[Opinion and Analysis.]
[ RnB note: The following is a copy of a letter recently sent to a variety of public officials, news organizations and other folks who’ve expressed an opinion on various members of the Confederate leadership during the Civil War.]
Dear Fellow Citizen/ Publisher and/or Holder of Political Office:
This is, hopefully, a constructive attempt to help preserve both national harmony and democracy in the United States. It is being sent: (1) to all folks who, at one point or another, have written or uttered a word or two denigrating Confederate leaders such as Robert E. Lee, Jefferson Davis, Stonewall Jackson and others; and (2) to some decision-makers/publishers/office-holders who, in all probability, are inundated with arguments and information that fails to take the following critical information into account. This subject is much written and talked about, but from what can be observed, several major points are nonetheless usually overlooked and deserve much more serious consideration. And, make no mistake, it is vitally important that this nation not try to re-write our history on this subject because unfair finger pointing will have very destructive and even dangerous repercussions in the future.
Let it be emphasized and agreed that slavery is horrible in every way imaginable. At the time of the American Civil War Black slaves were whipped, hung, and suffered incredible tribulations at the hands of many slave owners. Let there be no doubt that this country was, and is, better off because the North won the Civil War. It freed the slaves, made our country stronger internationally, and allowed for the adoption of important and fundamental changes to our Constitution. Equal Protection is now the law of the land. This is as it should be. In fact, and especially in light of recent events, more has to be done to make sure that our non-discrimination laws (protecting all races, religions, nationalities, sexes etc) are more effectively enforced.
However, if one examines history in detail, calling the Confederate leaders traitors and impugning their character becomes very problematic. Moreover, any racist tendencies that they had can be fairly understood if one also considers their upbringing and the economic, social and political context of the times particularly in the agrarian plantation-based economies of the South.
Beyond these factors, there were at least two legitimate good faith legal arguments that the South had for wanting to secede from the Union. Unfortunately, in more recent times these arguments tend to get overlooked.
One such argument was that prior to the start of the Civil War, the North was attempting to violate what is known as the Three-Fifths Compromise which was the population/slave counting agreement that the Northern and Southern colonies reached that made it possible for the United States Constitution to be ratified when this country was first formed way back in 1789. In other words, there would be no United States at all without the Three-Fifths Compromise, simply because the South would have refused to join our newly forming nation unless the North acknowledged the lawful existence of slavery—which it did in said Compromise. Thus when, it became increasingly apparent with the election of Lincoln that the North was going force the South to free its slaves that the South reacted by essentially saying that the North was breaching its deal (its contract) with the South.
Moreover, and regardless of whether the Three-Fifths Compromise created an implicit contractual agreement to recognize the continued legality of slavery, the Southern position was that the United States itself was a totally voluntary association of states. This was because there was no provision in the Constitution itself prohibiting any state from withdrawing from the union of states at any time for any reason whatsoever. Thus, the South believed, and with good reason, that they had the right at any time and for any reason to withdraw from the union of states, otherwise known as the United States.
These last two points are major reasons why many Southerners insist (and with some basis in fact) that they were fighting for States’ rights and that things like Confederate flags and rebel uniforms and memorabilia represent the right to the freedom from the tyranny of having someone from some other area (or some other state or nation) tell them how to conduct their affairs. Thus, the Confederate battle flag, to most Southerners, is not a symbol of support for racism or the re-institution of slavery. It is, instead, a symbol of defiance of any foreign or outside interference into one’s right to self-determination.
Admittedly, it’s quite easy to see the irony, if not hypocrisy, of this position today, since the South was fighting to maintaining a system that recognized slavery, the very antithesis of freedom. However, here again, slavery had been the “norm” historically. Southerners were just doing what always had been done and were not raised or culturally indoctrinated in a way that would have caused them to naturally think otherwise. In short, Southerners at the time were, in large measure, culturally incapable of seeing the inconsistency of their position on this issue. The point is that, in a sense, blaming Southerners for their blindness on this issue is like blaming a caveman for having bad table manners.
While it is true that by the time of the early 1860s much of the planet was outlawing slavery, we will never know for sure whether the Southern states, if left alone, would have eventually outlawed it as well. This is indeed an interesting possibility to consider. After all, the abolition of slavery had recently occurred elsewhere in the World. The Southern position, however, would have been that resolution of that issue was up to Southerners and Southerners alone.
In any event, these reasonably sound, if not persuasive, legal arguments justifying the Southern reasons for secession from the Union bear heavily on both the issue of whether the Southern leaders were guilty of treason and questions concerning the quality of their character in general. It is fair to say, however, that Southern leaders had a legitimate good faith reason to believe that they were totally within their legal rights to secede from the Union. Moreover, and importantly, they were not acting on behalf of any foreign power, nor were they calling for the overthrow of the federal government itself. After all, they didn’t call for the destruction of the Northern states or the government in Washington. As such, Southern leaders were not guilty of either treason or sedition. [In this regard, the U.S. Code provisions concerning these types of crimes have been amended since the Civil War.]
Furthermore, in analyzing the situation, one simply has to look at some of the more practical considerations that Southerners in general, and Southern leaders in particular, faced.
It is extremely important to remember that slavery had been practiced around the world throughout recorded history. Unlike the situation today, there was nothing unusual about its existence back then. As such, these men did not have the benefit of decades of education, socialization and enlightenment that we’ve had in more recent times that clearly demonstrate, to the more fair-minded amongst us, of the essential goodness and moral preferability of non-discrimination and racial inclusiveness. The world wasn’t as small then as it seemingly is now. Today, we have the chance via the radio, TV and the internet etc to see and deal with folks of other cultures on the other side of the planet, virtually instantaneously. Not so back then. Back then, White Europeans colonized many folks of different colors in far away lands separated by thousands of miles of ocean. Although the situation was changing, the basic mind-set had been that the White man was “civilizing” the rest of the Asian, African and Middle Eastern world—which was largely non-White.
Even more relevant, of course, is the fact, already mentioned, that slavery had and has been around since the beginning of history. The Egyptians had white non-Egyptian slaves. Romans had slaves, mostly White ones, from all around the Mediterranean including White Greek slaves. The Ottoman Turks had White Christian European slaves. Babylonians enslaved the Jews. Africans along the Mediterranean coast had White slaves. And importantly, during the period immediately prior to the Civil War, neighboring Black tribesman assisted White slave traders and Arabs in capturing neighboring Blacks in Africa so that they could be shipped to North and South America to be enslaved in the New World.
In short, all races have enslaved and been enslaved by other races. And slavery has existed even within the same race when one tribe or nation captured or conquered another. Every race that has been defeated in battle has suffered having many or most of its citizens forced into slavery. The primary purpose of all slavery has been for the victors, conquerors and colonizers to economically exploit defeated people by economically harvesting the value of their services without compensation. It is very important to note, however, that the suffering of Blacks in the United States is not at all unique in this regard.
It must be acknowledged that many, if not most, Southerners, prior to Civil War, probably had a racist view of Blacks that would be unacceptable today. However, it is unfair to unduly focus on that fact and fail to consider other highly relevant factors in order to put things in a fairer, more enlightened and legitimate historical context, particularly when talking about those Southern leaders who had slaves.
Suppose it’s 1860 and that Plantation Owner A in Georgia is considering whether he wants to free his slaves. It is more than probable that he’s deeply worried about at least two things. Assuming he, for the first time, will have to pay his former slaves to pick cotton, a major question will be: Will the price that he has to charge others to buy his cotton be competitive in the overall cotton marketplace?
The answer is a resounding no. That is, unless his fellow plantation owners B, C, D and all others also free their slaves. In fact, freeing his slaves will likely put A out of business unless B,C and D do so as well. Thus, unilaterally freeing one’s slaves (if one is a plantation owner) is probably economic suicide for any plantation owner. And this doesn’t even take into account what the reaction of other plantation owners would be. Would they shun A, or react violently because they would be fearful that their own slaves would get ideas and revolt thereby causing the other plantation owners great harm as well?
Let’s further assume that A, B, C and D etc. one day decide that slavery is indeed wrong and thus they decide to try to get the Georgia legislature to make slavery illegal in Georgia. A big problem they are likely to encounter is that other more skeptical Georgia legislators will correctly point out, that all cotton formerly sold by Georgia plantation owners will now be uncompetitively priced unless the legislators in Alabama, Mississippi, South Carolina and all of the other Southern states also make slavery illegal. And this, of course, will depend in large measure on the willingness of plantation owners in those states to go along with the idea of freeing their slaves.
At this point, all slave States would have incentive to wait for all other slave States to act to free their slaves before they do. This used to be called (pardon the expression) a Mexican standoff and means that in this kind of scenario it’s unlikely that any particular state or plantation owner will be the first mover. Hence nothing happens and the slaves remain enslaved.
Moreover, remember at the time all of this was happening the country was still only 70 years old and had no telephones, no TVs, no radio, no internet etc. This naturally makes coordinating legislative action amongst all slave states a much slower and more difficult process. Thus, the very existence of separate Southern states (instead of having one Southern nation) in and of itself, would have made freeing the slaves much more difficult to accomplish.
And beyond the economics of the situation, if you are a Southern plantation owner and/or a Southern politician, if you free the slaves there’s going to be another hugely important issue that will arise that will have far reaching political and societal consequences. In fact, it will probably upset the entire Southern political and cultural system. That issue is: Are all of these freed slaves going to get to vote? And crucially, if so, how will that affect everyone in the South holding political office? What percentage of elected leaders will get kicked out by a newly unleashed tidal wave of Black vote?
Think about all of this. If you are an elected Southern politician, you know that there’s a huge risk of being voted out of office—at least eventually—if you collectively vote to free all of the slaves. In the real world, how many normal people, let alone politicians, are going to be willing to do that? How many political leaders of any type want to face that uncertainty and personal risk, especially if the political leaders in question know that a decision like that is going to unpopular with his or her peers? The answer should be obvious.
The point is– let’s get real when analyzing what these men did. Before condemning anyone and calling them traitors, let’s understand as fully as we can what their position was. It is submitted that if one does this, any realist would know that every Northern politician facing similar issues, where the situations reversed, would have acted just as the Southern leaders did in the years leading up to the Civil War.
Moreover, and more importantly, if we reverse the color of the skins of the actors, keep all other situational factors the same, and thus had Black slaveowners and White slaves, the Black slave owners would have acted exactly as their White slave-owning counterparts did in the antebellum South! And anyone who believes otherwise is just kidding themselves—or they have a political ax to grind.
Before moving on, it’s important to note, that amongst other admirable things he did in his life, Robert E. Lee freed his slaves before the end of the Civil War and even before Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation. This was before he was militarily or legally forced to do so by the conclusion of the war.
In this regard, it is very interesting to note that Lincoln’s own Emancipation Proclamation allowed slavery to remain legal in certain slave owning areas of the North that had not seceded from the Union. This is proof that, at least initially, (at the very beginning of the Civil War) Lincoln was fighting to preserve the Union and not to end slavery.
Thus, even the great emancipator hedged his bets on slavery. The point is that these men, the Confederate leaders, were acting pretty much like typical human beings trying to navigate through a very morally, economically and politically challenging period of changing American and World attitudes about slavery.
In this regard, it’s worth mentioning again that the people in the South (and their leaders) were only doing what always had been done throughout human history. The significance of this is that these people were raised to believe that there was nothing wrong with slavery. One does not overcome the moral compass one is given by one’s parents, teachers and preachers so easily. And, in the South, all of those folks believed that slavery was normal. To condemn the Confederate leaders in the manner that has been done in the last couple of years is, in a sense, to condemn all of our Southern ancestors as being racist traitors merely for doing what had been done throughout recorded history.
Moreover, and just as importantly, whether Southern leaders are or were traitors is almost beside the point when one considers the dangers this country is presently facing. By this it is meant that this country is at grave risk of having its Constitutional form of democratic representative government cast aside by those who only seek power for themselves without regard for the rights of others. Despite this, many, including a multitude of White folks, seem susceptible to being seduced by these darker forces. And this is extremely dangerous because they ultimately hold the balance of power in all elections going forward. This is because of the sheer size of the White voting population, and the importance of the White southern vote. Consider this last point and then ask yourself two questions:
First: Wouldn’t it upset you if you were a White Southerner to have your ancestors called racist traitors, regardless of whether it was true or not? And one has to add here, that several southern leaders, particularly Lee and Jackson are widely admired even in the North.
And Secondly: If you were a White Southerner and someone called your heroes and/or your ancestors racists traitors, wouldn’t that inherently make you more prone to being angry at Blacks? Wouldn’t you want to retaliate? In other words, it’s inherently inflammatory and divisive to call Confederate leaders names. And this country, in these extremely sensitive times, does not need further grounds for division, nor for that matter does it need having a substantial portion of its majority voting block driven into the arms of groups with authoritarian tendencies.
In this regard, and if one looks at the voting power various parties and factions have, the entire southeastern section of the country, including Texas and Florida (to name a few states) fought on the side of the Confederacy. And, most folks, ( and yes that includes White folks) do not take kindly to having their ancestors being denigrated by outsiders and/or minorities, who are the newest members of the American “club”, so to speak. Nor do they like having statues of their childhood heroes torn down and defaced.
And the same can be said for removing their names from various military installations, highways, streets and schools. Why? Because it represents an attempt at kind of a cultural lobotomy—a re-writing of history that many White folks fear puts them in a place they don’t recognize and that they don’t belong to. Does it promote political stability to have a substantial portion of the nation’s White population feel this way, particularly if they are congregated in one contiguous section of the country? In any event, these kinds of actions only makes it more likely that fence-sitting White voters, particularly in the South, will be driven into the open political arms of extremist and autocratic political groups and organizations.
Moreover, no one is going to make the average White Southerner more progressive and enlightened by putting a megaphone in their ear and telling them that Davis, Lee, Jackson etc are bigoted, racist traitors. If a politically progressive person does so, the Southerner may just stroke a big check to [insert name of Neo-Fascist organization]; or they may even wear a White sheet and carry a torch at the next 4th of July celebration or whatever.
What should deeply worry all of us is that a lot of those voters (particularly White swing voters from the South) will not take kindly to having their ancestors constantly denigrated and thus vote for politicians with far-right/authoritarian leanings. As an example of the above, it is highly likely that the removal of Confederate monuments and statues in Richmond and elsewhere had a significant (if not decisive) impact on the election of a Trump supporting Republican to the Governorship of Virginia in 2021.
In short, militant Black points of view will not do well in crucial White suburbs in the South in coming elections. Recipients of this letter who are in that camp are getting it because they are shooting their own cause (which presumably includes supporting the continuation of a democracy in America) in the foot by denigrating Confederate historical figures in the way that they have.
Let’s take Jeff Davis. He was a large plantation owner and like all Southern plantation owners, he had slaves. Braxton Bragg was also a slave owner. He had a sugar plantation. Bragg is worth mentioning here because up until the war broke out he was against secession by the Southern states. Moreover, like Davis, Lee, JEB Stuart and virtually all other upper level confederate leaders, he/they had fought for this country in the Mexican War. They had long distinguished records of service to this County before the Civil War and put their lives on the line for it. Jefferson Davis himself was a U.S. Senator and served as Secretary of War before the Civil War. Lee himself, was Commandant of West Point and was almost given command of Union forces at the beginning of the War. He, however, famously turned it down because he couldn’t fight against his native Virginia. And as noted, Lee freed his slaves when he didn’t have to, that is, before the end of the War. After the War, General Longstreet used Black troops to help put down a White insurrection in Louisiana. Longstreet was later, and after the Civil War, appointed U.S. ambassador to the Ottoman Empire by President Rutherford B. Hayes. Thus, his former enemies obviously had immense respect for him.
All of which raises another major point. How can anyone denigrate someone who refuses to fight against their home town, their state, their relatives, friends, family and loved ones, especially when talking about an issue such as slavery which, at the time, had long been accepted throughout world history.
Just consider the situation from Lee’s perspective. If he takes command of the Union forces (as was offered to him prior to the War), and invades Virginia and/or attacks Richmond, perhaps level it with artillery etc., kills tens of thousands or more of its inhabitants, then what would he have had to come home to after the war? Who would dare remain his friend? Will he have any friends at all? Who wants to be 60 plus years old and have no friends and be a pariah to their own family when they are old, feeble and less able to care for themselves? What if he was seriously wounded, who would take care of him? The same considerations would apply to all Southerners considering whether to side with the North. It is simply nauseating and infuriating to hear holier than thou Monday morning quarterbacks criticize and/or denigrate Lee and other Southern leaders faced with similar issues.
One cannot judge historical figures based on contemporary moral standards. And what is particularly dangerous now is that doing so is creating a potentially toxic racially charged atmosphere at a time when extremist forces with authoritarian tendencies are challenging the very existence of our democracy.
I cannot help but to note here, that there is a Youtube video of then President Eisenhower holding a press conference. A reporter asked a question implying something derogatory about Lee. In response, Eisenhower pointed out that he had only 4 pictures in his office. He said those were of Washington, Franklin, Lincoln and his fellow West Point graduate, Robert E. Lee. Eisenhower concluded by making it crystal clear to everyone that he wasn’t about to criticize Lee, and in fact, revered him.
Why do I point this out? No Confederate leader that I know of (or at least none of the very famous ones) were ever actually convicted of treason. As part of the terms of surrender at Appomattox, Grant paroled Southern soldiers thus agreeing not to prosecute them and even allowing Southern officers to keep their horses and their side arms. As such, anyone calling them a traitor is making a misleading statement that, for no good reason, needlessly and perhaps even dangerously inflames the passions of important segments of the voting public.
Moreover, and from a strictly legal perspective, because no foreign nation was directly involved or benefited form the Southern attempt at secession and because the Southern states didn’t advocate the overthrow of the U.S. government, I doubt that Southern leaders could ever have been convicted of either treason or sedition if the case were objectively decided. In this regard, they didn’t advocate for the overthrow of the government because they weren’t trying to overthrow the federal government, they just wanted out of the Union.
Moreover, who are we to judge the Confederate leadership when their contemporaries did not prosecute them for treason and sedition, especially when one considers that the people who fought against them in very large measure forgave them. Why did the government forgive them? Because by and large northern leaders understood the fact that slavery had historically been socially acceptable, that Southerners were having brand new system forcibly, and perhaps unlawfully, imposed on them from the outside, that many of these men had previously put their lives on the line for the United States (Davis, Lee, Jackson Stuart and Others in the Mexican War) and/or honorably served in public office (Davis) and, very importantly, that maintaining the post-war peace required a certain amount of forgiveness if not an outright welcoming-back of Southerners into the Union. It’s this last point that is of particular concern right now, because folks who want to name-call and bad mouth Southern leaders are seriously overlooking a lot of important facts, and the fact that, right or wrong, a lot of White Southern folks do not take kindly to having their ancestors called racist traitors. And the same applies to having their statues defaced and/or torn down.
All of the foregoing is emphatically not to say that one should not demonstrate or strongly and publicly advocate for racial equality. Protests against police brutality, for example, are clearly justified in many circumstances, particularly if the police misconduct was racially motivated. Too many well-meaning leaders and commentators, however, are going about their fight for equal justice in a dangerous and counterproductive manner.
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In conclusion, please forgive the length of this letter. One can only hope that it will serve to help preserve democracy and bring peace to this Nation.
Respectfully and sincerely,
David D. Lentz
July 11, 2022
© Copyright 2022; David Dixon Lentz; All Rights Reserved.