Sailboat covered the issues of slavery and abolition very well, but I wanted to add that it is completely false that the North took military action to preserve the Union when the South seceded. Again, this is a complete distortion of what happened, laying the blame for starting the war squarely on the North when no such thing happened. Wiki has a timeline of events leading to the ACW, the link is to the period from the Nov 6, 1860 election to the start of the war at Fort Sumter on April 12, 1861. South Carolina was the first state to declare it had seceded on Dec 20, 1860, with more states following suit in the next few months. The North took no military action to preserve the Union for the next four months following South Carolina’s secession. The South started the war by opening fire on Fort Sumter. Lincoln didn’t even issue a call to arms during these four months, only after the South started the war at Fort Sumter on
The poor whites fought for the Confederacy out of a combination of ignorance and the simple fact that they saw their State as their “side” and in many conflicts in history it doesn’t need to go much deeper than that. In most wars of history the lower classes who participate do so because it was seen as an obligation, they were forced to do so under threat of death or imprisonment, or enough of their friends signed up that they felt societal pressure not to be the only coward in the village.
If you want to really understand the South in 1860, think about Atlantic City as it is portrayed in Boardwalk Empire, or think about the tiny town from the Patrick Swayze movie Roadhouse or basically any town that is ran by a corrupt official.
On paper, these are democratic places, with elected officers and institutions. In practice, corrupt backroom deals run everything. Votes are routinely bought. People of the wrong sort are encouraged not to vote. Remember the Australian or “secret ballot” was not the norm in America at this time. The fact that all white males over 21 could vote meant very little if the powerful State legislator who ruled your little patch of the State had guys who would make sure undesirable shit-kicker white trash never registered. It also meant little if that same legislator had guys who, after you cast your public vote against him, would beat the shit out of you on your way home.
Additionally, counting the votes isn’t done by some impartial third party. The guy counting the votes is part of the ruling class, and he’s going to count them to his side’s favor. You’re also going to have entire cemeteries voting for the ruling class candidate.
On top of all of that, just in case things weren’t already tilted far enough in the benefit of the “slaveocracy” you have the fact that within slave states blacks counted for purposes of apportionment of State legislative districts. That is one of the big problems the Northwestern counties of Virginia had with the Virginia General Assembly. An area in the plantation part of the state with say, 20,000 free whites and 20,000 enslaved blacks might have say, four districts representing it in the state legislature. A similar area in Northwestern Virginia, where slavery was rarely practiced and even blacks were mostly unknown as a demographic a district with 20,000 free whites and say, 1,000 enslaved blacks would end up with maybe 2 districts…half the number of legislators as a plantation area with roughly the same number of free voters. (I’m just doing envelope math…I don’t know the specifics of Virginia apportionment.)
On top of all that active stuff the ruling class can do to keep the poor ignorant and uninvolved in the political process is the simple fact that when you have such a scheme going, you rarely need to beat people up, arrest people for possessing abolitionist literature (yes, in virtually the entire antebellum South it was a crime to possess abolitionist literature) or even bother cheating to win an election. When you run your game strong enough, the people know their place and stay in line, they don’t make trouble. You only bring out the clubs for the marginal cases, to make sure they stay marginal.
Finally there was a true educational and sophistication gap. The sons of wealthy plantation owners by and large received some of the best educations available to Americans in the mid-19th century. The sons of poor white farmers received virtually no education at all. The poor whites were not on equal footing and were mostly not educated enough to fully understand this. Anyone who tried to show them would be dismissed as an “agitator” and most likely lynched.
It’s worth mentioning the South wasn’t always that way. In fact the South had abolitionist movements in the colonial days and early on in the republic. They weren’t beloved but many prominent Southern plantation owners were pseudo-abolitionist, not in that they were willing to (mostly) put their money where their mouths were, but they entertained abolitionist sentiments and spoke vaguely of “some day” slavery no longer being necessary.
That’s mostly because maintaining slaves was a bear and the profit wasn’t really there for a lot of the plantation owners. Some changes in agricultural practices rapidly changed that and also rapidly changed the tolerance of any abolitionists. By the 1840s or so being an abolitionist in the South would run you afoul of various State laws (for example the laws against possessing abolitionist literature) and also would make you likely to be lynched.
By the 1850s, the planter class had entrenched themselves so firmly with all the methods above that the poor whites were essentially their pawns. It was in the 1850s that a smart southerner, Hinton Helper, published a book looking at the economics of slavery. He wisely noted that slavery hurt, not helped, the South as a whole, that it hurt, not helped, the poor whites. Basically he showed the system for what it was, a system that benefited a very small minority of wealthy landowners to the detriment of everyone else. Helper’s writing was mostly not about morality, and was strictly about the economics of slavery. That didn’t matter his work was banned in the South (not that most whites who would be interested would have been able to read it) and Helper was burned in effigy–he would have almost certainly been lynched if he had traveled in his home state openly at that time.
We would need to know the particular laws of Georgia at that time regarding the eligibility of voters based on property ownership and citizenship. (If Georgia only reached 1,000,000 inhabitants that year, how many were immigrants who were not yet citizens?) Many states had any number of bars to voting, including property ownership.
The indirect immediate cause of the war was Lincoln winning election. Because it showed the South that their disproportionate influence, maintained through vague threats and a weak-kneed North for generations was coming to an end.
The direct immediate cause of the war was Lincoln calling up troops throughout the United States (including in States like Virginia), prior to that support for secession and open war in the States that had yet to secede was luke warm.
Firing on Fort Sumter does mean the South fired the first shot, but it is a little disingenuous to portray it that way. The ACW was a just war in which the Federal government put down a rebellion, but to say it wasn’t a Northern offensive war is mostly false.
The issue of Federal forts in secede territory isn’t so clear cut as who fired first in any case. It’s like when the British signed the Treat of Paris, provisions were made for us to eventually get control of all the forts of theirs in our territories (it took some time.) If the British had refused to ever abandon those forts, I don’t know that it’s really appropriate to look at us taking them by force as “aggression” arguably the very act of keeping those forts in our sovereign territory was a perpetual act of aggression.
Lincoln was biding his time, but make no mistake: Lincoln (correctly) never saw the South as a sovereign state, he saw it as a region in rebellion and I fully believe whether the South fired on Ft. Sumter or not he was eventually going to use Federal troops to quell the rebellion. Arguably Ft. Sumter hurt the cause of the South because it made the war more immediately into a shooting war. I don’t know what would have happened if the South had never fired a shot first. I know Lincoln saw the South as a region in rebellion, and would use force to quell the rebellion. However I think politically it would have been more difficult for him to conduct the ACW as he did if the South hadn’t started the shooting.
And some do it for the chance at high adventure, even if only temporarily and with high personal risk. And some enlist out of family and peer pressure - they didn’t want to spend the rest of their lives being shunned as cowards, in addition to hearing all the stories and seeing all the parades that wouldn’t include them.
IOW everything in this thread, including all of the more mundane reasons young men have always joined their local armies when the drums have started beating. The particular mix of reasons varies with the individual, of course.
It was a rural state. It wasn’t a matter of walking to the corner precinct or hopping in your car. If you were wealthy enough to own a horse you had to saddle it or hitch it up and ride a few miles. Otherwise, you walked. And you had to drop whatever work was pressing on the farm to do that. Under the circumstances, I’d say 50% turnout was pretty good.
Those blacks were geographically concentrated, though, in the richest farming areas. Today you can see the remnants of those demographics in the so-called “Black Belt.”
Meanwhile, in north Georgia there were many counties with lots of poor whites, but relatively few slaves. The idea of a slave rebellion would not held a lot of terror for folks living in those areas.
Which, if you noticed, only occurred after the South started the war. The immediate cause of the war can’t have been Lincoln calling up troops if he only called up troops after the war had started. It’s extremely disingenuous to try to pass this off.
Seriously, what does this even mean? The South fired the first shot of the war, but it’s disingenuous to portray it that way? Like I said, it’s amazing the levels of cognitive dissonance that some will go to insisting the North started the war immediately after admitting the South did at Fort Sumter.
Nobody said anything about the conduct of the war not consisting mostly of Northern offensives. Said offensives did not occur until after the South started the war.
How much more clear cut can you get than opening fire?
You can believe whatever you want, but they are entirely contrary to the facts. Lincoln did not use force to quell the rebellion, did not send the small active US Army to the South to put down the rebellion and did not issue a call for volunteers to raise forces to put down the rebellion for four months after the first secession, and only did so after the South had started the war at Fort Sumter.
How can it be disingenuous if it’s true? The South fired first. They started the war. It doesn’t do their side any favors to claim that the real belligerence was the democratic election of someone they didn’t like.
There’s another reason some men were in the ranks.
The Confederacy instituted a draft first, despite its foundational prejudice against a strong central government, because it was under immense, immediate military pressure and enlistments had started to fall off as the first blush of enthusiasm faded. At the time the Confederates instituted the draft, the Union did not have one and did not think it would need one (although that changed), mostly because the North’s demographic advantages gave it a cushion, so to speak.
One side effect of the draft laws, almost in passing, was to specify that men already enlisted for 90-day terms were extended for three years, or the duration. This had the effect that many of the men who had enlisted first, and perhaps with some justification felt that they’d willingly undergone risks that the stay-at-home population had avoided, were now stuck in the ranks for the entire war, while inevitably only some of the stay-at-homes would get drafted into the ranks, and some of those quite late, missing a lot of the danger. This was true for both armies at one time or another but it was most painfully true in the Southern armies, constantly outnumbered, poorly clothed, and underfed.
So, in a way, some of the men fought because they’d been tricked into volunteering for a short enlistment and then trapped by a law that extended their service indefinitely and shot them if they were caught trying to desert.
I can’t help but think that contributed to a lot of disaffection, bitterness, and desertion as the war dragged on.
No state restricted the franchise based on property ownership in 1860. The last state to remove a nominal property qualification for voting was North Carolina in 1859.
Its the same kind of stupidty of fighting against your own interests to make someone else rich as most tea party members…just turned to 11.
Because as I said (and this is a response to **Dissonance **as there is no need to make two separate), the Federal forts being maintained on territory that the seceded States viewed as sovereign cannot reasonably be viewed as anything other than an act of aggression. Firing the first shot is not synonymous with being the first aggressor, lots of things can be called military aggression, not just firing the first shot. Some 50 years later in Europe just the act of going into mobilization was seen as a de facto beginning of armed hostilities, even before the first troops clashed.
The South clearly started the insurrection, but insurrection is not synonymous with war. In fact, if Lincoln had not desired a fight with the Confederacy, there would never have been a war. So how anyone can view the war as anything other than a “War of Northern Aggression” is confusing to me. I understand the foolish canard of post-ACW Southern authors who use the term “War of Northern Aggression” as part of the “Lost Cause” movement, and I’m not advocating their position. But very technically it was a war of aggression. Supporters of the Confederacy would view it as a war of aggression against a sovereign state. My view, and the view of Lincoln, was that it was an offensive operation to crush a region of the country that had risen in rebellion. However the South did not invade the North first, the North invaded the South first.
The South fired the first shot, but only at a fort that was hundreds of miles within territory it viewed as sovereign. Persisting a military fort in the other side’s territory is just as much an act of aggression as a blockade or a bombardment.
The South essentially said “we’re leaving, now get your military forts off our land” and by not doing so Lincoln was saying “you’re not leaving without a fight.” That sounds a lot like to me one party starting an insurrection, and the state saying that there would be war to settle it–which is precisely what happened. Does anyone here think Lincoln would never have ordered troops into the South if they had never fired on Ft. Sumter? Lincoln’s casus belli wasn’t Fort Sumter, it was the acts of secession themselves–acts that placed the seceding States in open rebellion.
As stated earlier in this thread, they withdrew out of fear of losing influence, and slavery.
Therefor I submit the “War of Southern Slaver’s Cowardice” is just as accurate a name.
Oh please, Southerners had opportunity to fix it themselves. Instead threw a hissy fit over integration, and attacked peaceful protestors with viscous dogs. I’m not saying all southerners were retards, but they sure did have a lot retards running their governments.
What the hell was wrong with the majority to see police turn fire hoses and vicious dogs on peaceful people just trying to get equality in life, and do nothing? To be honest it scares the crap out of me.
It’s like Germany. Now it’s a peaceful country that respects and looks after all its people. Yet the ancestors of those same people were freaking Nazis. What changed? Circumstance? That’s terrifying. It means the potential to be slavers and Nazis is in us all. Just need the right time and place. Always lurking, waiting for society to let its guard down.
Here we have a great evil the south inflicted on humanity, lesser forms into living memory no less. How can the south not see how much scorn it deserved? I submit shameful acts should be remembered with shame, and regret as a lesson to do better.
The debate about who fired first is fine and dandy, but my OP is about the role played by poor southern whites in the ACW, whether they supported the Confederate cause and if so why.
Some of what I have just read in the New Georgia Encyclopedia http://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/nge/Article.jsp?id=h-3789 contains some interesting stats about the social classes in Georgia just before the War.
What emerges is a picture of a plutocracy masquerading as a democracy manipulating the poor to vote in favour of secession to protect rich men’s investment in slaves.
“A mere 6 percent of white Georgians held nearly half the state’s property, in land and slaves. They made up the planter class, generally defined as those who owned 20 or more slaves and whose plantations ranged from 200 to 500 improved (or farmable) acres.”
and
“Slave property in Georgia was worth more than $400 million in 1860, and accounted for at least half the state’s total wealth.” The article points out that only 37 per cent of white Georgians owned slaves.
Yeah, that’s about the size of it.
Having said that, there were plenty of strong Unionists in the South, before and even during the war. In the later years of the war, northwest Georgia was torn apart by rival bands of guerrillas, some pro-Union, some pro-Confederate, both ruthless in their dealings with citizens of the opposite stripe. It was almost like a Civil War within a Civil War.
I must agree with you, but only in part. It *was]/i] inexcusable and stupid to fight for Confederate preservation of slavery and States’ Rights. It was just as inexcusable and stupid for those Northern slave states – one having slaves for as long as 200 years. New York did that just as Virginia in the South did. And Philadelphia had one slave for every ten citizens at one point. Ignorance of Northern slave history is inexcusable.
Malice is an individual mind-set. I have no doubt that actions were taken with that as a motivation. But you can’t hang that label on everyone who fought as a Confederate. You are not in a position to judge every Confederate’s motives. Other posts here speak of a need for money and food, a sense of duty to their State, conscription, the fear of being thought a coward. The list of reasons is long.
Not everyone remained proud of what they had done as Confederates in defending slavery. I’m reasonably certain that there were Northerners who were also ashamed of having owned slaves. And not every Northerner was pro-Abolition. Not every Southerner was anti-Abolition. The more that people try to paint each section of the country as being all one way or the other, the more chance that the person doing the generalization is joining and increasing the ranks of the ignorant.
Northerns had slaves. How can the North not see how much scorn it deserves for having slaves for such long periods of time? I submit shameful acts should be remembered with shame wherever they are found. Those are your words and thoughts slightly paraphrased, aren’t they?
Southerners haven’t forgotten – even when we disagree about the actions of our ancestors. It appears that some Northerners have forgotten their own slave heritage which was just as ignoble.
From the OP:
Yes, many poor Southern whites supported secession and fighting for the CSA. Others opposed it. The reasons on both sides are many. We are talking about individuals.
Some did and some did not. Differing views were held by both Southerners and Northeners – just mostly at different times. If you are taught that an evil is “normal,” it is difficult to break away from “normal” thinking.
It’s difficult to believe, but some men my age have thought that women are to be treated as less than full adults. That thinking continues long after slavery is over and women have the vote. Even some women believe it – just as there were probably slaves who fought for the Confederacy or who thought that they were better off to remain slaves.
No, it was about slavery primarily. But it was also about States’ Rights and still other things which aren’t written in some Southern proclamation.
The states are still battling over States’ Rights in such matters as requiring voter ID’s, requiring parental notification for abortions for females under the age of 18, requiring misinformation be imparted by doctors to pregnant women who are considering abortion. The list goes on. And it is a kind of slavery that some find quite “normal.”
I raise these last issues only to illustrate my points and not to introduce another subject.
Pure unadulterated nonsense. The simple existence of Fort Sumter was in no way an act of aggression and cannot reasonably be viewed as such. Trying to call its very existence an act of aggression while acting as if firing upon it wasn’t the first act of the Civil War and wasn’t military aggression is thoroughly ridiculous. I note that you’ve failed to address your equally cognitively dissonant and disingenuous claim that
Again, this did not occur until after the South started the war by firing on Fort Sumter.
Truly absurd. Despite the fact that Lincoln did not start the war, did nothing to suppress the South’s insurrection for four months, and the fact that the South started the war, you somehow are still able to pin the blame on Lincoln. That you could even consider the Civil War to be a War of Northern Aggression while admitting that the South started the war but still blame the start of the war on Lincoln is such cognitive dissonance that it boggles the mind.
Again, how you can perceive the existence of a fort as an equal or greater act of aggression than firing on it is truly bizarre.
The fact that he spent four months with the South in open rebellion without ordering the troops into the South isn’t enough of a clue? I’ve no doubt that if it wasn’t Sumter the CSA would have opened fire on the Union first at some other place. Again, it is absurd that you place the onus of aggression on Lincoln while at the same time admitting that he didn’t commit the first overt act of aggression, and in fact went out of his way not to.
Eh, the forts existed before secession. Secession wasn’t recognized as legitimate by the North. Leaving the forts there while things were being sorted out isn’t really aggression, although it qualifies as refusing to back down and perhaps courting a fight.
Not really…more like "“we’re leaving, and we’ll be taking this fine military fort you built and paid for.” Southern states seized forts, arsenals, and weapons everywhere they could. Of course they justified it as the exigency of war, and they were in need of arms. But they didn’t buy these things nor return them to the Federal government, they took them.
Mind you, this was a South that had solidly opposed the old government spending any money on “internal improvements” for decades, on the claim that it wasn’t right for the Federal government to spend money on things localities and individual states would subsequently own. But when they wanted these Federally-funded improvements, they took them without apology.
Well, yeah, probably. But that’s not what happened. What actually happened was the South started the political ball rolling by secession, the “war on property” ball rolling by taking forts and arsenals, and the shooting war rolling by firing on Sumter. It’s not like they get “credit” for the idea that they “didn’t have to be” the aggressors, any more than their abortive late-war plan to arm some slaves earns them “credit” for emancipation. Stuff that didn’t happen didn’t happen.