I see your point, but imagine focusing on a single individual to prove a
point about mass consciousness at any other time or place in history:
Napoleon, David Lloyd George, Lenin, Indira Gandhi, Emiliano
Zapata, or Abraham Lincoln.  If R.E. Lee's decision is fully
indicative of white southerners' sense of allegiance, what then of
George H. Thomas of Southampton County, Virginia?
  There is no question that the standard historiography of the 19th
century agrees with the position you have stated.  I am taking aim
and that consensus, not at you personally.
  For starters, I will argue (with Thomas Jefferson in Notes on
Virginia) that slaves claimed any other country but their own.
Hence, they were almost by definition anti-Virginia, until Virginia
was reformed under Reconstruction.  My question to the list is, can
we consider what 40% of antebellum Virginia's population
considered their "country" while assessing these questions of
loyalty, legitimacy, etc?

Date sent:              Thu, 27 Feb 2003 12:14:50 -0500 (EST)
From:                   [log in to unmask]
Subject:                Sovereignty of Southern States
To:                     [log in to unmask]
Send reply to:          Discussion of research and writing about Virginia history
        <[log in to unmask]>

>         I think the best indication of the legitimacy, at least in the
>         minds
> of Southerners, of their overriding allegiance to the state over the
> federal government, and the legitimacy of state sovereignty, is found in
> Lee's refusal to accept the command on the Union army over his allegiance
> to Virginia.  By all indications, Lee was a thoughtful and educated man of
> personal integrity who was apparently respected by all who knew him.  His
> position was not that of some wild, rabid secessionist, slave owner.  I
> think you have to consider the issue of the perceived legitimacy of
> Southern sovereignty in the context of the man and come to the conclusion
> that this was not some theory ginned up at the last moment by wealth white
> slaveowners in an attempt to save slavery (although there may have been
> many who seized on it for that purpose).
>
> JDS
>
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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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