The South, against overwhelming numbers and resources, fought until exhausted

The South, against overwhelming numbers and resources, fought until exhausted

Michael T. Griffith

2006

@All Rights Reserved

Fourth Edition

I don't think anyone disputes the fact that the South faced overwhelming odds in a war with the North. The North had over twice the population of the South, and a great deal more heavy industry. McPherson's chapter entitled "The Balance Sheet of War" in his book Ordeal By Fire shows just how great the odds were against the South (Ordeal By Fire, pp. 180-205). In nearly every important category, the North held a decided advantage. In major battles, Confederate forces were frequently outnumbered by a ratio of two or three to one. Yet, amazingly, the Confederacy won many battles, inflicted greater casualties than it suffered, came close to gaining formal recognition from England and France (and would have but for the loss of two or three battles), and managed to hold on for over four years.

Finally, I would like to list some important facts that are often omitted from most of the history textbooks used in public schools and that are rarely, if ever, mentioned in documentaries on the Civil War:

* As early as 1862, Confederate diplomats in England were indicating to British authorities that the Confederacy would be willing to abolish slavery in exchange for diplomatic recognition. In late 1864, Jefferson Davis and other Confederate leaders were ready and willing to abolish slavery in order to save the Confederacy, and Confederate diplomats in Europe made an offer to this effect (see Cooper, Jefferson Davis, American, pp. 552-553; see also, Klingaman, Abraham Lincoln and the Road to Emancipation, p. 113). This shows that Confederate leaders viewed independence as being more important than the continuation of slavery.

* The Confederate constitution outlawed the slave trade, i.e., it forbade the importation of slaves from Africa and from all other continents (Article I, Section 9). The Confederate constitution also permitted Confederate states to abolish slavery if they wanted to do so and allowed for the admission of free states to the Confederacy.

* During the secession crisis, a group of moderates in the Senate proposed the Crittenden Compromise, which may have ended up preventing war. Lincoln rejected the proposal, and Senate Republicans stalled the measure until they had enough votes to defeat it after a number of Southern senators had resigned. This led Senator Crittenden himself to suggest that the compromise be voted on by the people in a national referendum. Senate Republicans, with Lincoln's approval, prevented this from happening (see Bruce Catton, editor, The National Experience: A History of the United States, Second Edition, New York: Harcourt, Brace, & World, 1968, p. 336). There is little doubt the Crittenden Compromise would have been approved by a substantial majority of the people if the measure had been put to a national vote (see, for example, Allan Nevins, The Emergence of Lincoln, Volume 2, New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1950, pp. 401-402).

At the first committee vote on the compromise, the Southern representatives, including Robert Toombs and Jefferson Davis, said they would support the proposal if the Republicans did the same (Nevins, The Emergence of Lincoln, p. 397). Vice President Breckinridge, who was from Kentucky, told the Senate that "the leading statesmen of the lower Southern States were willing to accept the terms" of the compromise (Nevins, The Emergence of Lincoln, p. 398). But, as mentioned, the Republicans were unwilling to support it. Historian Allan Nevins noted that "the chief responsibility for the defeat of the compromise falls upon the twenty-five Republicans who voted to slay it" (The Emergence of Lincoln, p. 403).

* Four of the states that fought for the Union were slave states: Maryland, Delaware, Kentucky, and Missouri. In fact, when Lincoln sent the federal naval convoy to Fort Sumter, there were more slaves states in the Union than in the Confederacy.

* As of 1860, just one year before the outbreak of the Civil War, roughly half of the free blacks in America lived in the South, and in the Southern cities of New Orleans and Charleston alone there were more free blacks who owned real estate than in the Northern cities of Philadelphia, New York, Baltimore, and Boston combined (see Franklin and Moss, From Slavery to Freedom, pp. 169-175). I again quote African-American scholars Franklin and Moss:

Free blacks in the Southern states also accumulated property. . . . Luther P. Jackson found that in Virginia in 1860 free blacks owned more than 60,000 acres of farmland and their city real estate was valued at $463,000. In North Carolina they owned $480,000 worth of real property and $564,000 worth of personal property in 1860. In Charleston, 352 blacks paid taxes in 1859 on property valued in excess of $778,000. Tennessee's free blacks owned about $750,000 worth of real and personal property in 1860. The affluence of a large number of free blacks in New Orleans is well known. (Franklin and Moss, From Slavery to Freedom, pp. 174-175)

* The same Republicans who vehemently attacked the South over slavery, and who imposed harsh Reconstruction rule on the South after the war, approved official discrimination against the American Indians in the West and permitted them to be segregated from the rest of society. One textbook, edited by Civil War scholar Bruce Catton, puts it this way:

The same Congress that devised Radical Reconstruction . . . approved strict segregation and inequality for the Indian of the West. (Catton, editor, The National Experience, p. 416)