Lies My Teacher Told Me (28 page)

The safeguarding of states' rights, often mentioned as a motive for the establishment of
the Confederacy, was for the most part merely an accompanying rationale. Historically,
whatever faction has been out of power in America has pushed for states' rights.
Slaveowners were delighted when Supreme Court Chief Justice Taney decided in 1857 that
throughout the nation, irrespective of the wishes of state or territorial governments,
blacks had no rights that whites must respect. Slaveowners pushed President Buchanan to
use federal power to legitimize slaveholding in Kansas the next year. Only after they
lost control of the executive branch in the 1860 election did they advocate limiting
federal power.

As the war continued, neither states' rights nor white supremacy proved adequate to the
task of inspiring a new nation. As early as December 1862,

JOHN BROWN AND ABRAHAM LINCOLN

Pres. Jefferson Davis denounced states' rights as destructive to the Confederacy, The
mountainous counties in western Virginia bolted to the Union. Confederate troops had to
occupy east Tennessee to keep it from emulating West Virginia, Winn Parish, Louisiana,
refused to secede from the Union. Winston County, Alabama, declared itself che Republic of
Winston. Unionist farmers and woodsmen in Jones County, Mississippi, declared the Free
State of Jones, Every Confederate state except South Carolina supplied a regiment or at least a company of white soldiers to the Union army, as well as many
black recruits. Armed guerrilla actions plagued every Confederate state. (With the
exception of Missouri, and the 1863 New York City draft riots, few Union states were
afflicted with such problems.) It became dangerous for Confederates to travel in parts of
Alabama, Florida, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Texas. The war was fought not just
between North and South but between Unionists and Confederates within the Confederacy (and
Missouri).50 By February 1864 President Davis despaired: “Public meetings of treasonable character, in
the name of state sovereignty, are being held.” Thus stales' rights as an ideology was
contradictory and could not mobilize the white South for the long haul.

The racial ideas of the Confederate states proved even less serviceable to the war effort.
According to Confederate ideology, blacks liked slavery; nevertheless, to avert revolts
and runaways, the Confederate states passed the “twenty nigger law,” exempting from
military conscription one white man as overseer for every twenty slaves. Throughout the
war Confederates withheld as much as a third of their fighting forces from the front lines
and scattered them throughout areas with large slave populations to prevent slave
uprisings.1 When the United States allowed African Americans to enlist, Confederates were forced by
their ideology to assert that it would not work-blacks would hardly fight like white men.
The undeniable bravery of the 54th Massachusetts and other black regiments disproved the
idea of black inferiority. Then came the incongruity of truly beastly behavior by Southern
whites toward captured black soldiers, such as the infamous Fort Pillow massacre by troops
under Nathan Bedford Forrest, who crucified black prisoners on tent frames and then burned
them alive, all in the name of preserving white civilization.

Contradiction piled upon contradiction. After the fall of Vicksburg, President Davis
proposed to arm slaves to fight for the Confederacy, promising them freedom to win their
cooperation. But ifservitude was the best condition for the slave, protested supporters of
slavery, how could freedom be a reward? To win foreign recognition, other Confederate
leaders proposed to abolish slavery altogether. Some newspaper editors concurred.
“Although slavery is one of the principles that we started to fight for,“ said the Jackson Mississippian, if it mim be jettisoned to achieve our ”separate nationality, away with it!” A month
before Appomattox, the Confederate Congress passed a measure to enroll black troops,
showing how the war had elevated even slaveowners' estimations of black abilities and
also revealing complete ideological disarray. What, after all, would the new black
soldiers be fighting far? Slavery? Secession? What, for that matter,

would white Southern troops be fighting for, once blacks were also armed? As Howell Cobb
of Georgia said, “If slaves will make good soldiers our whole theory of slavery is wrong.”

In part owing to these contradictions, some Confederate soldiers switched sides, beginning
as early as 1862. When Sherman made his famous march to the sea from Atlanta to Savannah,
his army actually grew in number, because thousands of white Southerners volunteered along
the way. Meanwhile, almost two-thirds of the Confederate army opposing Sherman disappeared
through desertion,54 Eighteen thousand slaves also joined Sherman, so many that the army had to turn some away.
Compare these facts with the portrait common in our textbooks of Sherman's marauders
looting their way through a united South!

The increasing ideological confusion in the Confederate states, coupled with the
increasing ideological strength of the United States, helps explain the Union victory.
“Even with all the hardships,” Carleton Deals has noted, “the South up to the very end
still had great resources and manpower.” Many nations and people have continued to fight
with far inferior means and weapons. Beals thinks that the Confederacy's ideological
contradictions were its gravest liabilities, ultimately causing its defeat. He shows how
the Confederate army was disbanding by the spring of 1865 in Texas and other states,
even in the absence of Union approaches. On the home front too, as Jefferson Davis put it,
“The zeal of the people is failing.”

Five textbooks tell how the issue of states' rights interfered with the Confederate
cause,5 Only The American Adventure gives students a clue of any other ideological weakness of the Confederacy or strength of
the Union. Adventure tells how slavery broke down when Union armies came near and that many poor whites in the
South did not support the war because they felt they would be fighting for slaveowners. Ac/venterf also quotes original sources on the evolution of Union war aims and asks, “How would
such attitudes affect the conduct and outcome of the war?” No other textbook mentions
ideas or ideologies as a strength or weakness of either side. The Civil War was about
something, after all. Textbooks should tell us what.

JOHN BROWN AND ABRAHAM LINCOLN

This silence has a history. Throughout this century textbooks have presented the Civil
War as a struggle between “virtually identical peoples.” This is all part of the unspoken
agreement, reached during the nadir of race relations in the United States (1890-1920),
that whites in the South were as American as whites in the North.58 White Northerners and white Southerners reconciled on the backs of African Americans,
while the abolitionists became the bad guys.

In the 1920s the Grand Army of the Republic, the organization of Union veterans,
complained that American history textbooks presented the Civil War with “no suggestion”
ihat the Union cause was right. Apparently the United Daughters of the Confederacy carried
more weight with publishers,“ The UDC was even able to erect a statue to the Confederate
dead in Wisconsin, claiming they ”died to repel unconstitutional invasion, to protect the rights reserved to
the people, to perpetuate the sovereignty of the states"60 Not a word about slavery, or even disunion.

History textbooks still present Union and Confederate sympathizers as equally idealistic.
The North fought to hold the Union together, while the Southern states fought, according
to The American Way, “for the preservation of their rights and freedom to decide for themselves.” Nobody fought
to preserve racial slavery; nobody fought to end it. As one result, unlike the Nazi
swastika, which lies disgraced, even in the North whites still proudly display the Stars
and Bars of the Confederacy on den walls, license plates, T-shirts, and high school logos.
Even some (white) Northerners vaguely regret the defeat of the “lost cause.” It is as if
racism against blacks could be remembered with nostalgia.61 In this sense, long after Appomattox, the Confederacy finally won.

Five days after Appomattox, President Lincoln was murdered. His martyrdom pushed Union
ideology one step further. Even whites who had opposed emancipation now joined to call
Lincoln the great emancipator.62 Under Republican leadership, the nation entered Reconstruction, a period of continuing
ideological conflict.

At first Confederates tried to maintain prewar conditions through new laws, modeled after
their slave codes and antebellum restrictions on free blacks. Mississippi was the first
state to pass these draconian “Black Codes.” They did not work, however. The Civil War had
changed American ideology. The new antiracism forged in its flames would dominate Northern
thinking for a decade. The Chicago Tribune, the most important organ of the Republican party in the Midwest, responded angrily: “We
tell the white men of Mississippi that the men of the North will convert the state of
Mississippi into a frog pond before they will allow any such laws to disgrace one foot of
soil in which the bones of our soldiers sleep and over which the flag of freedom waves.“65 Thus black civil rights again became the central issue in the congressional elections of
1866. ”Support Congress and You Support the Negro,“ said the Democrats in a campaign
broadside featuring a disgusting caricature of an African American. ”Sustain the Presi
dent and You Protect the White Man.“64 Northern voters did not buy it. They returned ”radical“ Republicans to Congress in a
thunderous repudiation of Pres. Andrew Johnson's accommodation of the ex-Confederates.
Even more than in 1864, when Republicans swept Congress in 1866 antiracism became the
policy of the nation, agreed to by most of its voters. Over Johnson's veto, Congress and
the slates passed the Fourteenth Amendment, making all persons citizens and guaranteeing
them ”the equal protection of the laws.” The passage, on behalf of blacks, of this shining
jewel of our Constitution shows how idealistic were the officeholders of the Republican
Party, particularly when we consider that similar legislation on behalfofwomen cannot be
passed today.

During Reconstruction a surprising variety of people went to the new civilian “front
lines” and worked among the newly freed African Americans in the South. Many were black
Northerners, including several graduates of Oberlin College, This passage from a letter by
Edmonia Highgate, a white woman who went south to teach school, describes her life in
Lafayette Parish, Louisiana.

The majority of my pupils come from plantations, three, four and even eight miles distant.
So anxious are they to learn that they walk these distances so early in the morning as
never to be tardy.

There has been much opposition to the School. Twice I have been shot at in my room. My
night school scholars have been shot but none killed. A week ago an aged freedman just
across the way was shot so badly as to break his arm and leg. The rebels here threatened
to burn down the school and house in which I board yet they have not materially harmed
us. The nearest military protection is 200 miles distant at New Orleans.

Some Union soldiers stayed in the South when they were demobilized. Some Northern
Republican would-be politicians moved south to organize their parry in a region where it
had not been a factor before the war. Some went hoping to win office by election or
appointment. Many abolitionists continued their commitment by working in the Freedman's
Bureau and priva[e organizations to help blacks obtain full civil and political rights.
In terms ofparty affiliation, almost all of these persons were Republicans; otherwise,
they were a JOHN BROWN AND ABRAHAM LINCOLN

The white woman at left, whom textbooks would call a “carpetbagger.” could hardlyj expect to grow rich teaching school hear Vicksbutg, where
this illustration was done. | This woman risked her life to bring basic literacy to
African American children and'j aduIts during Reconstruction.

diverse group. Still, all but one of the twelve textbooks routinely use the disgraceful
old tag carpeibaggers, without noting its bias, lo describe Northern white] Republicans who lived in the South
during Reconstruction.

Many whites who were born in the South supported Reconstruction.! Every Southern state
boasted Unionists, some of whom had volunteered for ilic Union army. They now became
Republicans. Some former Confederates,! including even Gen. James Longstreet, second in
command under Lee at Gettys-. burg, became Republicans because they had grown convinced
that equality for | blacks was morally right. Robert Flournoy, a Mississippi planter, had
raised a company of Confederate soldiers but then resigned his commission and returned home because
“there was a conflict in my conscience.” During the war he was once arrested for
encouraging blacks to flee to Union lines. During Reconstruction he helped organize the
Republican party, published a newspaper, EqudRights, and argued for desegregating the University ofMississippi and the new state's public
school system.hs Republican policies, including free public education, never before available in the South
to children of either race, convinced some poor whites to vote for the party Many former
Whigs became Republicans rather than join their old nemesis, the Democrats. Some white
Southerners became Republicans because they were convinced that black suf frage was an
accomplished fact; they preferred winning political power with blacks on their side to
losing. Others became Republicans to make connections or win contracts from the new
Republican state governments. Of the 113 white Republican congressmen from the South
during Reconstruction, 53 were Southerners, many of them from wealthy families.69 In sum, this is another diverse group, amounting to between one-fourth and one-third of
the white population and in some counties a majority. Nevertheless all but one textbook
still routinely apply the disgraceful old tag scalawags to Southern white Republicans,