Book Discussion Group

[unionblue]

Ole,

I further suggest that we move this thread over to the book and movie forum, that OK with you?

Unionblue

[ole]

Actually, Unionblue, I had intended this to be a "general discussion" guided by a book or books. Not a review or a comment, but a discussion. If you insist, it can easily be moved or taken up at a later place, for now, I'd rather it stay here.

Mark Neely, Jr. "Southern Rights." The book's subtitle: "Political Prisoners and the Myth of Confederate Constitutionalism" colors the book's actual content a bit too far. Using a word like "Myth" is guaranteed to make a potential reader assume that it's another southern-slam. I didn't find it to be so. In fact, I'd say that Neely bent over backwards to avoid any appearance of partisanship.

That it is a study of Confederate judicial activities, might necessarily lead one to believe that it is one-sided. It is one-sided: a study of Confederate judicial activities. Neely (I would say, gleefully boasts about) has come up with sparse documentation hitherto overlooked, regarding civilian arrests. It appears that these records are not organized, but are found as letters in files previously considered uninteresting.

These letters are reports on arrests and charges of civilians. He cites 4,100 (+) but makes clear that he's basing his conclusion on these few written records, and he names the 6 or 10 "officials" whose reports are included.

His major point is quite clear: arresting civilians and suspending the writ of habeas corpus was not uniquely Lincoln. He never says, "Hah!" or "So there!" or "Gotcha!" In fact, he rarely compares the Confederate experience with the Federal.

A great many arrests were for conscription evasion. Quite a number were explained as "Union man." What that actually meant, he will not say. In many cases, the Confederate Congress had approved suspension of the writ of habeus corpus, thereby making arrests and holding civilian prisoners "legal." But it was a slipshod organization.

Early in the war, the Confederate Congress made provision to name agents for the purpose of examining civilian prisoners to make sure that they were being held legally. As with most well-meaning actions, specifications were lacking in that a goodly number of prisoners were forgotten and spent extended time locked-up -- even as long as the duration -- without charges or hearings. That sort of thing happens in war time. Confederate as well as Federal.

I have flagged three statements to re-examine where he might have based a conclusion on insufficient evidence. I'd be interested to know if anyone else has flagged the same or other instances.

The present conclusion: That the Confederacy tread a straight constitutional line with regard to civil rights is indeed a myth. That it was harsher or less harsh than Federal encroachments is largely left to the reader's judgement.

Specifics, anyone?
Ole

[gary]

You guys are way above my head. After 300 plus books, I wouldn't dare try to argue with the gang here why the war started as its out of my league.

I'm more interested in battles and sometimes even opinions as to who messed up where. The Longstreet v. McLaws is an excellent example of where contemporary historians have revealed that McLaws was wrongfully accused by Longstreet of bumbling up Knoxville. The Marble Man myth of Lee & the Lost Cause was also discredited by modern historians. So, a discussion about books and their perspective, especially reviews of books written by participants in that light would be interesting. It's the advantage of a reprint with its inclusive introduction by a modern historian over an original first edition. Sure the first edition is worth more, but the reprint may teach you more.

[unionblue]

Ole,

You make reference to three statements to re-examine. May I ask which three statements you refer to?

Unionblue

[ole]

Neil:

I haven't re-read the pages I've flagged, but I can give you the numbers:141.145. 155, 166. and 170. In doing that small chore, I did not look at the page to see what it was that I wanted to question. Indeed, if I remember what I wanted to question on three of the six, I'll be operating about par.

All I can say, tonight, is that when I read the page, something didn't sound right and I flagged it. I'll make it a point to get back into those after I've finished the current chapter in Potter.
Ole

[ole]

Gary:

It only looks like some know more than you. (It's actually not true.) You are reading opinions -- well-founded opinions, to be sure, but opinions nontheless. And, in that respect, yours is as good as anyone's.

I am another whose main interest lies in the battles -- planning, movements, mistakes, mistakes taken advantage of, opportunities missed, generalship, leadership, strategy, tactics, weapons used to what effect, et al.

However, I'm easily distracted and can't resist charging off in a new direction. When I'm older and run out of spare time, I'll quit buying books trying to explain why and when sectionalism started and reached mileposts in its development -- and the peculiar institution's role in nurturing that separation.

Maybe you'd like to start a thread on a particular battle and we could pick it apart, day-by-day, hour-by-hour? Objectives, critiques of major players, strategy, operations, fast footwork, dumb moves.

For example, it might be said that Lee had no prepared plan to fight at Gettysburg nor, for that matter, did Meade. This was accidental. Grant had prepared plans to take Vicksburg, and Pemberton/Johnston had plenty of time to develope counter strategies. Rosecrans had designs at Chickamauga, but I think he was unpleasantly surprised by Bragg who did. That happened with some frequency.

Never mind, think about it. This is the wrong thread anyway.
Ole

[ole]

Neil:

Reread parts of Neely to reassemble his points and redirect inspection of the pages I flagged during the first reading. On page 141 he states:

“It proves the extent of the southern leadership’s tacit acknowledgment of the poor whites’ critique of slave society for absorbing resources that a free society would apply to capital improvements in infrastructure and education?”

I contend that it did nothing of the sort. That the governing elite considered deserters, shirkers, collaborationists, conscientious objectors, and the occasional willing tool to be ignorant means just that – they considered them ignorant. I see no tacit acknowledgment of the poor whites’ critique, if there was one.

To be sure, a few on both sides of the borders warned that the slavery system served to depress and repress the little people – the warnings were ignored. They are still not considered a factor today.

[ole]

Neil:

On page 145, Neely almost restates his previous “proof:”

“The ‘stampedes’ from East Tennessee to Kentucky to avoid Confederate conscription and control likewise revealed – mainly in the nomenclature applied – the widespread willingness to regard large segments of southern society as ludicrously ignorant. What can be said conclusively about the ‘panics’ and ‘stampedes’ is that the readiness of the Confederate authorities to attribute mass behavior to the ignorance of its people provided unconscious indictment of their society for consistent underinvestment in education and economic development.”

As in the previous post (about page 141), it appears that Neely is attempting to attach another significance to the governing elite’s consideration of its constituents as ignorant. It may be an “unconscious indictment … for consistent underinvestment …” but it is more plainly an elitist attitude.

[ole]

Neil:

On page155, I can’t find a reason for the flag. The information near that location does, however, show Davis’s deviousness in using northern civil rights violations against them while holding his own in secret. But then, “all’s fair…”

I have no particular quarrel with the statement I flagged on page 166:

“The only way to reconcile the anomalies in Davis’s position is to see in his mind a distinction between martial law as applied in the various proclamations of 1862 and early 1863 and the supension of the writ of habeas corpus. The former seemed to him the law used during sieges and contained nothing political about it. The latter was aimed at political opposition to the war effort. It is not a distinction that would be found compelling by civil libertarians, perhaps, and it made no difference at all to the inmates in Castle Thunder and Salisbury. The constitution of the Confederate States of America made no such distinction. But the distinction allowed Davis to continue to see himself as one who maintained constitutional rectitude until conditions became impossible and to cultivate his image as an apostle of constitutional purity for the rest of his long life.

“Abraham Lincoln, for his part, never had to change his policy on civil liberties. From the beginning to the end of the Civil War he adhered to the policy that seemed best suited to holding on to what he already had. Even with the border states secured to the Union by late 1862, similar limitations on civil liberties appeared necessary to enforce conscription.

“Historians could not help but notice the differences in Confederate and Union ideologies and policies – the Union restricting liberty from the earliest moment to the very end of the war, while the Confederacy made a great point [emphasis mine] of its maintenance of civil rights in the midst of war almost to the very end. Dwelling more on what the presidents said than what they did, historians assumed that Confederates valued white civil liberties more than Northerners did and that Confederate leaders had more reverence for the constitution.”

Neil:

[ole]

Last flag, page 170 – no quarrel at all:

“The supposed contrast between the fate of liberty in the North and South during the Civil War was substantially a construct of southern leaders after the war, as figures one at loggerheads politically – even as odd a couple as Jefferson Davis and Alexander H. Stephens – came to agree on a strategy of contrasting the supposed despotic tendencies of the North with the consistent history of concern for liberty in the South. In the absence of readily available evidence to the contrary from Confederate archives, they managed to fool posterity for a long time.”

Neely could have used a good editor. His sentences are needlessly long and frequently confusing. There are many those annoying examples where you read a sentence, then re-read it to get what he was saying. Ultimately, you end up rewriting the sentence in your head and congratulating yourself in how you would have said it better.

All in all, a worthwhile read, if not an addition to your library.