MISSING
HISTORY:
OMISSIONS
IN JAMES McPHERSON'S BOOK THE BATTLE CRY OF FREEDOM
Michael
T. Griffith
2003
@All
Rights Reserved
James McPherson's book The Battle Cry of
Freedom: The Civil War Era (New York: Ballantine Books, 1988) has been
hailed as one of the best books ever written on the War Between the States.
When the book was published in 1988, a Newsweek review declared the work
would be "the standard for the next three decades." Newsday
declared, "this book may not be superseded in our time." In 1989 the
book won McPherson the Pulitzer Prize. Many colleges and universities continue
to use the book as a textbook, and it is still sold in nearly all bookstores.
In my opinion, The Battle Cry of Freedom is a superb book in many
respects. I would include it on any student's "required reading
list." However, McPherson omits many important facts about the issues and
events that led to the Civil War and about the war itself. What follows is a
list of some of those facts.
1. One of the first acts of Jefferson Davis,
the president of the Confederate States of America, was to send a peace
delegation to Washington, D.C., in an effort to establish peaceful relations
with the North. Abraham Lincoln would not even meet with the delegation.
2. In his first inaugural address, Lincoln
threatened to invade the seceded states if they didn't pay federal tariffs or
if they didn't allow the federal government to occupy federal installations
within their borders. Said Lincoln,
The power confided
to me will be used to hold, occupy, and possess the property and places
belonging to the government, and to collect the duties and imposts; but beyond
what may be necessary for these objects, there will be no invasion. . . .
"Beyond what may be necessary for these
objects, there will be no invasion." So there would be an invasion
if it were necessary "for these objects," i.e., for the occupation of
federal installations, which everyone knew was a reference to federal
facilities in the seceded states, and for the collection of duties and imposts.
3. The state of South Carolina offered to
pay compensation for Fort Sumter, and the Confederacy was prepared to do the
same.
4. The Confederacy was prepared to pay
compensation for all federal installations in the South.
5. The Confederacy announced in its
provisional constitution that it was willing to enter into negotiations with
the North in order to arrange for payment of the South's fair share of the
national debt.
6. The Confederacy guaranteed the Northern
states access to the Mississippi River. Jefferson Davis explained,
The legislation of
the Confederate Congress furnishes the best evidence of the temper and spirit
which prevailed in the organization of the Confederate government. . . .
By an act approved
on February 26 [1861], all laws which forbade the employment in the coasting
trade of vessels not enrolled or licensed, and all laws imposing discriminating
duties on foreign vessels or goods imported in them, were repealed. These acts
and all other indications manifest the well-known wish of the people of the
Confederacy to preserve the peace and encourage the most unrestricted commerce
with all nations, surely not least with their late associates, the Northern
states. (Davis, The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government, Volume
1, New York: De Capo Press, 1990, reprint of 1881 edition, pp. 210-211)
7. Three of the original thirteen states
that ratified the Constitution specified in their ratification ordinances that
the people of those states reserved the right to resume the powers of government,
and they were admitted into the Union on the basis of those documents. The
three states were New York, Rhode Island, and Virginia:
New York:
That the powers of
government may be resumed by the people, whensoever it shall become necessary
to their happiness: that every power, jurisdiction and right, which is not, by
said Constitution, clearly delegated to the Congress of the United States, or
the departments of the government thereof, remains to the people of the several
States, or to their respective State Governments.
Rhode Island:
That the powers of
government may be resumed by the people whensoever it shall become necessary to
their happiness.
Virginia:
That the powers
granted under the Constitution, being derived from the people of the United
States, may be resumed by them whensoever the same shall be perverted to their
injury and oppression.
There can be little doubt about the intent
of these provisions. They were clearly meant to serve notice that the people of
each of those states reserved the right for their state to resume the powers of
government on their behalf. If the people of those states had this right, it
stands to reason that the people of all the states had this right. Notice that
New York's ordinance implied this right belonged to the people "of the
several states, or to their respective state governments."
Logically, if "every power,
jurisdiction, and right" not expressly delegated to the federal government
was to remain with "the people of the several states," or with
"their respective state governments," then naturally the people's
expressed right to resume the powers of government would be exercised by the
people through "their respective state governments."
The people of the Southern states chose to
exercise this right. They voted for secession in overwhelming numbers, either
in elections for representatives to state conventions or in referendums, and as
a result their respective states seceded. McPherson himself acknowledges that
the secession process was democratic, and in fact that it closely resembled the
process by which the original thirteen states ratified the Constitution (pp.
234-239, 276-283).
Virginia cited the right to resume the
powers of government in its ordinance of secession:
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 . . . declared
that the powers granted under 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. . . .
8. The thirteen states that ratified the
Constitution existed as sovereign entities before the Union came into
existence, and even before the Declaration of Independence was written.
McPherson uncritically quotes Lincoln's dubious arguments against secession,
which included the assertions that the Union was older than the states and that
no state (except Texas) had ever existed as a state outside the Union::
"The Union is
older than any of the States," Lincoln asserted, "and, in fact,
created them as states." The Declaration of Independence transformed the
"United Colonies" into the United States; without this union then,
there would never have been any "free and independent States."
"Having never been States, either in substance, or in name, outside
the Union," asked Lincoln, "whence this magical omnipotence of 'State
rights,' asserting a claim of power to lawfully destroy the Union itself?"
(p. 247, original emphasis)
Historians John Garraty and Robert McCaughey
point out that the thirteen colonies broke from England and created their own
constitutions even before the Declaration of Independence was written:
However crucial
the role of Congress, in an important sense the real revolution occurred
when the individual colonies broke the official ties with Great Britain. Using
their colonial charters as a basis, the states began new constitutions even
before the Declaration of Independence. (Garraty and McCaughey, The American
Nation: A History of the United States to 1877, New York: Harper & Row
Publishers, 1987, p. 135)
Historians Alan Brinkley, Richard Current,
Frank Freidel, and T. Harry Williams:
The formation of
state governments began early in 1776, even before the adoption of the
Declaration of Independence. . .
Two of the
original thirteen states saw no need to produce new constitutions. Connecticut
and Rhode Island already had corporate charters which provided them with
governments that were republican in all but name; they simply deleted
references to England and the king from their charters and adopted them as
constitutions. (Brinkley et al, American History: A Survey, Eighth
Edition, New York: McGraw-Hill, Inc., 1991, p. 150)
Concerning Lincoln's legal arguments against
secession, attorney James Ostrowski says,
Lincoln challenges
the claim of reserved state powers by asserting that no state, except Texas,
had ever "been a State out of the Union." Lincoln argues that the
states "passed into the Union" even before 1776; united to declare
their independence in 1776; declared a "perpetual" union in the
Articles of Confederation two years later; and finally created the present
Union by ratifying the Constitution in 1788. There are many problems with his
argument.
Lincoln confuses
no fewer than four different concepts of "union." Prior to July 4,
1776, the colonies were united by their increasing concern over the violation
of their rights by the British government. Their representatives met in a
Continental Congress which ultimately issued the Declaration of Independence
and organized the Revolutionary War effort. Prior to 1776, no issue of
secession from a union could have arisen because the colonies still considered
themselves part of Great Britain. Neither was there any legal document agreed
to by the Continental Congress which directly or indirectly addressed the issue
of secession. Thus, the "union" that existed prior to 1776 is of no
importance at all to the issue of secession.
Next comes the
union created by the Declaration of Independence. The most notable fact in this
context is that the Declaration announces a lawful secession by the colonies
from Great Britain based on the right of the people to alter or abolish their
form of government. It is thus apparent that the Declaration of Independence
establishes that the right of secession is among the inalienable rights of men.
The Declaration is therefore literally the last place on earth one would hope
to find legal justification for a war against secession. It was adopted by
representatives of the thirteen colonies and declared that those colonies had
become "Free and Independent States." The Declaration was not,
however, a constitution, establishing a particular type of union among the
states, or specifying any duties binding on them other than a moral commitment
to mutually defend their newly declared independence. (Ostrowski, "An
Analysis of President Lincoln's Legal Arguments Against Secession," paper
delivered at the "Secession, State, and Economy" conference sponsored
by the Mises Institute and held at the College of Charleston, Charleston, South
Carolina, April 7-9, 1995)
Michael Lind, a Whitehead Senior Fellow,
also takes issue with Lincoln's arguments:
On July 4, 1861,
President Lincoln said in a message to Congress, "The Union is older than
any of the States, and, in fact it created them as States." Political
scientist Samuel H. Beer restated this nationalist argument in To Make a
Nation: The Rediscovery of American Federalism (1993), when he wrote that
"the reallocation of power by the Constitution from state to federal
government was simply a further exercise of the constituent sovereignty which
the American people had exercised in the past, as when they brought the states
themselves into existence."
The argument is
flimsy. For one thing, it implies that without permission from the Continental
Congress, the colonial populations would not have abolished their colonial
governments and created new republican governments. To make matters worse for
the nationalist theory, the phrasing of the Declaration of Independence
supports the compact theory by referring to the formation of new state
governments by the authority of the people of the colonies when it means the
people of Massachusetts, the people of Virginia, and so on. And these colonial
peoples, which became the peoples of the first states, had come into existence
generations earlier--when each colony had been established by royal charter, if
not before.
Nationalists also
emphasize the description of the United States as "one people" in the
Declaration of Independence: "When in the Course of human Events, it
becomes necessary for one People to dissolve the Political Bands, which have
connected them with another." But elsewhere the Declaration refers to the
colonies in the plural, and concludes that "these United Colonies are, and
or Right ought to be, Free and Independent States." The author of the
Declaration, Thomas Jefferson, was a fervent champion of the compact theory.
Indeed, the Declaration claims that for generations the individual colonies had
been separate states in a federal empire held together only by personal
allegiance to the British monarch. During the Constitutional Convention,
Maryland’s Luther Martin summarized the view that was implicit in the
Declaration: "At the separation from the British Empire, the people of
America preferred the establishment of themselves into thirteen separate
sovereignties instead of incorporating themselves into one." (Lind,
"Do the People Rule?," The Wilson Quarterly, February 1, 2002,
from online reprint of article found at http://www.newamerica.net/index.cfm?pg=article&pubID=719)
Two states, North Carolina and Rhode Island,
initially declined to ratify the Constitution. They remained free, independent
states, and Congress treated them as such until they ratified the Constitution
a short time later.
The federal government wouldn't have been
created had it not been for the states, because each state had to agree to call
a ratifying convention. Garraty and McCaughey note that the state legislatures
"could have blocked ratification by refusing to call conventions" (The
American Nation, p. 158).
For that matter, it was the states that sent
delegates to the Constitutional convention in the first place, and that
convention was held as a result of an action taken by a state legislature. The
Virginia legislature issued an invitation to the other states to send delegates
to a convention in Annapolis, Maryland, in 1786. Only five states showed up.
The delegates who went to Annapolis drafted a report that recommended that
Congress call a convention in Philadelphia the following year. Congress did so,
but Congress could not compel the states to send delegates to the Philadelphia
convention. However, only Rhode Island declined to send delegates.
9. Thomas Jefferson said in a letter to
William Crawford in 1816 that he would allow a state to leave the Union, even
if he didn't approve of the state's reason for seceding. Said Jefferson,
The alternatives
between which we are to choose [are fairly stated]: 1, licentious commerce and
gambling speculations for a few, with eternal war for the many; or, 2,
restricted commerce, peace and steady occupations for all. If any State in the
Union will declare that it prefers separation with the first alternative to a
continuance in union without it, I have no hesitation in saying "let us
separate." I would rather the States should withdraw which are for
unlimited commerce and war, and confederate with those alone which are for
peace and agriculture.
10. The Hartford Convention, consisting of
delegates from the New England states, declared in 1814 that a state had the
right to assert its own authority over the federal government's authority, and
that a state could secede from the Union, even in time of war, in cases of
"absolute necessity" (Brinkley et al, American History, p.
230).
11. President John Quincy Adams said
that if sectional differences between the states became too severe it would be
better for the states to go their own way in peace than to be constrained to
remain together:
The indissoluble
link of union between the people of the several States of this confederated
nation is, after all, not in the right, but in the heart. If the day should
ever come (may Heaven avert it) when the affections of the people of these
States shall be alienated from each other, the bonds of political association
will not long hold together parties no longer attached by the magnetism of
consolidated interests and kindly sympathies; and far better will it be for
the people of the disunited States to part in friendship with each other than
to be held together by constraint. (Speech given at a celebration of the
50th anniversary of the inauguration of George Washington, April 30, 1839, as
quoted in the Hon. Joseph Wheeler, "Slavery and States Rights,"
reprinted in Richmond Dispatch, July 31, 1894, emphasis added)
12. Renowned legal scholar William Rawle, in
his highly regarded book Views of the Constitution, said a state had the
right to secede from the Union. Rawle's book was used for a time in the early
1800s at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. The North American Review
described the book as "a safe and intelligent guide." Rawle served as
a delegate to the Pennsylvania Constitutional Assembly of 1789 and later
accepted President George Washington’s request to become the first U. S.
Attorney for Pennsylvania. Rawle was also the chancellor of the Pennsylvania
Bar Association. Here is a sample of what Rawle taught about the right of
secession:
If a faction
should attempt to subvert the government of a state for the purpose of
destroying its republican form, the paternal power of the Union could thus be
called forth to subdue it.
Yet it is not to
be understood, that its interposition would be justifiable, if the people of a
state should determine to retire from the Union, whether they adopted another
or retained the same form of government, or if they should, with the, express
intention of seceding, expunge the representative system from their code, and
thereby incapacitate themselves from concurring according to the mode now
prescribed, in the choice of certain public officers of the United States. . .
.
It depends on the
state itself to retain or abolish the principle of representation, because it
depends on itself whether it will continue a member of the Union. To deny this
right would be inconsistent with the principle on which all our political systems
are founded, which is, that the people have in all cases, a right to determine
how they will be governed.
This right must be
considered as an ingredient in the original composition of the general
government, which, though not expressed, was mutually understood. . . .
The secession of a
state from the Union depends on the will of the people of such state. The
people alone as we have already seen, bold the power to alter their
constitution. (Rawle, Views of the Constitution, Second Edition,
Philadelphia: Philip H. Nicklin, Law Bookseller, 1829, chapter 32)
13. At no time did the Confederacy attempt
to overthrow or destroy the federal government. McPherson acknowledges in a few
places that the South was only seeking its independence and wasn't trying to
conquer the North (pp. 310, 534, 646-647; cf. pp. 693, 721). However, he
repeatedly refers to the Confederates as "rebels" and several times
uses the words "rebellion" and "insurrection" in reference
to the South's attempt to obtain independence. If the South had sought to
overthrow or destroy the federal government, that would have constituted
rebellion and insurrection. But the South did not do so. The Southern states
only sought to leave the government, not to destroy it. Every single
institution of the federal government would have remained the same if the South
had been allowed to go in peace. The only differences would have been that
there would have been fewer members of the House and Senate and no revenue from
tariffs on Southern goods. The form and nature of the federal government would
not have changed at all--only its size and the amount of revenue it collected
would have been different. Ostrowski makes a good point in this regard
concerning Lincoln's claim that secession would "destroy" the government:
We turn next to
Lincoln's discussion of the Constitution as he believes it relates to
secession. He argues that while states have reserved powers under the
Constitution--presumably referring to, but not mentioning, the Tenth
Amendment--secession cannot be such a power since it is "a power to
destroy the government itself." This is of course hyperbole and abuse of
language. To depart from is to destroy, according to Lincoln. If the union
government was "destroyed" by secession, what was the entity that put
a million troops in the field to stop it?
Secession does not
destroy the federal government; it merely ends its authority over a certain
territory and sets up a new government to take its place in that territory.
(Ostrowski, "An Analysis of President Lincoln's Legal Arguments Against
Secession")
14. Hinton Helper spoke approvingly of the
possibility of a violent slave insurrection in his famous 1857 book The
Impending Crisis of the South. McPherson says a number of things about
Helper's book, including the fact that several Southern states attempted to ban
its distribution (pp. 199-200). But for some reason McPherson doesn't mention
Helper's endorsement of violent slave insurrection. McPherson also fails to
mention that Helper was a shameless racist. Professor Francis Simkins said the
following about Helper and his book:
Helper made
invidious comparisons between the wealth of the sections [the North and the
South]. . . . Although he hated the Negroes to the extent of wishing them
expelled from the country, he attacked the slaveholders violently and suggested
servile insurrection as a means of ridding the white masses of their [the
slaveowners'] degradation. (Simkins, A History of the South, Third
Edition, New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1963, p. 192)
Among other things, Helper told slaveowners
that he and his fellow abolitionists would abolish slavery "peaceably or
by violence . . . one way or another." He then asked slaveowners, "Do
you aspire to become the victims of white non-slaveholders' vengeance by day
and of barbarous massacre by negroes by night? Would you be instrumental in
bringing upon yourselves, your wives, and your children, a fate too terrible to
contemplate?" Perhaps such statements shed more light on why some Southern
states sought to ban distribution of the book and why many Southerners were
upset over the fact that dozens of Republican leaders signed an endorsement of
the book. It is hard for most of us to bear in mind that slavery was legal back
then and that it had existed in the states for over two hundred years before
the war began. To put this in a modern context, imagine how most Americans
would react if dozens of leaders of a major political party endorsed a book
that approved of killing abortion doctors and bombing abortion clinics. Many people
believe abortion is a serious sin and that it involves the taking of innocent
human life. However, no responsible citizen would endorse a book that
sanctioned violence against abortion doctors and their clinics.
15. Lincoln approved the Dahlgren Raid, which
included a special order to kill Jefferson Davis and the entire Confederate
cabinet. Historian William Tidwell provides some details:
This raid was
under the command of Brigadier General Judson Kilpatrick, but it was fated to
be remembered in history as Dahlgren's raid. . . .
He [Kilpatrick]
appears to have gone over his supervisors' heads and won Lincoln's personal
approval for the scheme.
As a condition in
the plan approved by Lincoln, Kilpatrick was asked to take with him cavalry
Colonel Ulric Dahlgren, the son of Admiral John Dahlgren, whom Lincoln greatly
admired. . . . Kilpatrick apparently left much of the detailed planning of the
raid to Dahlgren, which, in view of the association of Lincoln to the elder
Dahlgren, later reinforced the southern belief that the operation was
personally sponsored by Lincoln. . . .
Dahlgren led his
force around Richmond to the north and tried to get around the Confederates
chasing Kilpatrick. During the night of 2-3 March 1864 his group broke into two
segments, and Dahlgren was ambushed in King and Queen County and killed leading
the smaller segment.
On the morning of
3 March several papers were found on Dahlgren's body and taken to Richmond,
where they caused a tremendous uproar. The papers included the draft of an address
that he apparently meant to read to his men: "We hope . . . . to destroy
and burn the hateful city [Richmond], and . . . not allow rebel leader Davis
and his traitorous crew to escape." Also among the papers was a special
order stating, "The men must keep together and well in hand, and, once in
the city, it must be destroyed and Jeff Davis and his Cabinet killed."
The ferocity of
these statements sounded a new note in Union policy toward the war, but it was
not unexpected to a growing body of opinion in the South. . . .
The Confederate
editorial opinions about the Dahlgren papers cannot be dismissed as mere
bombast. The Confederate leaders knew that these papers had been found on
Dahlgren's body and they had them in hand. More, their excellent intelligence
apparatus in Washington would have been dense in the extreme if it had not
picked up the various stories floating around that both Lincoln and Stanton
[Lincoln's Secretary of War] were involved in planning the raid. . . .
General Kilpatrick
claimed to have read papers similar to those quoted by the Confederates but
without the offensive language. There was a general outcry of
"forgery" in the North, but the Confederates had photographic
reproductions of the papers circulated to the Union and to foreign governments.
In the surviving photographs the papers appear to be genuine, and a study of
the timing involved indicates it would have been extremely difficult for the
Confederates to have fabricated such convincing material in so short a time.
(Tidwell, Come Retribution: The Confederate Secret Service and the
Assassination of Lincoln, Barnes & Noble Edition, New York: Barnes
& Noble Books, 1997, pp. 242-243, 245-246. Note: In case some might be
wondering about the subtitle of Tidwell's book, Tidwell does not believe
Jefferson Davis or the Confederate Secret Service were behind Lincoln's
assassination)
16. The South had a vigorous free press
during the war. To his credit, Ken Burns included this fact in his well-known
PBS documentary series The Civil War.
17. Jefferson Davis never shut down
opposition newspapers, even though some of them bitterly attacked him and his
policies. Dr. Emory Thomas notes that Davis had "ample opportunity"
to suppress hostile newspapers but never did so:
Davis, unlike
Lincoln, never closed down opposition newspapers. He had ample opportunity,
however. In his own capital, two of five dailies were hostile. (Thomas, The
Confederacy as a Revolutionary Experience, University of South Carolina
Press, 1991, p. 75)
Lincoln, on the other hand, shut down many
newspapers. Chief Justice William Rehnquist discusses some of these cases of
suppression:
Newspaper
publishers did not escape the government's watchful eye either. The [Lincoln]
Administration was especially concerned about the New York press, which had a
disproportionate impact on the rest of the country. In that era before press
wire services, newspapers in smaller cities frequently simply reprinted stories
which had been run earlier in the metropolitan press. In New York, the Tribune,
the Herald, and the Times generally supported the Northern
war effort, but several other papers did not. In August 1861, a Grand Jury
sitting in New York was outraged by an article in the New York Journal of
Commerce--a paper which opposed the war--that listed over one hundred
Northern newspapers opposed to "the present unholy war." The Journal
of Commerce frequently editorialized in no uncertain words about the
malfeasance of the Administration.
The grand jurors
inquired of the presiding judge whether such vituperative criticism was subject
to indictment. Because the Grand Jury was about to be discharged, the judge did
not oblige. Nevertheless, the jurors simply requested that a list of several
New York newspapers, including the Journal of Commerce, be called to
the attention of the next Grand Jury. They had heard no evidence, and received
no legal instructions from the judge; they simply made a
"presentment"--a written notice taken by a Grand Jury of what it
believes to be an indictable offense.
On this thin reed,
the Administration proceeded to act. Postmaster General Montgomery Blair
directed the Postmaster in New York to exclude from the mails the five
newspapers named by the Grand Jury. This was significant because the newspapers
of that day were almost entirely dependent upon the mails for their
circulation. Gerald Hallock, the part owner and editor of the Journal of
Commerce, was obliged to negotiate with the Post Office Department to see
what the paper would have to do to regain its right to use of the mails. The
Post Office Department told him that he must sell his ownership in the
newspaper. Hallock reluctantly agreed, and retired, thereby depriving the paper
of its principal editorialist opposing the war. The New York News,
owned by Benjamin Wood, brother of New York Mayor Fernando Wood, decided to
fight the ban against his paper. He sought to send its edition south and west
by private express, and hired newsboys to deliver the paper locally. The
government ordered U.S. Marshals to seize all copies of the paper. In fact one
newsboy in Connecticut was arrested for having hawked it. Eventually Wood, too,
gave up. (Rehnquist, "Civil Liberty and the Civil War," speech given
at the University of Indiana School of Law, Bloomington, October 28, 1996)
Lincoln not only shut down newspapers he
viewed as unpatriotic, he also ordered the arrest and imprisonment of some of
their editors and publishers, without due process of law. Lincoln issued the
following order to General John Dix:
You will take
possession by military force, of the printing establishments of the New York
World and Journal of Commerce . . . and prohibit any further
publication thereof . . . You are therefore commanded forthwith to arrest and
imprison . . . The editors, proprietors and publishers of the aforementioned
newspapers. (Order of Abraham Lincoln to General John Dix, May 18, 1864)
Lincoln suppressed newspapers even in states
that were far from the fighting and in which local courts were functioning.
Historian James Rhodes, though an ardent Lincoln defender, found it necessary
to condemn this suppression of the freedom of the press:
For my own part,
after careful consideration, I do not hesitate to condemn the arbitrary arrests
and the arbitrary interference with the freedom of the press in States which
were not included in the theatre of the war and in which the courts remained
open. (Rhodes, History of the Civil War, 1861-1865, New York:
Bartleby.com, 2000, electronic reprint of 1917 edition, chapter 11, page 19)
18. Major Anderson, the commander of the
federal garrison at Fort Sumter, questioned the wisdom of trying to resupply
the fort. Anderson also said that he had been led to believe by Colonel Lamon,
one of Lincoln's confidential agents, that Captain Fox's plan to resupply the
fort would not be carried out, and that the South had been led to believe the
fort would not be resupplied. Anderson said these things in a letter that he
wrote to "Colonel L. Thomas, Adjutant-General Unites States Army."
Anderson wrote the letter on the same day South Carolina's governor was
informed about the coming of the resupply mission, the day after Anderson
himself learned of the mission. Said Anderson,
I had the honor to
receive, by yesterday's mail, the letter of the Honorable Secretary of War,
dated April 4th, and confess that what he there states surprises me
greatly--following, as it does, and contradicting so positively, the assurance
Mr. Crawford telegraphed he was "authorized" to make. I trust that
this matter will be at once put in a correct light, as a movement made now,
when the South has been erroneously informed that none such would be attempted,
would produce most disastrous results throughout the country. . . .
I ought to have
been informed that this expedition [to resupply the fort] was to come. Colonel
Lamon's remark convinced me that the idea, merely hinted at to me by Captain
Fox, would not be carried out.
We shall strive to
do our duty, though I frankly say that my heart is not in this war, which I see
is to be thus commenced. (Letter from Major Anderson to Colonel Thomas, April
8, 1861, reproduced in Davis, The Rise and Fall of the Confederate
Government, Vol. 1, pp. 243-244)
19. Charles Dana, the Assistant Secretary of
War during the Lincoln Administration, said "the evidence proves that it
was not the Confederates who insisted on keeping our prisoners in distress,
want and disease, but the commander of our armies" (as quoted in Lynn
Tyler, A Confederate Catechism, Dahlonega, Georgia: Crown Rights Book
Company, 2000, reprint, p. 36, quoting "Treatment of Prisoners During the
War Between the States," Southern Historical Papers, Vol. 1, pp.
112-327). Dana also said the following to the New York Sun:
We think after the
testimony given that the Confederate authorities and especially Mr. [Jefferson]
Davis ought not to be held responsible for the terrible privations, suffering,
and injuries which our men had to endure while kept in Confederate Military
Prisons, the fact is unquestionable that while Confederates desired to exchange
prisoners, to send our men home, and to get back their own men, General Grant
steadily and strenuously resisted such an exchange. (As quoted in Mildred
Rutherford, Truths of History, Dahlonega, Georgia: Crown Rights Book
Company, reprint of original 1920 edition, p. 21)
McPherson blames the Confederacy for the
prolonged failure to resume prisoner exchanges, which in turn led to the
unintended deaths of thousands of Union prisoners of war (p. 792). Many
Northern soldiers and civilians placed the majority of the blame on Lincoln and
General Grant because they refused the Confederacy's repeated offers to
exchange nearly all prisoners and instead insisted on an all-or-nothing
arrangement. McPherson accepts the official explanation for the delay in the
resumption of prisoner exchanges, i.e., that Lincoln and Grant refused to
resume exchanges because the Confederacy refused to release black Union
prisoners as part of those exchanges. There are arguments that can be made for
and against the Confederacy's policy on black prisoners. Confederate
authorities argued that former slaves who had taken up arms against the South
were guilty of federally sanctioned slave insurrection. They also argued that
slaves did not have the right to be soldiers since slavery was still legal,
even under the U.S. Constitution, and since those slaves had either run away
and/or had been forced to fight for the Union. In any case, I have my doubts
that the Confederate policy on black prisoners was the real reason for Lincoln
and Grant's opposition to a resumption of exchanges. I suspect their real
reason was that they didn't want to replenish the Confederate army's manpower.
They knew the Union could replace captured soldiers much more easily than could
the Confederacy.
In fact, in August 1864 Grant said it was
better not to exchange prisoners and that "if we release or exchange
prisoners captured it simply becomes a war of extermination." McPherson
denies this was the real reason behind the suspension of exchanges, and he
notes that Grant made these comments "more than a year after the exchange
cartel had broken down over the Negro prisoner question" (p. 800).
However, one could certainly make the argument that Grant was expressing his
real reason for opposing the resumption of exchanges, regardless of when he
made the statement. Some find this the more plausible view, given the rather
uncaring attitude that Grant had already shown and expressed toward blacks, and
given Lincoln's own well-known views on blacks.
It is true that when the Confederacy finally
offered to include black prisoners in exchanges, Lincoln and Sherman accepted
the offer. But this occurred in January 1865, and by that time there was no
doubt the Union was going to win the war and win it soon. It would have been interesting
to see what the response would have been if the Confederacy had offered to
exchange all prisoners several months earlier. In any case, Assistant Secretary
of War Dana spoke for many of his fellow Northerners when he blamed General
Grant for the long suspension of prisoner exchanges.
20. Lincoln refused to sell medicines to the
Confederacy, even though Jefferson Davis offered to pay for them in gold and
even though Davis explained that the medicines would be used to care for sick
and wounded Union prisoners of war. The Confederacy had a very hard time
obtaining medical supplies. Although McPherson mentions in passing (and without
condemnation) that Lincoln resorted to the cruel step of blocking medicines
from entering the Confederate states, he doesn't mention that Lincoln refused
Davis's request to buy medicines for Union prisoners. Captain Samuel Ashe, the
last officer commissioned in the Confederate army, complained about this
refusal:
As Lincoln
declared medicines contraband of war, Davis asked for permission to buy at the
North medicines for the Northern prisoners, but his request was refused. (Ashe,
A Southern View of the Invasion of the Southern States, Crawfordville,
Georgia: The Ruffin Flag Company, reprint of 1938 edition, p. 57)
Some Northerners criticized Lincoln's policy
of preventing medical supplies from going to the South:
The United States
government early declared . . . all medicines, surgical instruments and
appliances contraband of war, and they were so regarded to the end of the struggle.
The ill temper and
inhumanity of the time in the North extended even to the medical profession, as
evidenced at the convention of the American Medical Association, held in
Chicago, in 1863, when Dr. Gardner, of New York, introduced preamble and resolutions
petitioning the Northern government to repeal the orders declaring medical and
surgical supplies contraband of war; arguing that such cruelty rebounded on
their own soldiers, many of whom, as prisoners in the hands of the
Confederates, shared the suffering resulting from such a policy, while the act
itself was worthy of the dark ages of the world's history. It is lamentable to
have record that this learned and powerful association of the medical men . . .
in their senseless passion hissed their benevolent brother from the hall.
(Rutherford, Truths of History, p. 22)
In spite of the omissions discussed above, I
still believe The Battle Cry of Freedom should be read by every serious
student of the Civil War. McPherson discusses many issues fairly and
thoroughly, and he provides a significant amount of information that supports
the Southern view of the war to varying degrees. I would especially recommend
the book to Southern heritage defenders, partly because McPherson refutes myths
that continue to appear in their books and articles.
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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.