"Ramblings of a Military Historian" Topic

My latest blog is out in Ramblings of a Military Historian: The way I See It based upon a discussion I had with about interpreting and accepting history, in general.

johnmpriest.blogspot.com

Interesting reflections – I have a friend in New York whose wife is from Mississippi;for his father-in-law's birthday he bought him a book on Union soldiers in the Civil War. When his father-in-law commented on the choice he told him that it would be good to see the war from both sides

My great-uncle and great-grandfather both served, in the same unit (4th Minnesota) – great-grandpa was wounded at Iuka, had a long convalesence and spent the rest of the war in the Veteran Reserve Corps due to a leg wound that would not heal

Well said! Spelling errors and all.

Thanks for finding the errors. I went back and corrected the ones which were not intended. I appreciate you reading the blog.

Nice blog post. Your comments about the Lost Cause remind me of "Journey to the Wilderness: War, Memory, and a Southern Family's Civil War Letters" by Frye Gaillard. I recently watched a PBS show based on the book, which is on my list to buy soon.

Disagree. The abolition movement was clearly part of the underlying calculus of the Civil War, but the principal factor was M O N E Y and P O W E R. The Southern senators did not walk out of the US Senate in 1860 over any slavery related issue, and Fort Sumter was not attacked because it had anything to do with slavery. Take a close look into US regional economic disparities and the struggle over tariff policy in the decades preceding the war. The tentacles run far, wide and deep.

Propaganda is a powerful tool to sway and control public beliefs, and it has a prodigious half-life.

B

Rambling is what we do because we are trying to correct so many misconceptions about events by the less knowledgeable general public.

I have been enjoying John's blog. There are a couple of good books out investigating why each side fought the war according to their letters home.

but the principal factor was M O N E Y and P O W E R. The Southern senators did not walk out of the US Senate in 1860 over any slavery related issue,…

Blutarski:

And money, power and slavery weren't related?

Have you read the various states' declarations of independence or Senator Alexander H. Stephens' "Cornerstone" speech explaining why he and the South 'walked out?' link

Stephens mentions a number of reasons for leaving the Union dealing with 'money and power', but he also spends a lot of time on slavery, saying this:

Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea; its foundations are laid, its corner-stone 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 upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth. This truth has been slow in the process of its development, like all other truths in the various departments of science.

Certainly money and power were involved, but slavery is hardly unrelated to those…according to the men who walked out.

To put every possible reason for the Civil War in the "shoes of slavery" is ridiculous.

To claim it was totally unrelated to slavery is equally ridiculous.

The slave-based economy is so prevalent that you can't ignore it.

Yes the transition was possible, but put yourself in the shoes of any Southern Politician of the time, were you going to push for reforms as long as you push the issue ahead of you as had been going on for so long ?

Blutarski is right in that there are major political and economic discrepancy between the South and North that are highly important to understand the US as it existed in the first 3/4ths of the 19th century.

The South was already a stagnant economy, heavily in debt, tied to a few precious agrarian products that were fast becoming the millstone around their necks because of diminishing returns.

The cotton/tobacco/misc industry was being undercut by better production in other countries. All the benefits of using slaves was undone by a very inefficient use of land. Russia built cotton fields that were on average 6-7 times the size of US plantations and had a greater yield per acre than anything they could produce in the Southern states. Labour in India was so cheap it undercut the cost to feed and maintain slaves in some places.

Slavery is not a zero-sum game, it reduces costs to some degree, but if you factor in all the related costs, other countries were doing much better with paid labour because of a much more efficient system of agriculture, subsidies and better integration.

Many Southern politicians were often plantation owners themselves, owned stock in them or had so many constituents they could not ignore the issue. This resulted in systemic myopia that we have seen many times since, politics pumping money into a dying economy. By 1860 slave based agriculture was still viable and profitable, but when you factor in debt and foreign production, the Southern States are grossly inefficient DESPITE having slaves.

I would venture that if slavery hadn't been on everyone's mind and so much effort wasted on trying to push the issue forward to avoid further problems and proper reforms be made the Southern Economy would have been better off and might even have prospered in the decades afterwards instead of trying to reform and rebuild.

Both sides in the conflict did much to antagonize the other party and make dialogue impossible. Southern states were myopically concerned with preserving the institution they began to fear all possible reform. Northern indignation and it's overwhelming economic and cultural influence only added oil to the fire.

But if you wish to deny slavery had anything to do with the Secession, maybe you should look at the declarations before and during the war made by the various Southern States or made in the name of the Confederacy. The how and why may be debatable, as would be who to blame, but ultimately slavery and many related issues were clearly considered important enough to be mentioned repeatedly in the various declarations not once or twice, but repeatedly, with emphasis.

I agree with Patrick R's points. I would add that the South's desire to expand slavery into the territories/new states was also a key factor leading to war. The various compromises in the decades before 1860, while intended to avert war, were merely band-aids that only delayed the inevitable.

It was slavery. We have discussed this many times. No matter what reason you choose, the economy, the expansion of slavery and states rights. In the end it's slavery. It was too profitable. It was the biggest industry in the country.

The North is nearly as guilty as they profited by paying so much less for the goods produced by slave labor. Millions of dollars were invested by Northern Industrialist into products which benefited by no cost labor.

The Southerners indicted themselves at one state succession convention after an other. They didn't hide it, they boasted. They seem to rejoice in it. Anyone who has read Alexander Stephens' "Cornerstone Speech" know this to be true.

"Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea; its foundations are laid, its corner-stone 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 upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth…"

link

McLaddie beat me to it but it is worth repeating. I have quoted form it before in other threads. I presume you can search for them.

The South was actually quite prosperous on the eve of the ACW. Go here – link

The notion that the South's cotton industry was in decline in the run-up to the ACW is IMO incorrect. To the contrary, it was at its peak, as evidenced by the fact that the South was the undeniably dominant supplier of cotton to Great Britain, supplying something on the order of 75-85 pct of the requirements of the English textile industry, which at that time was itself the dominant behemoth of international textile production – representing by itself about 80+ pct of global textile manufacturing. Cotton exports from the US South by 1850 alone comfortably exceeded in value all other US exports of any sort combined. The vibrancy of the South's cotton industry was once again demonstrated by the fact that within 10-15 years after the end of the Civil War, the US Southern cotton had succeeded in regaining its position as the dominant producer and supplier of cotton to the international textile manufacturing trade. Why? Southern grown cotton was the best quality for use in modern textile machinery, and the US was closest supplier to the UK (which reduced transport costs).

On the other hand, the profitability of Northern industrial products was directly related to the degree of price protection afforded by high import tariffs against British manufactured products. Great Britain could manufacture good of better quality, ship them across the Atlantic and still sell them for lower prices that the nascent US manufacturing industry could not afford to meet. Import tariffs were necessary to level the economic playing field for domestic American manufacturers; hence their continued interest and efforts toward the erection of high protective tariff walls. The higher the tariff wall, the greater the profitability of nor northern industry.

Why was the South annoyed by high tariffs?
(A) because the South was by far the principal importer of manufactured goods – something like 85pct of tariff proceeds could be traced to purchases of British and European goods by Southern buyers;
(B) because they feared British tariff retaliation leveled against their cotton exports (which was a problem for a region whose prosperity relied upon a mono-economy).

The more you look into this topic, the more interesting and complicated it gets.

- – -

On the subject of slavery, I have never said it was NOT an issue. I am arguing that it was not the ONLY issue.

FWIW.

B

There's deja vu about this thread (see theminiaturespage.com/boards/msg.mv?id=460333&page=1). Make sure you are comfortably seated as there's over 600 posts.

However, since others are weighing-in let me repeat some of my comments from that previous thirteen page thread:
I certainly do not see the Cornerstone speech as "irrefutable evidence the war was about slavery" given that a large part of it is concerned with money and other issues so here's a full version iowaculture.gov/history/education/educator-resources/primary-source-sets/civil-war/cornerstone-speech-alexander and a later clarification adena.com/adena/usa/cw/cw223.htm;
Lincoln didn't seem to originally see that a war over slavery was legal in his inaugural addressavalon.law.yale.edu/19th_century/lincoln1.asp and he even denounces "the lawless invasion by armed force of the soil of any State or Territory, no matter what pretext, as among the gravest of crimes";
Lincoln's call for 75,000 volunteers at the beginning of the war makes no mention that they are going to free any slaves;
When the war started and until almost the end, the USA continued to maintain slavery in several of its states; and
The 13th amendment was not passed until January 1865 and did not get ratified until December 1865 when Lincoln was dead and the war ended.

I'm happy to participate in these discussions but last time a lot of posts were censored/removed and many ended up in the Dawghouse.

As late as 1864 Lincoln and the North would have entered into serious negotiations with the South to end the war and the issue of slavery would have been on the table and part of the negotiations. How that would have played out is anybody's guess but clearly the war was not primarily about abolishing slavery.

Slavery contributed significantly to the tensions that triggered the war. However the actual shooting didnt start to end or uphold slavery. After a year of getting pummeled by the South Lincoln played the Slavery Card after Antietam to make it a central theme as a way of keeping England and other countries from getting involved.

Any doubts about this should be removed when you recall he only freed the slaves in the secessionist states. Had the shooting started over the issue of slavery he simply could have proclaimed ALL slaves in ANY state free the day they fired on Fort Sumpter. Cheers!

One of the causes of the South's failure was greed.
Instead of shipping every bale of cotton to be warehoused overseas while the Union blockade was farcical, the cotton growers held onto their crops to try to drive the price up.
Two results:
1. Europe turned to Egyptian cotton.
2. The blockade eventually choked off the export of what was being produced.
So, instead of importing machinery and possibly skilled labor to try to close the technology gap, the South twiddled away any possibility of producing war materiel to level the field.
Imagine--rimfire cartridges and repeating rifles to fire them, to be used against the Federals, whose quartermaster thought such would encourage troops to fire rounds wastefully.

How that would have played out is anybody's guess but clearly the war was not primarily about abolishing slavery.

So, the South's real problem with Lincoln and the 1860 election was that he favored a Trans-continental railway?

The Union fought the war to preserve the Union, the South left the Union to preserve their 'way of life', which had as it's 'cornerstone' slavery. Lincoln said that if he could preserve the Union and leave slavery, he would.

However, once Lincoln freed all the slaves in the rebelling states, there was no 'on the table' concerning slavery.

How that would have played out is anybody's guess but clearly the war was not primarily about abolishing slavery.

So, the South's real problem with Lincoln and the 1860 election was that he favored a Trans-continental railway?

The Union fought the war to preserve the Union, the South left the Union to preserve their 'way of life', which had as it's 'cornerstone' slavery. Lincoln said that if he could preserve the Union and leave slavery, he would.

However, once Lincoln freed all the slaves in the rebelling states, there was no 'on the table' concerning slavery.

However the actual shooting didn't start to end or uphold slavery.

Not according to the South. The shooting started to uphold slavery as much as any issue… all the State and Confederate declarations of Independence said so.

I do not believe that the trans-continental railroad was a do-or-die issue in the eyes of the South. Nor was there any imminent perceived threat to slavery and slave-owner rights. The US Supreme Court had re-affirmed slave owner rights in 1857 by a 7-2 majority decision in the Dred Scott case (hence the need for Constitutional amendments after the ACW).

The walkout of the Southern members of the US Senate was IMO a response to the 1860 Republican capture of the Presidency and both house of Congress which soon saw the introduction of the resurgently protectionist Morrill Tariff legislation instigated by newly powerful northern industrial interests of the Republican party. This was viewed by the South as a betrayal of the great sense of careful compromise and political balance between North and South that had developed over the preceding decades as a means of defusing regional conflicts between the northern and southern political factions after the great "Tariff of Abominations" crisis of 1828, followed by the equally dangerous "Nullification" crisis of the early 1830's. The slave state/free state balance (another mutually agreed compromise measure) also loomed as a great potential problem given the newly aggressive posture of the Republicans.

At some point, by 1861, the politicians of the South had (IMO) concluded that the time-honored balance of power (which IMO they saw as essential to the South's long term economic viability) was no longer in the cards. You know the rest of the story.

Re the institution of slavery? Many factions in American society viewed slavery as a moral sin and actively opposed it. The majority of those in the South, I believe, fundamentally viewed it as an economic measure necessary to the continued viability of "King Cotton" – the South's unique and hugely profitable mono-economy.

Verdict? IMO, The Southern states seceded in an attempt to extricate themselves from what they perceived to be a no-win political situation that threatened their economic livelihood; the Union fought the war to preserve the Union. Were a lot of people happy to see an end of slavery? Absolutely.

Interesting footnote on the slavery issue. Is it perhaps more than a coincidence that Great Britain renounced the institution of slavery within the Empire almost exactly around the time that the profitability of the West Indian great sugar cane plantations came to an end just after the turn of the 19th century? Would slavery in the American south have persisted after the development of modern industrialized agriculture in the latter half of the 19th century? Interesting question in my mind.

Hmmmmm.

B

One of the causes of the South's failure was greed.
Instead of shipping every bale of cotton to be warehoused overseas while the Union blockade was farcical, the cotton growers held onto their crops to try to drive the price up.
Two results:
1. Europe turned to Egyptian cotton.
2. The blockade eventually choked off the export of what was being produced.

Funny, my econ professors (and books) said that there was a year's supply of Southern cotton sitting in the various warehouses in the UK, so there was zero need for the UK to force the Union blockade to get their cotton.

The big problem is that the South was basically producing nothing but cotton and tobacco. Cash Crops, not food crops. So anything that damaged their ability to sell said cotton was going to strangle the South in very short order. We saw that happen again in the early 1900s.

This was viewed by the South as a betrayal of the great sense of careful compromise and political balance between North and South that had developed over the preceding decades as a means of defusing regional conflicts between the northern and southern political factions.

Blutarski:

Interesting. They may have viewed the protectionist Morrill Tariff legislation as a betrayal, but that and the expected compromise isn't mentioned when listing their reasons for leaving the Union.

That "At some point, by 1861, the politicians of the South had (IMO) concluded that the time-honored balance of power (which IMO they saw as essential to the South's long term economic viability) was no longer in the cards" also doesn't explain Bleeding Kansas or Missouri's woes before the ACW.

The Southern states seceded in an attempt to extricate themselves from what they perceived to be a no-win political situation that threatened their economic livelihood; the Union fought the war to preserve the Union. Were a lot of people happy to see an end of slavery? Absolutely.

Certainly that is why they seceded…and the culture that was dependent on those economics. The South saw Slavery as a 'cornerstone' of those economics and their culture. Lincoln's anti-slavery stand-- "a house divided against itself…" --and the probability that the institution would be at best limited to the existing states are definitely major factors in convincing the South that it was a no-win situation.

Giving economics center-stage as the primary reason the South leaving the Union simply doesn't jive with the Southern leaders own words…even when acknowledging the economic factors.

McLaddie,
Why do you suppose the Southern states kept slaves?

B

A somewhat interesting discussion. I read the blog in question. I have one question, well I have a lot, but I do need to mind my manners. This observation, "Artillery did deliberately fire through their own troops to save their guns." raises a question for our table-top. The question being, "Why do we continue to prohibit artillery from firing through their own men?" If we know they did it, why do we continue to prohibit it? This also prompts the following question, "What else do we allow/prohibit in our rules that is demonstrably in conflict with history?" And, now that we know these things, what are we going to do about it?

Here's a link to the actual article for those late comers to the party, like myself:

link

McLaddie,
Why do you suppose the Southern states kept slaves?
B.

B.

For the reasons outlined in the"Cornerstone Speech."

Do you believe there would have been a Civil War if slavery hadn't existed in the U.S.?

This also prompts the following question, "What else do we allow/prohibit in our rules that is demonstrably in conflict with history?" And, now that we know these things, what are we going to do about it?

Who is the "we" you are thinking of? And we have known these things for a long time… and "we" haven't done much about it.

I am not so sure it is prohibited. I think it should be determined by the GM with n explanation as to why it should or should not be done. Friendly fire was a major problem at Antietam, particularly in the Cornfield and in the West Woods.

"Do you believe there would have been a Civil War if slavery hadn't existed in the U.S.?"

Hi McLaddie,
Hard question to answer, as it involves a great deal of crystal ball speculation about a myriad of possible alternative scenarios. I will say this: If no immensely profitable but highly labor intensive cotton industry existed in the Southern states, there would have been little in the way of financial and political stakes over which to squabble. Concomitantly, the lack of a labor intensive agricultural industry would have made slave labor economically irrelevant.

The implication in brief:
[ 1 ] no cotton = much reduced political tension
[ 2 ] no cotton = no need for slaves.

The ACW, as I see it, was really fought to determine who would control the political and financial future of the young United States of America – The agriculturally wealthy but minority South, or the rapidly industrializing, majority populated, but investment needy North.

Slavery was an essentially peripheral issue attached to the fundamental issue, King Cotton – upon which the South's power and influence was totally reliant . On a related note, one might reasonably ask whether slavery "on the ground" was really ended by the ACW. The answer to that depends in very large part upon how one chooses to define the institution of post-ACW "share-cropping".

It is a very complex topic and I understand that YMMV.

B

The implication in brief:
[ 1 ] no cotton = much reduced political tension
[ 2 ] no cotton = no need for slaves.

Blutarski:

Many countries grew cotton, and most did not have slaves. The South grew cotton after slavery was abolished. Indentured servants and others farmed cotton. In fact there was tension between those using indentured servants and slaves in the early colonies.

So, assuming that cotton was still a major crop, which would have seen the same desire to expand the farming west, do you think there would have been a civil war?

Hi McLaddie,
It is interesting to read the main provisions (otherwise known as "the fine print") of Great Britain's "Anti-Slavery Act of 1833" not only with respect to exactly who and under what circumstances a slave was technically to be freed, but also with respect to the fact that all the domains (such as India) under the control of the East India Company were exempted; the British seizure of control of the Indian cotton trade is particularly fascinated as an example of cynical legal legerdemain. The two principal sources of raw cotton outside the American South were India and Egypt. Neither <<<technically>>> featured slavery as a source of labor, but availed themselves of the necessary cheap labor through various sorts of "indentured servitude" contracts taking advantage of the multitudes of peasants who had been dispossessed of their traditional farms through mass legalized seizures of land. Raw cotton in the 19th century was a highly profitable cash crop in huge demand, but it required cheap labor en masse to make it pay. Suffice it to say that ways were found to procure such labor at the necessary cost levels.

This approach was to a degree put into practice as well in the post-ACW South, but by that time advances in industrial agricultural technology had greatly reduced labor needs. Prior to 1860, it is hard to say if cotton cultivation could have reached the same heights as a cash crop without masses of slave labor or equivalent.

But that, IMO, is peripheral to the real issue as I see it. Slavery was not, in and of itself the issue; it was relevant only in the context of its importance to the continued viability and profitability of a cotton trade that represented the economic lifeblood of the South. If slave labor had been unnecessary to a successful cotton trade, they would (IMO) it would have been ended forthwith.

The popular history of the ACW, as portrayed in our public schools, is a cartoon compared to the real underlying factors behind the war – there were many much deeper issues in play. To get a view from the Southern side of the Mason-Dixon line, I recommend getting a copy of "A Colonel at Gettysburg and Spotsylvania" by Varina D Brown; before dismissing it as the rant of an old unreconstructed racist Southerner, read Chapter II – "The Time of Sectional Strife".

Oh, by the way, yes. I believe that, by the 1860's the odds were very high that conflict would have broken out between North and South irrespective of the slavery issue. The war was (again IMO) fought over the political and financial control of the nation as a whole.

Rgds / B

If you are looking for the simple explanation to why the ACW happened then the answer is slavery. Most of us here are smart enough to know that when looking at historical events the simple explanation is at best only a partial explanation. That is true of the ACW. Slavery explains why the South ended up seceding and fighting the U.S. It did not guarantee that the southern states would secede, it does not by itself explain why secession happened when it did and it did not in my opinion guarantee that there would be a war between the South and the rest of the U.S.

One problem with looking back at historical events is allowing events happening later to influence your views. One prominent ACW historian admitted that he had allowed his views on the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s to color his opinions on the ACW. Review antebellum writings and there wasn't that much support for full racial equality even among more hard core abolitionists. That view became stronger as a result of the ACW and the postwar obstructionist efforts by conservative Southerners. The same is also true of the Southern economy. The antebellum South wasn't as poor and economically backwards as some would describe. Yes many planters were heavily in debt, but a plantation was a capital intensive venture and many capital intensive ventures were heavily in debt. I read of one modest iron forge that went under leaving IIRC something in excess of $100,000 USD in debts.

Finally Alexander Stevens Cornerstone speach gets quoted alot. What isn't said much is that Stevens worked hard to prevent secession and maintained good personal relationships with people in the north. His political future was questionable at a time when fire eating secessionists had gotten control. So was Stevens speaking an accepted truth among Southerners when he gave the Cornerstone speach, or was he simply telling the fire eaters what they wanted to hear to insure his political survival?

Hi Bill,
It was indeed a complicated tapestry of causation. I have read, for example, that a certain fraction among settlers in the Kansas Territory ("Bloody Kansas") were opposed to slave state status because they did not wish to have blacks introduced to dwell among them.

Re Southern finances, I have read a claim that the asset value of the slave population of the South in 1850-1860 was in the vicinity of 3 billion dollars. That would have represented a very great deal of collateral for loans.

To add a wonderfully unimaginable element of impossibility to it all, the book I mentioned in a previous post ("A Colonel at Gettysburg and Spotsylvania") mentioned –

"In 1826, according to a statement by judge Oliver P Temple, there were in the United States one hundred and forty-three societies for the emancipation of slaves, and one hundred and three of them were in the South."

Given that the relevant chapter I mentioned ("The Time of Sectional Strife") is only six pages in length, I think I should transcribe it here for the sake of general interest and curiosity.

B

by the 1860's the odds were very high that conflict would have broken out between North and South irrespective of the slavery issue. The war was (again IMO) fought over the political and financial control of the nation as a whole.

Blutarski:

Well, as historians, in the end we start with the reasons the actual participants gave for seceding from the Union as the foundation of any analysis.

So was Stevens speaking an accepted truth among Southerners when he gave the Cornerstone speech, or was he simply telling the fire eaters what they wanted to hear to insure his political survival?

John Michael Priest wrote in his blog: "The scene, I believe, truthfully relates to a dilemma the historian encounters when an evidence trail leads to an unanticipated and uncomfortable conclusion."

Where does the evidence trail lead us? The reasons given by each Confederate state in their respective Declarations of Independence as well as the Confederate Government's rationales are pretty uniform. For example:

South Carolina's primary reason given in their Declaration of Secession:

The General Government, as the common agent, passed laws to carry into effect these stipulations of the States. For many years these laws were executed. But an increasing hostility on the part of the non-slaveholding States to the institution of slavery, has led to a disregard of their obligations, and the laws of the General Government have ceased to effect the objects of the Constitution.

Or Mississippi:

"A Declaration of the Immediate Causes which Induce and Justify the Secession of the State of Mississippi from the Federal Union:"

In the momentous step which our State has taken of dissolving its connection with the government of which we so long formed a part, it is but just that we should declare the prominent reasons which have induced our course.

Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery-- the greatest material interest of the world. Its labor supplies the product which constitutes by far the largest and most important portions of commerce of the earth. These products are peculiar to the climate verging on the tropical regions, and by an imperious law of nature, none but the black race can bear exposure to the tropical sun. These products have become necessities of the world, and a blow at slavery is a blow at commerce and civilization. That blow has been long aimed at the institution, and was at the point of reaching its consummation. There was no choice left us but submission to the mandates of abolition, or a dissolution of the Union, whose principles had been subverted to work out our ruin.

The 'Cornerstone speech' became well-know because most secessionists saw Stephan's arguments as the foundation of their decision, not just whoever the 'fire-eaters' were. [or how many] And whether his speech [rather than J. Davis's, which was pretty much forgotten] was well-received, Stephan was already Vice-President. He was going to politically survive as Davis did anyway.

To suggest that their stated primary reasons aren't the real reasons or actual priorities in the states' decisions to leave the Union requires a lot of primary counter evidence.