Ms. Ankrom:

  Thanks for your response.
  I think that the figure for slave ownership in the 11 Confederate
states was about 33% of white households.  Maryland, Missouri,
and Delaware, three of the four slave states that opted--with some
complicated politics in each--for the Union had a lower percentage
of slaveholders.  Certainly societies, the US included, have fought
wars to the advantage of a minority special interest, which
represented a much smaller percentage of the general population.
  Moreover, it is important to remember that many if not most
Confederate soldiers were not volunteers.  The Confederacy had a
draconian military draft, that called all white men from ages 17 to
50 (I may have the age range a bit wrong here).  There were three
ways out:  join the home guard, pay $300 for a substitute, or after
Nov. 1862, claim a draft exemption for each 20 slaves owned.
  Thus, Confederate military service in the 1860s is not a pure
measure of anything, beyond the power of that new state to coerce
military service.  The draft resistance and desertion rates--a
problem in the North as well as the South--is a subject rarely
discussed but very pertinent in all of this.
  I agree that slavery was not the only issue to cause the creation
of the Confederacy and the War, but I think that it was central if not
decisive.  After all, Jefferson Davis fully expected California and
Oregon to seceded along with the South, because Democrats
governed in both states, but it did not happen.  If states rights was
a position isolated from the ownership of slaves, why did only
states where the major economic and social interests were in
slaveholding leave the Union?
  One of the reasons that the methods historians use is so useful
in these kinds of discussion, is that historians at our best (an apex
we rarely reach) work to distinguish mentalite (climate of opinion) in
the early 1860s from, say 1890, or 1920.  For the most part, we
haven't talked to the veterans of the War, but to their children and
grandchildren.  These people were schooled in what one
distinguished southern historian has called "the church of the lost
cause."  I am amazed when I read the political letters of former
Confederate officers, chiefly Virginians, from the Gilded Age,
because they are so practical and unsentimental.  They are
struggling to govern Virginia in the 1880s and 1890s and they rarely
discuss the War.  For those whose letters I have spent the last ten
years read, the War was over.  It began again among civilians for
reasons having little to do with Bull Run or Appomattox.
  Much of the white South became more desperately poor after the
War than it had been before and a reason needed to be found.  C.
Vann Woodward clearly points to the ravaging of the South, not by
the Yankee armies, but by exploitative northern and European
interests, aided and abetted by corporation lawyers who governed
most southern states after Reconstruction, but passed themselves
off as planters in the gentlemanly old tradition.
  The political insurgency in the South AFTER Reconstruction,
when often blacks and whites found common cause, such as in the
Readjuster movement in Virginia, and the Populist movement
throughout the South, are signs of the suffering and assaults on the
perceived sources of misery.  These movements did not blame Abe
Lincoln for their woes.

Harold


Date sent:              Thu, 30 Aug 2001 14:43:34 -0400 (EDT)
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Subject:                Re: Hampton (Virginia) National Cemetary: 757.723.7104
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Send reply to:          Discussion of research and writing about Virginia history
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> Mr. Forsythe (from Fairfield U.):
>
> Thank you for your comments. I never suggested, nor do I ever suggest that
> quotations, or any one single item of evidence will resolve the "state's
> rights", "collective rights", "patriotism" or other issues about a
> sovereign state, nation, or group. I was simply suggesting to the
> gentleman from Colorado that people, particularly here in Virginia felt
> more "loyal", "patriotic" or passion for a cause AS Virginians instead of
> as Americans. I certainly think that times have changed. Indeed, my family
> has sent a man to fight in every country this war has fought, from the
> Revolutionary War to Desert Storm. Having said that, during W.W.I and
> W.W.II,  we rallied around the men in my family to fight as Americans in
> those wars.
>
> On another front, though, I think that's part of the discussion SINCE
> 1865, the causes of the War Between the States. I simply feel that slavery
> wasn't the only reason for the fighting. It was a collection of "evidence"
> (in your words), since 80% of people in the "Confederate South" didn't own
> slaves, they had other reasons, particularly high tariffs, slave vs. free
> state western expansion, industrialization vs. agrarianism, commerce,
> religious awakening. Part of my mother's family lived in western Virginia.
> They were poor farmers, owning less than 100 acres per person. They never
> owned slaves, as they lived off the land and couldn't afford slaves. They
> lived in an area of western Virginia where less than 2% of men owned
> slaves. They certainly didn't fight for slavery or its brutal practices,
> they fought for Virginia.
>
> I've only given examples based on my family's experience, plus my own
> education into the subject. I would be interested in your comments. I
> think learning about this country -  despite the problems, is a good
> thing...
>
> Kristyn Ankrom
> Colonial Heights, VA
>
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Harold S. Forsythe
Assistant Professor History
Director:  Black Studies
Fairfield University
Fairfield, CT 06430-5195
(203) 254-4000  x2379

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