Circa1865

African Slavery, North and South

“It will not be charged by the greatest enemy of the American South that it was in any way responsible, either for the existence of slavery, or for inaugurating that vilest of traffics – the African slave trade. On the contrary, history attests that African slavery was forced upon the colonies by England, against the earnest protests of those both North and South. Also, the very first statute establishing African slavery in America is to be found in the infamous Code of Fundamentals, or Body of Liberties of the Massachusetts Colony of New England, adopted in December 1641.

Additionally, the “Desire,” one of the very first vessels built in Massachusetts, was fitted out for carrying on the slave trade; “that the traffic became so popular that great attention to it was paid by the New England shipowners, and that they practically monopolized it for a number of years.” (The True Civil War, pp. 28-30).

And history further attests that Virginia was the first State, North or South, to prohibit the slave traffic from Africa, and that Georgia was the first to incorporate that prohibition in her Constitution.

And it is easy to show that as long as the people of the North were the owners of slaves, they regarded, treated and disposed of them as “property” just as the people of England had done since 1713, when slaves were held to be “merchandise” by the twelve judges of that country, with the venerable Holt at their head.

We could further show that slavery existed at the North just as long as it was profitable to have it there; that the moral and religious sense of that section was only heard to complain of that institution after it was found to be unprofitable. and after the people of that section had for the most part sold their slaves to the people of the South; and that, after [Eli] Whitney’s invention of the cotton gin, which wrought such a revolution in cotton production at the South as to cause slave labor greatly to increase in value, and which induced many Northern men to engage in that production; these men almost invariably purchased their slaves for that purpose, and many of these owned them when the war broke out.

But so anxious are our former enemies to convince world that the South did fight for the perpetuation of slavery that some of them have, either wittingly or unwittingly, resorted to misrepresentation or misinterpretations of some of the sayings of our representative men to try to establish this as a fact.”

(Report of the UDC History Committee, (excerpt). Judge George L. Christian. Confederate Veteran, Vol. XV, No. 7, July 1907, pg. 315)

When Thomas Jefferson wrote the following the right of kings to rule the world was regarded by nearly the entire human race as a divine right from the Creator of the universe. His populist views were looked upon in Europe with much dread and hostility, though it became clear to Jefferson in later life that political factions and the democratic urge would upend his experiment in government.

The Fate of Hereditary Monarchs

“While I was in Europe, I often amused myself with contemplating the character of the then-reigning sovereigns of Europe. Louis XVI was a fool of my own knowledge, and despite of the answers made for him at his trial. The king of Spain was also a fool, as was the king of Naples. They passed their lives in hunting and dispatched two couriers a week some one thousand miles to inform one another what game they killed in the preceding days. All were Bourbons.

The queen of Portugal, a Braganza, was an idiot by nature, and so was the king of Denmark. I hear their sons, as regents, really exercised the powers of government. The king of Prussia, successor to Frederick the Great, was a mere hog in body as well as in mind. Gustavus of Sweden and Joseph of Austria were really crazy, and George of England, as you know, was in a straight waistcoat. There remained, then, none but old Catherine of Russia, who we have learned of late to have lost her common sense.

In this state Bonaparte found Europe, and it was in this state its rulers lost all with barely a struggle. These rulers had become without minds and therefore powerless, and so will every hereditary monarch be after a few generations.”

(Forty Years of Oratory, Daniel W. Voorhees Lectures, Addresses and Speeches. Vol. 1. Harriet C. Voorhees. Bowen-Merrill Company, 1898, pg. 70)

Below, John Randolph Tucker reviews the constitutional issues which brought war 1861-1865, and poses the question:

“Was slavery so bad that the Constitution which shielded it, was violated in order to destroy it? That is the question which has been answered by the roar of artillery in the affirmative. But can that answer by force be justified in the forum of morals? If a solemn compact can be violated in order to destroy that which the compact guaranteed, what value is there in a written Constitution? It only awaits a new fanatical sentiment to justify a new crusade upon its integrity.” 

That Was the Problem We Inherited

“The [North’s] crusade not only destroyed slavery but entailed upon the South a social condition for which the crusaders suggest no relief, and a condition which seems to be without the hope of peaceful solution. Those who had no interest in the relation [of black and white] have inoculated the South with a social and political disease for which their statesmen have provide no remedy and can find no panacea. These were the issues upon which the Southern States seceded, and defended their imperiled rights with a valor, constancy and fortitude which has made them immortal.

We cannot be placed in the false position of having fought to hold men in slavery. The American South never made a free man a slave and never took from Africa one human being to shackle him with servitude. The South inherited the institution which had been put upon us by the cupidity of European and New England slave traders against the protests of our colonial fathers. That was the problem we inherited.

Shall they remain slaves and how long? Or be at once emancipated and then be put into possession of equal power with the white man to direct a common destiny?

Shall our constitutional power, our inherent natural right to regulate this special interest, be wrested from us and vested in aliens to that interest, to be exercised by them to create social and political relations never known in the history of civilized man, and for the right regulation of which no prophecy could forecast a law, and our sad experience has been unable to devise a remedy? To put it forensically, the South did not plead to the issue of slavery or no slavery, but to the proper jurisdiction. To create the jurisdiction was to, by force, give up self-government.

Let no censorious criticism suggest a doubt of our faithful devotion to the Constitution and Union of today because we honor and revere the patriotism of those who died for the lost cause of political independence. The heroic purpose failed; our Confederacy sank beneath the political horizon in clouds which could not blacken history.  The sun of the Confederacy illuminated them of its own transcendent glory. The fame of its American heroes, of their genius for leadership, of their fortitude, marital prowess and devotion to duty, all Americans will one day claim to be the common heritage of the Union.”

(Address of John Randolph Tucker, Vanderbilt University, June 1893, (excerpt). Confederate Veteran, August 1893, pg. 238)

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)

“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 101^st 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 101^st 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)

Gen. Hardee’s View – Spring 1865

“A correspondent for the New York Herald, Theodore C. Wilson, had been at General Kilpatrick’s headquarters in Durham Station, awaiting an opportunity to get into the Confederate camp. General Joseph E. Johnston had agreed that he might come if he could find means of transportation. Early the next morning . . . Wilson somehow managed to secure a seat in the car with [General William J.] Hardee and [aide-de-camp Thomas B.] Roy and now headed off to Greensboro with them.

Exploiting his opportunity, probably as Hardee breakfasted, Wilson asked him for an interview, which Hardee granted, receiving him “in a very cordial, generous, unreserved manner.” In reply to a general question about the war and slavery, Hardee said:

. . . “I accept this war as the providence of God. He intended that the slave should be free, and now he is free. Slavery was never a paying institution . . . For instance, my wife owned about one hundred negroes; forty of the hundred were useless for work, yet she had to feed [clothe and maintain the health of] these forty to get in order to get the work of the other sixty. The negro will be worse off for this war. Will any of your abolitionists . . . feed and clothe half-a-dozen little children, in order to get the work of a man and woman?

Sir, our people can pay the working negroes a fair compensation for their services, and let them take care of their own families, and then have as much left at the end of the year as we had under the old system.”

(General William J. Hardee: Old Reliable. Nathaniel C. Hughes, Jr. LSU Stat University Press. 1965, pg. 297)

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)

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)

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.

The political development of the United States has passed through three stages since independence from England. The stages are characterized as those of the First Republic (1776-1789); the Second Republic (1789-1861); and the Third Republic (since 1861).

Lincoln’s Great Blunder

“Former-President John Tyler wrote his wife the day after Virginia’s withdrawal from the 1789 Constitution.

“The die is cast and Virginia’s future is in the hands of the god of battle.” The contest will be one full of peril, but “there is a spirit abroad in Virginia which cannot be crushed until the life of the last man is trampled out. The numbers opposed to us are immense; but twelve thousand Grecians conquered the whole power of Xerxes [Darius] at Marathon, and our fathers, a mere handful, overcame the enormous power of Great Britain. Do, dearest, live as frugally as possible in the household, – trying times are before us.”

Tyler regarded the conflict between the North and the South as a great blunder, the chief blame for which must be laid at the door of Lincoln. For by reinforcing Fort Sumter, he had brought on a clash which could have been avoided. Lincoln had made the terrible mistake of “having weighed in the scales the value of a mere local fort against the value of the Union itself.” He even accused the new president of acting not from patriotic motives but from a desire to consolidate behind him his faction of the Republican party.

The South, he implied, was justified in its attack on Fort Sumter. “If the Confederate States have their own flag, is anyone so stupid as to suppose that they will suffer the flag of England or France or of the northern States to float over the ramparts in place of their own?

As Tyler believed in the sovereignty of the States, he considered that under existing circumstances secession was legal and coercion revolutionary. The breakup of the union was not caused by the secession of the South but by the nullification practiced by the North. The latter section’s disregard of the fugitive slave law, its rejection of decision of the United States Supreme Court, and the commission of other unconstitutional acts had really destroyed the union of 1789. If there was any rebellion involved in this dissolution of the partnership, the “rebels” were not the Southerners, but the Northerners.

For the former had been true to the principles of the Constitution and the latter had violated them. The North had thus pulled down the house and the South had only left its ruins.”

(John Tyler: Champion of the Old South. Oliver Perry Chitwood. American Political Biography Press. 1939, pp. 455-456)