Historians, public still wrangling over Civil War
By Clint Talbott
The American Civil War began 150 years ago, but it was not fully resolved at Appomattox. Emphatically and repeatedly, many commentators and historians have been making that point.
In April, on the anniversary of the South’s attack on Fort Sumter, the cover of Time magazine displayed an image of a weeping Abraham Lincoln next to the headline, “Why we’re still fighting the Civil War.” The reason, Time said, is that Americans dispute its cause.
Ralph Mann is an associate professor of history at the University of Colorado. On a warm, April day, he leans back in his office chair in CU’s Hellems Hall, the sun streaming through a south-facing window, and renders his judgment.
“The war was about slavery,” Mann says.
But like most professional Civil War historians, Mann’s expert opinion contradicts the view of about half of America.
A recent Harris Interactive poll found that 54 percent of respondents said the South fought to preserve slavery, compared to 46 percent who said the South’s grievance was the federal government’s threat to states’ rights. Meanwhile, a recent Pew Research Center survey found that 48 percent of respondents said the war’s central issue was “states’ rights,” while only 38 percent said it was slavery. Nine percent said “both.”
Politicians have fogged public understanding, some observers say. Last year, Virginia Gov. Robert McDonnell officially recognized Confederate History Month. His proclamation exhorted Virginians to “understand the sacrifices of the Confederate leaders, soldiers and citizens during the Civil War.”
The proclamation did not mention slavery. McDonnell later said the “conflict between the states” involved many issues, one being slavery, and, “I focused on the ones I thought were most significant for Virginia.”
“The southern position is that this is all about states’ rights,” Mann observes, adding that, like most Civil War historians, he himself is a southerner. He grew up in the South and attended Duke University when school events featured the playing of “Dixie.”
Mann emphasizes that the full picture of the Civil War should not be painted in broad strokes, because it is rife with nuance and irony.
Southern states did secede for the stated purpose of preserving slavery—and on the grounds that African-Americans were an inferior race whose natural condition was servitude. At the same time, secessionists did cite states’ rights, which are political powers reserved for the states by the U.S. Constitution.
While southern states viewed legalized slavery as not subject to federal restrictions, southerners nonetheless championed the federal Fugitive Slave Law of 1850, which required that slaves captured in northern free states be returned to their “owners” in the South.
Further, Mann notes, southern leaders hailed the U.S. Supreme Court’s infamous Dred Scott decision of 1857, which declared that no black person ever was or ever could be a free person, even if he or she lived in a free state.
Nine times of 10, the South invoked states rights to defend slavery. But when expedient, the South hailed federal law and the nation’s highest federal court.
“As northern historians gleefully point out, consistency wasn’t in the southern system,” Mann observes.
At the same time, the U.S. Constitution does not specify that its “more perfect union” will be permanent. That fact could buttress the argument that secession was not treason. Further, the Confederate states did make secession unconstitutional, “ironically enough,” Mann notes.
And Abraham Lincoln himself embodied nuance. Though he issued the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863—a decree that has “assumed a place among the great documents of human freedom,” the National Archives say—Lincoln’s initial goal in the war was preserving the union.
As Ken Burns, director of the documentary series “The Civil War” wrote this year, Lincoln “was at once an infuriatingly pragmatic politician, tardy on the issue of slavery, and at the same time a transcendent figure—poetic, resonant, appealing to better angels we 21st century Americans still find painfully hard to invoke.”
Further, those remembering the Civil War often focus on the courage of soldiers and the prowess of generals. There were brilliant battles and generals on both sides. The human toll of the war was appalling. With 620,000 killed, American deaths in other wars have never approached that number.
Today, American soldiers are suffering in Iraq and Afghanistan, but all the U.S. deaths in Afghanistan during the last decade—America’s longest war—“don’t equal a spring morning in Virginia in ’64,” Mann says, underscoring the “incredible cost” of the fight.
Like other Civil War historians, Mann also rejects caricatures of northerners as uniformly honorable and of southerners as homogenously bad.
Mann’s scholarly research focuses on the Civil War in Appalachia, where support for the Confederacy was not unanimous and where deserters were often motivated by a desire to protect their families and property.
As the nation strove to rebuild the south, the effort faltered because a majority of Civil War-era northerners were racist, Mann says. “The South, in effect, won reconstruction.”
“The war ended slavery but didn’t bring about equality.”
Paul C. Anderson, an associate professor of history at Clemson University in South Carolina, spoke with The Washington Post about this in April. Anderson, who works with many K-12 teachers, said he often has to dispel teachers’ view that the war was a “moral crusade” by the North.
“You have to understand that slavery was sectional, but racism was national,” Anderson told the Post.
On the other end of the spectrum, Mann adds, many southerners subscribe to the “myth of the lost cause.” In that view, life in the pre-war South was good, slaves were happy, and “abolitionist fanatics” forced a needless war on the South, which the South lost because of the North’s larger army and greater materiel.
During the next four years, “You’re going to hear that a lot. And that is precisely what the professionals … are going to be fighting against.”
Additionally, Mann notes that many view the Confederate battle flag as a symbol of brave soldiers. “When I was a kid in the ‘50s, it was a symbol of racism,” he adds.
“Ultimately, it’s a sign of defiance against the federal government, but that defiance was about slavery.”
Most professional historians agree with Mann. As Time magazine noted, slavery was central to America’s origins—one of its original sins—profitably practiced in North and South, and slavery could have continued creeping West: “The first nation founded on the principle of liberty came dangerously close to being among the last slave economies on Earth.”
Like Time and other sources, a recent PBS NewsHour asked Civil War historians why they hold a largely united view on the cause, but the nation remains a house divided.
As Howard University historian Edna Medford told PBS, “Americans, unfortunately, don’t know our own history. … And despite all of the books and all of the classroom discussions and all of the television programs, we still have the perception that it was about something other than slavery.”
A century and a half after the fall of Fort Sumter, she, Mann and a band of historians are still striving to help America see what propelled the first shot.
The American Civil War began 150 years ago, but it was not fully resolved at Appomattox. Emphatically and repeatedly, many commentators and historians have been making that point.
In April, on the anniversary of the South’s attack on Fort Sumter, the cover of Time magazine displayed an image of a weeping Abraham Lincoln next to the headline, “Why we’re still fighting the Civil War.” The reason, Time said, is that Americans dispute its cause.
Ralph Mann, associate professor of history at the University of Colorado
Ralph Mann is an associate professor of history at the University of Colorado. On a warm, April day, he leans back in his office chair in CU’s Hellems Hall, the sun streaming through a south-facing window, and renders his judgment.
“The war was about slavery,” Mann says.
But like most professional Civil War historians, Mann’s expert opinion contradicts the view of about half of America.
A recent Harris Interactive poll found that 54 percent of respondents said the South fought to preserve slavery, compared to 46 percent who said the South’s grievance was the federal government’s threat to states’ rights. Meanwhile, a recent Pew Research Center survey found that 48 percent of respondents said the war’s central issue was “states’ rights,” while only 38 percent said it was slavery. Nine percent said “both.”
Politicians have fogged public understanding, some observers say. Last year, Virginia Gov. Robert McDonnell officially recognized Confederate History Month. His proclamation exhorted Virginians to “understand the sacrifices of the Confederate leaders, soldiers and citizens during the Civil War.”
The proclamation did not mention slavery. McDonnell later said the “conflict between the states” involved many issues, one being slavery, and, “I focused on the ones I thought were most significant for Virginia.”
“The southern position is that this is all about states’ rights,” Mann observes, adding that, like most Civil War historians, he himself is a southerner. He grew up in the South and attended Duke University when school events featured the playing of “Dixie.”
Mann emphasizes that the full picture of the Civil War should not be painted in broad strokes, because it is rife with nuance and irony.
Southern states did secede for the stated purpose of preserving slavery—and on the grounds that African-Americans were an inferior race whose natural condition was servitude. At the same time, secessionists did cite states’ rights, which are political powers reserved for the states by the U.S. Constitution.
While southern states viewed legalized slavery as not subject to federal restrictions, southerners nonetheless championed the federal Fugitive Slave Law of 1850, which required that slaves captured in northern free states be returned to their “owners” in the South.
Further, Mann notes, southern leaders hailed the U.S. Supreme Court’s infamous Dred Scott decision of 1857, which declared that no black person ever was or ever could be a free person, even if he or she lived in a free state.
Nine times of 10, the South invoked states rights to defend slavery. But when expedient, the South hailed federal law and the nation’s highest federal court.
“As northern historians gleefully point out, consistency wasn’t in the southern system,” Mann observes.
At the same time, the U.S. Constitution does not specify that its “more perfect union” will be permanent. That fact could buttress the argument that secession was not treason. Further, the Confederate states did make secession unconstitutional, “ironically enough,” Mann notes.
And Abraham Lincoln himself embodied nuance. Though he issued the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863—a decree that has “assumed a place among the great documents of human freedom,” the National Archives say—Lincoln’s initial goal in the war was preserving the union.
As Ken Burns, director of the documentary series “The Civil War” wrote this year, Lincoln “was at once an infuriatingly pragmatic politician, tardy on the issue of slavery, and at the same time a transcendent figure—poetic, resonant, appealing to better angels we 21st century Americans still find painfully hard to invoke.”
Further, those remembering the Civil War often focus on the courage of soldiers and the prowess of generals. There were brilliant battles and generals on both sides. The human toll of the war was appalling. With 620,000 killed, American deaths in other wars have never approached that number.
Today, American soldiers are suffering in Iraq and Afghanistan, but all the U.S. deaths in Afghanistan during the last decade—America’s longest war—“don’t equal a spring morning in Virginia in ’64,” Mann says, underscoring the “incredible cost” of the fight.
Like other Civil War historians, Mann also rejects caricatures of northerners as uniformly honorable and of southerners as homogenously bad.
Mann’s scholarly research focuses on the Civil War in Appalachia, where support for the Confederacy was not unanimous and where deserters were often motivated by a desire to protect their families and property.
As the nation strove to rebuild the south, the effort faltered because a majority of Civil War-era northerners were racist, Mann says. “The South, in effect, won reconstruction.”
“The war ended slavery but didn’t bring about equality.”
Paul C. Anderson, an associate professor of history at Clemson University in South Carolina, spoke with The Washington Post about this in April. Anderson, who works with many K-12 teachers, said he often has to dispel teachers’ view that the war was a “moral crusade” by the North.
“You have to understand that slavery was sectional, but racism was national,” Anderson told the Post.
On the other end of the spectrum, Mann adds, many southerners subscribe to the “myth of the lost cause.” In that view, life in the pre-war South was good, slaves were happy, and “abolitionist fanatics” forced a needless war on the South, which the South lost because of the North’s larger army and greater materiel.
During the next four years, “You’re going to hear that a lot. And that is precisely what the professionals … are going to be fighting against.”
Additionally, Mann notes that many view the Confederate battle flag as a symbol of brave soldiers. “When I was a kid in the ‘50s, it was a symbol of racism,” he adds.
“Ultimately, it’s a sign of defiance against the federal government, but that defiance was about slavery.”
Most professional historians agree with Mann. As Time magazine noted, slavery was central to America’s origins—one of its original sins—profitably practiced in North and South, and slavery could have continued creeping West: “The first nation founded on the principle of liberty came dangerously close to being among the last slave economies on Earth.”
Like Time and other sources, a recent PBS NewsHour asked Civil War historians why they hold a largely united view on the cause, but the nation remains a house divided.
As Howard University historian Edna Medford told PBS, “Americans, unfortunately, don’t know our own history. … And despite all of the books and all of the classroom discussions and all of the television programs, we still have the perception that it was about something other than slavery.”
A century and a half after the fall of Fort Sumter, she, Mann and a band of historians are still striving to help America see what propelled the first shot.
An image from the Civil War illustrates the relatively primitive weapons used in the combat, which remains widely misunderstood, scholars say. Photo courtesy of the Library of Congress..