To All,
I must confess, I grow mighty weary at the cries that 'Southern' history is being suppressed and that only the 'Northern' version of the Civil War is being published or presented and has been the only such version ever put out by 'the victors.'
Before and at the start of the Civil War, the Southern leadership that led the region into rebellion had no problem saying what they meant. Jefferson Davis gives speeches out in plain sight in 1861 saying secession was justified because the election of Lincoln meant "property in slaves [would be] so insecure as to be comparatively worthless...thereby annihilating in effect property worth thousands of millions of dollars." Alexander H. Stephens gave his speech before God and the public and stated at Savannah on March 21, 1861, that slavery was "the immediate cause of the late rupture and the present revolution" causing the South to secede from the Union. Even later, Stephens went further on the reason for secession by saying the United States had been founded on the false idea that all men were created equal. Instead, he states the Confederacy in contrast was "founded upon exactly the opposite idea; its foundations are laid, its cornerstone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery, subordination to the superior race, is his natural and normal condition. This, our new Government, is the first, in the history of the world, based on this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth."
After the war, the song above gets a hasty make-over. The Confederacy is gone and slavery gone with it, everyone agreeing it was not a nice thing. How to tell the story that the Confederacy broke up the Union, started a war that killed 620,000 Americans in a thwarted attempt to keep four million black slaves in bondage without embarrassing your ancestors? You spin the cause of the war to something else, ANYTHING else.
Davis and Stephens (and others) decide to deny, hide, purge, etc., the idea that slavery had anything to do with slavery. Southern states seceded for states rights, over constitutional issues, tariffs, economics, cultural issues, etc., etc., ANYTHING but slavery. For instance, Davis states, postwar, that the South fought solely for "the inalienable right of a people to change their government...to withdraw from a Union into which they had, as sovereign communities, voluntarily entered." The "existence of African servitude," he maintained , "was in no wise the cause of the conflict, but only an incident." Stephens played the same tune. "Slavery, so called (I wonder what the heck else you would call it?), was but the question on which these antagonistic principles...of Federation, on the one side, and Centralism, or Consolidation, on the other...were finally brought into...collision with each other on the field of battle." (Whatever helps you sleep at night, Alex.)
It is this amazing ability to separate 1861 through 1865 with postwar fantasy that has always amazed me. Plus the unbelievable idea that somehow the Southern viewpoints of the war have been 'suppressed,' 'buried,' 'ignored,' 'banned,' or that some huge PC conspiracy prevents the Southern version of civil war history from getting a 'fair' hearing or from being heard at all.
The fact of the matter is, during the first half of the 20th century the argument that slavery had little to do with the causes of the war between North and South had a great deal of support from professional historians. The "Progressive school" was at the top of the heap of American historiography from the early 1900s to the 1940s. The progressives maintained that differences between certain interest groups and classes brought about the war. Industrialists vs. farmers, capital vs. labor, railroads vs. farmers, manufacturers vs. consumers, etc. They go on to say instead of slavery the real issue of American politics was centered around the economic interest of these bickering groups: tariffs, taxes, banks and finance, land policies, susidies to business or agriculture and such. In the Progessive view, the war was not primarily a conflict between North and South. "Merely by the accidents of climate, soil, and geography," according to Charles Beard, one of the leading proponents of the progressive thought. In other words, it was accidental that slavery was in the South and free labor was in the North. To their view, slavery and free labor in the North was no better or no worse than the other. The real issues between North and South was the tariff, government subsidies to transportain and manufacturing, public land sales, financial policies and other types of economic issues.
The Progressive view of the Civil War and it's causes were considered a 'godsend' to a generation of mostly Southern-born historians who went with that flow and said this theory proved slavery had little or nothing to do with the war. And hence we get the version of history that says Lincoln was not elected over the issue of slavery and its expansion into the territories. Instead it's economics, tariffs, banks, and evil capitalist railroad barrons against the simple and unsuspecting, majority farmers and such of the South. Pretty nice.
There's also an offshoot of this thought which dominates the workings of historians during the 1940s. Its called revisionism. These folks claim that none of the sectional conflicts (i.e., slavery, tariffs, states rights, etc.) were genuinely divisive at all. They advance the theroy that political extremists, on both sides, whipped up such passions that things got out of hand and what could have/should have been solved by American politicians and compromise, boiled over into war. The problem is with this school of thought, while blaming the extemists of both sides, revisionists tend to really hammer on antislavery radicals, even an antislavery moderate Lincoln, much more than they do anyone else (such as fire-eaters, disunionists, etc.) Again, this hands those who wish to portray the South as a victim a pretty good platform. These antislavery fanatics force the South into a defensive posture, making it as though the South merely reacted to Northern attacks (verbal and otherwise) and hence we get the "War of Northern Aggression" line.
Again, these views of history, where slavery is not the cause of the war, etc., have been around for a LONG time, both in the North and in the South. I will concede the idea that the history taught in our nation's high schools can never go into such detail. Hence the Lincoln and slavery mantra. It's easy, it's quick, next chapter please. But the idea that it is not presented in a different format in southern schools cannot be questioned either. The simple fact of the matter is, no one suppressed southern views of the civil war. Heck, even I know that as soon as 1866, a southern version of the war was already in print and sold all over the country. Why wasn't it suppressed? Why wasn't the author hauled off to prison? Because he wasn't, that's why.
Through most of my own research and study I have found there has been a more concentrated effort to deny, suppress and outright change historical fact by those in the South immediately after the war than any other so-called PC effort in the North.
So enough of 'your version' or 'your historians.' Why is it when people talk about their 'Southern Heritage' they only focus on four, short years of the failed attempt at rebellion? Why not simply say 'Confederate Heritage?' Southern heritage stretches back to the very first settlement in this country to the present day and is much deeper and richer than that short span of four years. (Yes, I know, it is a part of your Southern heritage, just as it is mine, but it's not the WHOLE part of your southern heritage, is it?)
But don't try to sell me the idea that you are being somehow shortchanged by all the majority of present-day historians who are saying slavery brought on the war. Stop whining that you are being somehow cheated of the chance to present your view of that time. You haven't. If anything, you've had almost a century at center-stage. Historians who have been born, raised and taught in the South are some of the ones who are bringing slavery back to center stage, so enough with the Northern view of civil war history.
Just present your facts and see if they stand up to the historical light and quit yelling offsides when someone disagrees with you.
Prove it or move on.
Don't cry about how you never get the chance to do so or (shock upon shock) we don't agree with your view. That's all it is, a disagreement, not an attempt to stiffle or suppress or censor you.
Enough venting.
Unionblue