A Liberal Dose, June 10, 2021 "What Is Lost Cause Ideology?"

 

A Liberal Dose, June 10, 2021

Troy D. Smith

"What Is Lost Cause Ideology?"

Last week I talked about the fact that, in popular memory in the South, the Civil War was not “really” about slavery –even though the documents from the time show that pretty much everyone on both sides, at the beginning of that war, agreed it was being fought over slavery. I can assure you that, among professional academic historians (who are specifically trained to study and evaluate the documents of the past), it is almost universally agreed that the primary cause of that conflict was slavery.

And yet in 2011, the 150^th anniversary of the war, national polls indicated that 48% of Americans cited states’ rights as the main cause of the Civil War, with only 38% saying slavery. Another set of polls in 2015 were a little bit closer, divided almost down the middle, but according to the Washington Post (Aug. 6, 2015) white people, people over 60, and Republicans were more likely to oppose slavery being taught in schools as the main reason for the war. Still, a significant minority of non-white people, Northerners, and Democrats felt the same way. Now, to me, saying the Civil War was about states’ rights is like saying the Civil Rights movement wasn’t about racism –it was about states’ rights to be racist or not. It’s a moot point. Slave-holding states were for states’ rights when those rights protected slavery, and against them when it did not. Southern politicians were opposed to the right of newly forming states to decide for themselves whether to allow slavery or not, or the rights of Northern states to decide whether or not to return runaway slaves.

It is important to note that the Confederacy and the South were not necessarily always the same thing. About one-third of white Southerners supported the Union. When you count the slaves, almost half the population in the South was against the Confederacy. Tennessee, by the way, provided the most Union troops of any Confederate state. But do you know where Union sentiment was highest? In Appalachia –where you can’t grow cotton, and the population was not dependent on slave labor. That speaks volumes.

The fact is, after the war –when slavery was ended –was when many Southerners started saying the conflict had not been over slavery, something they all basically agreed was the cause in the beginning. Many Southern leaders, artists, and intellectuals started developing what historians call “the Lost Cause Ideology.” That ideology has several components: that slavery was not the main cause of the war, that slavery hadn’t really been that bad anyway, and that the Confederacy had been a noble lost cause to protect a better way of life. I assure you, none of those things were true –especially if you did not happen to be rich and white.

But the truth was ugly, and most people didn’t want to face it. They preferred, instead, to make up a mythology about a chivalrous, beneficent world where even the slaves were happy. Have you ever noticed how, in Gone with the Wind, none of the black people are ever mad about anything until the mean Yankees show up and disrupt their idyllic world?

In recent decades, that perception has gone beyond the borders of the South –just as you are now likely to see Confederate battle flags being waved in places that were firmly anti-Confederate, from New England to the West Coast. Claims that Confederate mythology and imagery is history and heritage coming from people who are not Southern seems strange- and indicates there is more going on than regional pride.

The Lost Cause version of the Confederacy is not tethered to fact and reality. It is an exercise in making up a story that makes you feel good –or at the very least doesn’t make you feel bad –rather than learning from the past. And passing laws to prevent anybody from questioning that story is not “protecting history” –it is protecting your own feelings.

 

--Troy D. Smith, a White County native, is a novelist and a history professor at Tennessee Tech. His words do not necessarily represent TTU.

A complete list of "A Liberal Dose" columns can be found  HERE

A list of other historical essays that have appeared on this blog can be found HERE

Author's website: www.troyduanesmith.com

A Liberal Dose, June 3, 2021 "Civil War and Slavery: Past Is Prologue"

 

A Liberal Dose, June 3, 2021

Troy D. Smith

Civil War and Slavery: Past Is Prologue

I was born and raised right here in Sparta, in 1968. When I was growing up I was fascinated by the Civil War –I still am. I researched and wrote about it in my dissertation, and in several academic publications, as well as two epic-length novels and many short stories. It is a dramatic subject, and is really second only to the American Revolution in establishing just what the United States of America is. I’ve also researched and written extensively about slavery. Like it or not (and hopefully for all of us it is “not”), slavery, too, played a huge role in the early centuries of our country and the struggle to establish what America is.

When I was growing up, the textbooks said the Civil War was fought over slavery. That’s not the impression I came away with, though. Grown-ups, including teachers, said it wasn’t “really” about slavery at all, it was about states’ rights, or tariffs, or because Yankees were jerks who tried to tell us how to live. It wasn’t really the impression I got from movies, either, like Gone with the Wind. When I was in my late teens I discovered books at the old bookstore in the mall that seemed to back up this alternative view, and that called Abraham Lincoln a racist and a tyrant. It seemed like the South was being misrepresented in the history books –and that wasn’t hard to believe, because it seemed then (and now) like the rest of the country looks down on us and treats us unfairly in general. What I’m trying to get across is, as a white Southerner I grew up thinking about the Civil War the way the majority of you probably do.

But I learned different.

In college, I met Professor Larry Whiteaker –like myself, a native of this area. I had him for U.S. History, and took his upper division course on the Civil War. Dr. Whiteaker (like my grad school co-adviser, Vernon Burton) had been directed in his dissertation at Princeton by James McPherson, Pulitzer prize winning author of Battle Cry of Freedom and probably the most esteemed living historian of the Civil War. Dr. Whiteaker was very emphatic: the Civil War was about slavery. I still wasn’t completely convinced.

Then I went to graduate school and did a deep dive into the primary documents of the era. Thanks to the wonders of Google, you can do the same without leaving your home. Check it out. The seven states that seceded to form the Confederacy (Georgia, South Carolina, Mississippi, Alabama, Florida, Louisiana, and Texas) each issued statements explaining why. The main reason: to protect the institution of slavery. Four Upper South states later joined, after the siege of Fort Sumter and Lincoln’s call for volunteers to put down the rebellion: Virginia, North Carolina, Arkansas, and Tennessee. The vice-president of the new Confederate States of America, Alexander Stephens, gave a famous speech at the very beginning of the war explaining why the Confederacy existed and why they were willing to fight. It is called “The Cornerstone Speech” –please look it up and read it. As my space here is limited, I’ll give you the high points: he said the new Confederate constitution was better than the U.S. constitution, because it explicitly (rather than vaguely) defends the institution of slavery, and because it explicitly lays out the “great truth” that black people are inferior. That “great truth,” Stephens said, was the cornerstone on which the Confederacy was built.

During grad school I read through all the available primary documents about the Civil War in the Upper Cumberland. Of particular interest was the statement prepared by the city of Cookeville that Tennessee should secede to protect slavery and keep black people in their place.

All very interesting, you might say, but what does this have to do with modern politics, or education? Stay tuned.

 

--Troy D. Smith, a White County native, is a novelist and a history professor at Tennessee Tech. His words do not necessarily represent TTU.

A complete list of "A Liberal Dose" columns can be found  HERE

A list of other historical essays that have appeared on this blog can be found HERE

Author's website: www.troyduanesmith.com