Category: Historical Accuracy

“Rebels and Patriots”

The following address was delivered to those attending the annual Confederate Memorial Day observance in Columbus County, North Carolina.

“Rebels and Patriots”

In this cemetery today we honor brave American patriots who defended their families, hearths & country against an invading enemy 1861-1865, many of whom died doing so. Many also remain in distant unmarked graves, and whose families waited and waited for their return. Their tombstones are the many granite monuments erected all across the South.

Let us never cease to remember that these patriots were no different than the patriots of 1776, as both fought for freedom, political independence and self-government. They both proclaimed that governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed. And it is most important for us today to recognize that the very root the 1776 -1783 war was secession from England; and the very root of the 1861-1865 war was secession from the United States.

During the 1776-1783 Revolution, local men of the militia – mostly farmers and laborers – fought Tories & Loyalists who adhered to the British crown. This militia fought bravely at several engagements not far from this spot where we are today.

And allow me to pose this question to you: What difference existed between the patriots at the Moore’s Creek battle in 1776, and the patriots defending Fort Fisher in January 1865? We know in both cases they defended the very same thing – political independence – with their homes, farms and families behind them. They both were there to repel an invader whose intent was to deny them political independence.

Then how is it that we are told incessantly that the patriots of 1776 fought for political independence from England, but the “rebels” of 1861-1865 were “defending slavery?”

Let’s examine the facts.

In June of 1775 the desperate North Carolina Royal Governor, Josiah Martin, proclaimed African slaves free and armed those who adhered to his authority. Only 4 months later, the desperate Virginia Royal Governor, Lord Dunmore, creating a black “Corps d’Afrique” to assist in subduing the “rebels.” From this point on, and as Washington did not enlist slaves, the “rebels” were opposing the emancipators.

Eighty-seven years later, when Americans in the South sought political independence from what they viewed as an oppressive government, a desperate Abraham Lincoln called them “rebels.” He also followed the royal example of proclaiming African slaves free – but only within the new Confederacy.

In mid-January 1863, Ohio’s “Copperhead” US Congressman Clement Vallandigham excoriated his fellow northern congressmen for denouncing “Southern rebels,” stating:

“After 2 years of brutal warfare the North has failed to subjugate 10 million “rebels” you say. And you call them “rebels? “Your own fathers & grandfathers were “rebels.” The large canvas portrait of General Washington looking down upon us in this chamber was a “rebel.” Yet we, sitting here today, and cradled in rebellion, make the word “rebel” a reproach.”

You have every right to honor annually the “rebels” buried around us and hold them up as worthy of emulation. In 1861, your local “rebels” formed several companies to join North Carolina regiments, and as the war took its toll, your Junior Reserves did their part in the ranks.  And I cannot fail to mention the supreme dedication of the ladies at home – “rebels” as well – who formed Soldiers’ Aid Societies to collect supplies and maintain roadside hospitals.

In closing, I want to emphasize that the “rebels” we honor today fought a just cause defending the sacred 10th Amendment – simply interpreted as home rule and “States rights” – without which the United States Constitution would not have been ratified by North Carolina.

Deo Vindice!

John Bernhard Thuersam, Historian and Author

www.circa1865.org

 

Devotion to Land, Bible and Constitution

The writer below notes that historians burdened with modern egalitarian standards often “do not grasp the most elementary concept of the sound historian: the ability to appraise the past by standards other than those of the present. They accept a fanatical nationalism which leaves no room for sectional variations.”

Devotion to Land, Bible and Constitution

Jefferson Davis [is condemned by biographers] as a prolonged conspirator against the Union. But the facts show that as late as 1860 he, as a United States senator, was advocating appropriations for the army he was to fight in less than a year. A proper sympathy for the sectional values would perhaps lead to a condemnation of Davis because he did not become a conspirator against the Union soon enough.

Davis was not one of the great revolutionists of history; he was too honorable for that. Unlike William L. Yancy and R. Barnwell Rhett, he was slow in understanding that the North was in a revolutionary conspiracy against the Constitution as he interpreted it and could be answered effectively only by counterrevolution. Allen Tate, the poet, is the only biographer who condemns Davis for not understanding that the aim of the plutocratic democracy of the North was to crush his beloved homeland.

Davis should be praised for finally recognizing the forces arrayed against his section and then heroically defending its concept of truth and justice. Despite physical weaknesses, he maintained a proud but ragged nation for four years against the powers of wealth, progress and patriotism. After defeat he did not repent.

For his failure to repent, historians will not forgive Davis. He did not respond to the new wave of nationalism which came after the Civil War. He was no pragmatist, no evolutionist. Until his death, he remained devoted to his section, the soldier who found greatest virtue in continuing the battle charge after the enemy has inflicted a grievous wound and remained the scholastic who accepted the Bible and the Constitution just as they are written. He was as optimistic in his devotion to the antique values of the South as was Don Quixote to the antique values of an older land.

If the historians of the South were as tolerant of our past as are the European historians of theirs, they would confer on the defeated President of the Confederacy as many honors as have been conferred on the famous Spanish knight.”

Tolerating the South’s Past. Francis Butler Simkins. Journal of Southern History, Vol. XXI, No. 1, February 1955, pp 33-8)

Daniel Webster’s View of the Constitution

In his 1881 “Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government”, Jefferson Davis revisits the words of New England orator and statesman Daniel Webster (1782-1852) regarding the sovereignty of the American States.

Daniel Webster’s View of the Constitution

“Mr. Webster held the views which were presented in a memorial to Congress of citizens of Boston, December 15, 1819, relative to the admission of Missouri as a State, drawn up and signed by a committee of which he was chairman, and which also included among its members Mr. Josiah Quincy.

Mr. Webster speaks of the States as enjoying “the exclusive possession of sovereignty” over their own territory, calls the United States “the American Confederacy” refers to them “the only parties to the Constitution, contemplated by it originally, [and who] were the “thirteen confederated States.”

In letters written and addresses delivered during the Administration of Mr. [Millard] Fillmore, he repeatedly applies to the Constitution the term “compact” which, in 1833, he had so vehemently repudiated. In his speech at Capon Springs, Virginia, in 1851, he says:

“If the South were to violate any part of the Constitution intentionally and systematically, and persist in doing year after year, and no remedy could be had, would the North be any longer bound to the rest of it? And if the North were, deliberately habitually, and of fixed purpose, to disregard one part of it, would the South be bound any longer to observe its other obligations?

How absurd it is to suppose that, when different parties enter into a compact for certain purposes, either can disregard any one provision and expect, nevertheless, the other to observe the rest!”

“I have not hesitated to say, and I repeat that, if the Northern States refuse, willfully and deliberately, to carry into effect that part of the Constitution which its respects the restoration of fugitive slaves, and Congress provide no remedy, the South would no longer be bound to observe the compact. A bargain cannot be broken on one side and still bind the other side.”

(Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government, Volume I. Jefferson Davis. D. Appleton & Co., 1881, pp. 166-167)

 

A Common Agent Rather Than a King

Jefferson Davis mused in his magisterial Rise and Fall: “As time rolled on, the General Government gathering with both hands a mass of undelegated powers, reached that position which Mr. Jefferson had pointed out as an intolerable evil – the claim of a right to judge the extent of its own authority.”

A Common Agent Rather Than a King

“In July 1776, the Congress of the thirteen united colonies declared that “these united colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent States.” [England’s] denial of this asserted right and the attempted coercion made it manifest that a bond of union was necessary, for the common defense.

In November of the following year, 1777, the Articles of Confederation and perpetual union were entered into by the thirteen States under the style of “The United States of America.” Under the Articles, no amendment to them could be made except by unanimous consent, which hampered the efficient discharge of the functions entrusted to the Congress.

What is the Constitution of the United States?

The whole body of the instrument, the history of its formation and adoption, as well as the Tenth Amendment, added in an abundance of caution, clearly show it to be an instrument enumerating the powers delegated by the States to the Federal Government, their common agent. It is specifically declared that all which was not so delegated was reserved.

On this mass of reserved powers, those which the States declined to grant, the Federal Government was expressly forbidden to intrude. Of what value would this prohibition have been, if three-fourths of the States could, without the assent of a particular State, invade the domain which that State had reserved for its own exclusive use and control?

It [is, I hope], been satisfactorily demonstrated that the States were sovereigns before the formed the Union, and that they have never surrendered their sovereignty, but have only entrusted to their common agent certain functions of sovereignty to be used for their common welfare.”

(Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government, Volume I. Jefferson Davis. D. Appleton & Co., 1881, pp. 192; 195-196)

History in Education

History in Education

The following is excerpted from a 1999 Southern Partisan interview with acclaimed educator, author and historian Dr. Clyde N. Wilson, former Chair of the University of South Carolina Department of History. There he was editor of The Papers of John C. Calhoun, volumes 10 through 28 which drew praise from the Journal of American History; was presented with the Bostick Medal for Contributions to South Carolina Letters; the John Randolph Club Award for Lifetime Achievement; and was the founding Dean of the Stephen D. Lee Institute.

The question posed was: “Do you think the ordinary Southerner should be concerned or care about what happens in the field of education?”

“Yes, of course, because the educational system is supposed to belong to the people. It doesn’t. It belongs to the experts. But it should belong to the people, and the people have a right to hope that the university will be a part of the support of their culture. That is why South Carolina College was founded.

But I am inclined more and more to think that the entire public education system is more and more irrelevant. I look at what the historians are doing. They are writing about things that are so narrow or so esoteric that nobody cares. They are like a bureaucracy, divorced from the real world. Higher education is going that way, therefore becoming more irrelevant all the time. And in the future, more of the really good education is going to take place outside of public institutions.  

I hope people will begin developing institutions – different kinds of institutions. This why we have begun the League of the South Institute for Southern History and Culture. We’ve had a number of very successful summer schools and are starting a new program called Hedge Schools. This was how the Irish preserved their language and culture while under occupation as the British were trying to wipe out their language and customs. Speaking anything but English was forbidden, so you learned Gaelic under the hedge, or in a barn somewhere to keep up your history and traditions. It was a great idea.”

When asked what he considered to be the common traits of great American historians, Dr. Wilson’s answered with the following:

“Imagination and fairness. Like a judge, you have to be able to see that history is complicated and that there are many different things going on. A historian should understand this and not judge the past so readily as it seems so common now, such as judging people of the past as evil because they didn’t do things as we do today. And fairness, as facts don’t speak for themselves and any historical account is an arrangement of particular facts. To make some sort of meaning requires imagination. Understanding what is important and portraying it in a imaginative way. An example is Shelby Foote, who was able to absorb all the historical material, but render it in a way that presents a readable, but true story.”

It is notable that Foote was not an academically trained historian yet achieved his high stature and fame through hard work and exhaustive reading, esp. Tacitus, Thucydides, Gibbon and Proust.

(Southern Partisan, 2nd Quarter 1999, pp. 47-48)

Peaceful Separation No Longer Possible

In his December 3, 1860, State of the Union address, President James Buchanan stated that all that the South desired was to be let alone to manage its domestic institutions. Regarding the personal liberty laws of the Northern States, he declared they were in direct violation of the United States Constitution.

Buchanan further noted that waging war against a State desiring withdrawal was not a valid Federal power in the Constitution, but if the power existed, exercising it would produce a fraternal conflict in which “a vast amount of blood and treasure would be expended, rendering future conciliation . . . impossible.”

Peaceful Separation No Longer Possible

“Mr. Buchanan was an able man, but a very timid one. If he had the nerve to deal with the situation [of December 20, 1860] as its gravity demanded, I doubt exceedingly whether any other State [at the] South would have followed South Carolina into secession.

Had he withdrawn the troops from Sumter, it would have been such a conspicuous act of conciliation that the other States would not, I believe, have called conventions to consider the question of secession, or if they had the ordinances [they] would not have been passed. I was not one of those who believed there could ever be a peaceful separation of the States but could not convince our people of it.

I had years before become convinced by my association with Mr. Webster, that the North would never consent to it. I knew that secession meant war, and, therefore, did my utmost to prevent it. When the war came, however, it had to be met with spirit.

The chance for peaceful separation of the States was lost years before the war. It could have succeeded when the North wanted to go [the Hartford Convention], and again when Texas was annexed [when New England voiced secession], but not after.”

(The Life and Death of Jefferson Davis. A.C. Bancroft, editor. J. S. Ogilvie Publisher, 1889, pp. 145-146)

The Union’s “Veteran’s Corps”

In some northern States the amount of total bounty money for one man had risen to $1500 – a very large sum in 1863. If one consults Robert L. Dabney’s “Discussions, Volume IV (1897), he states: “the Secretary of War wrote that “after May 1, 1863, there were 1,634,000 enlistments. And if the cost of each enlistment was $300, which is far below the average bounty, somebody had to pay them a total of $490,000,000. It is then likely the “bounty jumpers” as it is well-known, perpetrated immense frauds with the number of bounties paid being far larger than that of the enlistments.”

The Union’s “Veterans Corps”

“In early November 1863 the veteran northern troops occupying Plymouth, North Carolina first read of financial incentives to reenlist, made necessary due to high bounties paid for new enlistees. To avoid mass desertions of veterans the US War Department needed incentives for existing troops. The following month a New York soldier recorded in his diary that “those regiments whose time expires next fall are asked to reenlist for three years or the war’s duration.” He wrote that the men “were lured by money in sums not imagined earlier: payment of an unpaid original bounty of $100, a new bounty of $400 plus a $2 recruiting premium paid in $50 installments every six months.

This was at a time when the annual family income in New York may have been $350. In addition to the $402 financial incentive was a month-long furlough home to see loved ones while wearing the blue uniform adorned with a gold sleeve chevron of the new “Veterans Corps.” Once at home, the soldier would also receive a $50 bounty from the State of New York and whatever bounty was offered by the soldier’s county and town. The total sum of $750 or more was sufficient to “build a house on his little farm on the road up home.”

As a town or county did not require residency to receive the bounty-paid credit, the soldier home on reenlistment furlough could shop area communities and counties for the highest amount and credit his reenlistment to them. Civilians unwilling to enlist and employers wanting to retain trained workers both contributed to each town’s bounty account to attract substitutes.

Some blowbacks did occur as some “Veteran Volunteers” visiting home would credit themselves to another community so as to not shelter those they considered “shirkers” in their hometowns who avoided the draft.”

(Plymouth’s Civil War: The Destruction of a North Carolina Town. John Bernhard Thuersam. Scuppernong Press, 2024, pp. 160-161)

Letter From Enemy-Occupied Plymouth

The writer below laments the low number of troops left to defend occupied-Plymouth, North Carolina, as the men of the 101st Pennsylvania Regiment were enjoying a 30-day furlough home. This and $402 was a bonus for “veteranizing,” a device for the retention of northern soldiers coming to the end of their original 3-year term. In addition to the $402 bonus, at home the reenlisting soldier collected generous State, county and town bounties offered as well, often totaling over $1000. Few voluntary enlistments came after the carnage of Fredericksburg; draft riots and poor-quality substitutes forced Lincoln to turn to American and foreign mercenaries. The North Carolina “troops” mentioned below were likely deserters whose families and farms were caught behind enemy lines.

Letter from Enemy-Occupied Plymouth

“There are not over eight hundred troops here now, & a considerable part of them are North Carolinians, & how much they can be depended [on] we do not yet know. A [rebel] deserter came in yesterday.  Says he came from Goldsborough & that there are but two rebel troops in this State. Don’t believe him as all the news we have had for the past month shows that the rebels have been concentrating a force in this state. Probably he was sent in to deceive us in hopes we would relax our vigilance & become easy prey the rebels.

Our river gunboat USS Bombshell had a narrow escape last week . . . she went up the Chowan River and was engaged by a rebel battery . . . though not damaged. Harry Brinkerhoff, her commander is considered a brave man. He is a German & is most terribly wicked.

We have two companies of the 2nd Regiment, Massachusetts Heavy Artillery here now. They are a hard set. Nearly all foreigners. Came out for the large bounties. It is amusing to hear some who are Irishmen talk about their enlistment: They will say: “only six weeks in this country and I enlisted in the Massachusetts “waty” [brogue for weighty or heavy] artillery.”

(Civil War Letters of E.N. Boots from New Bern and Plymouth. Wilfred W. Black, editor. North Carolina Historical Review, Vol. XXVI, No. 2, April 1959, pp. 220-221)

America’s 1861 Revolution

There was no “war emergency” that Lincoln faced at Fort Sumter. The US Constitution explicitly states that only Congress may declare war, with four US Supreme Court Justices holding in 1862 that a President’s authority to suppress an insurrection “is not tantamount to the power of initiating a legal state of war, and that civil war does not validly begin with an executive declaration.”

US Senator Thomas Clingman of North Carolina rightly prophesied on March 19, 1861:

“The Republicans intend . . . as soon as they collect the force to have war, to begin; and then call Congress suddenly together and say, “the honor of the country is concerned; the flag is insulted. You must come up and vote men and money.”

Lincoln intentionally bypassed Congress.

America’s 1861 Revolution

“The reaction of the Lincoln administration to the war emergency produced many unusual situations. Governmental norms were abandoned. War powers overbore the rule of law, and extra-legal procedures were initiated. Well-known distinctions of government were obscured. The line was blurred between State and federal functions, between executive, legislative, and judicial authority, and between civil and military spheres. Probably no president, not even Wilson, nor Roosevelt, carried the presidential power, independently of Congress, as far as did Lincoln. He began his administration by taking to himself the virtual declaration of the existence of a state of war, for his proclamation of insurrection (April 15, 1861) started the war regime as truly as if a declaration of war had been passed by Congress.

In issuing this proclamation Lincoln committed the government to a definite theory of the nature of the war (he commenced, but] it may be noted that in strict theory the [United States] government declined to regard the struggle as analogous to a regular war between independent nations. The American Confederacy . . . was deemed a pretender, an unsuccessful rival, and a usurper. Instead of the struggle being regarded as a clash between governments, the Southern effort was denounced as an insurrection conducted by combinations of individuals against their constituted authorities.

In contrast to this, the Southern view was analogous to that of the [British] Americans in the Revolution . . . that the Confederate States was an independent nation conducting war and entitled to the respect due a people fighting off an invader.

Lincoln’s view of his own war powers was most expansive. He believed that in time of war constitutional restraints did not fully apply, but that so far as they did apply, they restrained the Congress more than the President.”

(The Civil War and Reconstruction. J.G. Randall. D.C. Heath and Company, 1937, pp. 382-383; 385)

The South’s Manpower Advantage

In his efforts to overwhelm the American South’s resistance, Grant ended prisoner exchanges with soldiers returning to the South’s ranks while those in blue went home. He knew the late war, poor-quality conscripts and diseased substitutes he received wouldn’t fight and would desert at the first opportunity. This reality accelerated the capture and removal of colored laborers who represented an important part of the Southern war effort.

The South’s Manpower Advantage

“The responsibility for effectively assembling Negro manpower became that of the Virginia lawmakers and the Confederate Congressmen. Speaking on this point, President Jefferson Davis stated, “much of our success was due to the much-abused institution of African servitude.”

This opinion was shared by General Ulysses S. Grant who was well-aware of the need to remove from the South her vast army of noncombatants. Grant said, “the 4,000,000 colored noncombatants are equal to more than three times their number in the North, age for age, sex for sex.” Both Grant and Davis early recognized that the mobilization of the Negro constituted an extremely valuable resource.

At the call to repel the Yankee invaders, for example, Virginia looked to its Negro population as a major source of civilian workers. [The majority] of Negroes employed by the quartermaster, ordnance, niter and mining bureaus, and military hospitals were hired through voluntary contracts with free Negroes and the owners of bondsmen.

In February 1862 the State legislature passed an act which required local courts to register all male free Negroes within their jurisdiction between the ages of 18 and 50. The selected free persons were not required to serve longer than 180 days without their consent, and entitled to compensation, rations, quarters and medical attention. Their pay, rations and allowances were borne by the Confederate States.

[In early 1863, and in response to Lincoln’s so-called emancipation decree,] the Richmond Examiner asserted that the North had discovered from this war the value of the slave to the South as a military laborer, and “Lincoln’s proclamation is designed to destroy this power in our hands.”

(The Confederate Negro: Virginia’s Craftsmen and Military Laborers, 1861-1865. James H. Brewer. University of Alabama Press, 1969, pp. 6-7; 14)