"something worse than slavery? yes" Topic

That would be a race war. Abd it could have happened in several ways. John Brown's abolitionist raids. A decision by Lee or other Confederate leaders to carry on resistance from the mountains and swamps. A more aggressive use of freedmen militias against the KKK and such. Mass confiscation of plantations and executions of Confederate leaders. etc. Bad as the war was, we were spared that.

But the white south had a lively fear of the several Caribbean revolts that essentially wiped out the whites on an island. An over-reaction that resulted in a reverse genocide against blacks would have been very possible.

It was never about race. It was about slavery.

"Bad as the war was…", the aftermath left many southern blacks less free than they should have been. Would a 'race war' have been preferable to decades of continued oppression?

History is HUGE, why so much thought on this part of history? I think you might be a bit obsessed.

Bill, yes, because a race war would have left most blacks dead. And many whites too. And hatred that would make today's bitterness pale in comparison. It was a very real danger that we were spared.

And though it is important, essential even, to keep slavery and racism as distinct categories, if we are to understand tings, they were inextricably mixed.

…because a race war would have left most blacks dead.

Most is what…80-90 percent? You're kidding right? Do you know how many people that is? Four years of bloody civil war left at least 630,000 dead…and now you're suggesting millions dead in the United States?

link

Bill could probably tell us which boards are most popular. Bet ACW discussion is high on the list.

Kevin, yes, because organized warfare with rules, as bad as it is, is nothing compared with genocidal conflict. There have been such, around the world, sadly.

"The Rwandan genocide occurred between 7 April and 15 July 1994 during the Rwandan Civil War.[2] During this period of around 100 days, members of the Tutsi minority ethnic group, as well as some moderate Hutu and Twa, were killed by armed Hutu militias. The most widely accepted scholarly estimates are around 500,000 to 662,000 Tutsi deaths.[3]" wiki

So roughly comparable to the toll in four years of our bloodiest war. In 100 days.

But you're referring to one in the US at the end of the Civil War?

I don't think so, especially with the number of dead you're alluding to.

Nat Turner's revolt, and the aftermath, were as bloody, in proportion to numbers. Think something like that could not have spread? The white south surely thought so; it accounts for their paranoia about such as John Brown.

Well, WHY don't you think so? It didn't happen, thank God. Are you arguing that there was no such danger? or that the event would have been less bloody? why?

Bill, yes, because a race war would have left most blacks dead. And many whites too.

If the post-war southerners had tried to exterminate the blacks, there would have been round 2 of the Civil War. That would probably have changed things permanently in the south, so that the civil rights protests of the 1960s would not have been needed.

At some basic level I think blacks, first as slaves and then as freedmen, sensed that race war was unwinnable for them. For anybody, really, but they were outnumbered three or four to one by whites who were far better armed and organized. This partly accounts for the slaves refusal to support JB at HF, and to the near-absence of slave revolts during the war, when they had a greater chance of success. The UNION never seemed to have encouraged slave revolts, only runaways, as far as I know.

I think black Christianity, with its emphasis on Exodus, was a huge factor.

As was the wisdom and restraint of some key leaders such as Lincoln and Lee.

But bd as the reality was, it could have been much much worse.

Bill, President Grant would certainly have acted to protect the freedmen against state action, but I think he would have faced great criticism from the north once the immediate aftermath was past -- after 1866 or so. Northern racism was different but not insignificant. And the Republicans were still the minority party, facing a Democratic national party majority if unified.

Thought experiment: you are Lincoln, and the Abolitionists come to you with a plan to foment slave rebellions in multiple places across the south. Do you accept such a plan? or reject it firmly?

I think Lincoln would consider it the worst folly.

Nat Turner's revolt, and the aftermath, were as bloody, in proportion to numbers.

No, it was not. There were not 'thousands' killed…

link

"The Rwandan genocide occurred between 7 April and 15 July 1994 during the Rwandan Civil War.[2] During this period of around 100 days, members of the Tutsi minority ethnic group, as well as some moderate Hutu and Twa, were killed by armed Hutu militias. The most widely accepted scholarly estimates are around 500,000 to 662,000 Tutsi deaths.[3]" wiki

First, that wasn't a 'race war.' It was a tribal conflict.
Second, it wasn't in the United States. Third, I advise using a much better reference than Wikipedia. It is too many times inaccurate and there are few, if any, editorial constraints on the content.

Kevin, what does "in proportion to numbers" mean? NT was in a single locality, in effect a single neighborhood. And your quibbles are just that.

From the other side of the pond – let it go, folks.

In another hundred years, like the ECW here, it will be ancient history that no one gets heated over.

I, at least, am not heated about it. We were discussing slave uprisings on other threads, Harpers Ferry and such. Plus the ethics of evil action against an evil.

My own view is that the Abolitionists -- including old murderer Brown -- were admirable in certain ways, but having them in charge would have been disastrous, even more disastrous than what actually happened. Yes, slavery was a very great evil. But the war was also a very great evil. and I am trying to suggest here that there was risk of an even GREATER evil, a race war, risk the Abolitionists seemed at best indifferent to, and maybe even cultivated.

I am glad slavery was destroyed, and I am glad the Union held. But the whole affair was a great tragedy, though we were spared an even greater one.

…though we were spared an even greater one.

And that would be…what?

And John Brown was not in any way admirable.

Race war, what we are talking about on this thread, please try to keep up.

So were Harriet Tubman and Frederck Douglass admirable to you? Because they -- Douglass especially -- found much to admire in JB.

There is not much to suggest the possibilty of a third world style race war. Lee had had enough. Lincoln had set the stage for treatment of the south. Abolitionists could be strident, but they were not a large, warlike army of crazy extremists. There were major economic incentives to rebuild everything. .

Too much of a stretch to think that this was even a remote possibility in 1865. Worse than slavery, but more like an alternative history novel where the Confederates are armed with machine guns. In reality there was nothing worse than slavery for the survival of American core values as laid out in the Declaration.

Absolutely 100% Tortorella. Very well put.
We may as well discuss the possibility of a resurgent Third Reich conquering S. America from Argentina in 1946, interesting to speculate for a Weird War game perhaps; to be taken seriously? Nope.

Tort and Silurian +1 each. Well said. And I agree with you.

As for Tubman and Douglass, they are both great Americans. Brown is not.

I don't see either Tubman or Douglass participating in or supporting a 'race war.' Nor was one brewing after the Civil War. The idea is more a late 20th and early 21st century concept which is out of this period.

April 1865: The Month That Saved America (P.S.) Kindle Edition
by Jay Winik

Anybody else read this? Tort, I think it might change your thinking.

April 1865: The Month That Saved America

link

If anyone is interested, it can be picked up in paperback.

Mass confiscation of plantations and executions of Confederate leaders. etc.

After all, there were no longer any slaves to service them and the plantations automatically became white elephants.

Im not sure execution of Confederate leaders would've led to a race war.

Bill, yes, because a race war would have left most blacks dead. And many whites too. And hatred that would make today's bitterness pale in comparison. It was a very real danger that we were spared.

I should point out that this is a contemporary White Supremacist talking point. That, if blacks dared to participate in a race war, they would be the guaranteed net losers. I merely bring this up bc I know you constantly assert that the demand for white supremacists greatly exceeds the supply. If that is true why would white southerners identify violence across the board as something to be taken out on blacks only?

I should also point out that there were enough willing black men to supply a half million or more Union equipped and supplied army. And they were proving to be excellent soldiers.

Are you maintaining that there is racial bitterness in the USA? Who holds that bitterness and what is it based upon?

But the white south had a lively fear of the several Caribbean revolts that essentially wiped out the whites on an island. An over-reaction that resulted in a reverse genocide against blacks would have been very possible.

How many Caribbean revolts are we referring to?

Reverse genocide suggests that there had been no genocide taking place in the Carribean before blacks practiced this on whites. Are you comfortable with this sweeping assertion? I merely ask because you are a strong proponent of "It's Complicated".

At some basic level I think blacks, first as slaves and then as freedmen, sensed that race war was unwinnable for them. For anybody, really, but they were outnumbered three or four to one by whites who were far better armed and organized.

Were they really that outnumbered in the South?

Is there some body of evidence that blacks were holding back from an uprising and/or race war due to being outnumbered? Did they know what the population of the USA was?

Yes, slavery was a very great evil. But the war was also a very great evil. and I am trying to suggest here that there was risk of an even GREATER evil, a race war, risk the Abolitionists seemed at best indifferent to, and maybe even cultivated.

You believe that a slave insurrection would've been more evil than what happened? What exactly is that based on?

I hope I am mistaken but this sounds a lot like when a bully finally gets a slap across the chops by the subject he is tormenting, only to tell them that "Now, they're really going to get it".

Counter-factuals are always tricky; what happened is what happened. But it is a gross error and a failure of historical imagination to assume what happened is what HAD to happen, and the only thing that COULD have happened. (Some on this board seem to me to be sorely lacking in historical imagination.)

As the OP indicated, a race war might have occurred if and only if something else had changed: if Lee had not squelched plans for a last-ditch guerilla resistance; if the US had adopted a draconian policy after Lincoln's assassination (a very real possibility), or if the Abols had tried to foment mass uprisings. Perhaps it would have taken two of those factors combined. Again, cannot know with any certainty what didn't happen but might have. But it could have.

Unless one is a determinist?

I just ordered it so I'll have to see how it is.

How would the book change anyone's thinking?

What is 'historical imagination'?

Doesn't matter, we don't have it! lol

It did not much change my overall thinking doc, although it is a great book almost like a novel, looking at the people and events of the last days with some interesting vignettes that filled out the picture. Gives Lee a lot of credit, less so to Grant.

Partly because of hindsight perhaps, I did not see a race war likely in the fall of the South. There may have been more lawless pockets of resistance as he suggests, but people were incredibly drained in general, IMO. There was no more appetite for war beyond some fanatics in limited numbers.

From Winik.. "Houston Holloway, who had been sold three times before the age of 20, in 1865 recalled his emancipation: 'I felt like a bird out of a cage. Amen. Amen. Amen" I think that most of the soldiers, and Americans, felt like Holloway.

Well, what is imagination? An ability to consider alternatives to perceived or received reality. WHAT IF is the great question that the imagination tries to answer. That facility can and should be applied to the past, as well as to present and future.

Tort, yes, no question exhaustion was a factor. It didn't happen, thank God. But it was a danger.

Tort, you mentioned hindsight -- which is proverbally 20/20. One of my aims in teaching is always to persuade students that it did NOT have to happen the way it did. That is a crucial point when teaching, e.g., e pluribus unum. Creating a successful federal union in 1787 was a long-shot that paid off. Other outcomes were far more likely. If kids don't grasp that they cannot appreciate the "miracle at Philadelphia."

I think there were some miracles -- God's interventions -- throughout the Civil War, and certainly in its ending. It could have been MUCH worse. (And much better: I expect Lincoln was right about God's judgement.)

Tort, you mentioned hindsight -- which is proverbally 20/20. One of my aims in teaching is always to persuade students that it did NOT have to happen the way it did.

I think this is in error, the slave states made sure it happened the way it did. All it took was the sense that they werent going to have things go 100% their way.

I think there were some miracles -- God's interventions -- throughout the Civil War, and certainly in its ending. It could have been MUCH worse. (And much better: I expect Lincoln was right about God's judgement.)

It was pretty bad the way it played out. Maybe 2 million Americans dead, maimed or traumatized beyond recall. The South in ruins and the North nearly bankrupt. Together with a witless white supremacist (Booth) managing to murder the one man who could've pulled it all together again (Lincoln).

If you're trying to get us to agree that slavery was better than a race war, that's not going to happen.

Slavery was bad.

Period.

Slavery was evil. Genocide would have been worse.

Pollard laid the groundwork for the Lost Cause mythos: defending white supremacy, arguing that slavery was not a cause of the war, arguing for States' rights based on the Tenth Amendment, and that slavery was necessary to prevent race war. For Pollard, the Civil War only decided two things, the restoration of the Union and the end to slavery — not equality of the races, or voting rights for African Americans."

Disagree with Pollard or anyone's defense of white supremacy, agree that slavery was a big cause of the war (but not the onlY), insist that "states rights" are still an issue today (see "sovereign cities" etc) and will always be within the federal system. As to slavery and race war, I think the way that is stated is strange. No slavery, no black race in America, no race war. Was Nat Turner "race war"? Yes, sort of. The issue is whether a race war was possible, and if so, what prevented it?

And of course Pollard was semi-correct in the second sentence. The 14th and 15th amendments supposedly settled those things, but we know they really didn't. because we had the Civil Rights movement a century later.

But RUNAWAY, RUNAWAY, the LOST CAUSE IS COMING. Hide under your beds. And bless your hearts.

And equating me with a "mythology" is not insulting?

But I am gaining insights into the deplorable state of modern historical understanding.

See, insults are easy, and kind of fun. Can't take them, don't start them.

The 14th and 15th amendments supposedly settled those things, but we know they really didn't. because we had the Civil Rights movement a century later.

And why did we have the Civil Rights movement a century after the Civil War? For various reasons-racism, white supremacy, Jim Crow Laws in the South, and the refusal to allow black citizens to vote.

And some of those problems unfortunately still exist.

Kevin, you have a real talent for stating the obvious as though it were some great revelation. We know; that is what I SAID.

Just one brick at a time…😁

There is a beauty to a well-laid wall. Consider TJ's serpentines at UVa.

I have the last volume above. It is excellent and highly recommended. And the two editors are excellent historians.

And the quote by Davis is right on the money.

Regarding the idea of a 'race war' might be considered from the southern fears of slave insurrections.

From Hartwig's book on Antietam, page 930, note 4:

'Fear of a slave insurrection was not an abstract worry, and it resulted in lethal consequences in some instances. The Monmouth (NJ) Democrat carried a story of the execution by hanging of 17 Blacks in Culpepper County, Virginia. Most of the individuals were free but were found with copies of Northern newspapers containing the Emancipation Proclamation. The refugee who carried this story to Union authorities declared 'that there is the greatest consternation imaginable among the whites in that section, in consequence of an apprehended negro insurrection.'-Monmouth (NJ) Democrat, 23 October 1862.

Again on the subject of a slave insurrection from Hartwig:

'The [Emancipation Proclamation]…fueled the long-standing Southern fear of a slave insurrection. Lincoln understood that such a rebellion was extremely unlikely. First, because organizing one required a level of coordination that was almost impossible among the enslaved population. Second, many of the white male Southerners were mobilized into armies, which could easily crush any insurrection. Third, most of those who were enslaved had no wish to kille anyone. They simply wanted their freedom.'-731.

Interestingly, Hartwig quotes McPherson in Battle Cry of Freedom: '…to accept the notion that the South fought for independence rather than slavery required considerable mental legerdemain.'-730.

😁