in the new territories.
- In four of the states that joined the CSA, they appended a “declaration of causes.” In three of those four, a majority of the words in the document relate to slavery. For example, the first substantive sentence in the declaration of causes by Mississippi is very clear: “Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery– the greatest material interest of the world.”
- Also, the states left the Union in almost exactly the order of the proportion of their population who were slaves ― highest went first, and so on.
Finally, and to me most telling, in the Reconstruction period, the basic drive of southerners was to regain political and economic dominance over newly-freed slaves. The Black Codes quickly passed by state legislatures in the South during the early years of Reconstruction basically re-invented slavery. Every male of color had to have a contract to work for a (white) landowner. That landowner could discipline his workers in any way he saw fit. Any man of color without a contract was jailed for vagrancy and his labor sold by the local sheriff.
People of color were terrorized by the Ku Klux Klan, The Knights of the White Camelia, and a variety of other terrorist organizations composed largely of southern veterans of the Civil War. When freedmen tried to band together to form their own communities, these were systematically destroyed by these terrorists.
These same groups drove down black political participation in southern elections. In 1868, roughly 400,000 freedmen voted. In 1876, estimates imply that over 250,000 freedmen were driven away from the ballot boxes in the South thru a variety of stratagems involving violence and intimidation.
Yes, it was indeed a sectional conflict and had major economic undertones, but if anyone should doubt the most basic element of the American Civil War, then they would do well to remember the 1868 party convention slogan of the Democratic party, which largely represented the South. It was both simple and direct ― “It’s a White Man’s Country; Let White Men rule.”
I find it hard to see where that differs from the slogans chanted by those in the torchlight parade in Charlottesville, VA ― “You will not replace us; Jew will not replace us!”
It is the same old bitter wine in a more modern bottle. The one major exception comes in that the monument dispute has attracted not only those KKK members who wish the South had won the war, but the dispute brings other white supremacists, Nazis, and militias crawling out of the dark.
The argument that taking down the monuments to Rebel heroes means that we must take down all monuments to those who owned slaves is specious. The current president harangued reporters with “Do you like George Washington? Do you like Thomas Jefferson? They were slave holders.” Such questions represent a tremendous distortion of history. George Washington and Thomas Jefferson built this nation; Lee and the likes of Stonewall Jackson were basically traitors who tried to destroy this nation. Only someone who is supremely ignorant of our history would try to make such an argument.
That American heritage that the president and so many in this nation (62% in recent poll) want to maintain in the form of monuments of Rebel “heroes” is not really something of which, as a nation, we should be proud.