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Civil War Myths
Myths of the American Civil War
By Sam Vaknin
Author of "Malignant Self Love - Narcissism Revisited"
The Civil War (1861-5) has spawned numerous myths and falsities.
The Republicans did not intend to abolish slavery - just
to "contain" it, i.e., limit it to the 15 states where it had
already existed. Most of the Democrats accepted this solution.
This led to a schism in the Democratic party. The "fire eaters" left
it and established their own pro-secession political organization.
Growing constituencies in the south - such as urban immigrants and
mountain farmers - opposed slavery as a form of unfair competition.
Less than one quarter of southern families owned slaves in 1861.
Slave-based, mainly cotton raising, enterprises, were so profitable
that slave prices almost doubled in the 1850s. This rendered slaves -
as well as land - out of the reach of everyone but the wealthiest
citizens.
Cotton represented three fifths of all United States exports in
1860. Southerners, dependent on industrial imports as they were,
supported free trade. Northerners were vehement trade
protectionists. The federal government derived most of its income
from custom duties. Income tax and corporate profit tax were yet to
be invented.
The states seceded one by one, following secession conventions and
state-wide votes. The Confederacy (Confederate States of America)
was born only later. Not all the constituents of the Confederacy
seceded at once. Seven - the "core" - seceded between December 20,
1860 and February 1, 1861. They were: South Carolina, Mississippi,
Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas.
Another four - Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Arkansas -
joined them only after the attack on Fort Sumter in April 1861. Two -
Kentucky and Missouri - seceded but were controlled by the Union's
army throughout the war. Maryland and Delaware were slave states but
did not secede.
President James Buchanan who preceded Abraham Lincoln, made clear
that the federal government would not use force to prevent
secession. Secession was declared unconstitutional by the Supreme
Court only in 1869 (in Texas vs. White) - four years after the Civil
War ended. New England almost seceded in 1812, during the Anglo-
American conflict, in order to protect its trade with Britain.
The constitution of the Confederacy prohibited African slave trade
(buying slaves from Africa), though it allowed interstate trade in
slaves. The first Confederate capital was in Montgomery, Alabama -
not in Richmond, Virginia. The term of office of the Confederate
president - Jefferson Davis was the first elected - was six years,
not four as was the case in the Union.
Fort Sumter was not the first attack of the Confederacy on the
Union. It was preceded by attacks on 11 forts and military
installations on Confederate territory.
Lincoln won only 40 percent of the popular vote in 1860. Hence the
South's fierce resistance to his abolitionist agenda. In 1864, the
Republicans became so unpopular, they had to change their name to
the Union Party. Lincoln's vice-president, Johnson, actually was a
Democrat and hailed from Tennessee, a seceding state.
He was the only senator from a seceded state to remain in the
Senate.
Reconstruction started long before the war ended, in Union-occupied
Louisiana, Arkansas, and Tennessee. Slave tax was an important
source of state revenue in the South (up to 60 percent in South
Carolina). Emancipation led to near bankruptcy.
The Union states of Connecticut, Minnesota, and Wisconsin refused to
pass constitutional amendments to confer suffrage on black males.
The Union army consigned black labor gangs to work on the
plantations of loyal Southerners and forcibly separated the black
workers from their families.
Contrary to myth, nearly two thirds of black families were headed by
both parents. Slave marriages were legally meaningless in the
antebellum South, though. But nearly 90 percent of slave households
remained intact till death or forced separation. The average age of
childbirth for women was 20.
Segregation was initiated by blacks. The freedmen lobbied hard and
long for separate black churches and educational facilities. Nor was
lynching confined to blacks. For instance, a white mob lynched, in
September 1862, forty four Union supporters in Gainesville, Texas.
Similar events took place in Shelton Laurel, North Carolina. The Ku
Klux Klan was the paramilitary arm of the Democratic party in the
South, though never officially endorsed by it. It was used
to "discipline" the workforce in the plantations - but also targeted
Republicans.
The Democrats changed their name after the war to the Conservative
Party. By 1877 they have regained power in all formerly Confederate
states.
==============================================================
Sam Vaknin is the author of Malignant
Self Love - Narcissism Revisited and After the Rain - How the West
Lost the East. He served as a columnist for Global Politician,
Central Europe Review, PopMatters, Bellaonline, and eBookWeb, a
United Press International (UPI) Senior Business Correspondent, and
the editor of mental health and Central East Europe categories in
The Open Directory and Suite101.
Until recently, he served as the Economic Advisor to the Government
of Macedonia. Visit Sam's Web site at
http://samvak.tripod.com
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