- Joined
- Jan 12, 2016
- Location
- South Carolina
War for What?
by Francis W. Springer
1990
221 pages, 30 chapters with Acknowledgements, references, population charts, index and bibliography
I first learned about this book not that long ago in connection with Kevin Levin's recent book "Searching for Black Confederates". In it he cites an unnamed book by Francis W. Springer that Springer had been commissioned to write by the SCV commander in chief in response to the mini-series Roots in 1977. I was interested to see if such a book had ever been written, and I found this short volume did in fact appear in 1990, thirteen years later. The price was right, so I bought a copy and started reading. And as I found out, the book that was written is not about "the valuable contributions to the Confederate war effort" that black Southerners made, and is certainly not a book about "black Confederates". I'm not sure it could even be classified as a respone to Roots, though parts of it could be seen that way. It contains information on black Southerners in several chapters, but the information does not conform to the "myth" of the black Confederate as commonly described by Levin and others, though there is no doubt that Springer believes the slave and free populations were generally loyal, which was a surprising attitude to see given the decade in which the book was written.
The chapters are generally short, sometimes only three to five pages. The longest chapters are the ones on Reconstruction. This is a book that spends some time in the early North American colonies, and then details the breakdown of relations between North and South and the causes, spends a few chapters on the Civil War, and then covers Reconstruction, so it goes through a long stretch of history in a relatively small number of pages..
The first few chapters cover the colonization of North America, the competition between the English, Spanish and French, the development of tobacco farming in Virginia and the introduction of indentured servitude and slave labor. Springer discusses the economics of slavery in the colonies and the economics of slavery in Africa. The chapter on the Middle Passage discusses mortality rates and how New England financed and carried on the slave trade in North America, before finally discussing the disposition of slaves when they reached North America.
From there the book shifts to a discussion of abolitionism and related issues. This is a long chapter that is not sympathetic to the methods the abolitionists employed, and Springer blames them for creating a lot of the angry climate that would eventually lead to war by their demands for immediate, uncompensated emancipation and their constant attacks on the character of Southerners. He spends some time examining demographics here, and the rate at which the North outpaced the South, with the South's political power diminishing over time. In many ways, once the book moves past the early focus on the history of slavery as it related to North America, the time period and issues covered by this book remind me of Ludwell Johnson's "Division and Reunion", only Springer is clearly pro-Southern and takes the time to point out the foibles of the North and the abolitionists rather than placing the lions share of the blame with the South.
The chapters on the war cover the build-up and beginning and some of the causes. Springer again spends some time with demographics and devotes a chapter to the emancipation proclamation. To the extent that he discusses slavery, he is clearly of the belief that though the slaves wanted freedom, they were generally on the side of the South during the war. He does not subscribe to the idea that tens of thousands of black soldiers fought for the South. He notes that black troops were not authorized by the Confederate government until "almost the last days of the war". He mentions Patrick Cleburne's proposal to arm the slaves in 1864 but does not think it could have worked even then, due to a lack of weapons and food for existing troops, let alone new ones.
The war ends, Lincoln is assassinated, and the final portion of the book deals with Reconstruction. As with the pre-war chapters, Springer focuses largely on the North and the Republicans and how they approached the defeated South. If judged by the length of the chapters and the author's tone in discussing the subject, this portion of the book evoked the most feeling from Springer, who makes no attempt at neutrality in his disdain for men like Thaddeus Stevens or Charles Sumner.
The final chapter returns to the subject of black contributions to the war effort, so out of a thirty chapter book, Springer does devote one chapter to what the memo from 1977 ostensibly asked him to write about. He mentions a number of individual free and slave black men who fought or otherwise contributed to the war effort on the side of the Confederate States. It's worth noting here that he cites individual examples and does not claim "tens of thousands", and he includes free men who enlisted as musicians or cooks, and slaves who demonstrated loyalty, men like Bill Yopp or Levi Oxendine that many of us have run across while researching this topic. The book closes with 14 pages of references, population numbers from the census of 1860, 1840 and 1790, an index of topics, and a few pages of addenda.
Overall, I would sum up this book as perhaps a pro-Southern version of the same type of history that Ludwell Johnson wrote, as I noted earlier. It is an attempt to look at the causes and effects of the Civil War by examining both the slave trade and the ways in which the abolitionists and the Republican party reacted to slavery in relation to the South. Springer definitely takes the point of view that slaves were generally loyal to the South. I will note that he was 90 when this book was published, so it's likely that his ideas were formed long before the modern era of Civil War scholarship. I found that while I disagreed with some of Springer's views, it was a refreshing change to examine the Northern side of the equation when it came to creating the atmosphere that led to the war. I feel like that is not often examined in the other histories I have read. It takes two to have a conflict after all. And it is hard to see this book as any sort of proof that the "black Confederate myth" emerged from the SCV during the late 70s and the 1980s when Springer was writing it, because apart from his claims of loyalty, nothing in the examples he cites turns slaves into solders or inflates their numbers beyond individuals acting out of individual motives. The book is only partially a response to Roots and it's depiction of the slave trade in that it puts the practice of slavery in context and examines how and why it came to be such an important part of the North American economy, and who was involved in the "triangle" that was the Atlantic slave trade. But by and large it is exactly what the title indicates, an examination of what caused the Civil War and what some of the results were.
by Francis W. Springer
1990
221 pages, 30 chapters with Acknowledgements, references, population charts, index and bibliography
I first learned about this book not that long ago in connection with Kevin Levin's recent book "Searching for Black Confederates". In it he cites an unnamed book by Francis W. Springer that Springer had been commissioned to write by the SCV commander in chief in response to the mini-series Roots in 1977. I was interested to see if such a book had ever been written, and I found this short volume did in fact appear in 1990, thirteen years later. The price was right, so I bought a copy and started reading. And as I found out, the book that was written is not about "the valuable contributions to the Confederate war effort" that black Southerners made, and is certainly not a book about "black Confederates". I'm not sure it could even be classified as a respone to Roots, though parts of it could be seen that way. It contains information on black Southerners in several chapters, but the information does not conform to the "myth" of the black Confederate as commonly described by Levin and others, though there is no doubt that Springer believes the slave and free populations were generally loyal, which was a surprising attitude to see given the decade in which the book was written.
The chapters are generally short, sometimes only three to five pages. The longest chapters are the ones on Reconstruction. This is a book that spends some time in the early North American colonies, and then details the breakdown of relations between North and South and the causes, spends a few chapters on the Civil War, and then covers Reconstruction, so it goes through a long stretch of history in a relatively small number of pages..
The first few chapters cover the colonization of North America, the competition between the English, Spanish and French, the development of tobacco farming in Virginia and the introduction of indentured servitude and slave labor. Springer discusses the economics of slavery in the colonies and the economics of slavery in Africa. The chapter on the Middle Passage discusses mortality rates and how New England financed and carried on the slave trade in North America, before finally discussing the disposition of slaves when they reached North America.
From there the book shifts to a discussion of abolitionism and related issues. This is a long chapter that is not sympathetic to the methods the abolitionists employed, and Springer blames them for creating a lot of the angry climate that would eventually lead to war by their demands for immediate, uncompensated emancipation and their constant attacks on the character of Southerners. He spends some time examining demographics here, and the rate at which the North outpaced the South, with the South's political power diminishing over time. In many ways, once the book moves past the early focus on the history of slavery as it related to North America, the time period and issues covered by this book remind me of Ludwell Johnson's "Division and Reunion", only Springer is clearly pro-Southern and takes the time to point out the foibles of the North and the abolitionists rather than placing the lions share of the blame with the South.
The chapters on the war cover the build-up and beginning and some of the causes. Springer again spends some time with demographics and devotes a chapter to the emancipation proclamation. To the extent that he discusses slavery, he is clearly of the belief that though the slaves wanted freedom, they were generally on the side of the South during the war. He does not subscribe to the idea that tens of thousands of black soldiers fought for the South. He notes that black troops were not authorized by the Confederate government until "almost the last days of the war". He mentions Patrick Cleburne's proposal to arm the slaves in 1864 but does not think it could have worked even then, due to a lack of weapons and food for existing troops, let alone new ones.
The war ends, Lincoln is assassinated, and the final portion of the book deals with Reconstruction. As with the pre-war chapters, Springer focuses largely on the North and the Republicans and how they approached the defeated South. If judged by the length of the chapters and the author's tone in discussing the subject, this portion of the book evoked the most feeling from Springer, who makes no attempt at neutrality in his disdain for men like Thaddeus Stevens or Charles Sumner.
The final chapter returns to the subject of black contributions to the war effort, so out of a thirty chapter book, Springer does devote one chapter to what the memo from 1977 ostensibly asked him to write about. He mentions a number of individual free and slave black men who fought or otherwise contributed to the war effort on the side of the Confederate States. It's worth noting here that he cites individual examples and does not claim "tens of thousands", and he includes free men who enlisted as musicians or cooks, and slaves who demonstrated loyalty, men like Bill Yopp or Levi Oxendine that many of us have run across while researching this topic. The book closes with 14 pages of references, population numbers from the census of 1860, 1840 and 1790, an index of topics, and a few pages of addenda.
Overall, I would sum up this book as perhaps a pro-Southern version of the same type of history that Ludwell Johnson wrote, as I noted earlier. It is an attempt to look at the causes and effects of the Civil War by examining both the slave trade and the ways in which the abolitionists and the Republican party reacted to slavery in relation to the South. Springer definitely takes the point of view that slaves were generally loyal to the South. I will note that he was 90 when this book was published, so it's likely that his ideas were formed long before the modern era of Civil War scholarship. I found that while I disagreed with some of Springer's views, it was a refreshing change to examine the Northern side of the equation when it came to creating the atmosphere that led to the war. I feel like that is not often examined in the other histories I have read. It takes two to have a conflict after all. And it is hard to see this book as any sort of proof that the "black Confederate myth" emerged from the SCV during the late 70s and the 1980s when Springer was writing it, because apart from his claims of loyalty, nothing in the examples he cites turns slaves into solders or inflates their numbers beyond individuals acting out of individual motives. The book is only partially a response to Roots and it's depiction of the slave trade in that it puts the practice of slavery in context and examines how and why it came to be such an important part of the North American economy, and who was involved in the "triangle" that was the Atlantic slave trade. But by and large it is exactly what the title indicates, an examination of what caused the Civil War and what some of the results were.
Last edited:
Forum Host
Bringing the