Patrick Cleburne was the Steve Schmidt of his day--well sort of. Above is a trailer for a graphic novel which tells the story of Cleburne trying to convince the archons of the Confederacy that slavery was a military weakness, and the only way to truly defeat the North was to emancipate large numbers of slaves and make them into soldiers. My sense is that, like Schimdt's urging the GOP to embrace gay marriage, this was a pipe-dream. --a very visionary one, but a pipe-dream nonetheless.
Maybe it wasn't one at the start of the War, but by the time Cleburne pitched it (1864), it was just too late. Still, in early 1865, Robert E. Lee and Jeff Davis gave their ascent, and a small regiment was raised, if we can even call it that. This was a few months before Appamottax and CSCT didn't see a lick of action.
I just finished a chapter in Levine's book when he talks about how the slaves, themselves, forced the Confederates to reconsider their own position. I want to preface all of that by giving some idea of the kind of psychological pretzels these guys were twisting themselves into. They basically had conflicting stereotypes of black people--they thought they were cowards who were happily enslaved, faultlessly loyal to their masters, and yet in need of constant armed vigilance.
The upshot was you'd have the following sort of thinking:
Black people are happiest as our slaves--so happy that they have to be guarded by heavily armed white men at all times.or
The African slave is, by nature, cowardly--so cowardly that he routinely leaps in front of Yankee bullets to save his master.At one point in the debate you have people actually arguing that blacks will fight for the Confederacy with no promise of freedom and to preserve slavery. Today we call these people "conversion therapists." Lee, in his defense, sees this as utter madness. Of course blacks want to be free, and arming them without giving them that freedom is, as he put it, "neither smart nor just."
This is 1865, though, much, much too late. The problem is the South only became convinced that blacks would fight after actually seeing them do it--repeatedly. And so by 1864 you have the same old suspects asserting that blacks won't fight. But you have others in the South saying, "Well hell, they're fighting for the Yankees, ain't they?" Blacks had been fighting for Union, unofficially in Kansas since the onset of the war (It's worth reading about Island Mound and John Six Killer. Talk about a great name) and officially for over a year. And then there were the ex-slaves working as spies, or who'd simply been freed. I think, at the onset, some free blacks would have fought on the basis of Southern nationalism. But by the end, they
knew where they stood.
Moreover, there's a logistical question as to whether blacks could have ever fought for the South in the numbers that they did for North. Consider that 200,000 black men fought for the Union. During the siege of Petersburg, something like one out of every six soldiers there was black. There are questions as to whether the Southern economy could have withstood the loss of slave labor, whether white soldiers would have fought next to them, and whether there'd even be any secession at all, if it began with the promise of emancipation.
Equally interesting, to me, is the parallel in slave-master psychology and the psychology of those who claim to want to protect "traditional" marriage. It's like
Gays are sinful dirtbags--so much so that they want to pledge to be monogamous.Heh. It's so backwards. In that limited sense, I think seeing actual gays in actual marriages is a lot like seeing the USCT regiments coming over the hills. It's mind-fuck to watch all your sainted and evil caricatures transform into actual people. With guns. Or wedding rings.
The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood 
I always thought it was I SAY "they are cowards who are happily enslaved, faultlessly loyal to their masters." I BELIEVE "they are in need of constant armed vigilance."
The trouble is they said it all...And to some extent, believed it all.
Slightly OT, but if you enjoy alternative history, try reading Harry Turtledove's series on the Civil War.
In it, the CSA wins the war and then we flash forward to WWI (there is another, earlier book that begins in 1870), with the US aligned with Germany and the CSA aligned with Britain and France (they need the cotton to power their industrial revolutions). When WWI breaks out, there are two American fronts: One along the Mason-Dixon line and the other in Canada (which is still a British protectorate). At the end of the WWI series, the CSA frees the slaves to fight for them, but lose anyway and eventually prosecute them with a vengeance for causing the CSA to lose the war - mainly because there is a "Communist Negro uprising" in the South in 1917.
It's a really interesting a fun read. Some of the stereotypes are a bit cringe inducing, but it's porn for nerds. Seriously, it's a fun read...
You should also warn him that Turtledove never had an idea he couldn't stretch out over a 5+ book series.
That's the one where some South African timetravellers supply Lee with AK-47s, right?
Porn for nerds ... yeah, that's about right. :-)
No, that's a different series.
My main pet peeve with Turtledove is that he's not creative enough - the alternate history series discusssed above (running from the Civil War to WWII) is largely the world wars in Europe being duplicated in America, up to and including the Holocaust (southern, against blacks), and ending with an impending America-Germany-Japan cold war rather than the America-Russia-China one. And the Union presidents are either 1.) actual American Presidents or 2.) the defeated general election candidates. I mean, there's a good chance that big of a change in history would have led to some different people running for President.
Guns of the South.
Turtledove is not a good writer. He teaches Military history to nerds by putting it in a sci fi or alternate history setting.
I've heard of it but have never got around to checking it out. I assume it's light years different from the what-if fake docu "CSA: the Confederate States of America" that theorized about a possible Confederate victory, followed by a retrenchment of slavery throughout the country, prosecution of Harriet Tubman as a war criminal, and then what the modern US might have been like, from political scandals to pop culture. I've never seen anything be so fascinating, disturbing and weird all at the same time.
BTW, I just checked my local library, and "Cleburne" is in the holdings in many branches! I should check this outalong with the Turtledove series.
That is an enormous amount of cognitive dissonance.
That is an enormous amount of cognitive dissonance.
He, Dick Cheney still thinks he was one of the good guys.
I'd avoid the Turtledove books. He's got some interesting ideas, but I found his prose to be too clunky for me to enjoy. I read the first book, and there's some interesting conceits - like Lincoln ending up a Communist agitator. But it was a hard read.
If you want a good sci-fi take around the subject matter, I'd recommend Octavia Butler's Kindred. Its a great combo of time travel and slave narrative.
Dear Coates,
Again you raise many good questions and parallels. A theme running through your explorations of the Civil War, and Black involvement in it, has been that of resistance and master/slave relations--can Blacks ever prove they are 'men' by fighting? Is it standing up for a principle--any deeply held principle--unto death that shows we are worthy to live? I know you got hit by Heidegger yesterday (though in a good way), so I won't give you my 'take' on Hegel here. I imagine growing up your father may have had you read what he said about Africa, in any case. But it's worth mentioning that one of the most influential constructs in Western philosophy, the famous "master-slave dialectic" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Master-slave_dialectic) was actually formulated when Hegel was reading about the Haitian Revolution, and thinking through some of the same issues you've been discussing.
The master-slave psychology you describe might be illuminated by reading--or at least scrolling through--Susan Buck-Morss' article "Hegel and Haiti" in the following link (from Critical Inquiry 26, no. 4. (2000): 821-65.) The role of stereotypes and the denial of personhood to people of African descent is embedded in the very foundation of Enlightenment thought about human freedom and liberty. Sometimes going to the source helps clarify what's closer to hand.
http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/cross_fac/ias/programmes/07-08/integration/bhambra/2/buck_morss_hegel_haiti.pdf
I've been thinking and writing about this twisted logic recently in the context of what it means to be "queer." My partner of 22 years and I recently got married in Iowa (we were there visiting friends anyway) -- and I've been thinking about how "queer" my life is, not because I'm a lesbian, but because my marriage looks (from the outside anyway) so damn traditional -- my partner goes to work, and I'm a homemaker who gardens, preserves food, keeps house, bakes bread, knits, volunteers at school and church.
The argument against same sex marriage is that we're so sinful and evil that we want to pollute marriage, and destroy it. Also, you'll be told by nudges winks, and out and out claims, that we want to molest children too.
Which always fascinates me about anti-same sex marriage advocates. They claim to not hate LGBT people, but then they propagate, or sit silently by as people say the most vile things imaginable about us.
People like Chris Bodenner think getting called a racist is bad? Try getting called a pedophile. Every single day, some major news station will invite some conservative bigot on to do just that.
Not exactly on topic, but there is plenty of modern-day "slavery was okey-dokey" stuff being written. My husband's nephew has gotten involved with a Moscow, Idaho Christianist church and "college," New St. Andrew's Academy. I think he may have even taught there for a bit, though I'm unclear about it. I did some googling, and found lots of material, but this is a pamphlet he co-authored about slavery. (ya might want to play jello-shot games when you read it.)
I guess the "college" and church are post-Calvinist, Southern Reconstructionist post-Millenialist, Dispensationalist, whatever all that adds up to, if you also inject "Christian" into it. Pastor Doug did a debate with Christopher Hitchins, and they WROTE A BOOK TOGETHER!!! Another reason to be leery of Hitchins...There is apparently a companion school in the South somewhere. Creepy bo-peepy, these folks are. Youtube has lots of videos of the fine gentleman, Pastor Doug.
Anyway, I got suckered in to reading and watching (our nephew is going to marry on of the head honcho's daughter soon, and i was wondering about an intervention-email to him). I have felt slimey ever since I dove in to his murky pool.
Here's the link to the slavery pamphlet. It's a pdf file, you can click page by page.
http://www.tomandrodna.com/notonthepalouse/SSAIW.htm
Some folks in Moscow even started a group notonthepalouse.com to try to counteract all their influence in the small town.
p.s. being happy all the time is not all it's cracked up to be!
I wonder if you've come across any mention of Charles Camillo deRudio? During the Civil War, he was 2nd Lt of the 2nd US Colored Infantry. He was born Italian nobility, and sent to Devils Island for attempting to assassinate Napoleon III. He escaped from there and ended up in New York City. After the Civil War, he served with Custer and was with Reno at Little Big Horn. He went on to fight in the Nez Perce War and at Wounded Knee.
He was briefly mentioned in a History Channel documentary about Devils Island, where I first heard of him. The most complete information about him is at http://custerlives.com/7thcav16.htm.
. . . And nothing is clearer — the New Testament opposes anything like the abolitionism of our country prior to the War Between the States. The New Testament contains many instructions for Christian slave owners, and requires a respectful submissive demeanor for Christian slaves.
Damn, I knew these freaks were out there, but reading something like that makes you wonder what's hidden in your neighbor's attic . . . and whether it gnaws at its chains in between feedings.
Meanwhile, a new survey by the Dkos organization, reported by the Washington Independent, shows that the "Birther" belief system concerning President Obama is held or considered by about 10% of all Americans outside the south, but something like 70% of the white population of Florida, North Carolina, South Carolina, Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia, Virginia, Tennessee, Kentucky, Louisiana, Arkansas, and Texas.
Given that traditional and movement conservatism is a force in virutally every state, I would never have expected to see such a severe disjunction on an issue between states like Idaho and Alabama. It strikes me as more evidence the existance of a separate "southern" cultural entity left over from Jim Crow, and before that to the antebellum "slavocracy," the southern nationalist movement that McPherson describes, the one Northerners came to despise so much in the 1850s. Which, of course, is also the source of the cultural shift TNC described on Thursday, marking the change from Jefferson's doubt-plagued views on slavery to Calhoun's adamant self-assurance.
Even putting moral considerations aside, if leaving slavery uncontested in 1789 was the greatest mistake of the founding fathers, abandoning Recontruction and allowing the slavocracy culture to mutate into Jim Crow after 1876 was the greatest mistake of that age. The civil rights movement may have freed Americans from the legal oppression of racism, but that perverse cultural entity is still there under the surface, still listening mainly to itself, feeding on resentment and racism like flame feeding on the hot fumes its heat draws from its fuel.
One interesting tidbit from that Christianist tract: the writer claims that racism was and/or is seen as the "basic justification" for American slavery, and I believe that you find people of varying views who would say the same. However, it struck me that this reverses cause and effect. As Robert Jordan and other scholars have shown over the years. American racism differentiated itself from other varieties of ethnic bigotry because of slavery.
The people who founded Britain's North American colonies were more bigoted than less isolated cultures and less bigoted than some cultures with stricter social hierarchies. The virulence and violence of American racism appears to have developed out of a need to rationalize slavery as it existed in opposition to Enlightenment ideals, to excuse the blunt exploitation of humans as money-making property, and to demonize the victims you fear might someday resist you and take revenge for their miseries.
In other words, in a society where slavery is a natural and traditional part of the social hierarchy, ethnic/racial prejudice would not have needed to be so intensely defended.
Which helps us only slightly in dealing with the burden of it all.
That would certainly explain some Europeans' fascination with America's particular strain of racism.
Ta-Nehisi, I don't know if you've blogged on this before in your discussions of the civil war, but if you want another intellectual pretzel check out N.B. Forrest's speech to a black group in Memphis. What he says is seemingly a shocking statement of black/white equality in Redemption-era South. It seems to me the speech's origins could be suspect; i.e. it could be forged by a Lost Cause group. But then again it might be authentic. I don't have the research means to tell. Here's the link:
http://civilwarmemory.typepad.com/civil_war_memory/2007/08/some-questions-.html
Fascinating speech. According to the comments on the link, Bedford Forrest may have made his peace with God ten years after the war, or he may have seen the need to get black votes in the ongoing political struggle, or maybe some of both.
This is the speech, unfortunately, that Lost Cause types like to quote to prove that Bedford Forrest was never racist and slavery had nothing to do with his going to war. A logical pretzel indeed, mass produced for millions of True Believers.
If you read the comments around it, the thing seems really suspect, no?
The Order of the Pole-Bearers appears to have actually existed:
http://books.google.com/books?id=RcI4AAAAIAAJ&pg=PA836&lpg=PA836&dq=Independent+Order+of+Pole-Bearers+-bedford+-forrest&source=bl&ots=acqNXVoBg7&sig=KXx0fHBN96_eBxv6JmQ5FLS16Fs&hl=en&ei=rfN1SpeyC4rYNpq_nbEM&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=10#v=onepage&q=&f=false
I continue to hold the view that 19th Century America was much better at naming their clubs and organizations than we are today. Even if Ambrose Bierce made fun of them.
Re: President Obama is held or considered by about 10% of all Americans outside the south, but something like 70% of the white population of Florida, North Carolina, South Carolina, Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia, Virginia, Tennessee, Kentucky, Louisiana, Arkansas, and Texas.
It's more like 70% of Republicans, not white people in general (and it includes people who "don't know" as well as those who say Obama was born abroad). Also, I doubt Florida belongs in that list. Most of the white population of Florida (at least peninsular Florida) comes from the North and is not remotely Southern in culture and outlook.
I still keep reading a lot of this among well-meaning farmers. They make arguments for how they feed and protect their animals. Protect them from what? Wild predators? Last time I checked - predators and prey have evolved over millions of years together. Predators kill only the sick, old and unfit animals and thereby keep the genetic pool of their prey fit. This in turn guarantees sustainable development of their own gene pool and also the availability of food in the future.
We humans kill all animals except for the house negroes. We don't destroy sustainable aka self-sufficient family bonds because we do not allow them in the first place. Only because some innocents die in car crashes does not mean that innocents belong in prison where they are feed and protected from the outside world?
There is this good hearted couple that has a farm and writes for The Atlantic's food channel. Their latest article is: Keeping the Ranch Safe From Predators. It is an important projection, Ta-Nehsis called it psychological pretzels, without which we could not continue doing what we are doing. My comments there are not welcomed. I believe to post in a friendly manner but what I am saying goes too deep?
I hope that we can related to how slaves must have felt. But much more important than that - I hope that we can all related to how slave owners have felt in the past. And how they feel in the present. Ta-Nehisi helps on all fronts. They are not bad people per se. They often are not racists. They just practice racism on a daily basis.
If only our gods had the images of animals and trees again and not humans and human candle sticks etc. Maybe we would think twice. If only we would care, at least sometimes, how does who can feel like us actually feel due to us.