"A Consistent Viewpoint on Slavery..." Topic

Chesnut is a great read. I have a copy of one of the various editions it has been published in; I have quoted her in some of my books; but you have to be careful, because, as said above, she tampered with her diary extensively before it was published.

To use another example of primary sources, take the messages and reports published in the OR. The messages are generally more "pimarary," and thus more reliable, than the reports, as the latter might almost automatically contain the reporting officer's "spin", but then, so can the messages.

None of us here today were there 160 years ago (I'm pretty sure, though I have no actual proof of that). We thus are at the mercy of what was recorded by those who were there, then.

The issue of slavery and the Civil War arises on this forum with something like the frequency of outbreaks of herpes. Inevitable, dreaded, but with any luck, hopefully brief.

The Civil War was fought over money and power. Before the war, slavery was the Southern engine of money and power.
Nobody surrenders money and power without a fight. Fin.

If the north had been agitating for the south to rid itself of cock fighting can anyone imagine more than the occasional bar brawl over it?

The north could have introduced chariot races as a distraction. They could have called it NASCAR.

Let's all go back to the morality of using the bomb. I think it's time for that one again.

I once saw a quote, attributed to W.T. Sherman, that I've never been able to find again, that summed up the case against secession particularly well.

To paraphrase,

"It is a particular misapprehension that an American, residing in Louisiana, along the Mississippi, has some greater claim to that land and that river than an American living in Vermont, simply because of his proximity."

Apologies. I'm sure I butchered that.

an author writing 150+ years after the fact is more credible than someone writing at the time the event occurred when it comes to determining what the people at the time thought?

What 'people' and how many? Chestnut's circle was not very large, was it?

There is a very simple way to support your argument. Read Hartwig and then prove him wrong.

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The quote I used from Hartwig is on page 3. Another interesting facet of the book is on page 935-Essay on Sources.

And to supplement Hartwig, read Battle Cry of Freedom by James McPherson:

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And as background, read the cornucopia of Bruce Catton's Civil War works.

If that isn't possible, look at the quotations posted above by 23d Fusiliers. That would be a good start.

Read the classroom history books of the 30's and 40's.

Not a credible or reliable reference. I haven't found, in 20 years of teaching, any middle or high school history books worth using. That is why I finally stopped using them in class.

Read Diane Ravitch's The Language Police for a very good review of current, as of the book's writing, plethora of substandard classroom history texts, current as to 2003. I sincerely doubt that any newer books will be any better.

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From Hartwig's study on Antietam regarding slavery:

'I think that as a remedy for the South, dissolution is not enough, and a Southern Confederacy not enough. The latter would not stop the process by which some states, Virginia for example, are becoming free, viz., by ridding themselves of their slaves; and therefore we should in time with a Confederacy again have a north and a south. The only thing that will do when tried every way is a consolidated Republic formed of the Southern States. That will put slavery under the control of those most interested in it, and nothing else will; and until that is done nothing is done.'-Henry Benning to Howell Cobb, 1849. Benning was an advocate of secession in order to protect slavery.-464.

Benning further stated: 'What was the reason that induced Georgia to take the step of secession? This reason may be summed up in one single proposition. It was a conviction, a deep conviction on the part of Georgia, that a separation from the North-was the only thing that could prevent the abolition of her slavery. This conviction, sir, was the main cause.'-464.

'We want no negro equality, no negro citizenship; we want no mongrel race to degrade our own; and as one man they would meet you upon the border with the sword in one hand and the torch in the other.'-Robert Toombs upon his resignation from the US Senate, 1860.

'Their main purpose, as indicated by all their acts of hostility to slavery, is its final and total abolition. His party declares it; their acts prove it. He has declared it; I accept his declaration.'-Toombs to the Georgia state legislature regarding Lincoln and the Republican Party-463.

It appears that the war was about slavery as stated by the two above slave owners. Hartwig did his homework using primary source material to come to his conclusions.

And, yes, he is more credible and reliable than Chestnut.

Henry Benning was the person that Fort Benning, Georgia, was named after. Fortunately, it has now been renamed Fort Moore, after General Hal Moore, a famous commander during the Vietnam War.

Chestnut may not even be reliable for her own impressions about what was happening around her. There is even a question about whether the impressions were contemporary to the events.

Why do we have to go down this Chestnut-esque rabbit hole as a sort of cure-all about causes for the war and Southern viewpoints about slavery?

Funny you should mention Antietam…

I tend to approach the study of wars from more of a strategic viewpoint than one of a philosophic viewpoint.

I will grant you, that I have not done a lot of study on the philosophic viewpoint concerning the ACW, though it firmly points directly towards slavery as the reason for the war.

Nevertheless, from a strategic POV, Lincoln's initial objective of the war was to reunite the country. I think most folks will agree that after the Battle of 1st Bull Run, it was apparent that the war was going to be long. The Battle of Antietam was also known as the "battle that shocked the nation" due to the enormous amount of casualties during a single day of battle. So at this point, September 17, 1862, the country knows that it will not only be long, but it is going to be very bloody.

My personal theory, especially given that the folks of the US were predominately Christian at the time, is that Lincoln felt that reuniting the country was not a sufficient objective, given the tremendous sacrifices which would be required and the ethics inherent in conducting a "just war." IOT to continue on this path, it was necessary for Lincoln to provide a far more moral reason for the continuation of the war and the obvious loss of life that would entail.

September 22, 1862 (5 days following the Battle of Antietam), Lincoln issued his first Emancipation Proclamation. The objective of the war was now not only to reunite the union but to also abolish slavery. By doing so, he firmly established the conflict as a "just war."

In hindsight, if we look at the United States, especially after the Civil War, it has always sought to define conflicts as "just wars."

Just my opinion, though I think if one looks at the war from this viewpoint it provides a little more insight on the "reason" the war was fought.

Several links to reviews on Chestnuts diary – all talking about how they were extensively updated long after the war and how only a fraction of what she wrote was ever published – several present also how her writing changed over time as well

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The explanation of the 'Diary' is that it is now considered a hoax. That being the case, the 'Diary' is not a primary source at all.

Primary source material from historical periods have to be carefully screened and checked, as well as the backgrounds of the authors for accuracy and reliability.

Only then can they be used for research and as a credible source for the period.

The 1982 Pulitzer Prize Winner in History
For a distinguished book of the year upon the history of the United States, One thousand dollars ($1,000).
Mary Chesnut's Civil War, by C. Vann Woodward (Yale U. Press)

The 1619 Project won the 2020 Pulitzer Prize…and it was historically inaccurate…The title of Lynn's review of the Chestnut's 'Diary' is, if you haven't read it, 'The Masterpiece that became a Hoax.'

Chesnut has had some detractors, notably history professor Kenneth S. Lynn, of Johns Hopkins University. He described her work as a "hoax" and a "fabrication" in a 1981 New York Times review of Woodward's edition of the diaries. Lynn argues that the diary was "composed" (rather than simply rewritten) in the 1881-84 period, emphasizing that Chesnut both omitted a great deal from the original diaries and added much new material: "She dwelt upon the personalities of people to whom she had previously referred only briefly, plucked a host of bygone conversations from her memory and interjected numerous authorial reflections on historical and personal events."[13]

Because neither Chesnut nor her later editors conceded that she had heavily revised her work, Lynn's view that the whole project is a fraud is a minority one. In 1982, Woodward's edition of Chesnut's diary won a Pulitzer Prize. A few years later, Ken Burns used extensive readings from Chesnut's diary in his documentary television series The Civil War. Actress Julie Harris read these sections.

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So the Pulitzer was awarded the year after Lynn's criticism.

To the Editor:

Kenneth S. Lynn's review of ''Mary Chesnut's Civil War,'' edited by C. Vann Woodward, (April 26) is seriously inadequate in two major ways. It is important to point this out because Mary Chesnut's book has been for many years a key source of insight into antebellum America, evoking as it does the sensibilities of an elite Southern woman and a sense of an embattled South within the nation. The book deserves many more readers.

In his succinct and thoughtful introduction, Professor Woodward gives ample attention to the fact that the book is not a diary in the strict sense – it cannot be relied upon to tell us where General Lee was on a certain day in 1863. Based on a daily war journal but rewritten twice in the years between 1865 and 1881, the book is a mixture of reportage, memoir and social criticism. As Professor Woodward shows, Mary Chesnut never concealed the fact that her book was a much-rewritten version of her original diary, and it seems clear that she never intended it to be taken as a first-draft journal. It also is clear that Chesnut herself, while hoping to be published, may not have intended publication of the version that Professor Woodward gives us. She died in 1886 without making her desires known.

The story of how previous editions of the book came to be published is interesting and well recounted in Professor Woodward's introduction. It is a story of happenstance and changing editorial tastes, but nowhere is there evidence of hoax.

Moreover, it is possible to compare certain sections of the final version of the book with corresponding sections of Chesnut's original diary. In 1974-75, one of us spent several months looking at the manuscript original and making such comparisons. Chesnut altered certain kinds of statements: the most angry judgments on her husband, the harshest lampoons of her friends and the most grandiose selfassessments. But, like Professor Woodward, he came away satisfied that her 1880's version remained strikingly faithful to her initial perceptions of war, social class, slavery and, perhaps above all, her mixed feelings of anticipation and doom. In thus remaining faithful to her wartime perceptions, Chesnut did not even defraud herself, much less us.

This still leaves open the question of what sort of book Chesnut wrote and how it can best be used as evidence by historians and best enjoyed by anyone who prefers the complexity of historical documents to the smoothness of historical fiction. In this regard, too, Professor Lynn's review is inadequate. Having decided that the book is a hoax, he goes on to imply a literary kinship between Chesnut and the apologias of Thomas Nelson Page and – even more inappropriately – the vicious fantasies of Thomas Dixon.

Professor Lynn hardly could be more off the mark. He makes much of Chesnut's deletion from her book of a vehement criticism of slavery recorded in 1861. But he does not note that she retained other such utterances in the final version (pages 168-169, for example). This is not to say that Chesnut was always critical of slavery; she also mourned the passing of the old order and defended the South against Northern opinion. She both criticized and loved her region, just as she both flirted with men yet raged against their ''silly'' and demeaning tyrannies, just as she found herself both strangely freed by the war – traveling about, fending for herself – yet made a prisoner of its catastrophic consequences for her class. Her awareness of her contradictory wishes, her exasperated love for planter-class culture, her view of herself as a subjugated yet elite woman are just a few of the rich complexities that serve to root Chesnut's book in the fact of the Civil War, setting it off from the slick fantasies of Page and Dixon.

What one finds in Chesnut's book is a writer who has discovered her form (Professor Woodward calls it a ''simulated diary''), and in finding it has found a way to portray herself in relation to the social events that might have engulfed her. ''Life is so real,'' she wrote of the war years. ''So utterly earnest.'' Fiction – her own and others' – would not suffice, even though for most women fictions of various kinds had kept them from the perceptions that she finally was able to preserve and record.

Not quite diary and not quite memoir. Chesnut's book remains a form peculiarly suited to help us understand the changed perceptions of an upper-class woman. Her retrospect is faithful to the range of her qualities, as Edmund Wilson appreciated nearly 20 years ago. Whatever we decide to call it, Chesnut's book remains the ''extraordinary document'' that excited Wilson: perceptive and petty, pathetic and courageous. We can easily agree with Chesnut's own discovery: ''Fiction is so flat, comparatively.'' WILLIAM R. TAYLOR STEVEN M. STOWE New York City

William R. Taylor is a fellow of the New York Institute for the Humanities and a professor of history at Stony Brook (SUNY); Steven M. Stowe is a visiting assistant professor of history, New York University.

Two prominently renowned diaries from the Civil War era have recently faced scrutiny. Among these diarists, one is Sam Watkins, sometimes referred to as the "Forrest Gump" or "Waldo" of the Confederacy.

The other diary in question is that of Mary Chestnut. The initial editions of Mary Chestnut's diary, frequently cited, comprise a blend of personal journal entries and recollections.

For those seeking an unembellished diary account, I would recommend turning to "Journal of a Secesh Lady: The Diary of Kate Edmondstan, 1860 – 1866"

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@Brechtel

Thus there are a lot of issues with that document's sincerity, veracity, accuracy, contemporaneous to the times, and, additionally, it was doctored up to make her sound like a less harsh person. That does make it somewhat unreliable for certain purposes. It remains an interesting historical artifact but she compromised her own work.

In any event, even if she hadn't tampered with her diary, it still wouldn't be a document of use to measure why the South went to war or prove that all Southerners hated slavery but were trapped in it.

In addition, she couldn't vote and no one cared about a woman's opinion back then, anyway.

Why we keep getting flogged with Mary Chestnut like she countermands the articles of secession is beyond me.

I wonder what Mosby would've made of someone thinking that Chestnut's opinion about the war not being about slavery trumped his own opinion.

I used to take kids to the Dead Angle at Kennesaw, the trenches are still there, and read to them Watkins account of that fight. Maybe the fiercest of the war.

Agree 100% with Au pas de Charge

Articles of Secession reflected the accepted official views of the day

While there were other minority opinions out there – Words matter and no different then with the Declaration of Independence of the 18th Century – Southern Governments made their own official position known with the Articles of Secession

Not as if they said – Oops only kidding

Agree 100% with Au Pas also.

And a 'minority' opinion can still be correct. The study and writing of history is not a democracy. We don't vote on what is correct or incorrect. Proving what is correct through historical inquiry is what counts.

On another subject, the Bloody Angle at Spotsylvania, the Angle at Gettysburg, and Antietam saw the fiercest fighting of the war, hands down. The fight at the dead angle was one of the fiercest of the war but anyone would be hard-pressed to claim it was the fiercest of the war. Numbers employed and the ensuing casualties should be compared/contrasted with the other three named above as well as the length of the fighting.

For example, the fighting at the Bloody Angle at Spotsylvania was bitter and prolonged, lasting during the day and into the night. That at the Dead Angle did not last as long and the casualties suffered were not as great.

A few years later, Ken Burns used extensive readings from Chesnut's diary in his documentary television series The Civil War. Actress Julie Harris read these sections.

When I watched the subject 'documentary' the over-reliance on the Chestnut diary was a weakness, as was reliance on Shelby Foote's 3-volume Civil War narrative. Foote himself said he was a novelist and some of his statements regarding the size of Civil War battles contrasted with European battles was incorrect.

I have found that in order to understand American military history a firm background in European military history is needed. Apparently Foote did not have that vital advantage.

Comparing the large battles of the Civil War with, say Leipzig, Borodino, and Wagram, ignores the numbers involved, the length of the battles, and the number of casualties.

For example, the three-day battle of Gettysburg, the largest battle ever fought on the North American continent with about 52,000 casualties, is dwarfed by the two-day battle of Wagram in 1809 with 77,000 casualties; the one-day battle of Borodino with 76,000 casualties; the three-day battle of Leipzig with 128,000 casualties. And the numbers engaged dwarfed those engaged in the large Civil War battles.

Total engaged: Gettysburg-approximately 175,000; Wagram-325,000; Borodino-250,000; Leipzig-513,000 (Numbers are approximate)

And the Napoleonic battles were fought with smoothbore muskets and smoothbore artillery, not rifle muskets and rifled artillery. Even the 12-pounder Napoleon had a longer range and better accuracy than Napoleonic artillery.

Things should be put into perspective.

The subject documentary and the book produced based on that documentary cannot, or should not, be used as a reference for any serious Civil War study.

While I'm not going to defend Ken Burns or Shelby Foote, Gettysburg's significance in terms of the Civil War is similar to Borodino or Leipzig. The absolute number of troops may be less but the level of commitment of resources compares favorably and Gettysburg is generally accepted as the high water mark for the Confederate Army, just as Borodino was the high water mark for Napoleon's army.

Napoleon and the Grande Armee went on to take and occupy Moscow. The Army of Northern Virginia was badly defeated and its offensive capability crippled.

The point of the argument is that Foote, if I'm not mistaken, was stating that European warfare saw nothing as 'bad' as Gettysburg nor as large and that is just not correct.

Gettysburg was decisive, along with Vicksburg, but so were Wagram and Leipzig. Again, to have a good understanding of American military history, a good background in European military history is necessary.

I have encountered this somewhat myopic point of view among some Civil War gamers with only the vaguest idea of the Napoleonic wars and attempted to disavow them of the idea that nothing tops their favorite era for scope.

Its hard to imagine what it was like at Eylau, with it's grim winter cavalry charge of many thousands of horses, the sheer intensity of Borodino and Wagram, and the immense numbers at Leipzig, for which there remains no great readable modern narrative history. All huge battles.

Waterloo and Gettysburg have sucked too much of the air out of the room in some ways regarding these wars. We forget too often about the ACW in the west, or the impact of Russian and Austrian armies on Napoleon's wars.

The Civil War commanders who had gone to West Point would have no trouble recalling the details of Napoleonic battles and warfare..

And the series of wars covered over 20 years.

Napoleonic warfare was savage and costly, even when the opposing armies weren't huge and the casualty count relatively low.

People today, especially in the United States, have no idea what a long and costly war would be like-costly being high casualties. And the US has had no real dangerous national crisis to face since War II.

I would say that Chestnut's 'work' is secondary with little impact on the historiography of the period.

If it is used as a reference at all, it should be used with great care and sparingly.

And I would say you know too little of the historiography of the period.

Even if Chestnut's work wasn't riddled with inconsistencies, politically correct revisions, contrivances, fictional arrangements and deceits, it still isn't a reflection of the actual decision making of the South. It may contain some of her impressions but really, what sort of training did she have?

One interesting, and probably unintended, byproduct of the fact that doc relies on this woman so aspirationally is an unfortunate further sign that he believes the South acted more on passion than rational thought and on uninformed impressions more than groundings in reality about what was happening in the world around them.

She had no education, no elected or appointed positions, no military training or really training of any sort that has to do with affairs of state. So, why are we listening to her about politics and military history?

That she was the upper class daughter and wife of wealthy slave owners isnt really enough to brandish her constantly as some sort of vindication for the Confederacy.

It is worth observing that Mary Chesnut was daughter of one United States Senator and married to another. I expect that qualified as training and education in politics and public affairs.

Here she is on UNCLE TOM'S CABIN. Notice she is RE-reading it. And her perspective is an interesting one, well worth considering.

But anyone can make of it, and her, whatever they please.

Read Uncle Tom's Cabin again. These Negro women have a chance here that women have nowhere else. They can redeem themselves—the "impropers" can. They can marry decently, and nothing is remembered against these colored ladies. It is not a nice topic, but Mrs. Stowe revels in it. How delightfully Pharisaic a feeling it must be to rise superior and fancy we are so degraded as to defend and like to live with such degraded creatures around us—such men as Legree and his women. The best way to take Negroes to your heart is to get as far away from them as possible. As far as I can see, Southern women do all that missionaries could do to prevent and alleviate evils. The social evil has not been suppressed in old England or in New England, in London or in Boston. People in those places expect more virtue from a plantation African than they can insure in practise among themselves with all their own high moral surroundings—light, education, training, and support. Lady Mary Montagu says, "Only men and women at last." "Male and female, created he them," says the Bible. There are cruel, graceful, beautiful mothers of angelic Evas North as well as South, I dare say. The Northern men and women who came here were always hardest, for they expected an African to work and behave as a white man. We do not. I have often thought from observation truly that perfect beauty hardens the heart, and as to grace, what so graceful as a cat, a tigress, or a panther. Much love, admiration, worship hardens an idol's heart. It becomes utterly callous and selfish. It expects to receive all and to give nothing. It even likes the excitement of seeing people suffer. I speak now of what I have watched with horror and amazement. Topsys I have known, but none that were beaten or ill-used. Evas are mostly in the heaven of Mrs. Stowe's imagination. People can't love things dirty, ugly, and repulsive, simply because they ought to do so, but they can be good to them at a distance; that's easy. You see, I cannot rise very high; I can only judge by what I see.

Chesnut, Mary Boykin Miller . A Diary From Dixie (p. 41). HarperCollins Canada. Kindle Edition.

I hate slavery. I hate a man who—you say there are no more fallen women on a plantation than in London in proportion to numbers. But what do you say to this—to a magnate who runs a hideous black harem, with its consequences, under the same roof with his lovely white wife and his beautiful and accomplished daughters? He holds his head high and poses as the model of all human virtues to these poor women whom God and the laws have given him. From the height of his awful majesty he scolds and thunders at them as if he never did wrong in his life. Fancy such a man finding his daughter reading Don Juan. ‘You with that immoral book!' he would say, and then he would order her out of his sight. You see Mrs. Stowe did not hit the sorest spot. She makes Legree a bachelor."

Chesnut, Mary Boykin Miller . A Diary From Dixie (p. 34). HarperCollins Canada. Kindle Edition.

As you see, Mary was (here and in many other place) quite a bit of a feminist, for better and for worse. There are REASONS why she has long been and still is widely assigned in various college courses. You can make all sorts of (pardon me, but OBVIOUS) points about her privileged perspective -- but she saw a lot of things very clearly.

I was privileged to meet the Genoveses in Atlanta, and spent some time with them and a mutual friend (another PhD in history). Elizabeth Fox-Genovese was a splendid scholar, and she used Chesnut's DIARY extensively.

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Fox-Genovese's academic interests changed from French history to the history of women in the United States before the American Civil War. Virginia Shadron, assistant dean at Emory, later said that Fox-Genovese's Within the Plantation Household (1988) cemented her reputation as a scholar of women in the Old South.[8] Contemporary reviews praised it; one described her work as bridging "the gap between the study of individual identity and the economic and social milieu."[11] Mechal Sobel of The New York Times wrote, "Elizabeth Fox-Genovese undertakes the enormous tasks of telling the life stories of the last generation of black and white women of the Old South, and of analyzing the meanings of these connected stories as a way of illuminating both Southern and women's history—tasks at which she succeeds brilliantly."[12]

This book received the following awards:

1988 C. Hugh Holman Award, Society for the Study of Southern Literature
1989 Julia Cherry Spruill Prize, Southern Association for Women Historians
1989 Outstanding Book Award, Gustavus Myers Center for the Study of Bigotry and Human Rights in North America[12]
Fox-Genovese also wrote scholarly and popular works on feminism. Through her writings, she alienated many feminists but attracted many women who may have considered themselves conservative feminists. Princeton University history professor Sean Wilentz said, "She probably did more for the conservative women's movement than anyone… [Her] voice came from inside the academy and updated the ideas of the conservative women's movement. She was one of their most influential intellectual forces."[8] Fox-Genovese reportedly had no patience with the cultural feminist trend of viewing women and men as possessing completely different values, and she criticized the idea that women's natural instincts and experience of oppression gave them a superior capacity for justice and mercy.[13] For this, she had been labeled by Cathy Young as an "antifeminist".[13]

There's a whole world of scholarship that many Progressives are stubbornly ignorant of.

As you see, Mary was (here and in many other place) quite a bit of a feminist, for better and for worse.

A feminist? Just because she critiqued their husbands raping slaves? Are there Southern women who approved of this behavior?

It is worth observing that Mary Chesnut was daughter of one United States Senator and married to another.

With all the military/ political education and experience Jeff Davis had and he still couldnt hold the Confederacy together; but you think Mary Chestnut acquired these skills by osmosis?

I expect that qualified as training and education in politics and public affairs.

Unbelievable. I thought you didn't approve of revisionism. Maybe she also took out 6 Yankee soldiers with her ninja skills.

But I have no further interest in debating her, not on this forum with these participants.

That's alright, we have enough good chestnuts about this Chestnut to last us a while.

If someone isn't sympathetic to the Confederacy, they're a progressive?

You twist Doc's words here. That's not in any way, shape or form what he is saying. Doc has stated an opinion that many Progressives remain stubbornly ignorant of the large body of extant scholarship on this topic.

B

As usual, I don't even really know what a progressive is. It also sounds like it must be something bad…but what I don't know. I admire progress and generally dislike reactionary ideas.

Doc I sincerely appreciate and respect you and many of your posts even though we do not agree much of the time.

Has anyone seen PragerU. videos? I just heard about them today and saw one on Christopher Columbus, one on slavery and Lee. They are for kids – are they being used in schools?

Thanks, Blutarski. As I have said repeatedly, I'm glad slavery is gone and I am glad the Union held. Like many I had ancestors on both sides. But I love the south, and I think the Confederacy was doomed yet with a certain grandeur -- like a tragic hero -- and well deserving of study. It was fundamentally feudal, and aristocracy does not coexist with democracy, not for long, as DeTocqueville pointed out. We learn a lot about America and about ourselves today from its study.

As I have said before, my debate opponents here are not so much wrong as they are incomplete. They have a hold of part of the truth, but only a part.

Woodrow Wilson is the original Progressive. Inimical to the checks and balances that hamper the efficiency of Big Government. FDR was a progressive, and much of the Democratic Party in the past century. Some Republican progressives, too, going back to Teddy Roosevelt. It was more a movement than a party. Progressives believed in rule by experts, and of course THEY were the experts. The income tax was a big progressive thing. The Populists like W J Bryan wanted to destroy big business, but progressives wanted to tame it and regulate and tax it to run big government. FR added Big Labor. The US over the past century has been mostly a progressive program, both in successes and in failures.

Yes, I like Praeger U material, but have not used them much. I think they are aimed at middle school, but not sure about that.

What I said: As I have said before, my debate opponents here are not so much wrong as they are incomplete. They have a hold of part of the truth, but only a part.

What 23rd says I said: Which parts? Those that disagree with yours? Why is yours the truth and all others wrong?

No, sigh, there is much we agree about. My complaint is not so much with what they say, which is mostly correct. It is what they leave out. That is what "incomplete" means.

You have misread what I said.

and were glad to lose them. They saw the slaves as much or more as burden than as asset. That is evident throughout the diary. and she says so explicitly at the end.

No wonder John Chesnut is bitter. They say Mulberry has been destroyed by a corps commanded by General Logan. Someone asked coolly, "Will General Chesnut be shot as a soldier, or hung as a senator?" "I am not of sufficient consequence," answered he. "They will stop short of brigadiers. I resigned my seat in the United States Senate weeks before there was any secession. So I cannot be hung as a senator. But after all it is only a choice between drumhead court martial, short shrift, and a lingering death at home from starvation."
One year ago we left Richmond. The Confederacy has double-quicked downhill since then. One year since I stood in that beautiful Hollywood by little Joe Davis's grave. Now we have burned towns, deserted plantations, sacked villages. "You seem resolute to look the worst in the face," said General Chesnut, wearily. "Yes, poverty, with no future and no hope." "But no slaves, thank God!" cried Buck.

The whole question of the profitability of slavery is complex. The literature on the subject goes every which way. Even the argument -- which I accept -- that southern cotton exports fueled northern prosperity, is disputed, and the question of WHO got what profits there were – -- planters vs middlemen such as bankers and shippers -- is likewise very much in debate. While it is probably true that a "prime field hand" produced far more cotton than his upkeep cost, it gets tricky when one calculates the opportunity cost of the capital sunk in that slave, plus his family. The plantations that operated as efficient businesses seem to have been profitable, but many planters were slipshod in accounting etc. We all agree it was an evil system, but how profitable it was is not so clear. So while greed is always a motivating factor in human affairs, other considerations may have loomed larger. MANY southerners believed that slavery was a net negative to the south economically -- and indeed northerners such as Lincoln believed the same. Was it Lincoln who wrote of floating down the Ohio and contrasting the Kentucky side with the northern side? You could SEE the difference in prosperity. It is certainly arguable that if southern whites had been able magically to transport all Africans back to Africa, they'd have done so, in spite of whatever loss it meant in terms of capitalized labor. So racism was likely more a factor than greed.

I can't believe people are taking D Scott Hartwig's assertion seriously. Whatever merit it has, it has to be worked out on the specifics of his argument. I can't imagine there is much new here. And his comment is found in the prologue, which is hardly the heart of his monograph on the Antietam campaign. Seriously, Kevin you should know better than present a simple quote as a "proof." It is anything but that.

Even a cursory reading of the facts has to prove that Hartwig's assertion is incorrect. The North was in no way unified around the issue of slavery in the fall of 1862. There were many Northerners who would have argued vehemently that the ACW had nothing to do with slavery per se. Northern Democrats would have revolted had the Lincoln administration asserted this at any point in 1862.

Had the Union won major victories at front end of the war it is very likely that the Union would have been reestablished with slavery as an enduring element. The fundamental divisive issue in 1862 was the assertion by Southern states that they had the unilateral right to withdraw from the Union. On that, the North was very much united. Slavery, not so much.

I think Lincoln articulates this view clearly and succinctly in his well known letter to Horace Greeley where he writes, "If there be those who would not save the Union, unless they could at the same time save slavery, I do not agree with them. If there be those who would not save the Union unless they could at the same time destroy slavery, I do not agree with them. My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that."

you should know better than present a simple quote as a "proof." It is anything but that.

It is a supporting statement to the other comments on slavery as the cause of the war. I would have thought that was quite evident, especially regarding the title of the OP.

And no one is asserting that the Union went to war to abolish slavery. Slavery did become a war aim in early 1863 with the Emancipation Proclamation. That does not mean that the cause of the war was not slavery. The evidence is overwhelming that slavery caused the Civil War.

And the other primary source quotations from Hartwig, citing Toombs and Benning, in this thread support slavery as the cause of the war.

It is absolutely accurate to state that slavery was not the reason the US went to war against the rebellion-restoring the Union was. But the cause of the conflict was slavery which can be found not only in Hartwig, but in McPherson as well as Catton, Nolan, and Gallagher. And that material has already been posted on this forum.

So, I am not relying on any single source, but many sources for the cause of the Civil War and posting Hartwig's conclusion was only as a reinforcement of that idea, not a stand alone.

So the Pulitzer was awarded the year after Lynn's criticism.

And that demonstrates what exactly?

And I would say you know too little of the historiography of the period.

'The fallacy of argument ad hominem occurs in many different forms, all of which serve to shift attention from the argument to the arguer. Among its most common varieties are, first, the abusive ad hominem, which directly denounces an opponent. The classic example, perhaps apocryphal, is a not passed from one desperate lawyer to another: 'No case; abuse plaintiff's attorney.'-David Hackett Fischer.

Quod Erat Demonstrandum.

But I love the south, and I think the Confederacy was doomed yet with a certain grandeur -- like a tragic hero -- and well deserving of study.

The Southern Confederacy was not 'like a tragic hero' nor did it actually have 'a certain grandeur.' The south was an economy and hierarchy built on chattel slavery. And the slave owners, who actually owned or controlled 90% of the wealth in the south, were not admirable nor were they honorable. They rebelled against the lawful government and became traitors.

They attempted, at least some of them did, to reinstate the slave trade which had been outlawed in 1807 and then they rebelled against the United States in order to keep their 'peculiar institution' that should have died in Philadelphia in 1776 per the draft of the Declaration of Independence.

I live in the South, but am not a southerner. I'm a westerner. I live in North Carolina in a military community and am retired (twice). We decided to retire here because the cost of living is excellent. . And it is turning into a military retirement community which is even better.

The 'south' got what it deserved by rebelling and starting a hugely destructive war. Unfortunately for the south, and the entire country, Lincoln was murdered by a southern sympathizer and his humane and just plan for reconstruction did not go into effect.

The dating indicates that the Pulitzer judges were aware of Linn's criticism and were not impressed.

Marcus Brutus, yes.

Kevin, again, I think you have it correct, but you seem not to appreciate the significance of the truth you write. Nobody here is denying that slavery was a major factor in causing the war -- but not so much slavery as its extension into the west. My (our) argument is simply that there were OTHER important factors. And the fact, which you acknowledge, that the north's main motivation was NOT slavery means there must have been, aha, OTHER factors at work.

QED

The tragic grandeur is gone with the wind, and good riddance to it, but it existed.

Interestingly, in the Prologue on page 3, it reads succinctly 'It was well understood by all that this [slavery] was the divisive issue that had brought on secession and war…'

No it wasn't and the proof of this is that the North would have never gone to war on the matter of slavery. The North was highly conflicted about slavery in 1860. Slavery could not have been the divisive issue that led to war. The divisive issue was the state of the Union as Lincoln clearly recognized. Even then, it is highly unlikely that the North would have mobilized for war without the South attacking Sumter. As Don Lowry has mentioned several times on this forum it was this act of aggression that led war. Had the South played it cool in those early months of 1861 one has to wonder what would have evolved over the next couple of years. But then of course, their were many in the South that were afraid that the sentiments for the Union would have resurfaced in the Southern states and led to a political movement for readmission. Was time on the side of the new Confederacy? Don't know.

Slavery was still the cause of the war regardless of different opinions and this comes from the words of southerners themselves. They were going to defend slavery no matter what, and they chose secession when Lincoln was elected because, regardless of any evidence, they believed Lincoln would try and abolish slavery.

Secession brought on the war, but the cause of it, as repeatedly shown, was southern chattel slavery. And that has been repeatedly demonstrated from primary and credible secondary sourcing.

The dating indicates that the Pulitzer judges were aware of Linn's criticism and were not impressed.

So what? That doesn't 'prove' Linn was wrong. Winning a prize is not the be-all and end-all in history.

You brought up the 'silly games'…

And you haven't commented on the 1619 Project winning the Pulitzer Prize…

Posts by troll accounts have been removed.

Also, posts replying to those posts, as they make no sense now.