A Class War

[unionblue]

I have recently read some excerpts from a book entitled, "The Soul of Battle" by Victor Davis Hanson, a military historian at California State University at Fresno and a visiting professor of military history at the US Naval Academy. I would like to list some of the passages of the book for my fellow board members comments.

Professor Hanson is of the opinion that General William Tecumesh Sherman deserves "a place on the roll call of great liberators in human history. More than any other person, he destroyed the institution of American slavery and the Southern aristocracy that was interwoven with it."

The Professor further states that it took Sherman's 'total war' to uproot slavery as "earlier Northern battlefield sucesses had neither destroyed Southern morale nor dented the Confederacy's ability to field new armies. Union forces had gotten to within a few miles of Richmond yet the South had not sued for peace and did not, in fact, feel it was beaten."

Hanson states that Southern elites, "facing the specter of an egalitarian nation where race and class would lose their power to command, recalcitrant Southern elites dug in deeper for their Armageddon of 1864. There was no tomorrow in defeat, so the entry of Northern invaders created an understandable panic over the end to an entire way of a century-old existence. Many Southerners lived far removed from the mainstream of North American mores. Defeat, the planters believed, would mean surrender to a foreign culture antihetical to their existing hierachies. It would wash away status gained at birth, and allow neutral, heartless markets to govern the opportunity of all citizens. Success and status would be found solely in profit, not in inherited reputation."

The soldiers who were in Sherman's army are in the vast majority Midwest farmers and on the outset of the campaign, knew almost nothing about slavery or slaves. "Indeed, most Northerners had never seen a Negro or a plantation; many were, in the abstract, racists. But once Sherman's men observed the conditions in which slaves were kept unfree, and the ideology and venom of the so-called master class, there arose among these small farmers from the mid-American frontier a powerful repulsion."

"It cannot be emphasized enough that the society Sherman's men found was the polar opposite of the rural Western towns from which they came. True, the slave owners so over-represented among the South's military and political leaders were not truly characteristic of Southern society. For example, there may have been only 10,000 or so really large slaveholders in the South. About 75% of the South's white population had never had any connection with African chattels at all. Only 385,000 out of some 6 million citizens who lived in the Confederacy or border areas sympathetic to the South were themselves currently slave owners. NEVERTHELESS, MORALLY, ECONOMICALLY, IDEOLOGICALLY, AND CULTURALLY, SLAVERY AND THE ARISTOCRATIC CULTURE IT BUILT WERE AT THE CENTER OF SOUTHERN LIFE, AND ACCEPTED AND SUPPORTED BY MOST SOUTHERNERS, ESPECIALLY IN THE FACE OF NORTHERN CRITICISM."

Hanson states that Sherman's march took on the appearance of an ideological crusade that professed that collective Confederate defeat must be synonymous with individual ruin. The rank and file recruits were convinced that they were in a total war with haughty purveyors of real evil. Plantation homes were looted and burned, slave pens destroyed and the dogs used to hunt escaped slaves were shot. Union soldiers were disgusted with symbols of class hierarchy such as reserved middle and front seats for the well-born in "Patrician Churchs".

"Historians operating with the modernist assumption that idealism is only a veneer for self-interest, that war is always amoral rather than on occasion utilitarian, and uncomfortable with absolute notions of good and evil, have downplayed the actions of Sherman's soldiers as political avenging angels. But the root of the fearsome spirit and success of Sherman's Union soldiers in Georgia was their collective fervor for emancipation and destruction of the tyrannical Southern ruling class. Sherman and his Midwestern farmer-fighters had a keen appreciation that the landed lords of the South, for all their proclamations about states' rights and the preservation of liberty as envisioned by the Founding Fathers, had championed secession mostly to preserve and expand their own vast estates and multitudes of slaves. Property and position, not ideas, were the ultimate issue of this war. This Sherman, almost alone of Northern generals, understood."

"After Sherman's march through Georgia and the Carolinas, every child of the South knew that the will of the Confederate people, as as their army, had been crushed. Yet, Sherman killed very few, and with genuine reluctance. Rapes during the march were almost unknown. But he and his men were harshly unkind to the elitists running the Southern plantations. In the process, these soldiers did more than any abolitionist or liberator ever born in our country to guarantee the American proposition that each man is as good as another."

Thus ends a rather long article that I read on the book, "The Soul of Battle" by the author. I had to leave out much of the article as it was rather long, but I would like to get your feel on the man's thrust that Sherman and his army of Mid-west farmers were really hot to destroy the planter class and thereby got rid of any aristocracy in America.

Awaiting your response,
Unionblue

[hoosier]

I'll certainly agree that Sherman's march did a great deal to crush Southern morale and put an end to the dominating influence of the aristocratic planter class.

I'm not sure I agree with Prof. Hanson's assertion that Sherman's men believed they were on an ideological crusade with the purpose of ending the influence of the planter class.

My impression is that enlisted men in most wars are fairly apolitical. They go where the officers tell them to go and do what the officers tell them to do, and other than that, they worry about their own personal situations.

Maybe Prof. Hanson is right that what Sherman's men saw on their march made them more ideological than most. I haven't read enough to know that they weren't. I know my own great-grandfather's Civil War diary gives no hint of such feelings, but then he didn't penetrate as deeply into the South as Sherman did.

I would say that if the aristocracy in America was eliminated by the Civil War, the elimination was only temporary. I would contend that a new aristocracy eventually came into being, this one being comprised of wealthy industrialists and financiers.

Perhaps the Rockefellers, Kennedys, and DuPonts, to name just a few examples, are fortunate that the Midwesterners' ideological passion had dissipated by the time those families assumed the status of an American aristocracy.

[blue_zouave]

George, I'll concur with your last point that the Civil War was the turning point of American "royalty" - no longer did family an upper-class person make, but money. Still in effect today of course, that's why we've had two King Georges in the past 20 years!

Zou

[thea_447]

"Until we can repopulate Georgia, it is useless to occupy it, but the utter destruction of its roads, houses, and PEOPLE will cripple their military resources. I can make the march, and make Georgia howl." -Gen. W.T. Sherman

"There is a class of people (in the South) men, women and children who must be killed or banished before you can hope for peace and order." -Gen. W. T. Sherman

These are the direct quotes of a murderous man, one whom I assure you is not honored by true Southerners.

"Every one should do all in his power to collect and disseminate the truth, in the hope it may find a place in history and descend to posterity. History is not the relation of campaigns, and battles, and generals or other individuals, but that which shows the principles for which the South contended and which justified her struggle for those principles."- Gen. Robt. E. Lee, C.S.A.

"All that the South has ever desired was the Union as established by our forefathers should be preserved and that the government as originally organized should be administered in purity and truth."
- Gen. Robt. E. Lee, C.S.A.

"Governor, if I had foreseen the use those people designed to make of their victory, there would have been no surrender at Appomattox Courthouse; no sir, not by me. Had I foreseen these results of subjugation, I would have preferred to die at Appomattox with my brave men, my sword in this right hand." - Gen. Robt. E. Lee, C.S.A.

"The Confederate Soldiers were our kinfolk and our heroes. We testify to the country our enduring fidelity to their memory. We commemorate their valor and devotion. There were some things that were not surrendered at Appomattox. We did not surrender our rights and history, nor was it one of the conditions of surrender that unfriendly lips should be suffered to tell the story of that war or that unfriendly hands should write the epitaphs of the Confederate dead. We have a right to teach our children the true history of that war, the causes that led up to it and the principles involved." -Sen.
E.W.Carmack, 1903


Having read through letters from my great grandfather who fought in this war I did not read of fighting to keep the black men in slavery.
What was written were the thoughts of a man far from his wife and children, having willingly gone to war to preserve his family, home, his land and property. Next the letters become more mundane: things like enjoying the new socks his wife had made for him. And the last letters telling of his love for his family, how he missed them all, and finally that he had no socks, no shoes. But the war went on and he continued to fight. Why? Many may think that Southerners were stupid and that they followed the landed gentry into this blindly. To make such an assumption would be an error.

My husband's great grandfather left his home, a log cabin 18 by 20 ft. where he lived with his wife and fifteen children. He too went to fight for a cause he believed him. And no, he owned no slaves. He was a preacher/farmer but he went to war for a cause he believed to be just.

Outrageious tariffs and states rights were Southern causes. Slavery became an issue after Lincoln saw that he couldn't win without bringing this into it. }}}

As for the last poster's comments on kings, I won't comment. I believe that this is a Civil War board and that should be the topic.
But since I am new to this board, perhaps I am in error on this point.

[unionblue]

Thea_447, thank you for sharing your feelings and your thoughts on the above thread, I appreciate anyone who is willing to help in learning on this board.

Your comment about tariffs and states rights were Southern causes is one that I cannot really bring myself to except as the major causes of the Civil War. Slavery and the expansion of slavery seemed to be the major issue before the war and then as you put it, became a major one during the war.

I still go back to the secession articles that each Southern State gave as reasons for leaving the Union and I see slavery and the right to keep and expand that system as one of the primary causes for them leaving.

I leave you with one more quote from Gen. Robert E. Lee, a man I much admire and respect, "I take great pride in my country, her prosperity and institutions, and would defend any state if her rights were invaded. BUT I CAN ANTiCIPATE NO GREATER CALAMITY FOR THE COUNTRY THAN THE DISSOLUTION OF THE UNION. It would be an accumulation of all the evils we complain of, and I am willing to sacrifice everything but honor for its preservation."

Sincerely,
Unionblue

[thea_447]

I can see your point of view, Neil. Since you have brought up the Secession Articles, I would have to point out to you that when the original Constitution was being drawn up,all the states had to agree with each and every item that was to be put into it.

When the delegates selected Thomas Jefferson to write the Declaration of Independence from Britain, the delegates voted to adopt it, and all thirteen colonies declared independence on 7-3-1776.
Each state acted as a sovereign nation, but they acted together. The Declaration is quite clear about this. It states:

These united Colonies are, and of Right ought to be, FREE AND INDEPENDENT STATES; that they are absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connections between then and the state of Great Britian, is, and ought to be, totally dissolved; and that, as Free and Independent States, they have full power to levy war, conclude peace, which INDEPENDENT STATES MAY OF RIGHT DO."

Note that these are INDEPENDENT STATES. Each acted as an independent State before and after the war. They banned together to strengthen their resistance against a common enemy. The colonies were only united in their effort to be free and independent of a king that was attempting to tax them and destroy their liberties.

The first united States government, The Articles of Confederation, was drawn up by committe and approved by Congress. Ratification of each of the thirteen states took more than three years. It existed from 1781 until 1789. The States remained as nations and they were anxious to maintain their individual sovereignty.
These sovereign nations agreed to delegate, not grant, some of their authority to a confederated government for specific task. The nations involved retained all sovereignty not delegated. The end of the Revolution with Great Britain came after the States joined together. Yet the British Crown did not make peace with a single nation called the United States, but with EACH state, throughout their confederated government. Each is acknowledged, by name, to be a nation as free, sovereign, and independent in its own right in Article 1 of the Paris Peace Treaty of 1783.

Later a convention of the States was called to revise the Articles of Confederation as this was considered weak and ineffective, having no power to tax, or power to regulate trade. At the convention in Philadelphia, George Washington, a Southerner, was elected to preside over the assembly.

After a long and difficult period, the men here proposed a new government be formed under a Constitution they'd formulated. James Madison, another Southerner,is considered the Father of the Constitution.Under this Constitution some powere were specifically delegated by the States to the Union government to do only those things that the Constitution allowed it to do. The States, on the other hand, could do ANYTHING that was not specifically forbidden by the Constitution. The Constitution was passed on to the states for their approval or rejection. Each State called its own convention to decide if it would accept the new Constitution. The people in the States were split over the matter, and a great debate ensued. This debate is well documented. Here we have the Federalists who believed that the Constitution, whle it did provide a stronger federal government, could not usurp the power and sovereignty from the states.
The new government would be, as James Madison said, "bound by the chains of the Constitution". Those who opposed the new union were the Antifederalists. Virginia delegates Edmond Randolph and George Mason raised objections throughout the Convention. It was Mason who first purposed a Southern Confederacy in 1787.

And at the New York State Convention debates Alexander Hamilton said, "To coerce a State would be one of the maddest projects ever devised. No State would suffer itself to be used as the instrument of coercing another."
Luther Martin of Maryland charged that the intent of the advocates of the proposed Constitution was "the total abolition and destruction of all State governments." The Antifederalist believed that the Constitution as written would lead to a strong central ("consolidated") government that would steal the sovereignty of the states.
Patrick Henry, a Virginian, refused to even attend, because "he smelt a rat". He said "No nation ever retained its liberty after the loss of the purse and the sword." He believed that in the wording of the Preamble "We the People" should have been "We the States". He was right and changing these three words would have surely changed the course of history. Being such a powerful statesman he could have blocked the ratification altogether, and it was for this reason that the Federalist proposed a compromise, a bill of rights. The purpose of this Bill of Rights was to further bind and control a VERY SMALL and limited federal government. Samuel Adams, of Massachusetts, ws one of the Antifederalists won over by the compromise. He said this of the new union, "Each state retains its sovereignty, freedom, and independence, and every power, jurisdiction and right which is not by this confederation expressly delegated to the United States."

Article X in the Bill of Rights states: "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."

Each state as it adopted the new constitutional government seceded from the old union, the Articles of Confederation. It was made up of thirteen States; the new union began with eleven states. North Carolina had not voted to ratify, and Rhode Island had not even bothered to call a convention. These two states were foreign countries when Washington was inaugurated on April 30, 1789 and were treated as such by the new government. Those who try to prove that the United States was formed as a SINGLE NATION, at an earlier date, tend to IGNORE this fact.

North Carolina ratified the Constitution and joined the union 6 months after Washington had taken the oath of office. Rhode Island joined the union thirteen full months after the inauguation and when she was accepted into the union, her ratifying convention made it clear that she too believed she retained her sovereignty, and could recall all powers delegated to the federal government. Folks in Rhode Island believed they could secede from the new union if they chose. and none of the other States objected to their conditional acceptance to the "New Confederacy."

From Commentaries on the Constitution (Vol. 111, p. 287), Alexander Hamilton said, "The attributes of sovereignty are now enjoyed by every State in the Union."

James Wilson, Pennsylvania, "The Thirteen States are thirteen sovereignties."

Governor Morris: "Each State enjoys sovereign power."

Oliver Ellsworth: "The thirteen States are thirteen sovereign bodies."

Daniel Webster: "The States are Nations."

All of these men, except Daniel Webster, were delegates to the Constitutional Convention.

Daniel Webster, U.S.Senate: 2-15-1833 : "If the Union ws formed by the accession of States, then the Union may be dissolved by the secession of States."

Another very important part of the Articles of Confederation was intentionally dropped from the Constitution. The United States union that began and ended in the 1780's had been declared a "perpetual union" in the Articles of Confederation. Though many aspects of the Articles were carried over into the new Constitution, the words "PERPETUAL UNION" were OMITTED.

Thomas Jefferson believed the union was vital, BUT he did not doubt a state's right to leave the union if it decided to do so. Jefferson said in a letter written in 1802 that he believed that the United States, in and of itself, had no inherent sovereign power. That power was retained by the states.

The Southern cause was State sovereignty, constitutional government with limited federal powers, the same causes that the original union sought independence from, a growing centralized government that violated their rights and intruded into the affairs of sovereign States.

I feel that it is wrong to impose judgment on the people of that time and era. We did not live in their times, and by the same token, they would not understand ours.

History stands alone and should not be judged. But if we are to look at it, we must ALL be willing to look beyond the blatant facts that are laid out so moralistically. The North was not without fault and its leader, Abraham Lincoln, is not the saint nonpareil some would deem him. The man was absolutely ruthless in his drive for an unmatched centralized government. But that is an entirely different issue.
..........

}}}He's in the saddle now! Fall in! Steady, the whole brigade!
Hill's at the ford, cut off! He'll win His way out, ball and blade.
What matter if our shoes are worn? What matter if our feet are torn?
"Quick step--we're with him ere the dawn!" That's "Stonewall Jackson's way."
}}}

[tulip]

It is interesting to note that when Constitutional scholars debate whether there was a hole in the Constitution that made secession legal, they never come to a consensus. Nor did Americans in the first half of the 19th Century.

"No man, no association of men, no state or set of states has a right to withdraw itself from the Union, of its own accord. The same power, which knit us together, can only unknit. The same formality, which forged the links of the Union, is necessary to dissolve it. The majority of states, which form the union, must consent to the withdrawal of any one branch of it. Until that consent has been obtained, any attempt to dissolve the Union or obstruct the efficacy of its constitutional laws is Treason -- Treason to all intents and purposes . . . The illustrious Union, which has been cemented by the blood of our forefathers, the pride of America and the wonder of the world must not be tamely sacrificed to the heated or aspiring hearts of a few malcontents. The Union must be saved, when any one shall dare to assail it." [Richmond Inquirer November 1, 1814]

[tulip]

Personally, I love Sherman for his sharp tongue and bombast. The only notable, North or South, who actually predicted the war and its horrific outcome, Sherman is still an incendiary device burning up the printing presses North and South.

Victor Davis Hanson also published an article on Sherman's March in the November 1999 issue of American Heritage published. Hanson patiently outlines the exact destruction and unravels the myths. "We must here make a vital distinction between 'total' war and a war of 'terror.' Sherman surely waged the latter, seeking to shock the enemy through the destruction of its landscape and the wreckage of its hopes to such a degree that it would desist from supporting the killing of Union troops. But that terror was not total, and he never resorted to any of the barbarities of the modern age -- ethnic cleansing, concentration camps, mass killing, indiscriminate bombing, and torture -- to achieve his ends."

Hanson shows with contemporary evidence that much of the outrage rhetoric in diaries and letters of the time was the outrage against property destruction and personal dignity rather than crimes against persons. This outrage was typically expressed in the flamboyant writing style that flourished in the CW era filled with hyperbole and emotion driven embellishment.

Hanson notes the frequently quoted depredations against southerners. “. . . we learn that there were few, if any, gratuitous murders on the march. There seem also to have been less than half a dozen rapes, a fact acknowledged by both sides. Any killing outside of battle was strictly military execution in response to the shooting of Northern prisoners. The real anomaly seems to be that Sherman brought more than sixty thousand young men through one of the richest areas of the enemy without unchecked killing or murder.”

Lee Kennett, Professor Emeritus of History at the University of Georgia echoes Hanson’s view in his book <u>Marching through Georgia</u> (1995). “The widespread references to ‘outrage’ in correspondence of the period can be misleading, for it had several applications; thus when Mary Gay, a witness to the Federal occupation of Decatur, wrote of ‘outrages and indignities too revolting to mention,’ she was not referring to wholesale sexual assault, but tot he way her parlor looked after a ransacking by Garrard’s cavalry . . . Whatever the rumors that circulated in the last weeks of 1864, whatever stories were told afterward, it is significant that widespread rape was not to be among the charges Georgians so often leveled against the men of Sherman’s army after the war, though it would have been a telling one, had they been able to justify it. It was not out of a spirit of forbearance that the people of Georgia looked back on their enemies of 1864 as only brutes, ruffians, thieves, incendiaries and vandals.” (page 307) In a letter to Henry Halleck dated December 24, 1864,

Sherman expressed his goals in a letter to his brother. "I attach more importance to these deep incisions into the enemy's country, because this war differs from European wars in this particular: we are not only fighting hostile armies, but a hostile people, and must make old and young, rich and poor, feel the hard hand of war, as well as their organized armies. I know that this recent movement of mine through Georgia has had a wonderful effect in this respect. Thousands who had been deceived by their lying newspapers to believe that we were being whipped all the time now realize the truth, and have no appetite for a repetition of the same experience. To be sure, Jeff. Davis has his people under pretty good discipline, but I think faith in him is much shaken in Georgia, and before we have done with her South Carolina will not be quite so tempestuous.”

There is no doubt that Sherman achieved his objective. Was there damage? Of course, but that damage was against property and pride. Unfortunately, through the ripple affect, Georgia suffered well into the 20th C while the same ripple effect turned humiliation into accusations of barbarism that grew rhetorically from generation to generation.

[unionblue]

Thea, Please do me a favor, scroll down and check out the threads "Tenth Amendment" and "Was the Civil War Constitutional." They are both debates that cover a lot of ground about the idea of the Tariff and such.

I also do not go along with the idea that somehow the Constitution had a "get out of the Union free card" somewhere in the tenth amendment. The idea of secession was a radical, out of left field, concept mainly from one John Calhoun. Nor does the old idea that the 13 colonies somehow are looked upon as 13 seperate countries fly with me either. The idea of secession was looked upon with horror by most of the early members of Congress, to include old George himself.

Again I ask you check out the two threads I have mentioned and then check back with me here.

If need be, I will repeat a lot of the argument presented on those threads here to try and convince you why I do not abscribe to the tariff idea, but if you can check them out and get back with me on what you think of them.

I will sum up with the opinion that the war was not about tariffs, not even the Southerners who led the secession movement wanted that reason attached to their cause. Slavery was the issue to them at that time and continued to be throughout the war. Here are a few quotes from some of those Southerners themselves:

Henry L. Benning, GA politician and future Confederate general, writting in 1849 to his fellow Georgian, Howell Cobb: "First then, it is apparent, horribly apparent, that the slavery question rides insolently over every other everywhere -- in fact that is the ONLY QUESTION which in the least affects the results of the elections."

Albert Gallatin Brown, US Senator from MS, speaking with regard to the several filibuster expeditions to Central America: "I want Cuba...I want Tamaulipas, Potosi, and one or two other Mexican States; and I want them all for the same reason -- for the planting and spreading of slavery."

Senator Robert M. T. Hunter of Virginia: "There is not a respectable system of civilization known to history whose foundations were not laid in the institution of domestic slavery."

Richmon Enquirer, 1856: "Democratic liberty exists solely because we have slaves...freedom is not possible without slaves."

Atlanta Confederacy, 1860: "We regard every man in our midst an enemy to the institutions of the South; who does not boldly declare that he believes African slavery to be a social, moral, and political blessing."

Lawrence Keitt, Congressman from South Carolina, in a speech to the House on Jan. 25, 1860: "African slavery is the corner-stone of the industrial, social, and political fabric of the South; and whatever wars against it, wars against her very existence. Strike down the institution of African slavery and you reduce the South to depopulation and barbarism." Later in the same speech he said, "The anti-slavery party contend that slavery is wrong in itself, and the Government is a consolidated national democracy. We of the South contend that slavery is right, and that this is a confederate Republic of sovereign States." Keitt again, this time as a delegate to the South Carolina secession convention, during the debates on the states declaration of causes: "BUT THE TARIFF IS NOT THE QUESTION WHICH BROUGHT THE PEOPLE TO THEIR PRESENT ATTITUDE. We are to give a summary of our causes to the world, but mainly to the other Southern States, whose co-action we wish, and we MUST NOT MAKE A FIGHT ON THE TARIFF QUESTION. Our people have come to this on the question of SLAVERY. I AM WILLING, IN THAT ADDRESS TO REST IT UPON THAT QUESTION. I THINK IT IS THE GREAT CENTRAL POINT FROM WHICH WE ARE NOW PROCEEDING, AND I AM NOT WILLING TO DIVERT THE PUBLIC ATTENTION FROM IT."

From the Confederate Constitution: Article 1, Section 9, Paragraph 4: "No bill of attainder, ex post facto law, or law denying or impairing the right of property in negro slaves shall be passed."
Article IV, Section 3, Paragraph 3: "The Confederate States may acquire new territory...In all such territory, the institution of negro slavery, as it now exists in the Confederate States, shall be recognized and protected by Congress ant the territorial government."

From the diary of James B. Lockney, 28th Wisconsin Infantry, writing near Arkadelphia, Arkansas (10/29/63): "Last night I talked awhile to those men who came in day before yesterday from the S.W. part of the state about 120 miles distant. Many of them wish Slavery abolished &amp; slaves out of the country as they said it was the cause of the War, and the Curse of our Country &amp; the foe of the body of the people--the poor whites. They knew the Slave masters got up the war expressly in the interests of the institution, &amp; with no real cause from the Government or the North."

Sincerely,
Unionblue _

(Message edited by Unionblue on February 08, 2003)

(Message edited by Unionblue on February 08, 2003)

[tulip]

"Although I have taught at a New England college for the past 23 years, I am a son of the South. My ancestors on both sides fought for the Confederacy, and my father was named Jack, not John, because of his father's reverence for Stonewall Jackson. . . When I went off to high school in Virginia, I packed a Confederate battle flag in my suitcase and hung it proudly in my dorm room. My grandmother, whom I loved dearly, was a card-carrying member of the United Daughters of the Confederacy.

I did not think much about secession and the causes of the war back then. My focus was on the battlefield and Lee's valiant men, who had fought so hard and so long before finally yielding to overwhelming numbers. But if anyone asked me what the war was about, I had a ready answer for them. I knew from listening to adult conversations about The War, as it was called, and from my limited reading on the subject that the South had seceded for one reason and one reason only: states' rights. . . It was crystal clear to me that the Southern states had left the Union to defend their just and sovereign rights -- rights the North was determined to deny my region and my ancestors. Anyone who thought differently was either deranged or a Yankee, and neither class deserved to be taken seriously on the subject.

All of this is a roundabout introduction to a point I wish to make at the onset: despite my scholarly training and years spent trying to practice the historian's craft, I found this in many ways a difficult and painful book to write. Even though I am far removed -- both in time and attitude -- from my boyhood dreaming about Confederate glory, I am still hit with a profound sadness when I read over the material on which this study is based. . .

Other scholars, most notably Bertram Wyatt-Brown and Kenneth S. Greenberg, have pointed to cultural factors -- notions of honor and ideas about coercion, tyranny, and republicanism -- that colored the way Southerners reacted to what they saw as Northern moves against Southern interests in the years leading up to the war.

I have no quarrel with any of these historians, and I have learned a great deal from their work. But I am convinced that the speeches and letters of the Southern commissioners of 1860/61 also reveal a great deal about secession and the coming of the Civil War. I believe deeply that the story these documents tell is one that all of us, northerners and southerners, black and white, need to confront as we try to understand our past and move toward a future in which a fuller commitment to decency and racial justice will be part of our shared experience."

Charles B. Dew, <u>Apostles of Disunion,</u> Introduction.