No Moral Right to Independence?

No Moral Right to Independence?

Michael T. Griffith

2006

@All Rights Reserved

Did the South have no moral right to be independent because it permitted and upheld slavery? There's no doubt that slavery was wrong and that it needed to be abolished. But, if the Southern states had no right to form their own government because slavery existed within their borders, then the American colonies had no right to form their own government either, since slavery existed in the colonies and since some of the colonies (especially the New England colonies) upheld and grew rich from the slave trade. British leaders noted this inconsistency during the American Revolution. They pointed out that some of the colonial leaders who were loudly demanding "freedom and independence" were slaveowners. If the existence of slavery within a nation's borders means that nation has no right to exist, then America had no right to exist in the first place. In fact, the slaves may have been freed over thirty years sooner if the British had won the war, since England abolished slavery in 1833.

Every nation and region has its share of social injustices, and the South was certainly no exception. But what about the North? For starters, the New England states made large fortunes from the slave trade and from industries associated with that trade. Nearly all American slave ships were Northern-owned and operated from Northern ports.  Some Northern states continued to profit from the slave trade until just before the war started (John Tilley, The Coming of the Glory, Springfield, Tennessee: Nippert Publishing, 1995, reprint, pp. 1-13). Conditions on the New England slave ships were horrible. The slaves were kept below deck in cramped quarters and forced to sit or lie in their own urine and defecation. Not surprisingly, disease was rampant. The slaves were chained together by twos, hands and feet, and had no room to move around. Tens of thousands of slaves died on those slave ships.  In fact, the number of slaves who died on slave ships was far, far greater than the number of slaves who died from mistreatment on Southern plantations.

The North was home to a cruel form of wage slavery where factory workers, especially those who were immigrants, worked in terrible conditions for wages that were barely sufficient for basic existence. These workers were usually cast aside as soon as they ceased to be productive. On the other hand, many if not most slaves were fed, clothed, and housed for the duration of their lives, even after they grew old and could no longer work.  Even some modern scholars agree that many Northern wage-slave factory workers were materially worse off than most Southern plantation slaves (see, for example, John Garraty and Robert McCaughey, The American Nation: A History of the United States to 1877, New York: Harper & Row Publishers, 1987, p. 385).

Most Northern states had "Black Codes" that severely discriminated against free blacks. As mentioned, some Northern states wouldn't even allow free blacks to move into their territory. Let's briefly consider the conditions in one such Northern state, Illinois, the "Land of Lincoln," a state that was described as a "free state" because it had abolished slavery. As of 1845, free blacks could not settle in Illinois unless they could prove their freedom and post a $1,000 bond. If a black did in fact have a certificate of freedom, under Illinois law "he and his family were required to meet reporting and registration procedures reminiscent of a totalitarian state," notes African-American scholar Lerone Bennett (Forced Into Glory: Abraham Lincoln's White Dream, Chicago: Johnson Publishing Company, 2000, pp. 184-185). Bennett continues describing the conditions under which free blacks lived in Illinois,

The head of the family had to register all family members and provide detailed descriptions to the supervisor of the poor, who could expel the whole family at any moment.

Blacks who met these requirements were under constant surveillance and could be disciplined or arrested by any White. They could not vote, sue, or testify in court. . . .

With [Abraham] Lincoln's active and passive support, the state used violence to keep Blacks poor. Most trades and occupations were closed to them, and laws and customs made it difficult for them to acquire real estate. . . .

As for the pursuit of happiness . . . Blacks could not play percussion instruments, and any White could apprehend any slave or servant for "riots, routs, unlawful assemblies, trespasses and seditious speeches." It was a crime for any person to permit "any slave or slaves, servant or servants or color, to the number of three or more, to assemble in his, her or their house, out house, yard or shed for the purpose of dancing or reveling, either by night or by day. . . ." (Forced Into Glory, pp. 185-186)

Incidentally, Abraham Lincoln not only supported the Illinois Black Code, but he voted to deny blacks the right to vote and also voted "to tax Blacks to support White schools Black children couldn't, in general, attend" (Forced Into Glory, p. 186).

In 1848 Illinois adopted a new constitution that made it illegal for blacks to settle in the state. It, like the previous statute, also prohibited them from voting and from serving in the militia. In 1853, the state legislature made it a crime, punishable by fine, for a black to settle in the state. If the violator couldn't pay the fine, he or she could be sold by the sheriff to pay court costs. The architect of this Negro Exclusion Law was John Logan. During the Civil War, Lincoln named Logan to be a major general in the federal army.

In any discussion on the South and the Confederacy, critics invariably raise the issue of white supremacy. They are quick to point out that Alexander Stephens, the vice president of the Confederate States, said that one of the foundational principles of the new government was that the white race was superior and that blacks were best suited for slavery. Said Stephens,

Our new government . . . rests upon the great truth, that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery subordination to the superior race is his natural and normal condition. (Cornerstone Speech, March 21, 1861)

When critics quote this statement, they almost never inform the reader that, sad to say, most Americans at that time believed that whites were superior and that blacks and other minorities were inferior. One of those Americans was Lincoln himself, who said the following in 1858:

. . . anything that argues me into . . . [the] idea of perfect social and political equality with the negro is but a specious and fantastic arrangement of words, by which a man can prove a horse chestnut to be a chestnut horse. . . . I have no purpose to introduce political and social equality between the white and black races. There is a physical difference between the two, which in my judgment will probably forever forbid their living together upon the footing of perfect equality, and inasmuch as it becomes a necessity that there must be a difference, I, as well as Judge Douglas, am in favor of the race to which I belong, having the superior position. (Abraham Lincoln: Speeches and Writings 1832-1858, New York: The Library of America, 1989, edited by Don Fehrenbacher, pp. 511-512)

In another speech that he gave that year, Lincoln said much the same thing:

I will say, then, that I am not nor ever have been in favor of bringing about in any way, the social and political equality of the white and black races; that I am not nor ever have been in favor of making voters of the free negroes, or jurors, or qualifying them to hold office, or having them to marry white people. I will say in addition, that there is a physical difference between the white and black races, which, I suppose, will forever forbid the two races living together upon terms of social and political equality, and inasmuch as they cannot so live, that while they do remain together, there must be the position of superior and inferior, that I as much as any other man am in favor of the superior position being assigned to the white man. (Abraham Lincoln: Speeches and Writings 1832-1858, p. 751)

Not only did most Americans believe that blacks and other minorities were inferior, but they believed that America was founded to be ruled by whites and for whites. Senator Stephen A. Douglas, a prominent Northern politician, the leader of the Northern faction of the Democratic Party, and a presidential candidate in 1860, voiced this view in the following words in 1858 during his fourth debate with Lincoln:

I say to you in all frankness, gentlemen, that in my opinion a negro is not a citizen, cannot be, and ought not to be, under the constitution of the United States. . . . I say that this government was established on the white basis. It was made by white men, for the benefit of white men and their posterity forever, and never should be administered by any except white men. (Fourth Lincoln-Douglas Debate: Douglas' Reply, in Abraham Lincoln: Speeches and Writings 1832-1858, p. 673)

What did Lincoln think about this? He agreed, saying, "in point of mere fact, I think so too" (The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, Volume 2, edited by Roy P. Basler, Rutgers, 1955, p. 281, as quoted in Bennett, Forced Into Glory, p. 306, emphasis added).

Many Northerners believed that the statement in the Declaration of Independence that "all men are created equal" did not apply to blacks, but only to whites. Senator Douglas expressed this position in his fifth debate with Lincoln,

The signers of the Declaration of Independence never dreamed of the negro when they were writing that document. They referred to white men, to men of European birth and European descent, when they declared the equality of all men. (Fifth Lincoln-Douglas Debate: Douglas' Speech, in Abraham Lincoln: Speeches and Writings 1832-1858, p. 697)

Lincoln believed that the "all men are created equal" phrase did not refer to inherent equality but only to legal equality in certain respects, and more than once Lincoln called the Declaration of Independence "the white-man's charter of freedom" (Abraham Lincoln: Speeches and Writings 1832-1858, pp. 269, 477; see also Bennett, Forced Into Glory, pp. 303-304).

It's interesting to note that of the 3.4 million votes that were cast in the free states in the 1860 election, Senator Douglas received over 800,000 of them.  In addition, during that election Republican candidates described their party as "the true 'White Man's Party' because they wanted to reserve the territories for free white labor" (James McPherson, Ordeal By Fire: The Civil War and Reconstruction, New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1982, p. 123).  The Republican candidate for governor in Ohio assured voters that “the Republican Party is the white man’s party . . . and it labors for the prosperity and liberty of the white man” (Merton L. Dillon, The Abolitionists: The Growth of a Dissenting Minority, Norton Paperback Edition, New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1979, p. 240).

James and Lois Horton point out that free blacks in the North had fewer opportunities to engage in skilled labor than did free blacks and slaves in the South:

Opportunities for free black skilled workers seemed limited in the North in some ways that they were not in the South.  Slaves did virtually all types of work, and . . . in the South . . . free blacks were employed at many levels, even in skilled jobs.  It was not unusual to find black carpenters, blacksmiths, and coopers working in Charleston or New Orleans, for example.  One observer noted that in New Orleans skilled work was performed by some white workers but also by a substantial number of blacks, “and of the negroes employed in those avocations a considerable proportion are free.”  One black Virginian reported in the 1840s that in Virginia “both bond (slaves) and free (blacks) had trades” and he “had expected to find the people of color in free New York far better off than those in Virginia.”  Instead, he found that “many tradesmen he knew from the South were . . . cooks and waiters.”  Thus, northern blacks’ occupations reflected both their job skills and the prejudice and discrimination which prevented many from using those skills.

Official records paint a dismal picture of black opportunities for skilled work in Philadelphia.  In 1859 they reported, “Less than two-thirds of (black workers) who have trades follow them,” and “the greater number are compelled to abandon their trades on account of the unrelenting prejudice against their color.”  The exclusion of black artisans was even worse in Boston, where one foreign visitor reported seeing almost no skilled black workers in 1833.  The few exceptions were “one or two employed as printers, one blacksmith, and one shoemaker.”  White workers in New York City pressured authorities to exclude black workers from jobs requiring special authorization.  The city regularly denied African Americans licenses as hackmen or pushcart operators. . . .  As a slave in Baltimore, Frederick Douglass was a skilled ship caulker.  After he escaped slavery and moved to New Bedford, Massachusetts, he was unable to find employment as a caulker because, as he was told, “every white man would leave the ship, in her unfinished condition, if I struck a blow at my trade.”  Douglass was forced to take unskilled work at a fraction of the wages he would have made if he could have followed his trade.

White workers in the North generally saw black craftsmen as competitors and tried to exclude them from the work force. . . .  Blacks were barred from membership in the trade associations, dominated by German and some Irish immigrants, which pressured white businesses to hire black workers only for “appropriate” menial employment. (In Hope of Liberty: Culture, Community and Protest Among Northern Free Blacks, 1700-1860, New York: Oxford University Press, 1998 paperback edition, pp. 117-118)

Merton Dillon observes that the abolition of slavery in most of the North in the late eighteenth century actually caused an increase in prejudice against free blacks:

The ending of slavery in the North had not been accompanied by change in the racial attitudes that for so long had supported it.  If anything, prejudice increased as the numbers of free Blacks grew and as the insecurities resulting from rapid economic and social change were felt throughout white society.  Prejudice was not expressed in verbal slurs and social slights alone.  Far more serious was the fact that custom barred most Blacks from economic and educational opportunity.  Although striking examples can be cited of Blacks who overcame all such obstacles, the majority were shut out by prejudice from sharing in the profits and advantages of the growing American economy. (The Abolitionists, pp. 20-21)

Even after the war, racism was alive and well in the North. Herbert Gutman notes that Northern whites not only viewed blacks as inferior but also women and working-class men:

Neither the Civil War nor the Thirteenth Amendment emancipated northern whites from ideological currents that assigned inferior status to nineteenth-century blacks, women, and working-class men. . . .

Northern whites regularly compared the ex-slaves to the northern Irish and other "degraded . . . races or classes." (The Black Family in Slavery and Freedom, New York: Pantheon Books, 1976, p. 293)

Several years after the war, prominent Northern leader William Seward, who had served as Lincoln’s Secretary of State, said the following:

The North has nothing to do with the Negroes.  I have no more concern for them than I have for the Hottentots. . . .  They are not of our race.”  (William Klingaman, Abraham Lincoln and the Road to Emancipation, New York: Viking Press, 2001 p. 295)

I could go on for several pages documenting the fact that, unfortunately, throughout the nineteenth century most Americans, North and South, believed in white supremacy. This is why it's unfair when critics quote Stephens' cornerstone speech but remain silent about the fact that most Northerners held very similar views, and that some Northerners held identical views. It's also unfair when critics quote Stephens' speech but say nothing about the Black Codes that existed in most Northern states. Furthermore, not all Southerners agreed with Stephens' belief that blacks were best suited for slavery, but critics rarely mention this fact either.

What Was Slavery Really Like?

What Was Slavery Really Like?

Michael T. Griffith

2006

@All Rights Reserved

So just how bad was slavery in the South? Did any good come from slavery? Did slavery have any good aspects? Did all slaveowners mistreat their slaves? The subject of slavery in the antebellum (i.e., pre-Civil War) South is a delicate, highly charged issue because history books and documentaries have usually only told one side of the story.  The recent PBS documentary Slavery and the Making of America is a prime example of the  one-sided, misleading, and incomplete portrayals of Southern slavery that are usually presented to the public. I'm not trying to justify slavery. All I'm saying is that if we're going to talk about slavery, let's be fair and honest about it.

Most history books and documentaries that discuss slavery are full of tragic stories about the bad aspects of slavery, but they rarely mention the good aspects of the institution. Historians typically cite the worst cases of mistreatment and abuse but ignore or minimize the far more numerous cases of humane treatment, mutual respect, and genuine friendship. True, the good aspects of slavery don't outweigh the fact that slavery was wrong, but they should be noted in the interest of fairness and historical truth.

Southern slavery may have been the most humane form of slavery the world had ever known.  Most slaves were not mistreated, and most masters treated their slaves humanely.  Slaves in the South were arguably materially better off than many factory workers in the North. In many cases, slaves and slaveholders formed lasting friendships.  Most of the ex-slaves who were interviewed for the W.P.A. narratives and who discussed how they were treated said their masters were good men.  Some slaves remained fiercely loyal to their masters, even during the war and even though they had ample opportunity to leave. The suicide rate among slaves was actually substantially lower than the suicide rate among whites.  In part because of the efforts of numerous slaveowners, millions of slaves voluntarily accepted Christianity and found peace in their personal lives.  In some cases, Christian slaves converted their masters and afterward enjoyed a better relationship with them (see, for example, Leslie Howard Owens, This Species of Property: Slave Life and Culture in the Old South, New York: Oxford University Press, 1976, p. 150).  Bearing in mind that most American slaves lived in the South, let's consider some of the observations of historian James McPherson, who certainly can't be accused of being sympathetic toward the antebellum South:

Slavery in the United States operated with less physical harshness than in most other parts of the Western Hemisphere. . . .

The U.S. slave population increased by an average of 27 percent per decade after 1810, almost the same natural growth rate as for the white population. This rate of increase was unique in the history of bondage. No other slave population in the Western Hemisphere even maintained, much less increased, its population through natural reproduction. In Barbados, for example, the decennial natural decrease from 1712 to 1762 was 43 percent. At the time of emancipation, the black population of the United States was ten times the number of Africans who had been imported, but the black population of the West Indies was only half the number of Africans who had been imported. Of the ten million Africans brought across the Atlantic by the slave trade, the United States received fewer than 6 percent; yet at the time of emancipation it had more than 30 percent of the hemisphere's black population. (Ordeal By Fire, pp. 34-35)

McPherson notes other interesting facts: Although Southern law did not recognize marriages between slaves, 66 to 80 percent of slave marriages were not broken up by their masters (Ordeal By Fire, pp. 35-36).   McPherson points out that not only did most slaveowners permit their slaves to marry, but that some masters allowed their slaves to earn money and in some cases to buy their freedom (Ordeal By Fire, p. 34).  Economic historians Robert Fogel and Stanley Engerman contend that slaves were able to earn money and rise to responsible positions in the slave system, and that in some cases they received a greater share of the product of their labor than did many factory workers in the North (Time on the Cross, Norton Edition with Afterword, New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1989, pp. 39-78, 144-150; see also John Niven, The Coming of the Civil War, Arlington Heights, Illinois: Harlan Davidson, Inc., 1990, pp. 160-161).  Fogel and Engerman discuss some of the various forms of advancement and reward that existed in Southern slavery:

While slavery clearly limited the opportunities of bondsmen [slaves] to acquire skills, the fact remains that over 25 percent of males were managers, professionals, craftsmen, and semiskilled workers.  Thus, the common belief that all slaves were menial laborers is false.  Rather than being one undifferentiated mass, slave society produced a complex social hierarchy which was closely related to the occupational pyramid. . . .

Neglect of the fact that more than one out of every five adult male slaves held preferred occupational positions, which involved not only more interesting and less arduous labor but also yielded substantially higher real incomes, has encouraged still another oversight: that is, the failure to recognize the existence of a flexible and exceedingly effective incentive system that operated within the framework of slavery. . . .

What planters wanted was not sullen and discontented slaves who did just enough to keep from getting whipped.  They wanted devoted, hard-working, responsible slaves who identified their fortunes with the fortunes of their masters.  Planters sought to imbue slaves with a “Protestant” work ethic and to transform that ethic from a state of mind into a high level of production.  “My negroes have their name up in the neighborhood,” wrote Bennett Barrow, “for making more than anyone else and they think whatever they do is better than anybody else.”  Such an attitude could not be beaten into slaves.  It had to be elicited.

Much of the managerial attention of planters was focused on the problem of motivating their hands.  To achieve the desired response they developed a wide-ranging system of rewards.  Some rewards were directed toward improving short-run performance.  Included in this category were prizes for the individual or the gang [a team of slaves] with the best picking record on a given day or during a given week.  The prizes were such items as clothing, tobacco, and whiskey; sometimes the prize was cash.  Good immediate performance was also rewarded with unscheduled holidays or with trips to town on weekends.  When slaves worked at times normally set aside for rest, they received extra pay—usually in cash and at the rate prevailing in the region for hired labor.  Slaves who were performing well were permitted to work on their own account after normal hours at such tasks as making shingles or weaving baskets, articles which they could sell either to their masters or to farmers in the neighborhood.

Some rewards were directed at influencing behavior over periods of intermediate duration.  The rewards in this category were usually paid at the end of the year.  Year-end bonuses, given either in goods or in cash, were frequently quite substantial.  Bennett Barrow, for example, distributed gifts averaging between $15 and $20 per slave family in both 1839 and 1840.  The amounts received by particular slaves were proportional  to their performance.  It should be noted that $20 was about a fifth of national per capita income in 1840.  A bonus of the same relative magnitude today would be in the neighborhood of $1,000.

Masters also rewarded slaves who performed well with patches of land ranging up to a few acres for each family.  Slaves grew marketable crops on these lands, the proceeds of which accrued to them.  On the Texas plantation of Julian S. Devereux, slaves operating such land produced as much as two bales of cotton per patch.  Devereux marketed their crop along with his own.  In a good year some of the slaves earned in excess of $100 per annum [per year] for their families.  Devereux set up accounts to which he credited the proceeds of the sales.  Slaves drew on these accounts when they wanted cash or when they wanted Devereux to purchase clothing, pots, pans, tobacco, or similar goods for them.

Occasionally planters even devised elaborate schemes for profit sharing with their slaves.  William Jemison, an Alabama planter, entered into the following agreement with his bondsmen:  “You shall have two thirds of the corn and cotton made on the plantation and as much of the wheat as will reward you for the sowing it.  I also furnish you with provisions for this year. . . .”

There was a third category of rewards.  These were of a long-term nature, often requiring the lapse of a decade or more before they paid off.  Thus, slaves had the opportunity to rise within the social and economic hierarchy that existed under bondage.  Field hands could become artisans or drivers.  Artisans could be allowed to move from the plantation to town where they would hire themselves out.  Drivers could move up to the position of head driver or overseer.  Climbing the economic ladder brought not only social status, and sometimes more freedom; it also had significant payoffs in better housing, better clothing, and cash bonuses. (Time on the Cross, pp. 40-41, 147-149)

In a separate study, Fogel observes the following

In a separate study, Fogel observes the following

Michael T. Griffith

2006

@All Rights Reserved

U.S. masters also designed a wide array of positive incentives to promote the productivity of slaves. . . .  A favorite device was the awarding of prizes to the individual or the gang with the best cotton-picking record on a given day or during a given week.  Year-end bonuses, often distributed at Christmas, were another common device and could be quite substantial.  One Louisiana planter, for example, distributed gifts averaging between $15 and $20 per slave family in 1839 and 1840, with the amount of the gift made proportional to the planter’s view of the performance of each of his slaves.  Not all gifts were this large ($20 in 1840 was about one-fifth of per capita income; a bonus of the same magnitude today would be about $1,000), but $20 was by no means an upper bound.

Indeed, many large-scale planters had elaborate systems for rewarding exceptional work that not only recognized outstanding performances by field hands but generally led to substantial income differentials between ordinary field hands on the one hand and exceptional workers, especially drivers or artisans, on the other. (Without Consent or Contract: The Rise and Fall of American Slavery, New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1994, p. 191)

Fogel further notes that slaveholders often allowed slaves to grow food for their own use and to sell some of that food for their own profit:

Most U.S. planters allowed slaves to supplement rations with vegetables raised in gardens or by rearing small livestock and often purchased eggs, chickens, and vegetables raised by slaves for use on their own tables [i.e., on the slaves’ tables].  There were also masters who rewarded top hands by allowing them plots of up to a few acres to grow cotton or other staples on their own time, with the proceeds of the sales of these crops accruing to the hands. . . .

A recent study by Phillip D. Morgan of the practices of planters in the low country of South Carolina, where the task system predominated, revealed that despite legal injunctions prohibiting slaves from producing and marketing on their own account, the practice was widespread.  An industrious slave could sometimes finish his daily task by 2 P.M.  Such slaves accumulated property at a high rate.  Morgan estimates that in one county the average recorded accumulation of mature males was over $300, which is similar to the estimates of the wealth of industrious slaves in Jamaica. (Without Consent or Contract, pp. 192-193)

Slaves in Southern cities had additional opportunities to advance themselves. This was no small number of people either. In 1860 there were some 400,000 slaves living in cities, "and many additional thousands were hired out by their owners" (J. G. Randall and David Donald, The Civil War and Reconstruction, Lexington, Massachusetts: D. C. Heath and Company, 1969, p. 75). J. G. Randall and David Donald, citing the research of Richard B. Morris, point out some of the opportunities that were available to these slaves:

By the nature of their employments and the conditions of their service, as Richard B. Morris has pointed out, these urban and industrial slaves were a step removed from plantation service. . . . many of them were, despite numerous legal restrictions, "permitted to hold property, receive wages, make contracts, and assume supervisory responsibilities"; in addition, they possessed "some measure of mobility and occasionally a limited choice as to masters and occupations." "In industry slaves were customarily reimbursed for services performed beyond an accepted minimum," Professor Morris continues. ". . . slaves hired to others occasionally received directly a portion of the hiring wages. . . . Masters were often reluctant to force slaves to work as hirelings in occupations they disliked or for masters whom they found uncongenial." An increasing number of slaves were permitted to hire their own time--i.e., to work at whatever employment they pleased, paying their masters an annual rental. Such "nominal slaves" were able "to control their earnings, separate property, or occupational choices." (The Civil War and Reconstruction, p. 76)

Most slaves were provided with good housing for that era.  The Northern abolitionists’ claim that slaves lived in inhumane housing was unfounded.  The “houses of slaves compared well with the housing of free workers in the antebellum era” (Fogel and Engerman, Time on the Cross, p. 116).  Some slaves who worked in Southern cities had private homes "that rivaled those of country slaveholders in space and rustic luxury" (Owens, This Species of Property, p. 147). On "many of the farms the slave cabins were not much inferior to the master's cabin," and on some plantations "they were nearly as comfortable as the overseer's cottage" (Kenneth Stampp, The Peculiar Institution: Slavery in the Ante-Bellum South, Vintage Books Edition, New York: Vintage Books, 1989, p. 293).  According to information from the 1860 census, there were 5.2 slaves per house on large plantations, whereas there were 5.3 persons per house in free households, and most slave families, like most free families, lived in a house by themselves and didn’t have to share the house with others (Fogel and Engerman, Time on the Cross, pp. 115-116).  In fact, Fogel and Engerman point out that the typical slave cabin probably provided more sleeping space per person than did the homes of most workers in New York City over twenty years after the war:

As late as 1893, a survey of the housing of workers in New York City revealed that the median number of square feet of sleeping space per person was just thirty-five.  In other words, the “typical” slave cabin of the late antebellum era probably contained more sleeping space per person than was available to most of New York City’s workers half a century later. (Time on the Cross, p. 116)

Good relations often existed between slaves and slaveowners. As one example of this fact, let's consider the relationship between Confederate soldier Henry Kyd Douglas and one of his family's slaves named Enoch, who had left the family and had gone to live in Pennsylvania as a free man. When Enoch found out that Douglas had been wounded and captured and that he was being held in a Union prison camp, he wrote to Douglas and offered to send him money. Douglas was deeply moved by the offer:

I was surprised about this time to receive a letter from Enoch, whom I have spoken of as my father's colored coachman. He had gone off from home and was living in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, working for his living, in freedom, but harder than he ever did in his life. He wrote to say that he heard I was wounded and in prison and was having a hard time, and he had laid aside several hundred dollars and would send it to me, or as much as I wanted, if I were suffering or needed it. His letter was in his own untutored language, but its words were verily apples of gold. I did not need his money, but I hope I wrote him a letter that left no doubt of my appreciation and my gratitude. (Henry Kyd Douglas, I Rode With Stonewall, Marietta, Georgia: Mockingbird Books, 1974, reprint, p. 255)

Another case in point is that of Jefferson Davis, the president of the Confederate States of America himself. Davis cared deeply for his slaves, and they for him. When Davis had to leave his plantation suddenly in order to assume duties as the Confederate president, "He made a touching farewell speech to his quickly assembled slaves, who responded with expressions of devotion. . . ." (Rembert Patrick, Jefferson Davis and His Cabinet, Louisiana State University Press, 1944, p. 27). Davis was deeply concerned about the fate of his slaves when federal forces torched and plundered the Davis estates in Mississippi. Davis even sent money, in fact $3,000, to pay for supplies for his slaves to ensure they received proper care. The year before Davis died, he received a letter from one of his former slaves, James H. Jones, who had since become a Republican and had had a successful career in the intervening fifteen years. Jones told Davis, "I have always been as warmly attached to you as when I was your body servant" (William J. Cooper, Jefferson Davis, American, Vintage Books Edition, New York: Vintage Books, 2000, p. 691). Jones went on to say that he always defended Davis from "any attack of malicious or envious people" (Cooper, Jefferson Davis, American, p. 691). William J. Cooper gives us additional information about Davis's relations with blacks:

Without question he respected individual blacks and in turn received their respect. His dealings with his slave James Pemberton and with Ben Montgomery as both a slave and a freedman illustrate such a relationship. Inviting Davis to attend the Colored State Fair in Vicksburg in 1886, Montgomery's son Isaiah said he knew Davis would have an interest "in any Enterprise tending to the welfare and development of the Colored people of Mississippi." "We would be highly pleased to have you here," Isaiah Montgomery asserted, " and he closed "with best wishes for your continued preservation." (Jefferson Davis, American, pp. 690-691)

At a time when many Americans, in all parts of the country, still opposed allowing blacks to testify in court, Davis favored allowing them to do so. He expressed this view in a letter to his wife in which he also expressed concern about the welfare of their former slaves:

I hope the negroes' fidelity will be duly rewarded and regret that we are not in a position to aid and protect them. There is, I observe, a controversy which I regret as to allowing negroes to testify in court. From brother Joe [Joseph Davis], many years ago, I derived the opinion that they should be made competent witnesses, the jury judging of their credibility. (Jefferson Davis: Private Letters 1823-1889, selected and edited by Hudson Strode, New York: De Capo Press, 1995, reprint, p. 188)

Few people know that Davis and his wife informally adopted a mulatto (part-white-part-black) orphan during the war. For those who care to know, the child looked like a young African-American boy, except that his skin was slightly less dark than the skin of most other black children; his facial features and hair were clearly African-American. Mrs. Davis rescued the young boy from a cruel guardian and brought him with her to live at the Confederate White House in Richmond. His name was Jim Limber. Davis and his wife raised him as one of their own children. Jim Limber and the other Davis children played together as normal siblings. Even in family letters, Jim's new family spoke lovingly of him, and he expressed his love for them. Sadly, after the war, the Davises had to give up custody of the child when a disreputable Union officer threatened to take him from them (Felicity Allen, Jefferson Davis: Unconquerable Heart, Columbia, Missouri: University of Missouri Press, 1999, p. 24).

Davis was a kind, decent Christian man who treated blacks with respect, and many blacks knew it. During a trip through the western part of the Confederacy, Davis got off his train at Griswoldville, Georgia, in order to meet with a group of slaves who had gathered in the hope of seeing him. These men worked at a local pistol factory and had come to the train station because they wanted to meet Davis. Informed of the gathering, Davis got off the train and circulated among the group, shaking each hand and speaking to each man individually (Cooper, Jefferson Davis, American, p. 494). When Davis returned to Richmond, Virginia, after the war, he was not only cheered by whites but also by blacks. One observer noted that Davis was "greatly touched" by the sympathy shown to him by the blacks in the crowd. In fact, some blacks climbed up on his carriage, shook and kissed his hand, and called out "God bless Mars Davis" (Allen, Jefferson Davis: Unconquerable Heart, pp. 486-487).

Many other examples of good relations between slaves and slaveholders could be cited. For example, there were numerous instances during the war when slaves hid food from Union troops and then gave the food to their masters and their families (who in turn shared it with them). One such instance occurred when Union forces occupied Charles and Mary Jones' plantation on the Georgia coast. When the Union troops took over the plantation, a slave named Sue hid potatoes from the troops in order to feed the Jones' children (Gutman, The Black Family in Slavery and Freedom, p. 322).

John Blassingame points out that thousands of slaves were married in Southern churches

John Blassingame points out that thousands of slaves were married in Southern churches

Michael T. Griffith

2006

@All Rights Reserved

Abolition doubts notwithstanding, thousands of slaves were married in Southern churches between 1800 and 1860. For example, out of a total of 1,228 marriages performed in Episcopal churches in South Carolina, Alabama, North Carolina, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Virginia in 1860, at least 460, or 38.1 percent, were slave weddings. At many times between 1830 and 1860 more slaves were married in the Episcopal churches in some states than were whites. Between 1841 and 1860 Episcopal ministers performed 3,225 weddings in South Carolina; 1,705, or 52 percent, of these were slave marriages. (The Slave Community: Plantation Life in the Antebellum South, Revised and Enlarged Edition, New York: Oxford University Press, 1979, p. 169)

Contrary to the portrayals often given in textbooks and documentaries, most slave marriages and slave families were not broken up by their masters.  "A study of wills and advertisements," says Francis Butler Simkins, "shows that many masters" stipulated that their slaves "were not to be sold away from their families or transported out of the state" (A History of the South, Third Edition, New York: Alfred A. Knopf, Publisher, 1963, p. 123). As mentioned, even a strongly pro-Northern historian like McPherson acknowledges that 66 to 80 percent of slave marriages were not broken up by their masters.  Fogel and Engerman note that information from the slave market in New Orleans, which was the largest of the markets, refutes the claim that masters frequently broke up slave marriages:

Data contained in the sales records in New Orleans, by far the largest market in the interregional slave trade, sharply contradict the popular view that the destruction of slave marriages was at least a frequent, if not a universal, consequence of the slave trade.  These records, which cover thousands of transactions during the years from 1804 to 1862, indicate that more than 84 percent of all sales over the age of fourteen involved unmarried individuals.  Of those who were or had been married, 6 percent were sold with their mates; and probably at least one quarter of the remainder were widowed or voluntarily separated.  Hence, it is likely that 13 percent, or less, of interregional sales resulted in the destruction of marriages. . . .  the New Orleans data show that slaveowners were averse to breaking up black families. . . . (Time on the Cross, pp. 49, 52)

When circumstances led to the separation of a slave family, some owners and others tried to help the family in any way they could. Notes Gutman,

The separation of slave family members by sale or for other reasons led some sensitive owners to encourage contact between them. . . .

Overt expressions of slave familial feelings deeply affected some owners and other whites who came into contact with these slaves. Whites intervened sometimes to prevent the sale of slaves. After a hired Virginia slave was sold and separated from his family because he had not earned enough, whites who attended church with the man raised sufficient cash to buy him from a trader. Their slave grandmother persuaded a Kentucky clergyman to bid for two teen-aged sisters threatened with a distant sale, but a trader outbid him. The purchase of Mima and her children by an Alexandria slave-trading firm led the hard-pressed Virginian Richard H. Carter, who owned Mima's husband, to try to buy them "because of the distress . . . on account of the separation". . . . (The Black Family in Slavery and Freedom, pp. 287-288)

Kenneth Stampp

Kenneth Stampp

Michael T. Griffith

2006

@All Rights Reserved

No slaveholder needed to respect the marital ties of his slaves; yet a Tennesseean purchased several slaves at a public sale, not because he needed them, but because of "their intermarriage with my servants and their appeals to me to do so." A Kentucky mistress tried to buy the wife of her slave before moving to Missouri. Another Kentuckian, when obliged to sell his slaves, gave each an opportunity to find a satisfactory purchaser and refused to sell any to persons residing outside the neighborhood. (The Peculiar Institution, pp. 229-230)

A number of slaves were freed by their owners in the owners' wills. African-American scholars John Franklin and Alfred Moss note that for many years slaveholders, "stricken by conscience, impelled by affection, or yielding to the temptation to evade responsibility, manumitted [freed] their slaves in large numbers. . . ." (From Slavery to Freedom, Eighth Edition, New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2000, p. 168, emphasis added).

Other slaves earned enough money to purchase their freedom. Some owners assisted with the purchase of freedom by accepting payments over a period of time or by agreeing to accept a generously low price. Stampp explains how some slaves managed to buy their freedom:

Occasionally, they earned the necessary funds by working nights and Sundays. More often, they hired their own time. Either way, they gradually accumulated enough money to pay their masters an amount equal to their value and thus obtained deeds of emancipation. Benevolent masters helped ambitious bondsmen by permitting them to make the payments in installments over a period of years or by accepting a sum lower than the market price. (The Peculiar Institution, p. 96)

Allan Nevins noted that even in the 1850s "many" slaves continued to buy their freedom:

Even in the eighteen-fifties, many slaves, particularly in towns and among the skilled or semi-skilled, continued to buy their liberty. (The Emergence of Lincoln, Volume 2, New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1950, p. 161)

In contrast to many factory workers in the North, and even in contrast to many low-wage workers in our day, many if not most slaves received relatively good medical care. Most slaves received at least some medical care. And some slaves received exceptional medical care. Says Stampp,

To treat their sick slaves, many masters employed trained physicians, often the same ones who treated the white families. A few large planters retained resident doctors on their estates; occasionally several small planters together contracted with a doctor for his full-time service. More commonly a slaveholder made a yearly contract with a physician who agreed to charge a fixed amount for each visit. "Bargained today with Dr. Trotti to practice at the plantation," Hammond noted in his diary. "He agrees to charge only $2.50 a visit without reference to the number of sick prescribed for." Another planter cautioned his overseer, "Strong medicines should be left to the Doctor; and since the Proprietor [the master] never grudges a Doctor's bill, however large, he has a right to expect that the Overseer shall always send for a Doctor when a serious case occurs." Slaveholders, both large and small, sometimes spent generous sums for skilled medical treatment for their "people." To prove that there was "no class of working people in the world better cared for," one southern physician declared that he had often received large fees for attending even senile and worthless slaves.

This statement was much too optimistic, but it did give recognition to a class of humane masters whose expenditures for medical service went far beyond the simple dictates of self-interest. In mourning the death of an old slave woman, a North Carolinian noted that his physician had given the case "assiduous attention" for six months, "devoting to it more reflection and research than he had (as he informs me) to any case within ten years". . . .

A few masters patronized hospitals which were built and maintained especially for the care of sick slaves. During the 1850's, three Savannah physicians ran a slave hospital for "lying-in" women as well as for medical and surgical cases; similar institutions existed in Charleston, Montgomery, Natchez, and New Orleans. But plantation proprietors usually established their own hospitals where the sick could be attended by physicians or slave nurses. "All sick persons are to stay in the hospital night and day, from the time they first complain to the time they are able to go to work again," a South Carolinian instructed his overseer. "Hopeton," James Hamilton Couper's Georgia rice plantation, contained a model hospital where ailing slaves received the best medical attention the South could provide. The hospital was well ventilated and steam heated; it contained an examining room, medicine closet, kitchen, bathing room, and four wards, all of which were swept every day and scrubbed once a week.

Wise and humane masters gave proper attention to slave women who were either expectant or nursing mothers. A Mississippian ordered his overseer to treat them with "great tenderness." A South Carolinian required "lying-in women" to remain at the quarters for four weeks after parturition, because their health might be "entirely ruined by want of care in this particular." Hammond gave the "sucklers" lighter tasks near the quarters and insisted that they be cool and rested before morning.

Some masters were equally solicitous about the care of slave children. On the smaller establishments they appointed an old woman to watch the children while the mothers worked in the fields. On the plantations they built nurseries where the plantation nurse cooked for the children, mended their clothing, and looked after them during illness. (The Peculiar Institution, pp. 311-313)

Fogel and Engerman

Fogel and Engerman

Michael T. Griffith

2006

@All Rights Reserved

While the quality of slave medical care was poor by modern standards, there is no evidence of exploitation in the medical care typically provided for plantation slaves. . . .

That adequate maintenance of the health of their slaves was a central objective of most planters is repeatedly emphasized in instructions to overseers and in other records and correspondence of planters. . . .

Slave health care was at its best for pregnant women.  “Pregnant women,” wrote one planter, “must be treated with great tenderness, worked near home and lightly.”  “Light work” was generally interpreted as 50 to 60 percent of normal effort and was to exclude activity which required heavy physical effort.  During the last month of pregnancy work was further reduced. . . .

Demographic evidence gives strong support to descriptions of pre- and post-natal care contained in plantation rules, letters, and diaries.  Computations based on data from the 1850 census indicate that the average death rate due to pregnancy among slave women in the prime childbearing ages, twenty to twenty-nine, was just one per thousand. . . .  The slave mortality rate in childbearing was not only low on an absolute scale, it was also lower than the maternal death rate experienced by southern white women. (Time on the Cross, pp. 117, 122-123)

In addition, slaves were by no means always confined to their farms and plantations. Many if not most slaves were allowed to visit other estates or to go into nearby towns on a fairly regular basis. A few slaves lived in a state of virtual freedom. As mentioned, some slaves earned money by working on their time off. Slaves were usually free to attend church, and often times they were encouraged to do so. Blassingame observes that many slaves did not have to sneak off the plantation in order to leave for short periods for social visits and the like:

Many slaves did not have to use . . . stratagems. Their masters did not try to restrict their recreational activities as long as they did not interfere with the plantation routine. According to Robert Anderson, "The slaves on a plantation could get together almost any time they felt like it, for little social affairs, so long as it did not interfere with the work on the plantation. During the slack times the people from one plantation could visit one another, by getting permission and sometimes they would slip away and make visits anyway." Similarly, Elijah Marrs said his master "allowed us generally to do as we pleased after his own work was done, and we enjoyed the privilege granted to us." (The Slave Community, p. 108)

The more religious planters not only excused their slaves from work on religious holidays but provided great feasts and recreation on these occasions. "During these periods, which lasted from four to six days," says Blassingame, "planters prepared sumptuous feasts for their slaves" (The Slave Community, p. 107). He continues,

Whole hogs, sheep, or beeves were cooked and the slaves ate peach cobbler and apple dumplings, and frequently got drunk. Often the festival seasons included dances and athletic contests. (The Slave Community, p. 107)

Abolitionists claimed that most slaves worked intolerably long hours.  This claim is repeated in the PBS documentary Slavery and the Making of America.  In point of fact, “the slave work year was shorter than the free work year” (Fogel, Without Consent or Contract, p. 78, original emphasis).  Fogel qualifies this observation by making the argument that slaves were forced to work harder than were free workers; yet, he admits that slaves also earned 15 percent more income per clock-time hour than free workers earned (Without Consent or Contract, p. 79).  In addition, Fogel concedes that on average slaves enjoyed longer rest breaks during the workday and more time off on Sundays than did free workers (Without Consent or Contract, p. 79).  As a matter of fact, many if not most masters gave their slaves part of Saturday off and all of Sunday off (Without Consent or Contract, pp. 77-78).  Not only did slaves work less hours than did free workers, but they also worked less hours than did workers in English textile mills:

Recent studies on the labor routine on U.S. cotton plantations have revealed that the average work week during the spring, summer, and fall was about 58 hours, well below the 72 hours thought to have prevailed in English textile mills during the first quarter of the nineteenth century and also below the 60-hour work week of northern commercial farmers in the United States during the first quarter of the twentieth century. (Fogel, Without Consent or Contract, pp. 28-29)

One frequently runs across the claim that slaves had no legal protection. This is simply not true. I'm not saying slaves had all the legal protection they deserved, but the often-heard claim that they had no protection whatsoever is incorrect. Stampp discusses the legal status of slaves:

"A slave," said a Tennessee judge, "is not in the condition of a horse. . . . He has mental capacities, and an immortal principle in his nature." The laws did not "extinguish his high-born nature nor deprive him of many rights which are inherent in man." All the southern codes recognized the slave as a person for purposes other than holding him accountable for crimes. Many state constitutions required the legislature "to pass such laws as may be necessary to oblige the owners of slaves to treat them with humanity; to provide for them necessary clothing and provisions; to abstain from all injuries to them, extending to life and limb."

The legislatures responded with laws extending some protection to the persons of slaves. Masters who refused to feed and clothe slaves properly might be fined; in several states the court might order them to be sold, the proceeds going to the dispossessed owners. Those who abandoned or neglected insane, aged, or infirm slaves were also liable to fines. In Virginia the overseers of the poor were required to care for such slaves and to charge their masters. (The Peculiar Institution, p. 217)

Slavery and the Federal Government’s Use of Force

 Slavery and the Federal Government’s Use of Force

Michael T. Griffith

2006

@All Rights Reserved

Given these and other facts, I don't believe the existence of slavery in the South justified the federal government’s use of force to deny the South its independence. I don't believe that Southern slavery justified the brutal form of "total war" that federal armies waged against the South. This brand of warfare included the needless destruction of thousands of private homes and public buildings, the large-scale theft of private belongings, the burning of priceless Southern libraries, the killing of thousands of farm animals (even in remote areas), and the shelling of defenseless towns. Some idea of the brutality that was inflicted on the South is indicated by the fact that about 50,000 Southern civilians died in the war (Kenneth C. Davis, Don’t Know Much About the Civil War, Avon Books Edition, New York: Avon Books, 1997, p. 411). Nor do I believe that Southern slavery justified Lincoln's policy of blocking medicines from reaching the South. This cruel policy caused the needless deaths of tens of thousands of Confederate soldiers and of thousands of Southern civilians (Charles, Roland, The Confederacy, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1960, pp. 152-153). This policy also caused the deaths of thousands of Union soldiers who were being held in Confederate prisoner of war camps. When the South tried to buy medical supplies from the federal government to care for Union prisoners, Lincoln wouldn't even reply to the offer. Noted Tilley,

The time came when, shut off from the world by blockade [the federal blockade], the South experienced the greatest difficulty in obtaining medicine which had been made contraband by order of the federal government. By 1864 conditions were so desperate that the South actually offered to purchase from the North such needed supplies, agreeing to pay for them in gold, cotton, or tobacco. The offer made plain that Union surgeons might bring the medicines down and use them solely to minister to Union prisoners. To this offer, there was no reply. (Facts the Historians Leave Out, Ashland City, Tennessee: Nippert Publishing, 1993, reprint, p. 52)

I'm glad slavery was abolished, but it could and should have been abolished peacefully. Yes, this would have taken longer, maybe a lot longer. But it also would have saved the lives of over 600,000 soldiers who died in the war, as well as the lives of tens of thousands of Southern civilians who died as a result of the brutal type of warfare that federal armies waged in the South. It also would have spared tens of thousands of soldiers from suffering the loss of arms and legs for the rest of their lives. Other nations found ways to abolish slavery peacefully. I don't believe we needed to wage the most destructive war in our nation's history before slavery could be abolished.  It’s important to understand that slavery was not abolished during the war; it was abolished several months after the war with the passage of the 13th Amendment.

We will never know what would have happened to Southern slavery if the North had allowed the South to go in peace. The Confederacy was never given the chance to outgrow slavery. There were plenty of people in the South who did not like slavery and/or who wanted to see the slaves freed, including Confederate generals Robert E. Lee, Joseph E. Johnston, and Stonewall Jackson, Confederate Congressman Duncan Kenner, and James Spence, the Confederate financial agent in Europe, who criticized slavery in his book The American Union (Patrick, Jefferson Davis and His Cabinet, p. 196).  There were also Confederate leaders who supported emancipating slaves who served in the Confederate army, such as Confederate generals Patrick Cleburne, Daniel Govan, John H. Kelly, and Marc Lowrey, Governor William Smith of Virginia, Confederate Secretary of State Judah Benjamin, and the Confederate president himself, Jefferson Davis. It’s worth repeating that some 75 percent of Southerners did not own slaves.

I believe the Confederacy would have eventually abolished slavery, either actively or passively. There is some evidence that suggests slavery was beginning to die out on its own.  For example, the percentage of Southern whites who belonged to slaveholding families dropped by 5 percent from 1850-1860 (Robert Divine, T. H. Bren, George Fredrickson, and R. Hal Williams, America Past and Present, Fifth Edition, New York: Longman, 1999, p. 389). Nevins noted that "slavery was dying all around the edges of its domain" (The Emergence of Lincoln, Volume 2, p. 469).   Historians Randall and Donald, after noting the Confederacy’s move toward officially using slaves as soldiers and the support of key Confederate leaders for granting freedom to slaves and their families for faithful military service, acknowledged that the Confederacy may very well have abolished slavery even if it had survived the war:

On November 7, 1864, President Davis went so far as to approve the employment of slave-soldiers as preferable to subjugation, and on February 11, 1865, the Confederate House of Representatives voted that if the President  should not be able to raise sufficient troops otherwise, he was authorized to call for additional levies “from such classes . . . irrespective of color . . . as the . . . authorities . . . may determine”. . . .  There was no mistaking the meaning of this action.  The fundamental social concept of slavery was slipping; an opening wedge for emancipation had been inserted.  Lee’s opinion agreed with that of the President and Congress.  On January 11, 1865, he wrote advising the enlistment of slaves as soldiers and the granting of “immediate freedom to all who enlist, and freedom at the end of the war to the families of those who discharge their duties faithfully. . . .”  This fact, together with other indications, suggests that, even if the Confederacy had survived the war, there was a strong possibility that slavery would be voluntarily abandoned in the South. (The Civil War and Reconstruction, p. 522)

We must be careful not to judge a country or a people through our twenty-first-century lens. Past nations and their citizens should be judged primarily in the context of their own times and not in the context of our times. One hundred years from now, who is to say that future civilizations won't look back and denounce modern America as an unjust, oppressive nation because we have legalized the killing of hundreds of thousands of innocent unborn children every year by abortion, because we still have not extended basic health care to all of our citizens, and because we continue to pollute the environment with toxic waste and fossil fuel emissions? Over the last thirty years alone, more innocent human beings have been killed by abortion than were ever killed by slavery (even including the thousands who died on the slave ships). Or, consider how many low-income people in our country have died prematurely because they had substandard health care or no health care at all. This tragic injustice is no secret. Numerous stories about it have appeared on TV, in newspapers, and in books for decades. Yet, it continues. Will future civilizations look back and judge America harshly because of this? Will we be condemned as a cruel, elitist society? How would we feel if Islamic nations teamed up to invade America because we permit and uphold abortion? How would we feel if Russia and China teamed up to invade America because we don't have universal health care and because we're the world's biggest polluter? What if England, France, and Russia had teamed up to invade the Northern states in the early 1800s because New England permitted and reaped huge profits from the African slave trade and because so many Northern states strongly discriminated against blacks?

More on the Confederacy

More on the Confederacy

Michael T. Griffith

2006

@All Rights Reserved

This is not to say the Confederacy was perfect. But, in comparison to other nations in that era, and even to many nations in our day, the Confederacy was one of the most democratic countries in the world. The Confederacy came into existence in a peaceful, democratic manner, with the support of the overwhelming majority of Southern citizens. In fact, the percentage of Southern citizens who supported the formation of the Confederate States of America was considerably larger than the percentage of colonial citizens who supported the American Revolution (Roland, The Confederacy, pp. 14-15; cf. Divine et al, America Past and Present, pp. 159-161). Throughout its existence, the Confederacy enjoyed a vibrant free press. The Confederate government closely resembled the federal government, with three separate branches of power, i.e., executive, legislative, judicial. Confederate laws went through the legislative process. The Confederate Constitution was very similar to the U.S. Constitution, and it contained improvements that even some Northern writers praised. The Confederacy held free and fair elections. Citizens of the Confederacy enjoyed every right that we now enjoy, if not more.

The Confederacy made every effort to establish peaceful relations with the federal government. The Confederate government even offered to pay compensation for all federal facilities in the South and to pay the Southern states' fair share of the national debt. The Confederacy also announced that Northern ships could continue to use the Mississippi River. The record is clear that the South sought to avoid war. In fact, most Southerners believed secession would be peaceful. It's interesting to note that the correspondence of the first Confederate Secretary of War, Leroy Walker, "clearly indicates he did not expect war" (Patrick, Jefferson Davis and His Cabinet, p. 106). The Confederate states believed, with good reason, that since they had joined the Union voluntarily and peacefully, they had every right to voluntarily and peacefully leave the Union. But war came when the federal government launched an invasion of the Confederate states. That's why the vast majority of battles were fought in the South. The South fought because it was invaded. The South had no desire to overthrow the federal government--it merely wanted to leave that government and to form its own.

The Confederacy did not start the war, and, contrary to what most history books claim or imply, the war didn't really begin when Confederate forces attacked Fort Sumter, South Carolina. Lincoln later admitted he provoked the incident so that he could blame the South for firing the first shot and thus use that as an excuse for going to war.

Soon after South Carolina seceded, federal forces, acting without orders to do so, occupied Fort Sumter, in violation of the agreement that South Carolina had (or certainly thought it had) with President James Buchanan not to change the status quo. Southern leaders argued that South Carolina had the legal right to reclaim Fort Sumter, citing the fact that the state had ceded the fort to the federal government on certain conditions and that these conditions had not been fulfilled. (Jefferson Davis, The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government, Volume 1, New York: De Capo Press, 1990, reprint of 1881 edition, pp. 179-180). South Carolina, and then the Confederacy, tried for months to have Fort Sumter evacuated. Lincoln's Secretary of State, William Seward, promised Confederate representatives the fort would be evacuated, but this promise was not kept.

When Confederate leaders learned that, contrary to Seward's promise, Lincoln had sent a convoy of warships and other vessels to resupply the fort, they decided to demand the fort's surrender. The commander of the federal garrison on the fort refused, even though he did not agree with Lincoln's decision to send a resupply convoy (Davis, The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government, Vol. 1, pp. 243-244). The Confederates then gave the federal commander advance notice the fort would be attacked. Not a single Union soldier was killed in the attack. As a matter of fact, at one point, when the Confederates feared a fire on the fort was going to burn out of control, they offered to help put out the fire. When the federal troops surrendered, the Confederates allowed them to surrender with full military honors and then permitted them to return to the North in peace. This was the "attack," the alleged act of "rebellion" or "insurrection," that Lincoln used as his pretext for launching an invasion of the seceded states. On the other hand, even after the Fort Sumter incident, Jefferson Davis continued to publicly express his desire for peaceful relations with the North. In fact, just two weeks after the Fort Sumter incident, Davis said the following in a message to the Confederate Congress:

We protest solemnly, in the face of mankind, that we desire peace at any sacrifice, save that of honor. In independence we seek no conquest, no aggrandizement, no concession of any kind from the States with which we have lately been confederated. All we ask is to be let alone--that those who never held power over us shall not now attempt our subjugation by arms. (The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government, Vol. 1, pp. 283-284; see also Cooper, Jefferson Davis, American, p. 367)

Was the War Fought Over Slavery

Was the War Fought Over Slavery

Michael T. Griffith

2006

@All Rights Reserved

Many historians seek to justify the federal government's invasion of the South by claiming that the war was fought over slavery, and that Union forces were fighting to free the slaves while the South was fighting to keep them in bondage. A number of critics claim the South only fought in order to ensure the continuation of slavery. A detailed refutation of these assertions would require a separate paper. However, for now, I offer the following points in response to them:

* The war was fought over secession, not over slavery. If the South had not declared its independence, Lincoln would not have launched an invasion, and there would have been no war. The only slave states that were charged with insurrection and then invaded were those that belonged to the Confederacy. Would Lincoln and his fellow Republicans have accepted secession if the Confederacy had announced it was abolishing slavery as the first official act of its existence? Would the Republicans have allowed a peaceful separation if the Confederacy had started an emancipation program right after the First Battle of Manassas (Bull Run)? Any serious student of the Civil War will agree that the answer to both of these questions is no.  I don't think anyone who has studied the subject believes the Republicans would have allowed the South to go in peace no matter when the Confederacy would have started to abolish slavery.

* In July 1861, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a resolution, by a nearly unanimous vote, that affirmed that the North was not waging the war to overthrow slavery but to preserve the Union (Klingaman, Abraham Lincoln and the Road to Emancipation, pp. 66-70). McPherson notes,

. . . in 1861 the North was fighting for the restoration of a slaveholding Union. In his July 4 message to Congress, Lincoln reiterated the inaugural pledge that he had "no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with slavery in the States where it exists." (Ordeal By Fire, p. 265)

* When Lincoln assumed office, he was entirely willing to allow slavery to continue. Lincoln even supported a constitutional amendment that would have given additional legal protection to slavery. When Lincoln issued his famous Emancipation Proclamation about two years later, he did so largely because he was under intense pressure from abolitionist Republicans in Congress, who were threatening to cut off funds from the army if Lincoln didn't issue some kind of emancipation statement. One only has to read the Emancipation Proclamation itself to see that it was a war measure that only applied to slaves who were in Confederate territory; it did not apply to any slaves who were in Union-controlled territory, not even to slaves who were in the four Union slave states. In addition, Bennett presents evidence that Lincoln himself tried to undermine the proclamation soon after he issued it, and that he issued it unwillingly (Forced Into Glory, pp. 22-29, 411-508). For that matter, Lincoln only began to consider issuing the proclamation after the Union war effort continued to falter (Klingaman, Abraham Lincoln and the Road to Emancipation, pp. 134-139; Robert Divine et al, America Past and Present, p. 460.)

* To be sure, some members of the Republican Party did believe the war should be waged for the purpose of abolishing slavery. Those who belonged to this faction of the party were commonly known as "Radical Republicans."

* There were important economic and political differences between the North and the South that were major reasons for the South's desire for independence. Prior to secession, the South had complained for decades about unfair, unconstitutional Northern economic policies, especially tariff policy. One of the seven ordinances of secession and two of the Declarations of Causes of Secession of the Deep South states mention unfair Northern economic policies. Jefferson Davis mentioned the South's complaints about Northern protectionist tariff policies in his first message to the Confederate congress (he cited the North's imposition of "burdens on commerce as a protection to their manufacturing and shipping interests"). In his famous speech on secession to the Georgia legislature, Robert Toombs spent the first half of the speech listing some of the South's economic complaints against the North, and he cited these complaints as reasons the South needed to be independent. Historian Frank Owsley discussed some of the reasons for these complaints:

The industrial North demanded a high tariff so as to monopolize the domestic markets, especially the Southern market. . . . It was an exploitative principle, originated at the expense of the South and for the benefit of the North. . . .

The industrial section dem