SOME SURPRISING FACTS ABOUT THE CONFEDERACY
Michael T. Griffith
2006
@All Rights Reserved
In recent years it has
become increasingly fashionable in some circles, especially on college campuses
and in the media, to demonize anything and everything related to the
Confederate States of America (CSA).
Some critics have gone so far as to compare the Confederacy to Nazi
Germany. Many politicians and liberal
groups have sought to erase any trace of Confederate heritage. They’ve labeled the Confederate flag as a
“loathsome, offensive” symbol and have tried to ban its display on public
property. They’ve also campaigned to rename
public schools, roads, buildings and parks that are named after Confederate
heroes. In some towns, liberal groups
have worked to prevent the Confederate flag from even being flown over the
graves of Confederate soldiers in public cemeteries. In response to the ongoing campaign to demonize Confederate
heritage, I offer the following facts about the Confederacy:
1. By the latter part of
1864 the CSA was moving toward ending slavery.
In fact, there are indications that the Confederacy would have ended
slavery even if it had survived the war, as prominent historians like J. G. Randall
and David Donald have acknowledged (see Randall and Donald, The Civil War
and Reconstruction, Lexington, Massachusetts: D.C. Heath and Company, 1969,
p. 522).
Critics will reply that the CSA
only began to move toward emancipation as an act of desperation in the face of
imminent defeat. If so, this proves
that Southern independence was more important to Confederate leaders than was
the continuation of slavery, that when push came to shove they were willing to
abandon slavery in order to achieve independence.
However, this being duly
noted, it should be pointed out that it was by no means clear in late 1864 that
Southern defeat was imminent.
Historians Herman Hattaway and Richard Beringer note that even in
February 1865, just two months before the war ended, "a considerable
degree of determination and high morale did still persist" in the South (Jefferson
Davis, Confederate President, University Press of Kansas, 2002, p.
357). Militarily speaking, the
situation was far from hopeless in late 1864.
Even when the Army of Northern Virginia surrendered in April 1865, the
situation was not completely hopeless.
At the end of the war, fewer than one-third of Confederate troops on
active duty were deployed against either of the two main Union armies. One of the arguments made by Southern
leaders who opposed the arming and freeing of slaves was that the South's
situation did not yet require such a measure.
There is certainly room for debate about the CSA’s military prospects
after the fall of Atlanta in September 1864.
It’s also true that Confederate leaders felt that using slaves as
soldiers was a matter of urgent military necessity. However, few if any Confederate leaders believed the South would
be defeated by April if they didn’t arm and emancipate the slaves. George Rable noted that even after the fall
of Richmond "a belief that somehow independence could yet be won
persisted" (in Hattaway and Beringer, Jefferson Davis, Confederate
President, p. 357). Historian
Robert F. Durden of Duke University echoed the observations of Hattaway,
Beringer, and Rable:
Wracked
though the Southerners were with the agony of a war they were losing, most
Confederates, contrary to those persons who prefer to read history backward,
did not know in November 1864 that they were beaten. (The Gray and the
Black: The Confederate Debate on Emancipation, Louisiana Paperback Edition,
Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2000, reprint of 1972 edition,
p. 101)
One could correctly observe
that the only reason the Union started using black troops was that Union
casualties were mounting and that Northern resistance to the draft was
increasing. One could also point out
that Lincoln strongly resisted using black troops until intense pressure from
the Radical Republicans coupled with mounting Union casualties caused him to
change his mind. Even after Lincoln
agreed to the use of free blacks and ex-slaves as troops, he refused to give
them equal pay until forced to do so by Congress.
In his book Forced Into
Glory: Abraham Lincoln’s White Dream (Chicago: Johnson Publishing Company,
2000), African-American author Lerone Bennett presents evidence that Lincoln
only issued the Emancipation Proclamation in response to increasing pressure
from the Radicals and in order to blunt the effect of a more drastic
confiscation measure that Congress had already passed. Bennett also discusses evidence that Lincoln
worked to minimize the effects of the proclamation almost as soon as he issued
it.
In the American Revolution,
the Continental Army only began to use black troops as an act of desperation
because the army was running short of soldiers and because the British had
offered freedom to American slaves who would fight in the British army (Henry
Wiencick, An Imperfect God: George Washington, His Slaves, and the Creation
of America, New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2003, pp. 196-22; James
and Lois Horton, In Hope of Liberty: Culture, Community and Protest Among
Northern Free Blacks, 1700-1860, New York: Oxford University Press, 1997,
pp. 55-71). George Washington initially
barred blacks from enlisting in the army.
He relented because he was desperate for more soldiers, because white
enlistment was falling dramatically. (Wiencick, An Imperfect God, pp.
196-227). Even then, some New England
militias continued to bar blacks from enlistment. It took the Continental Congress two years to formally agree to
black enlistment. Another factor that
influenced the decision to use slaves and free blacks as soldiers in the
Continental Army was the fact that thousands of American slaves were flocking
to British lines in response to the British offer of emancipation.
I might add that after the
Revolutionary War, American negotiators insisted on a provision in the treaty
that ended the war, the Treaty of Paris, that the British return any American
slaves who had fled to British lines during the war. One of those negotiators was none other than John Adams. In fact, Adams warmly endorsed the provision
(Wiencick, An Imperfect God, p. 254).
To their credit, the British later violated this provision and evacuated
thousands of slaves with them when they left America.
I might also add that when
it began to appear that the British weren't going to return the runaway
American slaves, George Washington demanded a meeting with the British general
who was in charge of enforcing the Treaty of Paris during the evacuation from
New York, General Guy Carleton. Washington
tried to persuade Carleton to honor the treaty provision on the return of
runaway slaves. To his credit, Carleton
stood his ground and refused to hand over the slaves. Carleton said the Americans could apply for compensation for the
slaves, but that he would not return them.
Carleton insisted the slaves were now free and that it would bring
dishonor on England to return them after promising them safe refuge. Lord
North, the British prime minister, called Carleton's stand "an act of
justice." King George III himself
voiced support for Carleton's action "in the fullest and most ample
manner." One very rarely finds any
mention of these facts in American history books.
The American colonies’
policies on black troops during the Revolutionary War and their insistence on
the return of American slaves after the war are admittedly embarrassing and
contrary to the spirit of the Declaration of Independence. However, to my knowledge, no American
historian has expressed regret that the Americans won the war.
2. The Confederate president
himself, Jefferson Davis, came to strongly support ending slavery. So did CSA Secretary of State Judah
Benjamin, Governor William Smith of Virginia, and leading CSA Congressmen
Ethelbert Barksdale and Duncan Kenner (who was one of the largest slaveholders
in the South).
3. The CSA's two highest
ranking generals, Robert E. Lee and Joseph E. Johnston, both disliked slavery
and supported emancipation in various forms.
Lee called slavery "a moral and political evil." Johnston called it "a curse." (Johnston initially opposed using slaves as
soldiers only because he feared it would be disruptive and ineffective, not
because he had any sympathy for slavery.
He later came to support the proposal.)
Other Confederate generals who supported emancipation included General
Daniel Govan, General John Kelly, and General Mark Lowrey.
4.
The majority of Confederate generals did not own slaves and did not come from
slaveholding families (Hattaway and Beringer, Jefferson Davis, Confederate
President, p. 37).
5. Thousands of African
Americans, Hispanics, and Indians fought for the Confederacy. Many of the slaves who served in the
Confederate army did so because they hoped that by doing so they would be
granted freedom after the war or because they were specifically promised
freedom if they would serve. The same
was true of most of the slaves who fought for the Continental Army during the
Revolutionary War.
The chief inspector of the
U.S. Sanitary Commission, Dr. Lewis Steiner, reported that he saw about 3,000 well-armed
black Confederate soldiers in Stonewall Jackson’s army--he added that those
soldiers were "manifestly an integral portion of the Southern Confederate
Army" (Issac
W. Heysinger, Antietam and the Maryland and Virginia Campaigns of 1862,
New York: Neale Publishing Company, 1912, pp. 122-123; cf. John J. Dwyer,
general editor, The War Between the States: America’s Uncivil War,
Denton, Texas: Bluebonnet Press, 2005, p. 409).
Three Confederate states authorized free blacks to enlist in state militia
units. The first to do so was
Tennessee, which passed a law on June 21, 1861, authorizing the recruitment of
state militia units composed of "free persons of color" between the
ages of 15 and 50. In 1862, Louisiana
assembled the all-black 1st Louisiana Native Guard, and Alabama
authorized the enlistment of creoles for a state militia unit in Mobile.
6. The Confederate Congress specified that black soldiers in the
Confederate army were to receive the same pay, rations, and clothing that white
soldiers received. In contrast, black
soldiers in the Union army were paid much less than white soldiers were paid
for over a year. The Union army began
using former slaves and free blacks as soldiers in September 1862. They were paid $7 per month. Technically, they were paid $10 a month, but
they were forced to pay a clothing allowance of $3, which meant their net
monthly pay was only $7. White
soldiers, on the other hand, received $13 per month and were not forced to pay
a clothing allowance. Thus, in the Union
army white soldiers were paid nearly twice as much as black soldiers were
paid. Black Union soldiers didn’t start
receiving equal pay until June 1864. When the Confederate Congress authorized the
recruitment of slaves as soldiers, it stipulated that they were to receive “the
same rations, clothing and compensation as are allowed to other troops” (An Act
to Increase the Military Force of the Confederate States, March 13, 1865,
Section 3). In addition, when the Confederate Congress
authorized salaries for black musicians in the Confederate army in 1862, it
specified that they were to receive the same pay as white army musicians,
stating "whenever colored persons are employed as musicians in any
regiment or company, they shall be entitled to the same pay now allowed by law
to musicians regularly enlisted."
7. According to the 1860
census, only 31 percent of Southern families owned slaves. Seventy-five percent
of the families that owned slaves, owned less than ten and often worked side by
side with them in the fields.
Approximately half of the free blacks in America lived in the
South. The percentage of Southern
citizens who held slaves was probably no more than 25 percent (some scholars
put the percentage as low as 10 percent).
8. The Confederate Constitution
allowed for the admission of free states to the Confederacy, banned the
overseas slave trade, and permitted Confederate states to abolish slavery
within their borders if they wanted to do so.
During the Confederate debate on emancipation, both sides readily
acknowledged that under the Confederate Constitution each state had the
absolute right to abolish slavery within its borders (see, for example, Durden,
The Gray and the Black, pp. 98, 115, 170,195).
9. The Confederate
Constitution protected every right for its citizens that the U.S. Constitution
protected for U.S. citizens, if not more (Charles Roland, The Confederacy,
University of Chicago Press, 1960, pp. 25-27; see also below). Even during the war, the Confederacy held
free elections and enjoyed a vibrant free press (William J. Cooper, Jefferson
Davis, American, Vintage Books Edition, New York: Vintage Books, 2001, pp.
349-519; see also below).
10. The Confederate
Constitution contained added protections against runaway government spending, excessive
taxation, and harmful protective tariffs. Historian Allan Nevins said the
following about the Confederate Constitution:
It differed from the
old national model chiefly in its emphasis on State rights. . . . The general welfare clauses were omitted. Any Confederate official acting within the
limits of a State might be impeached by the State legislature, though the
Constitution, laws made under it, and treaties were declared “the supreme law
of the land”. . . .
The most remarkable features of the new instrument sprang from the purifying and reforming zeal of the delegates, who hoped to create a more guarded and virtuous government than that of Washington. The President was to hold office six years, and be ineligible for reelection. Expenditures were to be limited by a variety of careful provisions, and the President was given budgetary control over appropriations which Congress could break only by a two-thirds vote.
Subordinate employees
were protected against the forays of the spoils system. No bounties were ever
to be paid out of the Treasury, no protective tariff was to be passed, and no
post office deficit was to be permitted. . . .
Some of these changes were unmistakable improvements, and the spirit
behind all of them was an earnest desire to make government more honest and
efficient. (Nevins,
The Emergence of Lincoln, Ordeal of the Union, Volume 2, New York:
Charles Scribner's Sons, 1950, p. 435)
11. Unlike the federal
government, the Confederate government did not imprison well over 10,000 of its
own citizens without due process in order to suppress internal dissent (some
scholars suggest the number of illegally imprisoned citizens was close to 30,000);
it did not shut down the legislatures of two of its states because the citizens
in those states elected anti-war majorities; it did not arrest members of a
state legislature to prevent the legislature from even discussing a policy it
didn’t like; it did not shut down over 300 newspapers for expressing
"unpatriotic views"; it did not jail dozens of newspaper editors for
expressing "unpatriotic views"; and it did not impose military rule
on areas that were far removed from combat in order to suppress internal
dissent. The federal government did all these things and more.
The Confederacy showed an
amazing degree of respect for civil rights during the war. Renowned Civil War scholar (and pro-Lincoln
biographer) David Donald has observed that the Confederacy was
"astonishingly libertarian" and that "disloyal elements
throughout the South had almost unrestricted freedom." His comments on the Confederacy’s respect
for civil rights and on the contrast between the Confederacy’s policies and the
Lincoln Administration’s policies deserve to be quoted at length:
If
we could free ourselves of the notion that democracy (a “good” thing) must inevitably have been connected with the
winning (hence “good”) Lincoln government, we would discover abundant evidence
that the Confederacy, not the Union, represented the democratic forces in
American life.
The
democratic tendencies of the Confederacy were all too plainly reflected in its
army. . . .
The
Confederacy’s tolerance of democracy was not confined to military affairs. In civil rights, too, the South had an
astonishingly libertarian record. Though engaged in deadly war, the Davis government preserved the
traditional rights of freedom of speech, freedom of the press, and freedom from
arbitrary arrest. . . .
Both
Davis and his government were subjected to tirades of abuse. Davis, said T. R. R. Cobb of Georgia, was
“the embodiment and concentration of cowardly littleness. . . .” The editor of the influential Richmond
Examiner, E. A. Pollard, described Davis as “a literary dyspeptic who had
more ink than blood in his veins, an intriguer, busy with private
enmities.” Robert Toombs, the
Confederacy’s first Secretary of State, declared: “Davis’s incapacity is
lamentable. . . .” “How God has
afflicted us with a ruler!” exclaimed Linton Stephens, the Vice President’s
brother, a leader in the Georgia House of Representatives. “He is a little, conceited, hypocritical,
sniveling, canting, malicious, ambitious, dogged, knave and fool.”
Not
one of these, nor any of the other critics, of the Confederate President had
his liberty of utterance impaired. . . .
“When Davis’s advisers were to urge that anti-Administration papers be
restrained, he would not hear of it,” Hudson Strode points out. “As a democrat, he believed in maintaining
complete freedom of the press.” It is
true that in January 1862, the Confederate Congress did pass a law forbidding
the publication of unauthorized news of troop movements, but even this slight
regulation was bitterly protested and flagrantly ignored. No Southern newspaper was ever suppressed by
the Confederate government for its opinions, however critical or
demoralizing. The ardent wish of
Secretary of War George W. Randolph was realized: that “this revolution may be
. . . closed without suppression of one single newspaper in the Confederate
States.”
More
significant militarily was the Confederacy’s insistence upon maintaining the
cherished legal rights of freedom from arbitrary arrest and upon preserving due
process of law. This sentiment was so
strong that, though the Confederacy was invaded and Richmond was actually
endangered, President Davis did not dare institute martial law until he had
received the permission of his Congress. While General George B. McClellan was
about to assault the Confederate capital in 1862, the Southern Congress debated
the question and concluded that their President was “subject to the
Constitution and to the laws enacted by Congress in pursuance of the
Constitution. He can exert no power
inconsistent with law, and, therefore, he cannot declare martial law.” Grudgingly Congress permitted Davis to
suspend the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus [protection against
arbitrary arrest and denial of due process] for three brief periods—once when McClellan
was within sight of Richmond, again during the Fredericksburg-Chancellorsville
threat, and once more when [General Ulysses] Grant was pushing through the
Wilderness. Even then he was allowed to
suspend the writ only in limited areas, not throughout the Confederacy. When he came to Congress for a renewal of
his authority during the grim winter of 1864-1865, he was refused. . . .
The
result, of course, was that disloyal elements throughout the South had almost
unrestricted freedom.
(Donald, "Died of Democracy," in
Donald, editor, Why the North Won the Civil War, Touchstone Edition, New
York: Touchstone, 1996, pp. 82, 86-88)
Donald then examines the
federal government’s very different approach to civil rights, noting that “in
comparison with the Confederacy, the Union government did curtail civil
liberties” (Why the North Won the Civil War, p. 88). Says Donald,
As
soon as the fighting started, President Lincoln, without delaying to consult
Congress, suspended the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus, at first for a
small area of the East, later for the entire nation. At a subsequent date he reported his fait accompli to
Congress. . . . Congress had little
choice but to ratify, and the disloyal citizen [i.e., the citizen who opposed
Lincoln and/or the war] had no alternative but to acquiesce. Thousands of citizens were imprisoned in the
North for alleged disloyalty or sedition.
They were arrested upon a presidential warrant and were kept
incarcerated without due process of law.
It did the disaffected citizen no good to go to court for a writ of
habeas corpus to end his arbitrary arrest.
On orders from President Lincoln himself, the military guard imprisoning
him refused to recognize a judicial writ even when it came from Chief Justice
Roger B. Taney.
Freedom
of the press was also seriously abridged in the North. . . . Over three hundred Northern newspapers were
suppressed, for varying periods, because they opposed the [Lincoln]
administration’s policies or favored stopping the war. . . . (Why the North
Won the Civil War, pp. 88-89)
Donald further notes that
political democracy thrived in the Confederacy, and that the record was quite
different in the North under Lincoln:
Political
democracy, too, was unimpaired in the Confederacy. Jefferson Davis took care to abridge no Southerner’s political
rights. Elected provisional president
through no solicitation of his own, reelected as the first—and only—regular
President of the Confederacy, Davis did not believe that he should interfere in
politics, either to solicit votes for his friends or to win support for his
measures. . . . When North Carolina
held a critical gubernatorial election in 1864 to choose between Zebulon Vance,
pledged to sustain the war effort, and William H. Holden, dedicated to
withdrawing the state from the Confederacy and making an independent peace,
Davis expressed no public preference between the candidates. Nor did he make any attempt to secure the
defeat of Governor Joseph E. Brown, of Georgia, though Brown, with the backing
of Vice President Stephens, did all he could to hamstring the Richmond
government. . . . Davis did not try to
replace his arch-rival, Stephens. . . .
The
record of the Lincoln government is in marked contrast. Lincoln regularly used patronage to build up
a political machine dedicated to supporting his policies. . . .
When
Republican Governor O. P. Morgan of Indiana was faced in 1863 with a hostile
Democratic majority in the state legislature [which majority that had been
elected by the citizens of the state], which threatened to curb his appointing
powers and his control of the state militia, the Republicans, by
prearrangement, walked out of the chamber, leaving the legislature without a
quorum and unable to transact any business.
The Democrats then adjourned the session, believing that Morton, in
order to carry on the government, must call them promptly back. Instead, the Indiana governor made a flying
trip to Washington, saw Lincoln and Secretary of War E. M. Stanton, and
returned to Indianapolis bearing $250,000 [about $47 million in today’s
dollars] extracted from war department funds, on which he ran the state
government until the next election, blithely ignoring constitutional
regulations and majority rule.
Having
learned a lesson from 1862, Lincoln was prepared to take a more active,
preventive role in the presidential elections two years later. When he saw that the Northwestern states
were going to show a closely balanced vote, he wrote in September 1864 to
General W. T. Sherman, whose army was in a tight spot before Atlanta: “Any
thing you can safely do to let soldiers, or any part of them, go home to vote
at the State election, will be greatly in point.” Although Lincoln added that “this is, in no sense, an order,” he
was clearly giving a directive, and it was one which Sherman promptly
obeyed. The Republicans carried the
Northwest by narrow majorities. In
Pennsylvania, too, the Democrats were threatening, and it was found possible to
furlough several thousands from Grant’s army before Richmond. Not all soldiers were Republicans, to be
sure—but Democratic soldiers found it strangely difficult to secure furloughs.
In
1864 a number of Northern states permitted their soldiers to vote in the
field. Republican canvassers were
afforded every facility for getting to the front, but Democratic politicians
were often harassed by long delays in Washington. (Why the North Won the
Civil War, pp. 89-91)
Donald states that most
Northern citizens supported the Union cause and either didn’t know or didn’t
care “that freedom of the press was abridged or that arbitrary arrests were
numerous.” Saying that “most” Northern
citizens felt this way might be a bit of an overstatement, since Lincoln’s
opponent in the 1864 election, George McClellan, received 41 percent of the
vote, in spite of everything the Republicans did to try to keep McClellan
supporters from going to the polls. In
any case, Donald correctly observes that “the test of civil liberties is not the
freedom of the majority but that of the dissenter,” and that “in the
Confederacy the dissenter retained his democratic rights down to Appomattox” (Why
the North Won the Civil War, p. 89).
Indeed, Donald argues that the real "weakness" of the
Confederacy was that "the Southern people insisted upon retaining their
democratic liberties in wartime" (Why the North Won the Civil War,
p. 92).
12. Even though it was being
invaded and ravaged, the Confederacy showed more respect for private property
and limited government than did the federal government. Critics unfairly claim
that the CSA became a highly centralized, micromanaging state, contrary to the
doctrines of states' rights and limited government. For one thing, this is hardly a fair argument to begin with,
since the Confederacy wouldn't have had to take any centralizing measures if it
hadn't been invaded and ravaged.
Furthermore, the federal government became highly centralized during the
war and engaged in just as much micromanaging as did the Confederate
government, if not more.
Moreover, the degree of CSA
centralization has been somewhat misrepresented by critics. McPherson notes that while Republicans in
the U.S. Congress gave Lincoln the power to seize all railroads at his
discretion and that it established a bureau to build and manage railroads, the
Confederate government “did not achieve similar control over southern railroads
until May 1863 and thereafter rarely exercised this power” (The Battle Cry
of Freedom, pp. 514-515). In fact,
the Confederate Congress did not mandate strict wartime, emergency control over
railroads, telegraph lines, and water transportation until February 1865
(Hattaway and Beringer, Jefferson Davis, Confederate President, p.
355).
Critics point out that the
Confederate government resorted to impressment to support the war effort. But
so did the federal government. When
Confederate officials impressed goods, each impressing agent had to show
written authority and had to issue the owner of the goods a certificate indicating
the value of the goods that were being impressed.
In addition, when the
Georgia supreme court ruled that major sections of the 1863 Act to Regulate
Impressments were invalid within the state, the Confederate government
respected the decision. Marshall DeRosa, a professor of political science,
observes that the Confederate government's response to the Georgia supreme
court's ruling was "conciliatory" and that there was no support in
the Confederate Congress for any legislation that would force the state to
comply with the entire impressment act (The Confederate Constitution of
1861: An Inquiry Into American Constitutionalism, University of Missouri
Press, 1991, pp. 117-119).
13. One of the first things the Confederacy did
after it was formed was to send a peace delegation to Washington, D.C., in an
effort to establish friendly relations with the federal government. Lincoln wouldn’t even meet with the
delegation, not even informally.
14. The Confederacy publicly offered to pay the
federal government the Southern states’ share of the national debt, to pay
compensation for all federal installations in the South, and to allow Northern
ships free use of the Mississippi River.
The Confederacy also hoped to establish good, extensive trade relations
with the United States. But Lincoln
refused to even consider any Confederate peace proposals.
15. The Confederacy was created by delegates
from the seven states of the Deep South soon after those states seceded from
the Union. A provisional constitution
was produced and a president and vice president were selected, subject to the
approval of voters several months later.
The Deep South states separated from the Union in a peaceful, democratic
manner. In fact, they seceded in the
same manner in which the U.S. Constitution was ratified, i.e., by state
conventions whose delegates were elected by the citizens of their respective
states in special elections. Historian
James McPherson estimates that about 80 percent of those states’ citizens
supported secession (The Battle Cry of Freedom, New York: Oxford
University Press, 1988, p. 235).
The Confederacy grew from
seven states to eleven states when Lincoln made it clear he was going to launch
an invasion to force the seceded states to rejoin the Union. Voters in the Upper South states of Arkansas,
North Carolina, Tennessee, and Virginia initially rejected secession by
substantial margins. They were willing
for their states to remain in the Union as long as Lincoln allowed the Deep
South states to leave in peace.
However, when Lincoln left no doubt he was going to use force, new votes
were held in the Upper South states, and this time the results were strongly in
favor of secession. It should be noted
that these four states did not secede because of slavery but because
they believed it was illegal and immoral to maintain the Union by
violence.
16. Anti-Semitism was more of a problem in the
North than it was in the South (Hattaway and Beringer, Jefferson Davis,
Confederate President, p. 137). In
relation to this, it should be pointed out that the Confederate Secretary of
State, Judah Benjamin, was Jewish.
17. Confederate soldiers were among the bravest,
most determined soldiers in the history of warfare. Even many Union soldiers testified to the courage and fortitude
of Confederate soldiers. This is an
especially interesting fact because Confederate troops were frequently poorly
fed and often suffered from a lack of clothes and shoes. Some Northern citizens who saw Confederate
troops in Maryland and Pennsylvania commented on how surprised they were to see
that many of those troops wore ragged uniforms and had no shoes. Confederate leaders did all they could to
supply their soldiers, but the Confederacy was being blockaded and invaded; so
Confederate authorities had a hard time keeping their soldiers properly
provisioned. In addition, Confederate
forces were often outnumbered by two or three to one. Yet, in spite of these hardships, they fought bravely and
tenaciously. One Union officer wrote
with amazement that Confederate soldiers fought so courageously even though
they were so poorly supplied:
It
is beyond all wonder how such men . . . can fight on as they do; that, filthy,
sick, hungry, and miserable, they should prove such heroes in fight, is past
explanation. (In McPherson, The Battle Cry of Freedom, pp. 539-540; see
also p. 535)
18.
Even when the Confederacy was winning on the battlefield, Southern
leaders wanted to end the war and desired peaceful relations with the United
States (McPherson, The Battle Cry of Freedom, p. 650; Hudson Strode, Jefferson
Davis: Confederate President, New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1959,
pp. 299-302). The South hoped that, if
nothing else, England and France would prevail upon the Lincoln Administration
to end the war or that Lincoln would eventually grow tired of Union casualties
and would decide to allow the Confederacy to exist in peace. Jefferson Davis
did not desire to conquer the North. He said repeatedly that the South simply
wanted to be allowed to go in peace, and that the Confederacy wanted peaceful
relations with the federal government (see, for example, William Cooper, Jefferson
Davis, American, New York: Vintage Books, 2000, pp. 379-380). Davis expressed this position many times.
For example, he said the following in his proclamation to the people of
Maryland in 1862:
First, that the
Confederate Government is waging this war solely for self-defense; that it has
no design of conquest, or any other purpose than to secure peace and the
abandonment by the United States of their pretensions to govern a people who
have never been their subjects, and who prefer self-government to a union with
them.
Second, that this
Government, at the very moment of its inauguration, sent commissioners to
Washington to treat for a peaceful adjustment of all differences, but that
these commissioners were not received, nor even allowed to communicate the
object of their mission; and that, on a subsequent occasion, a communication
from the President of the Confederacy to President Lincoln remained without
answer, although a reply was promised by General Scott, into whose hands the
communication was delivered. . . .
Fourth, that now,
at a juncture when our arms have been successful, we restrict ourselves to the
same just and moderate demand that we made at the darkest period of our
reverses, the simple demand that the people of the United States should cease
to war upon us, and permit us to pursue our own path to happiness, while they
in peace pursue theirs. (Proclamation of Jefferson Davis to the People of
Maryland, September 7, 1862)
When judged fairly and
objectively, it must be admitted that the Confederacy was one of the most
democratic countries of its day, if not the most democratic country in terms of
the rights that its citizens enjoyed.
The Confederacy was more democratic than many countries in our day.
What about the fact that the
Confederate States of America permitted slavery? How could the Confederacy have been a democratic country when it
allowed slavery? This is a fair
question. On the one hand, the
Confederate Constitution established a marvelously democratic government for
its citizens, but on the other hand it allowed its citizens to own slaves if
they wanted to do so (though, as mentioned earlier, only about 25 percent of
Southern citizens were slaveholders).
Similarly, how could the United States of America have been a democratic
country when it allowed slavery and when some New England states made huge
profits from the overseas slave trade?
This, too, is a fair question.
The U.S. Constitution was the most democratic document of its era for
the citizens who lived under it, but that document also protected slavery,
guaranteed the continuation of the overseas slave trade for twenty years, and
mandated the return of runaway slaves.
Most Northern states that abolished slavery did so very gradually, so
gradually that slaves were held in Pennsylvania, Connecticut, and Rhode Island
into the 1840s. When the Civil War
began, there were over 400,000 slaves in Union states, and most of those
slaves weren’t freed until several months after the war ended. Nevertheless, historians who are willing to
fairly judge the United States as it was from 1789 to1860 generally conclude
that America, for all her faults, was the most democratic nation in the world
at the time. I would say much the same
thing about the Confederacy.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Michael T. Griffith holds a Bachelor of Science degree from
Excelsior College in Albany, New York, two Associate in Applied Science degrees
from the Community College of the Air Force, and an Advanced Certificate of
Civil War Studies and a Certificate of Civil War Studies from Carroll College
in Wisconsin. He is a two-time graduate of the Defense Language Institute in
Monterey, California, in Arabic and Hebrew, and of the U.S. Air Force Technical
Training School in San Angelo, Texas. He is the author of four books on
Mormonism and ancient texts, and of one book on the John F. Kennedy
assassination. He has completed advanced Hebrew programs at Haifa University in
Israel and at the Spiro Institute in London, England. He is currently pursuing
a Master's degree in Religious Studies from The Catholic Distance University in
Hamilton, Virginia.