Category: Southern Statesmen

An Important Sectional Irritant

One of American history’s greatest ironies is that the Southern colonies, and later States were populated with Africans who were transported in the holds of English and New England ships, both growing prosperous and wealthy through this iniquitous maritime trade. The result was a million American dead by mid-1865.

An Important Sectional Irritant

Antebellum anti-slavery Republicans, in criticizing Southern anti-abolitionist literature policies, linked the laws making the education of Negroes a crime with other violations of freedom of speech. Charles Sumner of Massachusetts, the egalitarian radical, early in his career attacked the Southern States for rifling the mails to destroy anti-slavery publications emanating from the North. A Republican colleague of Sumner criticized the restrictions “as being uncivilized.” In 1860, Sen. Jefferson Davis of Mississippi responded in the United States Congress:

“When men employ their time in writing tracts, in publishing newspapers, to indoctrinate crime into the Negroes – to teach them to commit arson, theft and murder – then there is reason growing out of the crimes of our neighbors which it imposes it upon us, as a duty of self-protection, to prevent the Negroes from reading, as the means of shutting out your unholy work . . . that, I imagine, is the foundation of all the objection which has existed to their being taught to read.” (Congressional Globe, 1687, 1860).

“In Georgia the circulation of any newspaper, pamphlet, or circular inciting insurrection, revolt, conspiracy or resistance by slaves, free Negroes or colored persons, was made punishable by death. Louisiana punished any writings designed to produce discontent or insubordination among Negroes, slave or free, with death or life imprisonment.

Not only did Virginia punish the making of abolitionist speeches or writings, but the State required every postmaster to notify a local justice of any mail with abolitionist literature and then burn this mail. And, if the addressee of the abolitionist material had subscribed to it, knowing its character, he was guilty of a crime.

These laws were constantly the subject of discussion in Congress and constituted an important sectional irritant. Northern members of Congress attacked them as violating freedom of speech, while the South defended them as essential to forestall slave revolts and bloody massacre of white Southerners. The specter of the early 1790’s massacre of Haiti’s white population was an ever-present fear in the American South.”

(School Segregation and History Revisited. Alfred Avins, PhD, Cambridge University. The Catholic Lawyer, Vol. 15, No. 4, Autumn 1969, pp. 311-312)

 

Honor for the South

The impressive monument to American President Jefferson Davis was erected at the intersection of Monument and Davis Avenues in Richmond, designed by architect William C. Noland and noted sculptor Edward Valentine. It was unveiled, along with a monument to Gen. “Jeb” Stuart, to a vast crowd on the President’s birthdate, June 3, 1907. The article below was published in January 1893.

Honor for the South

“The impulse to build to Jefferson Davis a monument typical of the South in the war, was so universal when the great hero died that a general agreement was had in a few hours by telegraph. The movement was inaugurated by the Southern Press Association, and it is cooperated in by Confederate veterans everywhere. The Jefferson Davis Monument Association at Richmond, chartered under the laws of Virginia, has special charge of the work. The active cooperation of every newspaper and periodical in the South is sought on behalf of this Fund. It is very desirable to procure name and post office of every contributor of $1 or more.

Let every Southerner and friend of his people look at the situation, and he or she will want to do something. In our National Capital there is an equestrian bronze statue at every turn, to some hero or the war, but none of them represent our side. Proud patriots want for this final tribute not less than $250,000. Twice as much as this has been raised at the North for one individual monument. Shall we stop short of half as much for one symbolic of our cause?

Here are extracts from the thousands that have been published:

“C.A. Read, editor Lewisville, Texas Times: “Mr. Davis deserves a monument as lasting as our native hills, for the splendid record he made in the cause of liberty. As an exemplar his character should be held up to the youth of the country; as an embodiment of everything good in human nature.”

An ex-Union soldier, popular humorist and lecturer, said: “Think of that man’s integrity, of what he accomplished with the resources at hand – he was an American!”

A beautiful sensation occurred at a reunion of ex-Confederates of Tennessee at Winchester, Gen. G.W. Gordon, of Memphis, in an oration, said: “We cannot forget him who has left to his countrymen and to posterity one of the noblest examples of unfaltering devotion to truth and principle, of which the political history of the human race gives an account. I trust we will erect a monument so magnificent and imposing that it will have no equal upon the vast shores of America – a monument that will tell the world that he was a patriot and that cause for which we fought, and our comrades died was constitutional, right and just. Let the monument be built!

The men and women who fought for the Confederacy, and their descendants, must quarry this monument and out of their heart’s blood if need be.”

(Honor for the South. S.A. Cunnigham, Confederate Veteran, Vol. I, No. 1, January 1893, pg. 2)

Correcting the Record

Correcting the Record

“The Jackson (Mississippi) Clarion prints the following letter:

Beauvoir, Mississippi

June 20, 1885

Dear Sir, – Among the less-informed persons at the North there exists an opinion that the negro slave at the South was a mere chattel, having neither rights nor immunities protected by law or public opinion. Southern men knew such was not the case, and others desiring to know could readily learn the fact.

On that error the lauded story of Uncle Tom’s Cabin was founded, but it is strange that a utilitarian and shrewd people did not ask why a slave, especially valuable, was the object of privation and abuse? Had it been a horse they would have been better able to judge and would most probably have rejected the story for its improbability. Many attempts have been made to evade and misrepresent the exhaustive opinion of Chief Justice Taney in the ‘Dred Scott’ case, but it remains unanswered.

From the statement in regard to Fort Sumter, a child might suppose that a foreign army had attacked the United States – [and] certainly could not learn that the State of South Carolina was merely seeking possession of a fort on her own soil and claiming that her grant of the site had become void.

The tyrant’s plea of necessity to excuse despotic usurpation is offered for the unconstitutional act of emancipation, and the poor resort to prejudice is invoked in the use of the epithet ’rebellion,’ a word inapplicable to the States generally, and most especially so to the sovereign members of a voluntary union. But alas for their former ancient prestige, the States have even lost the plural reference they had in the Constitution . . . such language would be appropriate to an imperial government, which in absorbing territories required the subject inhabitants to swear allegiance to it.”

(Letter from President Davis on States’ Rights. Southern Historical Society Papers. Vol. XIV, January – December 1886, Rev. J. William Jones, D.D., pp. 408-409)

 

“We Are Now an Occupied Territory”

“We Are Now an Occupied Territory”

Gov. Orval Faubus’ Message to Arkansas:

“On Tuesday, September 24, 1957 . . . the cleverly conceived plans of the US Justice Department under Republican Herbert Brownell, were placed in execution. One thousand two hundred troops of the 101st Airborne Division were flown in from Fort Campbell, Kentucky, to occupy Little Rock’s Central High School.

At the same time, the entire Arkansas National Guard and Air guard were federalized and are now a part of the US Army and Air Force. We are now an occupied territory.

Evidence of the naked force of the federal government is here apparent in the unsheathed bayonets in the backs of schoolgirls – in the backs of students – and in the bloody face of a railroad worker, who was bayoneted and then felled by the butt of a rifle in the hands of a sergeant of the 101st Airborne Division. This man, on private property, as a guest in a home two blocks from the school, has been hospitalized. Others have suffered bayonet wounds from the hands of the US Army soldiers. Your New York newspapers also show the scenes.

Up until the time the injunction was issued against me by the imported federal judge, the peace had been kept in Little Rock by as few as 30 National Guardsmen. Not a blow was struck, no injury inflicted on any person, and no property damage sustained. I wish to point out that no violence broke out in the city until after the injunction was issued by the imported federal judge, and the National Guardsmen were withdrawn. And I might add here, all we have ever asked for is a little time, patience and understanding, as so often expressed by President Eisenhower himself, in solving this problem.

In the name of God, whom we all revere, in the name of liberty we hold so dear, in the name of decency, which we all cherish – what is happening in America? Is every right in the United States Constitution now lost? Does the will of the people, that basic precept of our republic, no longer matter? Must the will of the majority now yield, under federal force, to the will of the minority, regardless of the consequences?

If the answers to these questions are in the affirmative . . . we no longer have a union of States under a republican form of government. If this be true, then the States are mere subdivisions of an all-powerful federal government, these subdivisions being nothing more than districts for the operation of federal agents and federal military forces – forces which operate without any regard for the rights of a sovereign State or its elected officials, and without due regard for personal and property rights.

The imported federal comes from a State a thousand miles away with no understanding whatsoever of the difficulties of our problems in the field of race relations.”

(Another Tragic Era: Gov. Faubus Gives His Side of the Arkansas Story. US News & World Report, October 4, 1957, pp. 66-67)

Southern Aristocracy?

Greatly concerned in the mid-1700s over their growing African populations, both Virginia and North Carolina petitioned the British Crown to end its slave trade. This was denied while New England’s transatlantic slave trade continued.

Southern Aristocracy?

“That subordination of the black race which was called slavery gave rise to a certain development of society, not at all English, however, bore some features of an aristocracy. But this was by no means so general as might be inferred from much seen lately in print about the subject of the “slave oligarchy” of the South. It was by no means the controlling force. In South Carolina alone, by her peculiar Constitution, could it be correctly said that the slaveholders as a class held the political power.

The anti-slave element was always strong in Virginia; but for external agitation, I have no doubt slavery would have been abolished there long ago, or have been greatly modified. The same is true of North Carolina.

Throughout the South no feeling was more general, none stronger with the voting majority, than a deep-seated detestation of the very name “Aristocracy.” I do not think there was a county in Georgia where a man could have been elected to the State Legislature, or to any other office, upon the principles of an aristocracy, or if he were ever known to favor such a doctrine.

Eight-tenths of the people of Georgia, I believe, were thorough Jeffersonian Republicans and would have been as thorough abolitionists as Jefferson if they could have seen what better they could do with the colored people than they were doing.

They had a hard problem to solve, and the external agitation kept down internal inquiry and discussion as to whether there was any proper and safe solution [to the slaves among them].”

(Recollections of Alexander H. Stephens: His Diary While Imprisoned. Myra Lockett Avary, ed., LSU Press, 1998 (original 1910), pg. 422)

The Horrors of Andersonville

It became clear in the postwar that both Grant and Lincoln were responsible for the excessive mortality in the South’s prison camps, especially Camp Sumter – aka-Andersonville. But northern politicians still “waved the bloody shirt” in 1876 with James Blaine of Maine claiming Jefferson Davis “was the author, knowingly, deliberately, guiltily, and willfully, of the gigantic murders and crimes at Andersonville.” Benjamin Hill of Georgia replied to him: “If nine percent of the [northern] men in Southern prisons were starved to death by Mr. Jefferson Davis, who tortured to death the twelve percent of the Southern men in Northern prisons?”

Prior to his release from postwar captivity, former Vice-President Alexander H. Stephens of Georgia was asked himself about the conditions at Camp Sumter, also known as the Andersonville prisoner of war camp.

The Horrors of Andersonville

“Regarding treatment of prisoners at Andersonville and other places, which was brought up, I said that the matter had caused me deep mortification and pain. From all I had heard, the sufferings of prisoners were terrible. I had no idea, however, that these sufferings were by design or system on the part of Mr. Davis and other authorities at Richmond. Something akin to what might be styled indifference or neglect toward our own soldiers on the wounded and sick lists I have witnessed with distress. To this subject I have given a great deal of attention.

I had never seen in Mr. Davis any disposition to be vindictive toward prisoners of war. I had no idea that there was any settled policy of cruelty on his part to prisoners.

In all my conversations with him on the subject of prisoners, he put the blame of non-exchange on the authorities at Washington: he always expressed earnest desire to send home all we held upon getting in exchange our men equally suffering in northern prisons. Our prisoners, it was said, were treated as well as they could be under the circumstances; those at Andersonville were crowded into such a miserable pen because we had no other place in which to secure them. They had the same rations as our soldiers, who, to my own knowledge, suffered greatly themselves from food shortages, not only in our hospitals, but also in the field.

The advice I had given was to release all our prisoners on parole of honor, whether the authorities at Washington exchanged theirs or not. I had advised such a course as one of humanity and good policy.

Against it was urged that if we were to release all our prisoners, our men would be held and treated not as prisoners of war but as traitors and would be tried and executed as such; our authorities must hold northern soldiers as hostages for ours.  And I could not, after looking over the whole matter, come to any other conclusion than that some blame rested on the authorities at Washington.

War is at best a savage business; it never had been and never would, perhaps, be waged without atrocities on all sides. Hence, my earnest desire during the late conflict to bring about pacification by peaceful negotiations at the earliest possible moment.”

(Recollections of Alexander H. Stephens: His Diary While Imprisoned. Myrta Lockett Avary, ed., LSU Press, 1998 (original 1910), pp. 444-446)

Citizenship as Intended

Below, Alexander Stephens explains the original intent of citizenship of the United States being first State citizenship. Stephens wrote the following from a Fort Warren jail cell after his arrest in 1865 for an unknown crime.

Citizenship as Intended

“Eight weeks today [July 6, 1865] I have been a prisoner; six weeks in this place; all without the slightest intimation of the cause. Seized by an armed force, sent here by an armed force, kept in close confinement, guarded by an armed force, deprived of all means of appealing to judicial power for redress; and yet Eagle-orators and reverend rhetoricians scream and shout about the glorious freedom we Americans enjoy.

PM – [A newspaper] article on naturalization in the cyclopedia attracted my attention. It is strange what errors have crept into vogue and pass without scrutiny or question, especially on naturalization and its sequence, citizenship of the United States. The subject is treated as if Congress were empowered by the Constitution to confer upon aliens’ citizenship of the United States distinct from citizenship of particular States and Territories.

The truth is, Congress has no power to naturalize or to confer citizenship of the United States. Its only power is to establish a uniform rule to be pursued by the respective States and Territories on admitting aliens to their own citizenship.

Before the Constitution was adopted, each State possessed the right as an Independent Sovereign Power to admit to citizenship whom she pleased, and on such terms as she pleased. All that the States did on this point in accepting the Constitution was to delegate to Congress the power to establish a uniform rule so that an alien might not be permitted to become a citizen of one State on different terms from what might be required in another; especially, as in one part of the Constitution it is stipulated that the citizens of each State shall be entitled in all the rest to the rights and privileges of their citizens.

But no clause of the Constitution provides for or contemplates citizenship of the United States as distinct from citizenship of some particular State or Territory. When any person is a citizen of one of the States united, he thereby, and thereby only, becomes and can be considered a citizen of the United States.

Errors in the public mind on this question are radical and fundamental and have the same source as many others equally striking.

I was first struck with these on the annexation of Texas. How could her representatives, it was asked, take their seats in Congress, not having been citizens of the United States for the term of years required by the Constitution? The answer, upon the true principles of the Constitution and the only citizenship it contemplates, was plain: members and senators could not present themselves until the State was itself one of the United States; then, whoever might present himself as a member, having been seven years a citizen of Texas, would, in the terms and meaning of the Constitution, have been seven years a citizen of the United States, so constituted.”

(Recollections of Alexander H. Stephens: His Diary While Imprisoned. Myra Lockett Avary, ed., LSU Press, 1998 (original 1910), pp. 312-313)

 

States Above Federal Authority

Both Thomas Jefferson and John Madison feared the Adam’s administration’s “Alien and Sedition Acts” and agreed that these should be attacked on the grounds of their unconstitutionality. A stern response should emanate from State legislatures, and those opposing the “Acts” had to do so anonymously to avoid arrest. To Jefferson especially, it was federal power that represented a clear and present danger as would be the case some 63 years later.

States Above Federal Authority  

“John Breckinridge, who would later become Thomas Jefferson’s Attorney General, authored resolutions in 1798 which opened with ‘the American States were not united on the principle of unlimited submission to their government.’ And there was nothing startling about at that time in his reference to the Constitution as a compact between States, for this view of it was widely held.

Jefferson, remaining in the background, did not say, as Calhoun did later, that sovereignty was indivisible and remained with the States. The abstract question of sovereignty probably did not greatly interest him. He took the position which Madison well-described a few months later: “The authority of constitutions over governments, and of the sovereignty of the people over constitutions, are truths which are at all times necessary to be kept in mind, and at no time, perhaps, more necessary than the present.” At this moment Jefferson would not have used the word “perhaps” . . . with him the essential truth was the sovereignty of the people, and the reality as he saw it was that the people lived in the several States and could express themselves more readily through State action.

Regarding constitutions as shields against arbitrary power, he was disposed to interpret all of them strictly. In construing the federal constitution strictly, however, he was pursuing no solitary course: he was quite in line with the Republican spokesmen in Congress.”

(Jefferson and the Ordeal of Liberty; Volume III. Dumas Malone. Little, Brown and Company, 1962, pp. 402-403)

 

A Most Portentous Event

Before condemning the American South for its use of African labor in its agricultural production, one must first highlight the roles of the African tribes who sold their own people into slavery. One must add to this the Portuguese, Spanish, British and French – and later New Englanders who conducted the transatlantic slave trade. Below, prominent Wilmington attorney and Attorney General of the Confederate States, lamented postwar the inauguration of slavery into Carolina by British Colonial Governor Yeamans.

A Most Portentous Event

“We draw a veil over the sad scenes enacted there, but we recall the fact that it was not until after the slave traders of the North had received full value of their human merchandise from their Southern brethren that our neighbors began to realize the enormity of the institution of slavery.

With reference to the introduction of slavery into Carolina by the Colonial Governor John Yeamans, from Barbados in 1671, the late George Davis said:

‘This seems to be a simple announcement of a very commonplace fact; but it was the little cloud no bigger than a man’s hand. It was the most portentous event of all our early history. For Yeaman’s carried with him from Barbados his negro slaves; and that was the first introduction of African slavery into Carolina. (Bancroft, V2, p. 170; Rivers, p169.)

If, as he sat by the camp-fire in that lonely Southern wilderness, Yeamans could have gazed with prophetic vision down the vista of two hundred years, and seem the stormy and tragic end of that which he was then so quietly inaugurating the beginning, must he not have exclaimed to Ophelia, as she beheld the wreck of her heart’s young love:

“ ‘O, woe is me! To have seen what I have seen, see what I see’”!

(Tales and Traditions of the Lower Cape Fear, 1661-1896. James Sprunt. LeGwin Brothers, Printers & Publishers, 1896.

American Citizens Targeted

The following is noted as “a summary of the report made by Tyler to Virginia Gov. Letcher on his return from Washington. The text of this report, with the letters passing between Tyler & Buchanan, was published in the Richmond Daily Dispatch, February 1861.”     The fortress was built to protect Virginia, not wage war upon it.

American Citizens Targeted

“Tyler left Washington on January 29 with the expectation of returning to the Washington Peace Convention, which was to assemble on February 4. On the day before leaving, he sent another letter to President James Buchanan, in lieu of a call which other engagements prevented. In this letter he expressed appreciation of the courtesies that had been shown him and pleasure at hearing the President’s message read in the Senate.

Tyler’s letter also spoke of a rumor that at Fortress Monroe the cannon had been put on the landward side and pointed inland. His comment of this report was “that when Virginia is making every possible effort to redeem and save the Union, it is seemingly ungenerous to cannon leveled at here bosom.”

To this letter Buchanan sent a very courteous reply, stating that he would inquire into the rumors with reference to Fortress Monroe’s cannon.”

(John Tyler, Champion of the Old South. Oliver Perry Chitwood. American Political Biography Press, 1939 – pg. 438)