The more I read, the more I realize I know little to nothing (no pun intended) about the North and South's reasons for Union/secession. More explicitly, my view was based on movies I saw or subjects quickly studied in high school rather than the varied views of scholarship deftly presented in essays/documents such as Perman and Taylor's or books written like that of Dew's Apostles of Disunion.
Perman & Taylor readings
Sheepish disclaimer aside, Chapter Four's "Sectionalism and Secession" helped me to understand what sectionalism meant in both the modern and periodic sense and what the impetus behind secession was. Regarding the two documents by Emerson and Lincoln, it is obvious that Sumner's caning horrified the North, and its' accompanying images were certainly used in speeches to highlight the South's "barbaric" nature. I noted that the whipping of a slave was not mentioned in these documents (although perhaps in other primary, abolitionist sources) as barbaric. A few years later, Lincoln addresses accusations of the North's sectionalism and says it is really the South who is sectional. (It isn't lost on me that he writes like the lawyer he was :). Moreover, he turns the South's arguments and what they are in favor of on them by writing that they are the ones who are not acting according to the Founding Father's precepts.
The last three documents by Southerners written during the secession crisis, illustrate that they too, had blame to throw at the North, and felt justified in seceding. Of course, as Dew mentions, one cannot set aside that the South was primarily concerned about slavery itself. In all the documents, strong language in words like "madcaps," "totally revolutionized," "ignorant, inferior, barbarian," etc. leave no doubt where each stood. For instance, Harris' address to the Georgia assembly, which also appears in Dew, is plain language which is plain sad (as Dew has also asserted in his introduction). Yet, I tried to read the aforementioned articles in a way that would showed me how scared each side was because of the slippery slope leading to the inevitable - secession, then war - following Lincoln's election. Although the first Southern justification articles are forceful, Stephens seemed a little less so; "We will be the architect of our own fortunes," and even though he feels Northerners are "fanatics," one can't help but feel some hesitation on his behalf about secession.
The pair of essays by Grant and Sinha left me with mixed feelings, although they seemed to speak to one another. Grant's essay shows a different side of the same coin in that she examines what she views as the North's sectionalism and some of the ideology she feels fanned the flames of secession. For example, she points out that the North wasn't nationalistic because they had "anti-southern" views and that the North saw the South as "posing a threat" to their way of life. To her, How is not as important as why. That is, she maintains the North's support of "all things Northern" and their claim of nationalism was truly sectional and politically calculated/motivated. Grant makes some concessions, but in the end, she writes that the North was not unified and that "Opposition to the South was a more viable cohesive force ... than was opposition to a threat an ocean away." On page 117, she makes a definitive point that the North was "too" everything to allow "national development" which had both parties interests. I hope I did justice to her essay, as there were so many interesting points in it. By contrast, Sinha's article on South Carolina planters presents the view that they were politically motivated to keep a "separatist" ideology which favored few and "defended bound labor," but was not democratic in nature. Her essay is almost completely differs from Grant's in that she sees no democratic values in the South. She also writes that a distinct ideology, not "broad republican principles" was the reason for disunion in South Carolina (p. 123). Later in the essay, she says that Leonidas Spratt "has been strangely neglected" by scholars of "pro-slavery thought," which I found to be untrue as I read Dew's book, which dedicates at least three or more pages to him and his address to the South. I did wonder if Spratt was considered a radical in his day?, as he was for the African slave trade. Both essays address religion as an inextricable part of the secession equation, although Sinha includes gender as well.
Apostles of Disunion by Charles Dew
Appearances are def. deceiving in Dew's slim volume! I thought it was brave of him to introduce this book in both a scholarly and personal way. His introduction is not to be missed because as a son of the South, he lets the reader know how primary documents in history made him question Southern pride and what the causes of the Civil War were beyond what he learned growing up. Though his intro. is short, it is the Commissioner's own voices in letters and speeches he uses to tell the story of why the South felt secession was necessary after Lincoln's election. I didn't even know that Southerners had commissioners of this sort because it is not usually taught in history courses. Mainly, the trend seems to be to read Harriet B. Stowe, discuss major leaders like Lincoln, or discuss slavery as evil without showing how we got that far. The commissioners were more like henchmen who took their jobs seriuosly without regard (more or less) to war's consequences. No one thougght the war would last as long as it did and with so many casualties on both sides. This book fully engaged me in understanding their roles (especially that of South Carolina, Virginia, and Alabama) and why the war was shortly to follow. Some Southerners were reluctant, while others were adamant and used language that stings especially modern readers and historians alike.
Dew's conclusion firmly asserts that these "Apostles of Disunion" were also "Apostles of Racism." Additionally, he gives three reasons why the South felt threatened, all amounting to apocalyptic scenarios for the white man. One was (he writes) social inequality, two was the possibilty of a "race war," and three was "racial amalgation" (Dew, 77-79). That is, the author sees these reasons not as political discussions but as arguements sometimes slyly, sometimes unapologetically, sometimes brutally cloaked as rhetoric (and violent canings, at times) in the justification for secession. The men, Dew writes, were "untroubled" by "illogical inconsistencies". Any good historian would do just what Dew did: present the facts and let history speak for itself. Any group that cannot see slavery as a major underpinning of the Civil War has not read these documents extensively or chooses to ignore the facts that race and hierarchy, not political affiliations and national pride, caused the inevitable. A history ignored is one that, unfortunately, tends to repeat itself in this and other ways. It should be required reading in high school history courses!
No comments:
Post a Comment