Gentle prodding with two different questions can ease this problem. First, can students find a serious historian who has claimed that the South Carolina convention was lying? (No, they cannot.) “The secessionists knew why they seceded,” wrote David Duncan Wallace, the dean of South Carolina historians, and a white supremacist as well. He pointed out that they always cited the threat to slavery, real or imagined, as the cause.7 No significant South Carolina historian claims otherwise. Second, what plausible motive would prompt its members to censor all mention of their pro-states’ rights feelings or their disagreement with some national tax or tariff? (None.)
Their error is not their fault. We shall see that it is historically determined and caused. Showing students that their thinking comes from 1900 rather than, say, 1860 or 2010, can also help prompt rethinking. Challenged to use actual evidence to mount arguments favoring one interpretation over another, students will gravitate toward the right answer.
They will, partly because the case does not rest on this one document. At least four other states, when seceding from the Union, incorporated passages and ideas from South Carolina’s document in their statements telling why. The secession convention in Texas, for example, proclaimed:
The States of Maine, Vermont, New Hampshire, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Wisconsin, Michigan, and Iowa, by solemn legislative enactments, have deliberately, directly or indirectly violated the 3rd clause of the 2nd section of the 4th article of the federal constitution, and laws passed in pursuance thereof….
Texas lists pretty much the same states, in pretty much the same order. The constitutional clause they are charged with violating is of course the same fugitive slave clause about which South Carolina complains.
Other states said the same thing in their own words. For example, concern over slavery permeates Mississippi’s “Address Setting Forth the Declaration of the Immediate Causes Which Induce and Justify the Secession of Mississippi”:
Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery…. [A] blow at slavery is a blow at commerce and civilization. That blow has been long aimed at the institution, and was at the point of reaching its consummation. There was no choice left us but submission to the mandates of abolition, or a dissolution of the Union….
As well, South Carolina and other Deep South states sent ambassadors to other states that allowed slavery, trying to persuade them to secede. These envoys used similar language, stressing slavery first, last, and foremost. Henry L. Benning, for instance, speaking to Virginia’s secession convention on behalf of Georgia, said:
What was the reason that induced Georgia to take the step of secession. That reason may be summed up in one single proposition. It was a conviction, a deep conviction on the part of Georgia, that a separation from the North was the only thing that could prevent the abolition of her slavery.
Confirmation also comes from the famous “Cornerstone Speech” by Alexander Stephens, vice president of the Confederacy. He spoke before a huge audience in Savannah, Georgia, on March 21, 1861, as the Confederacy was forming. After telling several ways that he deemed the new constitution for the Confederate States of America superior to the U.S. Constitution, Stephens reached the central point of his speech:
The new constitution has put at rest, forever, all the agitating questions relating to our peculiar institution—African slavery as it exists amongst us—the proper status of the Negro in our form of civilization. This was the immediate cause of the late rupture and present revolution. Jefferson in his forecast, had anticipated this, as the “rock upon which the old Union would split.”
Stephens then spoke at some length on how Jefferson and other founders believed that all men were created equal. He continued:
Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea; its foundations are laid, its cornerstone 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. [Applause.] This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth.
Thus, the South was not just seceding over the issue of slavery, but over the issue of race as well. White Southerners could not imagine what to do with the four million African Americans in their midst if they were to be free. For that matter, neither could many white Northerners. White supremacy was not just an expedient adopted to rationalize the otherwise indefensible unfairness of slavery. Most whites sincerely believed it. Therefore, white Southerners came to see blacks as a menace, were slavery ever to end. Slavery had given rise to white supremacy as an ideology; now white supremacy prompted a fierce defense of slavery. Thus, to a considerable degree, secession was about white supremacy. In November 1864, the Richmond Daily Enquirer asked and answered the cause question: “What are we fighting for? We are fighting for the idea of race.”8
No one contested any of this in the 1860s. When Abraham Lincoln said in his Second Inaugural, “All knew that this interest [slavery] was somehow the cause of the war,” he was not trying to convince his audience. He was merely stating the obvious, en route to some searing statements about slavery, God, and justice.
What was common knowledge at the time became encrusted by myth during the Nadir of race relations, around 1900. In 1907, John Singleton Mosby, the “Gray Ghost of the Confederacy,” grew so disgusted with the campaign of pettifoggery that Southern neo-Confederates (and some actual Confederates) were waging that he wrote:
The South went to war on account of slavery. South Carolina went to war—as she said in her secession proclamation—because slavery would not be secure under Lincoln. South Carolina ought to know what was the cause for it seceding.9
In 1996, historian William C. Davis noted, “All peoples part with their myths reluctantly, and historians are at some risk when they try to dismantle those of the Confederacy.”10 K–12 teachers can be at greater risk from neo-Confederate white parents and school board members who believe that the South was right, that it seceded for states’ rights and other unspecified constitutional principles, and therefore that secession should be celebrated, not inquired into. If, despite the statements above by Lincoln, Stephens, Benning, Mississippi, Texas, and South Carolina, a teacher feels the need for more evidence that the states’ rights issues did not prompt secession, here are three additional suggestions:
Look up, print, and have ready the reasons for secession given by each Confederate state as it left the Union.
Read the secondary sources that make the case compactly and effectively, listed at the end of this chapter.
Consider the Confederate Constitution. Note that Confederates built into it no right to secede and no chance for states to have their own say about slavery. Instead, it forbade states and territories from ever “impairing the right of property in Negro slaves,” regardless of local sentiment. As always, slavery trumped any commitment to states’ rights.
If the above steps do not stiffen a teacher’s resolve to present secession accurately, s/he must teach math, not history or social studies! Americans are ignorant enough about the Civil War as it is. We cannot have another generation grow up believing falsehoods about a central event in our past.
EXAMINING TEXTBOOKS
Secession provides another opportunity for students to critique their textbook. Why does it say South Carolina seceded? I surveyed six high school history textbooks on this point, all published since 2000. Not one quoted any statement about why the South seceded.11 Holt American Nation, for example, says, “Within days of the election, the South Carolina legislature called a convention and unanimously voted to leave the Union. Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas soon passed similar acts of secession.” Similar to what? Holt does not quote a single word from any of these documents. No textbook quotes Alexander Stephens. None quotes Jefferson Davis or Robert E. Lee or any other Confederate leader on the idea of race.
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Not only do our textbooks avoid primary sources, the accounts they do provide sometimes contradict the historical record. Holt writes,
The southern secessionists justified their position with the doctrine of states’ rights. They asserted that since individual states had come together to form the Union, a state had the right to withdraw from the Union.
If read literally, in a certain circular sense Holt is right: secessionists seceded while asserting their right to secede.12 This is hardly what people meant then by “states’ rights,” however. Nor is it what people mean today. Proponents of states’ rights defend the power of individual states to make public policy, vis-à-vis the power of the central government. The secession documents show that Southern states were outraged by the rather feeble attempts by Northern states to exercise states’ rights. They never mention any inability of their own to do so.
Some textbooks toss tariffs into the mix. The American Pageant, for instance, admits, “The low Tariff of 1857, passed largely by southern votes, was not in itself menacing.” Nevertheless, it goes on to hypothesize, “But who could tell when the ‘greedy’ Republicans would win control of Congress and drive through their own oppressive protective tariff?” This might sound plausible, but it is “what if?” history, referring to some future possibility in some future year. Not one state mentioned concern about tariffs when seceding in 1860–61.
If students find that their textbook does a better job, they might send words of praise to the author(s) and publisher. If they conclude that their textbook is not better, they might send the author(s) and publisher a letter setting forth their complaint, backed by evidence, inviting them to respond.
Hopefully, students also have access to other textbooks. Chapter 1 suggested teachers might easily collect old textbooks in U.S. history. Older textbooks are even less clear. Triumph of the American Nation was the most popular textbook in the 1970s and ’80s, when most of today’s teachers went to high school. Its 1990 edition says:
Why did the North and South go to war in 1861? What was the immediate cause of the tragic conflict? There is no easy way to answer these two questions. Historians have studied the issues for years and still reach different conclusions.
Some historians have stressed the basic economic and social differences of the North and the South. Other historians have pointed to disagreements over tariffs, internal improvements at public expense, money and banking, the disposal of public lands, and slavery. Still other historians have emphasized the issue of states’ rights.
This treatment sounds professional. It starts by saying this is a hard question. It is multicausal, complex, surely better than simplistic. Then it uses the tried-and-true device of saying “some historians say” while “others emphasize.” Surely this is a defensible summary.
Only it isn’t. From the start, this passage makes unclear things that are clear. It never even addresses the second of its two questions, which has an easy answer: the immediate cause of the conflict was the election of Lincoln. The South Carolina document could not be clearer. Historians have “studied this issue for years” and always reach the same conclusion. No historical controversy exists here. If students want other evidence, they can research when South Carolina leaders first suggested holding a convention—directly after Lincoln’s election. Taking something that is plain and making it complex and beclouded amounts to obfuscation.
Assuming that the first question seeks deeper causes, again these paragraphs obfuscate. Slavery, clearly the cause according to South Carolina, is reduced to a single word, and that comes after four other alleged causes. States’ rights then gets the final sentence all by itself. On what basis?13 Triumph of the American Nation includes no primary sources, of course—textbooks rarely do. Indeed, it contains no sources of any kind. If historians really disagree, why are none named in support of any of these six positions? Why are there no footnotes? Like most textbooks, Triumph provides nothing but assertion. Students should not be gentle in their criticism of writing like this. If they are supposed to back their claims with evidence, they should condemn textbooks for not doing the same thing.
Students can then ask deeper questions. Why would textbooks get secession wrong? Why would their authors not quote the critical documents, easily available to them? Four basic reasons explain this failure. First, textbook authors have got into the habit of not quoting anything. One textbook even gives students two paragraphs about William Jennings Bryan’s famous “Cross of Gold” speech while not quoting a single word of it, beyond its title. Authors drone on in an omniscient monotone, rather than letting the voices of the past speak.
Second, publishers don’t want to offend. Flatly saying that slavery was why Southern states seceded might cause state textbook adoption boards across the South to reject a textbook. At least, so worry publishers’ marketing departments.
Third, authors are too busy to write “their” textbooks. Most high school textbooks—especially as they age—aren’t really by the scholars whose names grace their covers. Some of the people who actually write textbooks don’t even have a B.A. in history. As one textbook editor put it, “They pick things up pretty quickly, and in a couple of days, they’re up on the Civil War.”14 Only they’re not. They don’t know enough to question the popular culture, let alone challenge it, and the popular culture, as the teachers’ poll showed, holds that the South seceded for states’ rights.
Fourth, downplaying slavery as the chief reason for secession got set in our culture as well as our textbooks about a century ago. By now, the “states’ rights” explanation has become a textbook tradition. It’s hard for publishers to buck tradition, especially since the people who actually write their textbooks are often not the scholars whose names grace their title pages. Instead, publishers typically hire anonymous writers who lack the independence, credentials, and knowledge to start a new tradition.
GENESIS OF THE PROBLEM
During the Nadir of race relations, that terrible period from 1890 to 1940 when race relations deteriorated, Northerners found it embarrassing to think about the cause they had abandoned. They had fought for something, after all. At first, they’d gone to war to prevent the breakup of the United States. As the war ground on, it became a struggle to end slavery. By the summer of 1862, Union soldiers were going into battle singing “Battle Cry of Freedom” and “John Brown’s Body.” Getting students singing historical songs is an excellent way to make history come alive. It helps students have verstehende, too. No one can sing the words of these songs without perceiving that freedom and Union were both war aims of the United States and without feeling some of the power of that combination. At Gettysburg in the fall of 1863, Abraham Lincoln was already proclaiming “a new birth of freedom.” The freedom to which he referred was black freedom, and again, everyone understood that at the time. Conversely, on their way to and from Gettysburg, Lee’s troops seized scores of free black people in Maryland and Pennsylvania and sent them south into slavery. This was in keeping with Confederate national policy.
During the Nadir, however, black freedom turned out to have been stillborn, as the next chapter shows. In 1892 Grover Cleveland would win the presidency with a campaign that derided Republicans as “nigger lovers.” Four years later, the U.S. Supreme Court would grant official approval to racial segregation in Plessy v. Ferguson. Around that time, racial segregation became required by custom if not law throughout the North. No longer were Americans “dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal,” as Lincoln had said we were at Gettysburg.
During those decades, our popular culture also celebrated the antebellum plantation South, from minstrel shows to movies like Birth of a Nation and Gone with the Wind. Now the South and North came to be considered morally equal during our “tragic” Civil War. As part of this program, textbooks had to downplay slavery as the cause of secession. This is also when authors started portraying Abraham Lincoln as being indifferent to slavery. His Emancipation Proclamation was only
a political gesture, done to win support from England and France or abolitionist Republicans. (In reality, the Proclamation cost Republicans votes in the November 1862 elections, as Lincoln and his cabinet had predicted.)
Asked what speech, what address, what letter by Lincoln textbooks are most likely to include, students chorus “The Gettysburg Address.” It’s a good choice, partly because it’s so short. The entire speech will fit in a little box in the corner of a page. Several textbooks put it there, too, isolated from the main narrative of the war, so it’s not clear it should even “count.” Students can survey various textbooks to see what words of Lincoln textbook authors quote as part of their main narrative. When I did so, the runaway winner was this paragraph, from his letter of August 22, 1862, to Horace Greeley’s New York Tribune:
I would save the Union…. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave, I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves, I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone, I would also do that. What I do about slavery and the colored race I do because I believe it helps to save this Union; and what I forbear, I forbear because I do not believe it would help to save the Union….
These sentences present a Lincoln who obviously did not care about slavery. In Lies My Teacher Told Me, I berate textbooks for claiming that these sentences show Lincoln’s true war aims. Such misrepresentation again fits with the program of showing the North and South as moral equals.
Teaching What Really Happened: How to Avoid the Tyranny of Textbooks and Get Students Excited About Doing History Page 26