The Civil War Era: Historical Viewpoints

255 Pages·1994·6.676 MB·English

by  Eugene H. Berwanger

The Civil War Era
------------------------------------------------- ★ -------------------------------------------------
HISTORICAL VIEWPOINTS
Eugene H. Berwanger
Colorado State University
Harcourt Brace College Publishers
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Editor in Chief Ted Buchholz«.
Acquisitions Editor Drake Bush
Developmental Editor Kristie Kelly
Project Editor Sara Schroeder
Senior Production Manager Tad Gaither
Art Director Jim Dodson
On the cover, left: Winslow Homer, United States, 1836-1910: Trooper Med-
itating Beside a Grave. Date unknown. Oil on canvas, 16^8 x 8". Joslyn Art
Museum, Omaha, Nebraska. Gift of Harold Gifford and Ann Gifford Forbes.
Right: Winslow Homer, United States, 1836-1910: Young Soldier: Separate
Study of a Soldier Giving Water to a Wounded Companion. 1861. Oil,
gouache, black crayon on canvas, 36 x 17.5 cm. Gift of Charles Savage
Homer, Jr., 1912-12-110. Courtesy of Cooper-Hewitt, National Museum of
Design, Smithsonian Institution/Art Resource NY. Photo: Ken Pelka.
Copyright © 1994 by Harcourt Brace Sc Company
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3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 066 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
C
ontents
Preface v
Introduction i
föÄez/i'/e* 7
Reactions to Slavery: In the North and in the South 7
Charles Grier Sellers, Jr. The Travail of Slavery 9
James L. Huston The Experiential Basis of the
Northern Antislavery Impulse 19
The Freeport Question: Why Did Lincoln Ask It? 28
Ida Tarbell The Lincoln-Douglas Debates 30
Don E. Fehrenbacher The Famous “Freeport Question” 32
The Republicans: Racists, Nativists, or Antislavery Advocates? 39
Leon Litwack The Crisis of the 1850s 41
William E. Gienapp Nativism and the Creation of a
Republican Majority 46
Eric Foner Slavery and the Republican Ideology 52
What Caused the Civil War? 57
James A. Rawley The Great Fact of Race 59
Mark W. Summers Corruption and the Death of the Union 64
Fort Sumter: What Was Lincoln’s Purpose? 70
Charles W. Ramsdell Lincoln and Fort Sumter 12
Richard N. Current The Bringer of War 79
fëÂa/i'/e/* 6*
Lincoln as Emancipator: Indecisive or Determined? 85
Ralph Komgold The Truth about the Emancipation
Proclamation 87
Stephen B. Oates Death Warrant for Slavery 91
Lincoln and Blacks: How Tolerant Was He? 97
Jason H. Silverman In Isles beyond the Main 99
LaWanda Cox Can We All Do Better? 106
* iii
^Äa/i/e/* <9
The Woman’s Civil War: In the Confederacy and in the Union 111
Anne Firor Scott The War and Southern Women 113
Wendy F. Hamand The Woman's National Loyal League 119
Wtfa/i'fe/* &
The Black People’s Civil War: As Civilians and as Soldiers 126
Leon Litwack The Faithful Slave 128
Joseph T. Glatthaar Black Glory 136
WAa/ite/* /Ü
Was the Civil War Total War? 143
James M. McPherson Lincoln and the Strategy of
Unconditional Surrender 145
Mark E. Neely, Jr. Was the Civil War a Total War? 152
<ëjtfayïfes' / /
The Final Outcome: Why Did the South Lose? 160
Archer Jones The Collapse of the Confederacy 162
Reid Mitchell The Perseverance of the Soldiers 171
TOe Radical Republicans: Manipulating Politicians or Liberal
Statesmen? 181
Howard K. Beale Reconstruction versus Restoration 183
W. R. Brock Politics and Possibilities 189
/*9
Political Equality in the Postbellum South:
Opposition and Accommodation 198
George C. Rable New Orleans and the Emergence of
Political Violence 200
Carl Degler Black Suffrage and White Dissenters 205
Reconstruction in the South: Success or Failure? 210
Kenneth M. Stampp Triumph of the Conservatives 212
Eric Foner The River Has Its Bend 222
<ëjtfayg'/es* /&
The Compromise of 1877: Historical Fact or Historical Fiction? 230
C. Vann Woodward The Forked Road to Reunion 232
Allan Peskin Was There a Compromise of 1877? 239
C. Vann Woodward Yes, There Was a Compromise of1877 246
P
reface
This reader is designed primarily for classroom use. It presents contrasting
points of view on topics dealing with the Civil War and Reconstruction in
the hope that they will stimulate discussion among students and encourage them
to read further about those issues on which they have differing opinions. Col­
lege students often enroll in Civil War and Reconstruction courses with precon­
ceived notions about certain events or motives of the wartime generation, and
they occasionally become perplexed when their impressions are modified in a
classroom situation. It is not solely the purpose of this book to change these
impressions, but also to explain the different interpretations and why they exist.
The book is also intended to make students aware that history is not a
static subject and that interpretations of the past are altered as the values of
society change. Historical perceptions that are acceptable to one generation
might be totally rejected by a succeeding one. Thus, as students read the works
of historians of an earlier era, they should realize that history is a re-creation
of the past in light of the writer’s own times. History, then, is not merely a
memorization of facts but an attempt to understand the past through the eyes
of those who write it.
A number of individuals aided in bringing this book to publication. Pro­
fessors C. Vann Woodward and James McPherson offered suggestions that al­
tered the original proposal, broadening the scope of the readings and strengthening
the organization. At Harcourt Brace College Publishers, Sara Schroeder over­
saw the book’s production and Kristie Kelly helped secure permission to reprint
a number of selections. Drake Bush, history acquisitions editor, expressed his
enthusiasm from the beginning and encouraged me every step of the way. And
finally, students in graduate seminars on Civil War historiography at Colorado
State University offered suggestions about the readability and appropriateness
of the selections. To all these people, named and unnamed, I express my ap­
preciation and acknowledge their assistance.

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I
ntroduction
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Y Y *st°rical interpretations of the American Civil War con-
Ê— Ê tinue to change, and books or essays sometimes give en-
-£ -£ tirely different versions of events. The facts are usually
not distorted, but the manner of their presentation can leave dissimilar impres­
sions of what actually occurred. For instance, Allan Nevins, one of the noted
Civil War historians of the 1950s and 1960s, described the attack on Port Hud­
son, Louisiana, this way:
I The siege had actually begun May 24 [1863], when [General]
I Banks’s force of possibly about 30,000 at its peak invested Major
^ General Frank Gardner’s force of approximately 6,000 at Port ^
I Hudson. . . . Banks’s assault of May 27 was a tragic blunder,
and, like Grant’s at Vicksburg, failed, with Northern losses of 1,842
killed and wounded.
Writing approximately thirty years after Nevins, James M. McPherson of
Princeton University described the same event thus:
I On May 27 [1863] two Louisiana black regiments participated in I
an assault on Port Hudson, the Confederate stronghold downriver I
★ from Vicksburg. Although the assault was repulsed with heavy ★
I Union casualties, the courageous fighting of the black soldiers |
opened many Northern eyes. I
From Nevins’s account the reader would probably assume that the Union
force assaulting Port Hudson was made up entirely of white soldiers because
1
2 * Introduction
he does not mention any racial difference among the troops. McPherson, how­
ever, leaves no doubt that a substantial number of the men were black, and he
also implies that their bravery affected Northern thinking about blacks as sol­
diers. Thus, Nevins’s description leaves an impression entirely different from
McPherson’s.
Shortly before the beginning of World War II, Carl Becker, then president
of the American Historical Association, wrote an essay entitled “Everyman His
Own Historian.’’ Becker recognized that people see history through their own
eyes and that an individual’s perception of history is based upon his or her own
background and life experiences. But, he wrote, “neither the value nor the
dignity of history need suffer by regarding it as a foreshortened and incomplete
representation of the reality that once was.’’ Becker was also aware that history
can never be recalled exactly because all facts are not known and because
historians and popular writers interject something of themselves into every de­
scription of the past. He did not mention what in the writer’s experiences influ­
ences his or her perceptions, but they are almost as various as the perceptions
themselves.
In the writing of Civil War history, the author’s place of birth and the
nearness of that birth to the actual events have been major factors in determin­
ing attitudes and interpretations. Such was the case with the early studies of
Reconstruction between 1900 and the beginning of World War I, written as
Ph.D. dissertations under the direction of William A. Dunning at Columbia
University. Most of the authors were Southerners, bom in the 1880s and 1890s,
who first heard about Reconstruction from their parents and grandparents. Their
impressions reflected the thinking of most white Southerners about the postwar
era, ideas many Northern intellectuals accepted as fact at the turn of the cen­
tury: Greedy Yankees (carpetbaggers) came South at the close of the war to
rob the region of its wealth or to control it politically, and they were aided by
unscrupulous and just as greedy Southern whites (scalawags). To achieve their
aims, both groups (with the help of legislation passed by Republicans in Con­
gress) placed ignorant former slaves in positions of authority, ran roughshod
over the Southern white population, and engaged in an orgy of corruption and
economic devastation that lasted for twelve years. Despite a few attempts to
correct this interpretation, it remained standard for nearly half a century.
The Dunningites, as they came to be called, did not distort the facts, they
just overlooked a great deal. Their two favorite themes were the heavy postwar
debts incurred by Republican state governments in the South and the imposition
of Negro rule there. While detailing the increased debts, Dunningites failed to
mention the many charitable programs and newly established public school sys­
tems provided by the new governments. They also neglected to point out that
most Southern states did not offer such services before the war, with the result
that the earlier budgets were correspondingly smaller.
With respect to Negro rule, the Dunningites reflected their parents’ distaste
for the idea of black participation in politics rather than any actual political
control by freedmen. More recent studies point out that they never had a ma-
Introduction * 3
jority voice or occupied positions of substantial authority. Within the states of
the former Confederacy, blacks controlled the lower house of the South Caro­
lina legislature in 1868 and 1874, but the upper house remained in the hands
of South Carolina whites. Moreover, the black population of every state except
South Carolina was concentrated in certain localities; their votes could deter­
mine the outcome in some districts but were usually a small percentage of
the total.
When historians began to examine the Dunningites’s conclusions in later
years, they found much to question and revise. There was some truth in the
older interpretations but also much misrepresentation. Except for acknowledg­
ing the existence of corruption in the postwar South, present-day historians
have modified or reversed many of the older concepts about Reconstruction.
Current intellectual ideas also determine how individuals view historical
events. U. B. Phillips’ study of slavery, a standard interpretation for almost
thirty years, was published during World War I. For a generation before the
book appeared the racial ideas of Social Darwinism were the prevailing intel­
lectual standard. Social Darwinists accepted the concept of racial inferiority and
used it to justify imperialism in Africa and Asia and racial distinction within
countries. They declared the Anglo-Saxon the superior race—evidenced by the
political and cultural preeminence of countries such as England, Germany, and
the United States—and advocated uplifting all other races to the Anglo-Saxon
standard. Phillips’ book reflected these racial ideas. He assumed slaves (Afri­
can Americans) were innately inferior, intellectually and culturally, to their
masters and through their association with whites were raised to a higher stan­
dard. Later generations of historians often noted the racial overtones in Phillips’
book without recognizing perhaps the influence of societal thought on his
assumptions.
Time and other events brought an end to Social Darwinian concepts. Hit­
ler’s concentration camps, designed to eliminate Jewish and Slavic populations,
made people everywhere recognize the fallacy of racial-inferiority notions and
the extremes to which racial zealots could take such ideas. Thus when Kenneth
Stampp wrote The Peculiar Institution: Slavery in the Ante-Bellum South in the
1950s, he rejected Phillips’ racial theories. To Stampp, there was little differ­
ence between blacks and whites except skin coloration; he also denied that
bondage uplifted slaves in any way.
The civil rights movement of the 1960s led to further changes in the study
of slavery. Advocates for greater racial equality, white and black alike, com­
plained that previous histories of slavery were too often written from the white
man’s perspective. They had relied on plantation owners’ records, diaries, and
letters. How, the critics asked, could the total impact of slavery be assessed
from one point of view? Plantation records presented a cold, statistical descrip­
tion of an institution that involved much human emotion and trauma; the truth
of slavery could never be comprehended until it was looked at from the slave’s
perspective. Shortly thereafter, historians such as Eugene Genovese, John Blas-
singame, and Albert J. Raboteau took up the challenge. Examining testimony
4 * Introduction
given by former slaves as late as the 1930s and probing various aspects of
slave culture, these historians painted a picture of slavery that up to that point
had been ignored.
The feminist movement also played its part. As more women entered the
historical profession they began to investigate the trials and tribulations encoun­
tered by female slaves. Taken as a whole, all these reinterpretations provided
a much broader understanding of the “peculiar institution.” One might well
ask whether such intensive research would have been undertaken without the
impetus of changing social and intellectual thought.
In writing about the past, historians sometimes revive previous explana­
tions. Charles Ramsdell attempted to reinvigorate an older interpretation of the
cause of the war when he investigated Lincoln’s actions with regard to Fort
Sumter. Southerners during the Civil War believed that Lincoln provisioned the
fort to trigger resistance by the new Confederate government and to unite the
rest of the country behind him. As the editor of the Petersburg (Virginia) Daily
Express wrote shortly after Fort Sumter surrendered: Lincoln “chose to draw
the sword, but by a dirty trick succeeded in throwing upon the South the seem­
ing blame of firing the first gun.” In his attempt to resurrect the Southern
assertion, Ramsdell built an elaborate case that described Lincoln’s every ac­
tion as a cold and calculated move to achieve his purpose.
While some historians interpret history by focusing on specific events, oth­
ers *&ee importance in broader trends of the time. One example is Charles A.
Beard’s explanation for the cause of the war. A trained economist as well as a
historian, Beard provided many economic explanations as central to under­
standing events in the past. About the Civil War specifically, he maintained
that it was brought on by a growing economic cleavage between the South and
the North. The free states were becoming increasingly industrialized and surg­
ing toward a twentieth-century capitalist economy while the South lagged be­
hind and did all within its power to resist moving forward. For Beard the Civil
War was less a clash of arms caused by one event or series of events than a
clash of economic systems. Other historians adapted Beard’s theory and sought
to explain the war as a dispute between two divergent cultural, social, or intel­
lectual entities.
Sometimes a historian’s own dissatisfaction with an event in his lifetime
influences his perception of the past. At least this seems to be the case with
the revisionist school of Civil War causation. Revisionist writings reached their
height in the 1930s, a decade when many Americans advocated isolationism
because of their disillusion with World War I. Americans had been encouraged
to join the Allies in 1917 in a “war to end all wars” and a “war to make the
world safe for democracy.” But the war did not deliver these goals. No sooner
had the fighting stopped in France than smaller conflicts erupted in other areas
of Europe, and the rise of communism threatened democracy as never before.
The further Americans retreated from the events that had occurred in Europe,
the less inclined they were to become involved in current or future European
affairs. Therefore they readily agreed with a 1935 congressional commission