Historians have often wondered why the Confederacy abandoned its bid for independence so readily after Robert E. Lee surrendered his army at Appomattox Court House on April 9, 1865. Catherine Anne Devereux Edmondston was a wealthy planter in Halifax County, North Carolina who wrote a detailed diary between 1860 and 1870. This is her entry for May 7, 1865:
What use is there in my writing this record? What profit, what pleasure, do I find in it? None! none! yet altho it is an actual pain to me I continue it from mere force of habit. We are crushed! subjugated! and I fear, O how I fear, conquered, & what is to me the saddest part, our people do not feel it as they ought — like men who have lost their Liberty. The cup has not to them the full bitterness which a once free people ought to find in the draught held to them by a Victor’s hand. They accept the situation tacitly, fold their hands, & say “resistance is vain,” “we have done all that men could do,” we are out numbered, over-run, & have not the where withal to set an army in the field. Their once high spirit, their stern resolve, seems dead within them! “The War is over” & that fact seems to console them. O My God, can the very spirit of Freedom die out thus & leave not a trace behind it? Are the lives laid down in its defence to be but as water spilled on the ground? Is the very memory of one dead to vanish from our minds? One would think so from the conduct of those around us. On Thursday, on our way out to Hascosea, we met crowds of people, almost the whole neighborhood it seemed to me, on their way to a Pic Nic at Hills Mill. The usual preparations for dancing had been made & there they spent the day feasting, dancing, fishing, & merry making in their old familiar way. It seems almost like dancing over their husband’s, brothers, & sons graves. Do they realize what they do, or are they stupefied by the calamity which has befallen them & say “let us eat & drink for tomorrow we die.” O my Country, my Country, I look forward to the future with bitter forebodings when I see your children thus forgetful of your and their own honour, of their own blood!
So, yeah, many people at the time also found the complete collapse of southern resistance a little weird.
My own thoughts on this topic are already recorded here somewhere: that the rebellion was undertaken in hot blood for reasons of honor as much as anything else, and once they had fought hard enough for honor to be served – as shown by the surrender of Lee, the most honorable man in the South – most of the Confederates abandoned the dream of independence and moved on to more important goals, such as maintaining white supremacy and limiting outside interference in how they ran their states.
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ReplyDeleteMy own thoughts on this topic are already recorded here somewhere: that the rebellion was undertaken in hot blood for reasons of honor as much as anything else, and once they had fought hard enough for honor to be served – as shown by the surrender of Lee, the most honorable man in the South – most of the Confederates abandoned the dream of independence and moved on to more important goals, such as maintaining white supremacy and limiting outside interference in how they ran their states.
This interpretation flies in the face of the Confederacy's own plainly declared motivations. Here is an excerpt from a speech by Confederate Vice President Alexander Stephens, given on the topic of the then newly-drafted Confederate Constitution:
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"The new Constitution has put at rest forever all the agitating questions relating to our peculiar institutions - African slavery as it exists among us - the proper status of the negro in our form of civilization. This was the immediate cause of the late rupture and present revolution. Jefferson, in his forecast, had anticipated this, as the 'rock upon which the old Union would split.' He was right. What was conjecture with him, is now a realized fact.
But whether he fully comprehended the great truth upon which that rock stood and stands, may be doubted. The prevailing ideas entertained by him and most of the leading statesmen at the time of the formation of the old Constitution were, that the enslavement of the African was in violation of the laws of nature; that it was wrong in principle, socially, morally and politically. It was an evil they knew not well how to deal with; but the general opinion of the men of that day was, that, somehow or other, in the order of Providence, the institution would be evanescent and pass away.
This idea, though not incorporated in the Constitution, was the prevailing idea at the time. The Constitution, it is true, secured every essential guarantee to the institution while it should last, and hence no argument can be justly used against the constitutional guarantees thus secured, because of the common sentiment of the day. Those ideas, however, were fundamentally wrong. They rested upon the assumption of the equality of races. This was an error. It was a sandy foundation, and the idea of a Government built upon it - when the 'storm came and the wind blew, it fell.'
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ReplyDeleteOur new Government is founded upon exactly the opposite ideas; its foundations are laid, its cornerstone 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 moral condition. [Applause.]
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. It is so even amongst us. Many who hear me, perhaps, can recollect well that this truth was not generally admitted, even within their day. The errors of the past generation still clung to many as late as twenty years ago. Those at the North who still cling to these errors with a zeal above knowledge, we justly denominate fanatics.
All fanaticism springs from an aberration of the mind; from a defect in reasoning. It is a species of insanity. One of the most striking characteristics of insanity, in many instances, is, forming correct conclusions from fancied or erroneous premises; so with the anti-slavery fanatics: their conclusions are right if their premises are. They assume that the negro is equal, and hence conclude that he is entitled to equal privileges and rights, with the white man.
I recollect once of having heard a gentleman from one of the Northern States, of great power and ability, announce in the House of Representatives, with imposing effect, that we of the South would be compelled, ultimately, to yield upon this subject of slavery; that it was as impossible to war successfully against a principle in politics, as it was in physics or mechanics. That the principle would ultimately prevail. That we, in maintaining slavery as it exists with us, were warring against a principle - a principle founded in nature, the principle of the equality of man.
The reply I made to him was, that upon his own grounds we should succeed, and that he and his associates in their crusade against our institutions would ultimately fail. The truth announced, that it was as impossible to war successfully against a principle in politics as well as in physics and mechanics, I admitted, but told him it was he and those acting with him who were warring against a principle. They were attempting to make things equal which the Creator had made unequal.
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Stephen clearly spells out - over and over - that secession was entirely about slavery.
He notes that while Southerners had not previously been so adamant about the cause of preserving slavery at any cost, that had changed recently - although he specifically calls out that it had changed no less than 20 years prior.
Stephens does not frame their rebellion as having been "undertaken in hot blood for reasons of honor as much as anything else", but rather as having been undertaken after twenty or more years of consideration and growing resentment, and for the explicit reason of preserving the "truth" and "principle" of slavery based on racial superiority.
No where in his entire address does Stephens mention the "honor" of the South.
That notion is Neo-Confederate rhetoric that was created after the war, as a way to retroactively justify their "Lost Cause" narrative, and which exists to whitewash the reality of their actions - denying that rebellion was about preserving slavery, which they realized they could no longer argue as a moral imperative, and instead falsely framing the entire affair as about "honor" and "states rights", which they could level at their opponents as seemingly sympathetic reasons for what they did, rather than the true abhorrent ones.
I will win no academic points by referring to Margaret Mitchell, writing 60 years later, but I'm reminded of a passage in her book that describes the Confederate soldiers as having fought the good fight and being ready to settle down and take up their plows under the flag they had fought. "Bitterness they left to their women.". [Until the evils of Reconstruction of course.]
ReplyDelete~ The Wife
@G- Why did Southerners think slavery was threatened in 1860, when Lincoln swore up and down that he had no plans to move against it, and only a small minority of northerners had any interest in doing so?
ReplyDeleteIn my view, they had no reason for this fear.
Yes, they wanted to preserve slavery, but they backed themselves into a corner by saying, over and over, that if the north forced an anti-slavery president on them, they would fight. When that happened, honor forced them to fight.
@John
ReplyDelete"Forced an anti-slavery president on them" is an extremely bizarre interpretation of "lost a free and fair election in a democratic society".
And again, your argument that "honor forced them to fight" is completely contrary to what figures like Stephens flatly stated motivated them.
You very recently made the comment: "Hey, great, I love manifestos. More people should write manifestos so we can tell what they think instead of having to work it out from random stuff they say."
Well, here you are resolutely dismissing the actual contents of a speech made to directly address the very foundation of the Confederacy (earning it the nickname "The Cornerstone Speech"), which is but a mere few steps away from being a full-blown manifesto.
The Vice President of the Confederacy is telling you exactly what he thinks, and you are ludicrously insisting on instead trying "to work it out" - and not even "from random stuff he said", but from the even more absurd position of things he did not say.
Or maybe this one speech alone is not compelling enough evidence for you?
ReplyDeleteIn that case, please, go peruse the Ordinance of Secession, or the various Declarations of Secession put forth independently by certain states. The contents of all of them follow a common pattern - a declaration of secession (and likewise an unsubstantiated claim of legal authority / right to secede, justifying said declaration), and unsubstantiated claims that the North has gone out of its way to treat them unfairly and unlawfully.
Georgia:
"For the last ten years we have had numerous and serious causes of complaint against our non-slave-holding confederate States with reference to the subject of African slavery. They have endeavored to weaken our security, to disturb our domestic peace and tranquility, and persistently refused to comply with their express constitutional obligations to us in reference to that property, and by the use of their power in the Federal Government have striven to deprive us of an equal enjoyment of the common Territories of the Republic. This hostile policy of our confederates has been pursued with every circumstance of aggravation which could arouse the passions and excite the hatred of our people, and has placed the two sections of the Union for many years past in the condition of virtual civil war."
Mississippi:
"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. That we do not overstate the dangers to our institution, a reference to a few facts will sufficiently prove."
South Carolina:
"We affirm that these ends for which this Government was instituted have been defeated, and the Government itself has been made destructive of them by the action of the non-slaveholding States. Those States have assumed the right of deciding upon the propriety of our domestic institutions; and have denied the rights of property established in fifteen of the States and recognized by the Constitution; they have denounced as sinful the institution of slavery; they have permitted open establishment among them of societies, whose avowed object is to disturb the peace and to eloign the property of the citizens of other States. They have encouraged and assisted thousands of our slaves to leave their homes; and those who remain, have been incited by emissaries, books and pictures to servile insurrection. For twenty-five years this agitation has been steadily increasing, until it has now secured to its aid the power of the common Government."
Texas:
ReplyDeleteThe controlling majority of the Federal Government, under various pretences and disguises, has so administered the same as to exclude the citizens of the Southern States, unless under odious and unconstitutional restrictions, from all the immense territory owned in common by all the States on the Pacific Ocean, for the avowed purpose of acquiring sufficient power in the common government to use it as a means of destroying the institutions of Texas and her sister slaveholding States.
By the disloyalty of the Northern States and their citizens and the imbecility of the Federal Government, infamous combinations of incendiaries and outlaws have been permitted in those States and the common territory of Kansas to trample upon the federal laws, to war upon the lives and property of Southern citizens in that territory, and finally, by violence and mob law, to usurp the possession of the same as exclusively the property of the Northern States.
The Federal Government, while but partially under the control of these our unnatural and sectional enemies, has for years almost entirely failed to protect the lives and property of the people of Texas against the Indian savages on our border, and more recently against the murderous forays of banditti from the neighboring territory of Mexico; and when our State government has expended large amounts for such purpose, the Federal Government has refuse reimbursement therefor, thus rendering our condition more insecure and harassing than it was during the existence of the Republic of Texas.
Virginia:
"The people of Virginia, in their ratification of the Constitution of the United States of America, adopted by them in Convention on the twenty-fifth day of June, in the year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and eighty-eight, having declared that the powers granted under the said Constitution were derived from the people of the United States, and might be resumed whensoever the same should be perverted to their injury and oppression; and the Federal Government, having perverted said powers, not only to the injury of the people of Virginia, but to the oppression of the Southern Slaveholding States."
So we've got arguments about "Property Rights" invoked to defend slavery, because slaves are property, and so the existence of Northern states where slavery was illegal "unlawfully" impacted the commerce of Southern states where it was legal...
ReplyDelete(...nevermind that in the pre-war South, there were several states that banned alcohol under a variety of justifications, and when other states complained that such bans "unlawfully" hurt their commerce and economies, the Supreme Court dismissed those complaints...)
We've got arguments about not being allowed to spread slavery into the Territories, and preventing newly formed states from allowing slavery...
We've got an argument about "they denounced us as sinful!", which is really a pathetic complaint to lodge as justification for treason and civil war...
We've got an argument about "slavery is good for the economy!"...
We've got an argument about "disloyalty" and "imbecility", which is a yet another obscenely petty excuse for engaging in armed rebellion, akin to a playground insult ("You're stupid and you didn't let me have my way!")...
We've got an argument about "the federal government has failed to prevent violence in Kansas!", which... is actually a somewhat legitimate complaint, in certain regards...
(...except for the fact that A) it's being made by Texas, not Kansas; B) the violence, criminality, and corruption were carried out more or less equally by both pro-slavery and anti-slavery forces on either side of the conflict; and C) the Federal Government actively turned a blind eye to Kansas' fraudulently elected pro-slavery legislature, despite a congressional investigation which found the Kansas legislature to be wholly illegitimate....)
We've got an argument about "the federal government hasn't done enough about Mexican bandits!", which is... also, actually fairly legitimate, without such obvious problems as the prior one...
And we've got Virginia saying "the federal government has done bad stuff, but we're not going to say what, just trust us, they're real jerks, but anyway we're seceding now, okay, bye!".
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Your claim is: "that the rebellion was undertaken in hot blood for reasons of honor as much as anything else".
But honor is not mentioned, at all, by anyone. You would think with all the other petty reasons they deigned to offer, at least someone would have thought to argue that their honor had been maligned most unfairly!
Similarly, the notion of action "undertaken in hot blood" is absurd, given the frequency with which Confederate voices flatly state that they've been unhappy with the general course of events in the country for multiple decades.
This wasn't a "hot-blooded" crime of passion; the secessionists themselves say so quite clearly and directly. They even state that "virtual civil war" has been ongoing for years. They directly point to the "Border War" of Kansas as a primary factor in their secession.
So please, stop parroting well-known and well-debunked ancient Neo-Confederate talking points. "Honor" didn't compel the South to illegally secede - greed and racism did, and they go to great lengths to spell it out plainly for all to hear.
@G- I am, you know, a professional historian, and among other things I write histories of Civil War battlefields for the National Park Service. If you did a quick search of this blog you would find several statements to the effect that slavery was the root cause of the war.
ReplyDeleteThat slavery was the root cause of the war says nothing at all about why the war started in 1860, and, in particular, it says nothing at all about why the Confederates gave up so easily at the war's end. Search the sources you supply; is there anything in them at all that explains the Confederate surrender of 1865? I would say that they imply the South should never surrender, for surrender to the Lincoln administration would mean its destruction. The fact that they did surrender after much less effort than many other rebel groups have put into their wars is, to me, very interesting. What was the significance of Lee's surrender? Why was it interpreted across the South as the signal for the war's end? Is there anything in the sources you cite that offers any insight?
I would also offer a deeper sort of point about history, which is that emotions matter. Very little in history can be explained solely by material interests. The war was fought between people who thought their distinctive way of life, rooted in mastery over slaves, was both worth fighting for and threatened. Why did they believe either thing? I do not think either is obvious, even from their point of view. Why was their emotional attachment to slavery so strong, when the econometrics shows that it retarded Southern economic growth? Ok, so it was good for people who owned hundreds of slaves, but what about everybody else? Why did the Southern leadership choose the one course, armed rebellion, that (as many understood at the time) guaranteed the end of slavery and collapse of both their society and their national political power? Because they were stupid? I doubt it. I would say, because they were blinded by false beliefs about both themselves and their enemies. Why did they hold those false beliefs? And why did they change them over the course of the war?
Those are my questions.
If we're looking for answers as to why the Confederates gave up, there is no shortage of possible explanations you could to look to.
ReplyDeleteBut "honor was served, so now the war can end" doesn't seem terribly compelling to me without some sort of commentary by the Confederates themselves to that effect. In fact, I only seem to find commentary which suggests otherwise.
Here's Lee's own words enacting his surrender, General Order No. 9:
"After four years of arduous service, marked by unsurpassed courage and fortitude the Army of Northern Virginia has been compelled to yeild [sic] to overwhelming numbers. I need not tell the survivors of so many hard fought battles who have remained steadfast to the last, that I have consented to this result from no distrust of them. But feeling, that valor and devotion could accomplish nothing that would compensate the loss that would attend the continuance of the contest – I determined to avoid the useless sacrifice of those whose finest services have endeared them to their countrymen. By the terms of the agreement Officers and men can return to their homes and remain until exchanged. You will take with you the satisfaction that proceeds from the consciousness of duty faithfully performed, and I earnestly pray that a merciful God will extend to you His blessing and protection – With unceasing admiration of your constancy and devotion to your country, and a grateful remembrance of your kind and generous consideration of myself, I bid you an affectionate farewell."
Here, Lee - "the most honorable man in the South", as you put it - does indeed invoke "duty", "valor", "constancy", "devotion", et cetera. But he's addressing his own troops and telling them they've lost the war - of course he's going to ameliorate the sting of their surrender with noble words, the better to help his men go along quietly with the matter.
ReplyDeleteBut those noble words distract from the actual justifications he gives for the surrender. He does not say that "honor has been served" - he in fact says quite the opposite! He instead says that honor has been exhausted; that "valor and devotion" can accomplish nothing of any further value; that they have been "compelled to yield to overwhelming numbers".
In short, he's saying that the war has been lost, and it's useless to go on. And he is, in fact, directly implying that were the fight not hopeless, it would continue - that "valor and devotion" would fuel further conflict if it had a realistic chance of success.
You talk about the Confederacy ending "after much less effort than many other rebel groups have put into their wars" - but effort is not the same thing as capacity to continue fighting, and both the South's economy, manpower reserves, military command structure, and even formal government were all in utter shambles by the time of Appomattox. The war had taken a very serious toll, and the South suffered very severely from "War Weariness" - both in terms of shattered morale, and in terms of simple physical logistical capacity to continue fighting.
Sherman had marched to the sea, and left utter devastation in his wake - ruining hundreds of miles of railroad and telegraph wire, stealing tens of millions of pounds of grain and animal feed, burning untold acres of unharvested cropland, and torching who knows how many homes and plantations and stables and mills and factories and warehouses and ports and every other kind of infrastructure you can imagine.
Elsewhere, the Confederate capital had been taken. The Mississippi had long since been locked down firmly under Union control. Battle after battle was being lost at terrible cost. The Confederate frontline had been in continuous retreat for a long time.
And then Lee got cornered, short on supplies, his forces exhausted, and he faced two options - surrender his army, or be destroyed. He had 25,000 men - the Union had 125,000. He tried to break out anyway, but failed. Escape was impossible. Victory was impossible. Faced with the prospect of a fruitless last stand that would see his army wiped out either as casualties or as prisoners, he opted to instead spare the lives of his men and win them as many favorable terms as he could manage.
Now, you ask "Why was (Lee's surrender) interpreted across the South as the signal for the war's end?"
ReplyDeleteI believe the question is fundamentally flawed - his surrender was NOT (broadly speaking) interpreted across the South as the signal for the war's end. Lee's own wife remarked that "General Lee is not the Confederacy", and she was correct, in that his surrender alone did not spell the end of the war.
Lee's surrender quite obviously was a serious blow to morale - after all, he was the South's most famous, most beloved, most influential, most important general. But even more than that, it was an equally serious blow to the practical war effort - a loss of an army of 25,000 men (which had previously been the single largest army of the Confederacy, before being drastically reduced in numbers by casualties and mass desertion) AND the loss of the capable and beloved commander leading it.
This did not stop the fighting, though. The Confederacy was poised to continue resistance even without Lee.
Not long after Lee's surrender, we get Gen. Joseph E. Johnston's surrender of his own force of 100,000 men in North Carolina. From a practical standpoint, this much larger loss of troops was a proportionally much worse blow to the war effort.
But Johnston had, in fact, been directly ordered by his superiors to continue the fight - the North had made generous peace overtures to the Confederacy in the wake of Lee's surrender, and President Jefferson Davis had rejected them and sought to redouble their war efforts.
Johnston defied orders to surrender his men - like Lee, he had been hounded by Union forces, with dwindling supplies, and no hope of resting his men or replacing his casualties, and he predicted he himself would shortly be cornered with no where to run, so he too surrendered. Like Lee, he felt the war was utterly lost, and further fighting was hopeless.
In less than three weeks, between just those two surrenders, the Confederacy lost over a third of their approximately 350,000 men still remaining. The commanders of its two largest armies both agreed that there was no point in further fighting, and that the war was lost.
At that point, virtually anyone would give up the fight - "Honor" be damned.
The war was LOST - that isn't simply my own empty conjecture, it's the explicitly stated justification given by the surrendering generals.
ReplyDeleteAnd even still, much of the Confederacy tried to limp along lamely anyway, with their army in tatters, their economy in ruins, and their hopes of ever realistically winning the war burnt to ashes. It literally took the dissolution of their cabinet and the capture of their president for the war to actually reach an end - and even then, it still crawled onward, as the Trans-Mississippi Department held out for weeks after their formal government was disassembled.
That doesn't sound like Lee's surrender convinced people that "honor had been served" - it sounds like virtually everyone kept fighting until they each individually could no longer delude themselves about the fact that they war could no longer be won, or were literally forcibly captured. Some individuals, like Lee and Johnston, simply were able to accept reality sooner than others.
So no - I really must insist that the war was not "undertaken in hot blood for reasons of honor as much as anything else".
And no - I equally must insist that "once they had fought hard enough for honor to be served – as shown by the surrender of Lee, the most honorable man in the South – most of the Confederates" did not abandon "the dream of independence" and move "on to more important goals".
You keep arguing for this notion of "honor", but you haven't cited a single scrap of evidence to back it up that isn't circumstantial or theoretical. You talk about the emotions of the Confederates, but you don't provide any quotations from them or other concrete evidence of what those emotions may have actually been, and you instead simply simply insist upon your view, despite the fact that to all appearances, it is mere empty conjecture on your part.
I very much don't mind being shown that I'm wrong here! I'm quite willing to entertain concrete evidence that appears to support your views. But you simply aren't providing any, and I've found and cited I think not-inconsiderable evidence which leans in the opposite direction of your claims. How else am I supposed to react, other than with disbelief?