This article is being started on February 12, Lincoln’s birthday. It registers comments by U.S. readers uneasy with recent columns about America’s Civil War (1861-1865). All nations, and sections of nations, live in some part on a past of legends of bravery in the face of great odds – and on sorrow, too. All regions possess such myths, cherish them and commemorate them. Some are fiercely local, some even familial. And despite this time when the lazy habit of dismissing history is popular, people still live with and by myth. Nowhere is that more true than Mexico, despite the “modern” inclination to display fashionable historical indifference.
And within America, few regions equal the South for its reverence for its glorious past and the emotional potency of a hard heritage. All countries, nations, regions even long-lasting families do too. Legends, myths, even past pieces of our own lives, are what help us deal with the world, our circumstances, and the challenges.
But many myths are built around tragedy as well as triumph. This is wounding because it is destructive, and it is destructive because it’s so often based on hate. Any comprehensive analysis of why this is true would take many pages.
But that this remains true was demonstrated by legislators during the confirmation hearings of the last two appointed supreme justices, both women: Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor, one Jewish, one Hispanic. Such twisted ethnic spasms were expected of course. But many people – well, men, certainly – were surprised by Congress’ virulent gender-wide prejudice against women. But everyone everywhere was convinced of it when this peculiar disease was lavishly illustrated in the presidential election just past – an embarrassing exercise for U.S. culture and for national prestige. And despite the present campaign by the political perpetrators to tone down pejorative rhetoric and boost a “positive” political vocabulary – at least in major speeches and campaigns – the same code words are used to denigrate opponents, and sectors of society that wealthy legislators privately, but obviously, loathe.
I lived in Georgia in the 1950s, and met some wonderful people, though I seldom initiated discussions about race with those well-educated folks. But my responsibilities in Dixie called for dealing with a wide array people. I was impressed with the virulent racism most whites were delighted to display for “Yankees.” I had several black and Jewish friends, a circumstance that such people found unbearable. They showed their disapproval by getting me alone and trying to do damage. But I was in pretty good shape. Yet frequently I faced two or three large crackers waiting for me in the men’s room of some watering hole. That could become tiresome. Happily, one of my black companions had been a Golden Gloves runner-up. He had the useful knack of appearing at opportune moments. Which saved me from having to get numerous stitches.Less piquant, early on I often came to Mexico through Texas where crossing the border was merely matter of walking across a piece of cactus-ornamented sand. I was surprised that so many German families lived in Texas. A large number of immigrant Germans had fled the catastrophes of the 1848 European revolutions, and landed in Texas. When Texas joined the Confederacy of American States (CSA) in 1860, these immigrants generally disapproved. Having fled Germany because of odd government behavior, they refused to be drafted to defend the slave-owning oligarchy of southeastern Texas. Pro-Unionism was strong enough in German communities that they were put under martial law. That enraged them even more, and many began migrating to northern Mexico, some settling in Matamoros. Sixty-one people, German families, set out in August 10, 1862, for Matamoros. They were almost there when Confederate cavalry attacked them. Thirty-one of these civilians were murdered immediately, six were killed later, shot as they emerged from the far side of the Rio Bravo (Grande).
Anti-secessionist sentiment in the South evidently was stronger from the very beginning than most U.S. citizens seem to realize. And despite the acts of the Home Guard assigned to apprehend “Unionists,” usually meaning at least long and harsh imprisonment, often abuse, torture (especially of women), and death, historical investigation shows that the opposition to the CSA continued to grow. Sometimes this dissent was based purely on class: Why die for rich slave owners who looked down on, and mistreated, the poor?
This was aggravated by the way the war was conducted by its political leaders. A number of 20th and 21st century historians have discovered treasuries of new – or not previously used – information regarding the impediments to the South’s search for an “independence” that would allow it enslave hundreds of thousands of human beings so its wealthy classes could become wealthier, and its poor could be contained. This was to be accomplished by giving them a class to which they could feel superior, a class without any rights or opportunities at all. (In 1935, Fletcher Pratt wrote an amazingly conceived history, ahead its time: “Ordeal by Fire: A Short Short History of the Civil War,” which has recently been re-issued by Dover publications.)
But, point out such historians as Pratt, this opened a door for two unmanageable classes, one of them from the South’s revered elite: women. First came the “dirt poor,” who were often uneducated, among whom the concept of analysis and clear reasoning was unknown; thus, they were easily manipulated by the elite.
Unfortunately for Jefferson Davis & Co., many of the untutored were something like Lincoln – poor but sporting an itchy intellect, which was often the major reason they became Unionists. Others, often better off, simply found the structure of Southern society not just weirdly skewed but stunningly unjust in its cultural vision of what the Confederacy should become. More than one of this century’s historians asks us to stretch our brains so that 19th century “politics” are understood to be what they’ve long been ... “the entire sphere of public life.”
The Confederacy’s reason for existence was to protect the “rights” of wealthy white men, such historians demonstrate, despite any contrary rhetoric. They prick holes in the flawed logic that, after making it clear that the advancement and protection of the institution of slavery was secession’s primary goal, the Confederacy opposed Republican economic policy such as a tariff or the rights of minorities. Law after law, policy after policy, the Confederacy showed such arguments rested on the paltriest of logic, of reason.
The lack of any desire of the elite’s willingness to sacrifice for the common good of the South was as obvious as it was rigid. When the Davis government asked plantation owners to plant more edible crops for a society that was on the brink of starving, planters responded with outrage that such a request should be made.
The result of pocked management of a costly war, and deprivation both at the front and at home – as official agents swooped down to confiscate agricultural products from those farmers without personal or political connections. Thousands of letters were sent to menfolk at the front. They detailed increasing food shortages, the effort of women to join together to provide for hungry children, the growing impressments, and to plea for male family members to quit the army and come home. Women in groups looted stores, infants in arms. In Richmond, an angry mob of women became so unruly the governor called out the local militia and threatened to shoot the women. Smaller scattered groups of females armed with shotguns, pistols, knives and blades of scythes conducted swift raids.
The beginning wave of desertions from the army increased. Home-grown Unionists stepped up their campaigns. Educated Americans recognize that many Confederate troubles were self-concocted. They know that the Union in great part was saved by the 200,000 African-Americans who fought for the Union (three-quarters of them former slaves). And historians now are reminding them that 300,000 southern whites also joined the Union army. Half came from Confederate border states. Just 90,000 from that region joined the Confederate army. These troubles were to get worse.