Even slaves knew the cause was slavery

This is fascinating. The slaves and their owners knew what the Civil War was about and the former weren't taking any chances in case the North, less certain about the South's reasons for secession, got wobbly.

Many of the runaways had their own good explanation: they understood, even if many whites still did not, that this war might soon turn into a struggle for their freedom. In late August, a correspondent for the New-York Tribune interviewed two recently escaped Virginia slaves who were passing through Philadelphia. The white journalist was astonished to find the two black bondsmen quite well-informed on current war news and political developments. He added:

They say all the negroes now want is for our Government to arm them. Let such a fact be once generally known — the willingness of [Abraham Lincoln] to receive, train, and arm them — and he can have, almost immediately, more men than [Jefferson] Davis has or ever can muster. They are longing to be permitted to fight for freedom. They fully understand the nature of the contest going on.

Even far below the Mason-Dixon Line, on the isolated cotton plantations of the Mississippi Delta, the struggle over secession had fanned the embers of the slaves’ long-smoldering dreams of freedom. “The runaways are numerous and bold,” wrote a Vicksburg woman on June 19. “The house servants have been giving a lot of trouble lately — lazy and disobedient,” she recorded on another occasion, noting that they seemed to be anticipating a Union decree of emancipation when Lincoln reconvened Congress for its emergency session on July 4. (Independence Day, she noted with relief, came and went without any such inconvenient liberation.)

Slavery, fundamentally

The next time you hear some defender of treason in defense of negro slavery say that the Civil War was about "State Rights" and "smaller government," point them to the constitution...of the Confederacy.

"So it's even"

An important reminder from Louis C.K.

Grant's last days

Oddly, TNC and I finished reading U.S. Grant's memoirs on the same day, and I too was saddened by it -- not just because Grant would die shortly after finishing, but also because after several years and several starts and stops (during his memories of the Mexican-American War), as I approached Appomattox, I found myself reluctant to finish and be done with Grant's seemingly effortless writing (even in the orders he wrote to his generals), his humor, self-awareness, and perceptiveness.

Vindicating Grant

Rep. Patrick McHenry's (R-NC) attempt to replace U.S. Grant with Reagan's mug is a shameful attempt in a long line of shameful attempts to rewrite the history of the Civil War and Reconstruction. Grant was one of our most progressive presidents and progressives should fight for his reputation.

As president, Grant was determined to achieve national reconciliation, but on the terms of the victorious North, not the defeated Confederates. He fought hard and successfully for ratification of the 15th Amendment, banning disenfranchisement on account of race, color or previous condition of servitude. When recalcitrant Southern whites fought back under the white hoods and robes of the Ku Klux Klan, murdering and terrorizing blacks and their political supporters, Grant secured legislation that empowered him to unleash federal force. By 1872, the Klan was effectively dead.

For Grant, Reconstruction always remained of paramount importance, and he remained steadfast, even when members of his own party turned their backs on the former slaves. After white supremacists slaughtered blacks and Republicans in Louisiana in 1873 and attempted a coup the following year, Grant took swift and forceful action to restore order and legitimate government. With the political tide running heavily against him, Grant still managed to see through to enactment the Civil Rights Act of 1875, which prohibited discrimination according to race in all public accommodations.

Grant did not confine his reformism to expanding and protecting the rights of the freed slaves. Disgusted at the inhumanity of the nation’s Indian policies, he called for “the proper treatment of the original occupants of this land,” and directed efforts to provide federal aid for food, clothing and schooling for the Indians as well as protection from violence. He also took strong and principled stands in favor of education reform and the separation of church and state.

Grant’s presidency had its failures and blemishes. On the advice of his counselors, Grant appointed men to the Supreme Court who wound up gutting much of the legislation he himself championed. This included the 1875 civil rights law, which the court declared unconstitutional in 1883.

Certainly, Grant’s administration was tainted by oft-remembered corruption scandals. But Grant was never seriously implicated in any of them, although emboldened Democrats and disloyal Republicans, with the help of a sensationalist press, did their best to make the president appear the villain. (Grant ill-advisedly decided to present a stoic public face instead of fighting back.)

In reality, what fueled the personal defamation of Grant was contempt for his Reconstruction policies, which supposedly sacrificed a prostrate South, as one critic put it, “on the altar of Radicalism.” That he accomplished as much for freed slaves as he did within the constitutional limits of the presidency was remarkable. Without question, his was the most impressive record on civil rights and equality of any president from Lincoln to Lyndon B. Johnson.

Grant has been slandered for 150 years, despite saving The Union, winning two terms as president, recognizing that it was the North that won the war when legislating Reconstruction, and writing an enormously popular memoir just before his death. We still allow those who pine for the White Sheets control our national narrative on The Civil War and Civil Rights.

DH Riley weighed in on this with his usual aplomb weeks ago.

Gettysburg and Vicksburg

One thing about Pat Buchanan that is dated? He ain't heard of The Google.

Gettysburg.

Subj: Gettysburg National Battlefield Interpretations and Stories.
Dec. 16 2004 -- >From Superintendent Latschar, Superintendent of the Gettysburg National Battlefield:
John_Latschar@nps.gov

Mr. Moody -

Thank you for your inquiry about our interpretive plans at Gettysburg National Military Park, and the information regarding Richard Poplar. His is an interesting story. It is not altogether unusual, however, since it's a well-established fact that many Confederate officers and units were accompanied by their personal servants. Some of these servants, like Mr. Poplar, were given honorary military rank, and even sometimes participated in combat, but neither Mr. Poplar nor the others could be regularly and legally enlisted in the Confederate States Army until March of 1865 when the Confederate Congress passed an act authorizing the recruitment of blacks.

At Gettysburg, to answer your question, we intend to include the stories of the thousands of blacks from both the north and south, both slave and free, that were associated with and/or impacted by the Gettysburg Campaign. As you know, this will not include the United States Colored Troops, since they were not at Gettysburg. But it would include the estimated 10,000 slaves who accompanied the Army of Northern Virginia on the Gettysburg Campaign, the free blacks and "contraband" blacks who supported the Army ofthe Potomac, the black Pennsylvania "home guard" reserve unit that was mobilized in reaction to the Confederate advance, the hundreds of free blacks in southern Pennsylvania who fled from the advancing Confederate army for fear of captured and sold south into slavery, and the unfortunate ones to whom that happened.

In short, all of our stories at Gettysburg will be told in context, so that individual stories are woven together to illustrate the larger whole.

I trust that this helps answer your inquiry.

Regards,

John Latschar

Vicksburg.

Because the black regiments lacked experience and their guns were inferior, the enemy soon managed to close in for hand-to-hand combat. The black troops fought bravely, as they handled their bayonets with fierce determination, contesting every inch of ground until they were surrounded. At that point, McCulloch’s men poured a deadly fire along their lines, directing their efforts mainly at the officers, many of whom ultimately fell. Finally, overpowered by superior numbers, the black troops retreated to the river banks, but they continued to fire and to remain as organized as possible in what was up to this time the most vicious hand-to-hand fighting of the war.

Finally, the gunboat Choctaw cruised into position, fired at the enemy, and forced them to withdraw behind the levee. Undaunted, McCulloch’s troops continued to fire at the defenders.

The Confederates at this time attempted to extend their line to the extreme right, but two black companies were determined this action would fail. These companies, a part of the 11th Louisiana, fought from behind cotton bales and parts of the old levee until almost noon, when the enemy withdrew after nine hours of fighting against inferior numbers that would not be defeated. As McCulloch’s troops retired, the gunboat Lexington placed several well-directed shots and scattered the enemy in all directions.

The Confederates’ hatred of black troops was surpassed only by their animosity toward those white officers who led them. The fact generated nightmares. Rumors ran that officers were the victims of atrocities. Needless to say they had a poor effect on morale. But Bryant not only survived the fighting, kept his spirit, and avoided capture, he became conspicuous for his gallantry, constantly rallying his troops after they had been driven to the river banks. Shouting directions, he prodded and encouraged his men. His wiry stature seemed to rise with his fervor.

In his report to the adjutant general, Grant noted the heroism of the troops, despite their lack of military experience. He concluded, ‘With good officers they will make good troops.’

Pat Buchanan. Not only on the wrong side of history. He doesn't know very much about history.

As for the "white men" who wrote the Constitution. I can assure you, none of them were "working class whites," either.

Oh, and don't even get me started about "Normandy" when Jim Crow ruled the U.S. military.

Army of the Potomac

Damn. Marshall beat me to it again!