of that ruin which has
overwhelmed all those that have preceded it. I need not refer
one so well acquainted as you are with American history, to the
State papers of Washington and Jefferson, the representatives of
the federal and democratic parties, denouncing consolidation and
centralization of power, as tending to the subversion of State
Governments, and to despotism. The New England states, whose
citizens are the fiercest opponents of the Southern states, did not
always avow the opinions they now advocate. Upon the purchase
of Louisiana by Mr. Jefferson, they virtually asserted the right of
secession through their prominent men; and in the convention
which assembled at Hartford in 1814, they threatened the
disruption of the Union unless the war should be discontinued.
The assertion of this right has been repeatedly made by their
politicians when their party was weak, and Massachusetts, the
leading state in hostility to the South, declares in the preamble
to her constitution, that the people of that commonwealth
"have the sole and exclusive right of governing themselves as a
free sovereign and independent state, and do, and forever
hereafter shall, exercise and enjoy every power, jurisdiction,
and right which is not, or may hereafter be by them expressly
delegated to the United States of America in congress
25
assembled." Such has been in substance the language of other
State governments, and such the doctrine advocated by the leading
men of the country for the last seventy years. Judge Chase, the
present Chief Justice of the U.S., as late as 1850, is reported to
have stated in the Senate, of which he was a member, that he
"knew of no remedy in case of the refusal of a state to perform
its stipulations," thereby acknowledging the sovereignty and
independence of state action. But I will not weary you with this
unprofitable discussion. Unprofitable because the judgment of
reason has been displaced by the arbitrament of war, waged for
the purpose as avowed of maintaining the union of the states. If,
therefore, the result of the war is to be considered as having
decided that the union of the states is inviolable and perpetual
under the constitution, it naturally follows that it is as incompetent
for the general government to impair its integrity by the exclusion
of a state, as for the states to do so by secession; and that the
existence and rights of a state by the constitution are as
indestructible as the union itself. The legitimate consequence then
must be the perfect equality of rights of all the states; the exclusive
right of each to regulate its internal affairs under rules established
by the Constitution, and the right of each state to prescribe for
itself the qualifications of suffrage. The South has contended
only for the supremacy of the constitution, and the just
administration of the laws made in pursuance to it. Virginia to the
last made great efforts to save the union, and urged harmony and
compromise. Senator Douglass, in his remarks upon the
compromise bill recommended by the committee of thirteen in
1861, stated that every member from the South, including Messrs.
Toombs and Davis, expressed their willingness to accept the
proposition of Senator Crittenden from Kentucky, as a final
settlement of the controversy, if sustained by the republican party,
and that the only difficulty in the way of an amicable
adjustment was with the republican party. Who then is
responsible for the war? Although the South would have preferred
any honorable compromise to the fratricidal war which has taken
place, she now accepts in good faith its constitutional results, and
receives without reserve the amendment which has already been
26
made to the constitution for the extinction of slavery. That is an
event that has been long sought, though in a different way, and by
none has it been more earnestly desired than by citizens of
Virginia. In other respects I trust that the constitution may undergo
no change, but that it may be handed down to succeeding
generations in the form we received it from our forefathers. The
desire I feel that the Southern states should possess the good
opinion of one whom I esteem as highly as yourself, has caused me
to extend my remarks farther than I intended, and I fear it has led
me to exhaust your patience. If what I have said should serve to
give any information as regards American politics, and enable you
to enlighten public opinion as to the true interests of this distracted
country, I hope you will pardon its prolixity.
In regard to your inquiry as to my being engaged in preparing a
narrative of the campaigns in Virginia, I regret to state that I
progress slowly in the collection of the necessary documents for its
completion. I particularly feel the loss of the official returns
showing the small numbers with which the battles were fought. I
have not seen the work by the Prussian officer you mention and
therefore cannot speak of his accuracy in this respect.–
With sentiments of great respect,
I remain your obt. servant,
~ R.E. Lee
[Bold emphasis supplied by the editor.]
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