Southern Discomfort: U.S. Army seeks removal of Lee, ‘Stonewall’ Jackson honors

Although I agree with much of what Bullet said earlier, its important not to oversimplify the reasons for the secession. Census figures for 1860 show that only about a quarter of the families in slave states actually owned slaves. The majority had five or fewer while many plantations had substantial populations of slaves.

Notwithstanding the likelihood that many of those who were too poor to own slaves had ambitions to own them in the future, the low percentage of slaveowners suggests that there were other powerful motivations behind the secession. These included fear of domination by the Northern majority and loyalty to individual states over loyalty to the union. When Cadet Delahanty and I toured the Vicksburg battlefield, we noted that the memorials for both sides were organized by state. The same is true at Gettysburg.

Although the majority of the (white) population of the southern states supported secession, there were many Unionists. One of the last states to vote was Virginia, which voted down the proposed ordinance of secession by a two thirds majority in early April 1861. After Fort Sumter, another vote was held with secession winning 88 to 55 (leading to West Virginia's secession from the secession). Another close vote among the individual conventions was in Alabama, where 61 of the 100 delegates voted in January 1861 for secession. The relative closeness of this vote can be misleading, since a number of the 39 who voted against secession were in favor of cooperating with seceding states, and some later changed their votes.

It is also interesting to note that the young Republic of Mexico had abolished slavery by 1829. One of the reasons the Texans revolted in 1835-36 was their rejection of interference with their right to own slaves. It's some time since I read the memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant, which I suggested on another thread, but I recall reading an arresting phrase along the lines that the Civil War was God's revenge for the Mexican War (of 1848).

Good post. However, let me chime in as a U.S. History teacher. I would say that while many individual soldiers in the Confederate Army (CSA) FOUGHT for reasons other than to protect slavery (for independence, to protect their home soil, out of loyalty to their kith and kin in their home state), the overwhelming causal reason for secession was a desire to protect the institution of slavery.

At the time of the Constitutional Convention, many in the south, including slave-owning framers of the Constitution, believed that most likely slavery would die out of its own accord at some time in the future and that it was a "necessary evil" in their present day. With the advent of a lucrative new plantation-based cash crop after 1800 -- cotton, made economically viable by the invention of the cotton gin -- slave-based agriculture became enormously profitable. In part due to that, and in part as a backlash to what they saw as Northern criticism of and interference with slavery, by about 1840 the Southern elite did not regard slavery as a "necessary evil" but as a "positive good." John C. Calhoun, the intellectual father of secession (and U.S. Senator, and Secretary of State, and Vice President at various points in his career) gave a famous speech using the phrase "positive good." By the 1850s, the South was truly a slave society -- slavery was a dominant, and arguably THE dominant, influence on Southern culture, politics, economics, and even strongly influenced religion (we got "Southern Baptists" and "Southern Methodists" as the result of an Antebellum split on slavery).

When the U.S. acquired huge amounts of new territory after the Mexican-American war, a simmering dispute over slavery boiled over. Northerners who subcribed to a "free soil" ideology wanted the new land to remain free territory, a source of cheap land for small farmers who did not want to compete with big plantation owners using slave labor. Southerners felt that their considerable skill in arms had helped win this territory in blood and they were being unfairly excluded from the fruits of victory. They believed that for slavery (and their society) to thrive, slavery had to be allowed to expand or it would wither and die politically and economically.

Lincoln's election was a last straw to pro-secession Southern "fire-eaters," because he was a long-standing free soiler and a member of a new political party, the Republicans, founded primarily on one issue: exclusion of slavery from any new territory. In Lincoln's victory -- he was not even on the ballot in 10 southern states! -- the South saw the demographic handwriting on the wall: they would not have any chance of the election of a president either favorable or neutral to slavery as an institution. Lincoln's protestations that he had no intent of trying to go after slavery where it currently existed were either disregarded (he had given his "house divided" speech suggesting the two systems were irreconcilable), or they were seen as irrelevant: it wasn't about losing one presidential election, it was about losing all of them. And they believed -- and we know this because they said it, again and again -- that the loss of political influence spelled danger or doom for slavery.

The first state to secede, South Carolina, issued their own version of the Declaration of Independence explaining why they wanted to secede -- you can google it, it is called the "declaration of the immediate causes of secession." The document is crystal clear that the "immediate cause of secession" is northern hostility to slavery. The other similar seceding state declarations are also quite clear that secession is to protect the institution of slavery which, in the words of Confederate Vice President Alexander Stephens, was the "cornerstone" of the Confederacy.

Again, let me be very clear that many, many Confederate soldiers fought for reasons other than protecting the institution of slavery. But if you look at the words of those who were architects of secession, they were proud to say it was in defense of slavery.

Whew! Got me going there. (For what it's worth, I celebrate Lee as a peacemaker -- had he encouraged any sort of guerrilla warfare the fighting could have gone on at the insurgency level for generations. His acceptance of defeat and counsel to his troops and the South to accept the loss put the country on the road to healing. )
 
In many ways poor whites were in worst shape than slaves. Slaves were feed and provided shelter. Poor whites in many cases were left to starve. The only advantage for them was the fact that they were white and free but poor just the same.

....because they were someone's property, someone didn't want their invest ment to go to waste so they were fed and sheltered just enough to keep them alive long enough to reap an acceptable profit. After they had lived out their usefulness they were discarded or put down. Do then feel poor whites had as much to envy from horses, cows, oxen, etc?
 
....because they were someone's property, someone didn't want their invest ment to go to waste so they were fed and sheltered just enough to keep them alive long enough to reap an acceptable profit. After they had lived out their usefulness they were discarded or put down. Do then feel poor whites had as much to envy from horses, cows, oxen, etc?

Probably not. Being free and starving to death is much prefered.
 
I would definitely agree with that statement. Sort of makes me sick that the Marine Corps flag is in the same shot.

I would hope that it if that nimrod is/was a Marine, that some older and wiser Marine had a word with him at that rally.

The dope probably thought he was showing his love of Lynyrd Skynyrd.

BTW. I don't display the Stars and Bars, but I love Lynyrd Skynyrd.
 
The dope probably thought he was showing his love of Lynyrd Skynyrd.

More likely he's an ignorant idiot who watches a little too much Fox News, and is convinced his own problems are all because there is a Kenyan-born devil sitting in the White House, and is adamant that his 4 years of service makes him "right" on every political issue and that anyone who disagrees with him is "Un-Mericun".
 
I would definitely agree with that statement. Sort of makes me sick that the Marine Corps flag is in the same shot.

God loves idiots which why he made so many of them. Maybe we mark progress in that this lone idiot stands there with a few followers. 85 years ago thousands of hooded men marched down that very street. Soon no one
 
I would hope that it if that nimrod is/was a Marine, that some older and wiser Marine had a word with him at that rally.

The dope probably thought he was showing his love of Lynyrd Skynyrd.

BTW. I don't display the Stars and Bars, but I love Lynyrd Skynyrd.

That's a typo, right? You did mean "have a word with him in an alley", didn't you? :biggrin:
 
Why? We live in a free country. I wish I only serve to defend certain rights, but that's not how it works.

The person on the picture will be judged accordingly by a higher authority, but he is not violating any law. Free speech applies to all, not only to ones we agree with.

That's right. Free speech applies to Black Panthers, Neo-Nazis, idiots, cretins, the Kardashians.

Although it may not be his intention, the Marine Corps will be judged by that picture. I would like to hear the person in the picture explain himself to a descendent of American Slaves, who served in a segregated Marine Corps but was denied the right to vote in his home state, which once flew that flag as we now fly the Stars and Stripes.

Okay he's not an idiot. As my Grandmother would say, "Well, bless his heart."
 
That's right. Free speech applies to Black Panthers, Neo-Nazis, idiots, cretins, the Kardashians.

Although it may not be his intention, the Marine Corps will be judged by that picture. I would like to hear the person in the picture explain himself to a descendent of American Slaves, who served in a segregated Marine Corps but was denied the right to vote in his home state, which once flew that flag as we now fly the Stars and Stripes.

Okay he's not an idiot. As my Grandmother would say, "Well, bless his heart."

Why would you think the Marine Corps will be judged by that picture?
 
Why don't we honor Benedict Arnold? Now take that reasoning and apply it to Jackson and Lee...

I support this
 
Why don't we honor Benedict Arnold? Now take that reasoning and apply it to Jackson and Lee...

I support this

We shouldn't over simplify what some Confederate officers did

Not sure if we can compare Benedict Arnold against Jackson and Lee

Benedict Arnold - if I recall my history correctly, he offered to surrender a fort to the British, when things didn't go his way, he escaped, than lived out his life in England

I believe Jackson was inactive and Lee resigned his commission, when their state declared it's independence from the United States of America. Jackson was killed. Lee did a lot to pull our country together after the war.

As a National Guard officer, I hold two commissions. It will be an interesting debate to see which commission holds more weight.
 
I think what we really need to remember is the tremendous loss of life. Most familes were effected. 2% of the population. It must have had a numbing effect on this country. You can walk through the many battle cemeteries and just be overwhelmed. Those endless rows of stones as far as you can see. You have to know there were wives, girlfriends, brothers sisters, parents and children for each of those stones. Just like now. It was for the greater good of not just this country but of the world. Just like now.
My grandfather lived with his grandfather, a Northern Veteran, as a boy. he lived with him because my grandfather's father had died in the Army in service to this country. There was always a sense of pain, in my grandfather, from that conflict, his fathers and the World Wars. For my grandfather a shot and a beer always somehow fixed that.
 
I believe that we should study history so that we know where we came from and use that knowledge to make decisions about our future.

While this is a movie line, it is very true:(paraphrased) "Prior to the civil war, we were called 'These United States', It was not until after the civil war that we were called 'The United States'." Back then, we were not one nation, but a collection of Nations. Each state was sovereign.

People like to examine history in today's context to much and fail to dig deeply enough to examine the context of the times. By doing so, we fail to find the true meaning of what transpired. It appears today that we as a population tend to research history just enough to justify our position and condemn our opposition. We cherry-pick our statistics and our facts to support our conclusions. I see this everyday in the classroom and I would bet that many others on here do to if they look hard enough.

A good example of this has already been discussed in this thread - Slavery! Everybody knows how white plantation owners had enslaved the *****'s basically for their economic gains. However, rarely does it get mentioned that slavery included, whites, blacks and hispanics. Some were owned for life, some were indentured for a period of time.

Rarely does it get discussed that free Blackman also owned slaves. A friend of mine recently came across a court record in James City County archives showing were a man went to court turn his indentured servant into property for life! The plaintiff was a free Blackman who wanted to turn his white indentured servant into a slave. This was 1654 and he won. Today we would look at this behavior as insulting and as a human rights violation....However it was normal for the times.

So, how do I feel about Lee and Jackson's photos being displayed at our Army's War College....I think they should. They both served the US Honorably and then resigned their commission before raising arms to defend THEIR sovereign state. It is part of our history wether we like it or not....We cannot change it and to write them out of our history books and collective minds would be wrong.

Sorry to be the history nitpicker -- because I am not trying to pick a fight with your ultimate conclusion that Jackson and Lee are worthy of being honored -- but a few points:

1. Beginning in the late 1600s, states with slavery adopted "slave codes" that did things like (a) limit slavery to blacks; (b) make it illegal for blacks and whites to have intimate relations; (c) decree that children of white fathers and black mothers would be slaves (the traditional rule was that "status followed the father").

2. Indentured servitude -- signing a contract to work for a term of years -- was indeed a status widely held by whites in the Chesapeake region in the 1600s and it extended into the 1700s. However, although the conditions for indentured servants were very harsh, especially in the Chesapeake (which became regarded as a death trap back in England by the late 1600s because of high mortality rates for indentured servants), both historians and legal scholars consider indentured servitude to be quite distinct from "chattel slavery" which is not contract-based and in which the slave is considered to be a class of property.

3. Early in the 1600s, some free blacks did own slaves. However, I have never seen any evidence that any blacks owned whites as chattel slaves and believe that this probably did NOT occur -- legal documents from that time period can be confusing and before I reached the same conclusion as your friend (that a free black "owned" a white as a chattel slave) I would want to see analysis of the underlying documents by a legal historian with expertise in this area.

4. By the late 1600s/early 1700s, the slave codes referenced above prevented blacks from owning slaves.

5. By the early 1700s, the term "slavery" in the United States was legally and culturally synonymous with race-based chattel slavery of blacks.

6. In terms of "sovereign states," in the original Articles of Confederation that was the first written framework of government for the new fledgling "United States," the very first substantive article (Article 2) provided for the continued sovereign status of the states. However, when the ill-fated Articles of Confederation were scrapped after only seven years, the new Constitution did not preserve the sovereign status of the states (instead, it took an approach of spelling out certain powers that were federal and certain that were state). Mainstream constitutional interpretation holds that there was NOT a right of secession in the Constitution, making the actions of SC and her sister Confederate states an act of rebellion, not a legal dissolution of union.

However, with all that said, one of the big reasons that the United States was able to move on from the horrific carnage of the Civil War (and be unified enough to win big wars less than 100 years later), is that the American public as a whole was willing to accept Southern heroes and admit the gallantry with which the Confederacy fought, if not the righteousness of secession or the slave system secession was designed to protect.

If folks are interested, a Yale professor named David Blight has written an very interesting book called "Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory," which examines how and why the Civil War was remembered as it has been: http://www.amazon.com/Race-Reunion-Civil-American-Memory/dp/0674008197

You can also get free podcasts of one of his Yale courses that have lectures on this -- he's very good and quite interesting: http://oyc.yale.edu/history/hist-119
 
@tpg, I definitely did not mean to suggest you were in any way defending slavery! Thanks for the nice note. That document sounds fascinating and it sounds like the historians are hard at work on seeing if they can authenticate it.

I definitely agree that more people should be honest about our collective history. For example, as a U.S. History teacher, it's important for me that the students understand the depth of racism that existed in the North (the draft riots in New York City in 1863 showcased some of that) and also understand -- as Lincoln himself emphasized -- that the North shared in the financial benefits from slavery. "Political correctness" definitely results in some historical blind spots.

If you like history and have any kind of a commute where you are looking for stuff to play in your car, there's a lot of good free history courses on iTunes U -- if you're not just a U.S. History buff, you might like Prof. Donald Kagan's on Ancient Greek History and the Peloponnesian War, for example: https://itunes.apple.com/us/itunes-u/ancient-greek-history-audio/id341651987?mt=10
 
The confederacy was not fighting "Against" the United States. The southern states were PART of the United States. Hence, a "Civil War". Just because citizens of a country, who organized, and participated in a civil war wound up on the "Losing Side", doesn't mean they were fighting "Against" the United States. Had the south won the civil war, would the northern states be looked at in history as fighting "Against" the United States? ALL the states involved in the Civil War were part of the "UNITED STATES".

If the same thing happened today, whereby certain states believed that the federal government was over stepping their authority and disregarding the 10th amendment and ignoring "State's Rights", that wouldn't mean that the states in question were fighting "Against" the United States. This has nothing to do with slavery or anything else. Our country IS, was FOUNDED UPON, and hopefully always will be: "50 INDEPENDENT States, UNITED for matters of "INTER-STATE" and "INTER-NATIONAL" affairs. And yes, there are plenty of issues, whereby the FEDERAL Government has overstepped their authority. Then again; there are still people who believe the "Civil War" was fought specifically for the purpose of abolishing slavery. But even the reason WHY we had a civil war, is not important to the discussion.

But again; neither Lee, Jackson, or any other "Confederate State", fought AGAINST the United States. That would mean fighting against "Themselves", because they WERE PART OF the United States. And if they would be considered "Traitors"; then every colony and citizen would have to be considered traitors when we fought against the British for our independence. After all, we were "British Subjects" at the time.
 
But again; neither Lee, Jackson, or any other "Confederate State", fought AGAINST the United States. That would mean fighting against "Themselves", because they WERE PART OF the United States. And if they would be considered "Traitors"; then every colony and citizen would have to be considered traitors when we fought against the British for our independence. After all, we were "British Subjects" at the time.

Ok, so instead of "fighting against the U.S." we can just say "killed many U.S. soldiers."

And yes, they were traitors, and had the colonies not won, they would have been (and in reality were truely) traitors to the British. Luckily the colonies won.
 
Back
Top