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Post by the Scribe on Mar 15, 2024 0:17:28 GMT
Conservatives have always been and are still obsessed with the Civil War and all the accoutrements that go with it. Extremist republiconservative groups and faketriots have adopted its flag as an anti-government protest. I went to college in the South and I have to say Southerners are among the nicest people in America and the students who flew the flag did so out of custom. It didn't seem to be much more than an ornament to them. Politics being what they are today there are many who carry it as a symbol of hate more than anything else. One would think they would want a symbol of the victorious instead...and then again, many also drape themselves in the American flag...like Trump. In the North no one I ever knew thought twice about that war, not even to gloat or put anyone down. Only conservatives carry that cross. I think exploring that war is relevant to today.This thread contains information on the first and hopefully last American Civil War April 12, 1861 - April 26, 1865Simply put the Great American Civil War was a war between the LIBERAL NORTH and the CONSERVATIVE SOUTH of which the majority were Democrats on both sides. Like so many Republican presidents, Abraham Lincoln did NOT win the popular vote. They often slide in via the electoral college or other nefarious means to set up their tyranny of the minority and then expect loyalty and compliance. Lincoln was a political moderate, not a conservative as he leaned Left but he was the first Republican president from a fairly new party. His vice president Andrew Johnson was a dyed in the wool conservative.
Three hours after Lincoln was assassinated by John Wilks Booth, Johnson was sworn in as the 17th president of the United States. During the Civil War, Booth was a Confederate secret agent. In March of 1865, his attempt to kidnap President Abraham Lincoln failed. then, on April 14, 1865, he assassinated Lincoln at Ford Theater. One day less than a week before, on Palm Sunday, April 9, Robert E. Lee, the commander of what remained of the Confederate States’ Army, surrendered to Ulysses S. Grant, the commanding General of the Union thus ending the war but not the mindset.
In a strange irony often found in American history, the racist Southerner Johnson, now the new President was charged with the reconstruction of the South and the extension of civil rights and suffrage to former Black slaves. Johnson turned his attention to reconstructing the Union, implementing the lenient approach that Lincoln favored, which was in direct opposition to the ideology of the Radical Republicans. Like Lincoln, Johnson believed the Southern States had never legally left the Union. The North aka Union wanted to preserve itself yet stop slavery as the country spread Westward. The CONservative South had different ideas which led to the war in the first place.
Reconstruction (1865-1877), the turbulent era following the Civil War, was the effort to reintegrate Southern states from the Confederacy and 4 million newly-freed people into the United States. Under the administration of President Andrew Johnson in 1865 and 1866, new southern state legislatures passed restrictive “Black Codes” to control the labor and behavior of former enslaved people and other African Americans.
Outrage in the North over these codes eroded support for the approach known as Presidential Reconstruction and led to the triumph of the more radical wing of the Republican Party. During Radical Reconstruction, which began with the passage of the Reconstruction Act of 1867, newly enfranchised Black people gained a voice in government for the first time in American history, winning election to southern state legislatures and even to the U.S. Congress. In less than a decade, however, reactionary forces—including the Ku Klux Klan—would reverse the changes wrought by Radical Reconstruction in a violent backlash that restored white supremacy in the mostly conservative South.
Most if not all of the abuse, lynchings, torture, etc. of the former black slaves happened in the South and came from the CONservatives be they Southern Democrats, Southern Republicans or a peripheral party.
Often, the people we choose to lead us do not do a very good job especially if they have only been chosen by a minority of the people because of our flawed electoral system.
www.history.com/topics/american-civil-war/reconstruction*Note...if you listen to CONservative media, especially "hate radio" you will hear the endless trope that it was the Democrat Party (there is no such thing...it is the Democratic Party) that enslaved, lynched, beat, abused black slaves when in reality it was CONSERVATIVES who happened to be Democrats and/or Republicons doing so. Same situation one hundred years later. It was Liberals/Democrats who voted to pass the Civil and Voting Rights Acts with NOT one conservative in the affirmative. They always fail to mention the truth behind their propaganda and talking points as it would defeat the constant gaslighting and false messaging to their vulnerable audience....the Scribe
while this is neither here nor there my earliest ancestor born in North America was in 1691 and my direct family line namesakes settled in in the Gourdvine area of today’s Rappahannock County, Virginia in 1717. Family members fought in the Revolutionary War and later as well in the Civil War (for the South). While it is easy to get caught up in the politics of any time, the more important thing is to know "right from wrong" and then do the right thing by that knowledge. Some things are just wrong and should be called out in the best way one is able and comfortable. So here I am!
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Post by the Scribe on Mar 15, 2024 0:25:25 GMT
Peace Democrats (aka Copperheads)
www.americanhistorycentral.com/entries/peace-democrats-aka-copperheads/
1860 - 1865
The Peace Democrats, aka Copperheads, comprised a faction of the Democratic Party who opposed the American Civil War and President Lincoln's leadership during the conflict.
Ohio Congressman Clement L. Vallandigham was the most notable leader of the Peace Democrats (aka Copperheads) who opposed the American Civil War. Image Source: Library of Congress.
Prelude
During the 1850s, American politics splintered along sectional lines because of differing beliefs regarding slavery. Gradually, the Whig Party dissolved, as the Free Soil Party, and later, the Republican Party emerged to replace it in the North. Members of the new parties opposed the practice of human slavery on moral grounds, or they objected to the extension of slavery to the American West for economic reasons. By 1856, the Republican Party had grown so popular that its candidate, John C. Fremont, out-polled Whig candidate Millard Fillmore and finished second in the presidential race to Democrat James Buchanan.
Four years later, the Democratic Party split into three factions—Northern Democrats, Southern Democrats, and Constitutional Unionists. The Democratic rift enabled little-known Republican candidate Abraham Lincoln to win the presidential election with only 39% of the popular vote. Lincoln’s election prompted South Carolina to enact articles of secession on December 24, 1860. Four months later, Southern militia fired on Fort Sumter (April 12, 1861) and the United States plummeted into civil war.
War Democrats, Peace Democrats, and Copperheads
The American Civil War forced members of the Democratic Party to choose allegiances. War Democrats—most of whom lived in the North—supported the war to save the Union. Not all of them, however, solidly supported Republican President Lincoln’s leadership during the conflict.
The remaining members of the Democratic Party in the North comprised a coalition known as Peace Democrats who opposed the war, and/or Lincoln’s leadership, for a variety of reasons. The number of Peace Democrats ebbed and flowed as the war progressed, depending upon Northern battlefield successes and failures, and Lincoln’s actions as commander-in-chief.
Republicans who supported the war to save the Union, as well as their president, often referred to Peace Democrats as Copperheads—probably a reference to the poisonous species of snake predominant in the Eastern United States.
Early Copperheads
Copperheads were Northern members of the Democratic Party who shared one or more of the following characteristics:
They sympathized with the South because they had once lived there or had family members who lived there.
They believed southern states had the constitutional right to leave the Union if they chose.
They did not believe that the secession of southern states was worth fighting for.
Later Copperheads
As the war progressed, more people joined the Copperhead ranks for different reasons. Among that group were:
People who believed that Lincoln exceeded his presidential authority by approving the imprisonment of war protesters without access to the writ of habeas corpus.
People who criticized Lincoln’s military decisions as commander-in-chief.
People who believed that Lincoln exceeded his constitutional authority by issuing the Emancipation Proclamation.
People who initially favored fighting to save the Union, but opposed fighting to end slavery.
Miners, industrial workers, and immigrants who feared economic competition from freedmen if the North won the war.
Merchants who lost profitable Southern trade during the war.
Racists and bigots who opposed the extension of citizenship and equal rights to freedmen if the North won the war.
People who opposed the draft.
People who gradually tired of the carnage as the death toll escalated during the conflict’s last years.
Hotbeds of Opposition
Pockets of opposition to the Civil War and President Lincoln’s leadership extended throughout the North. Their numbers were highest, however, in midwestern border states, such as Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, and Missouri.
Copperhead Leadership
Because the Copperhead Alliance comprised a diverse group of people who opposed the Civil War or President Lincoln for many reasons, it tended to be a loosely organized grassroots movement. It did, however, feature several prominent leaders, including Wilbur F. Storey, William Taylor Davidson, and Lewis W. Ross of Illinois; Jesse D. Bright and Daniel W. Voorhees of Indiana; Alexander Long, Edson B. Olds, George Pendleton, Clement Vallandigham, and Joseph W. White of Ohio; Horatio Seymour and Fernando Wood of New York; George W. Woodward and William A. Wallace of Pennsylvania; and Marcus M. Pomeroy of Wisconsin. Many Copperhead leaders were prominent newspaper publishers and politicians, some of whom were state governors or served in the U.S. Congress before, during, and after the Civil War.
Clement Vallandigham
The most notable Copperhead leader was Clement Vallandigham. Born in eastern Ohio on July 29, 1820, Vallandigham served in the Ohio General Assembly (1845-1847) where he agitated for war with Mexico, opposed the Wilmot Proviso (excluding slavery from the territories), and resisted efforts to repeal Ohio’s “Black Laws,” which suppressed the rights of citizens of African descent. In 1856, voters of Ohio’s 3rd District elected Vallandigham to represent them in Congress. Serving from May 25, 1858, to March 3, 1863, he was an ardent supporter of states’ rights and a relentless opponent of abolitionists. After the Civil War began, Vallandigham consistently voted against measures to fund the Union war effort, and he condemned what he considered President Lincoln’s abuses of power.
When Vallandigham’s last term in Congress ended, he returned to his home in Dayton, Ohio, where he continued to serve as the preeminent spokesperson for the Peace Democrats. On May 1, 1863, he delivered an inflammatory speech at Mt. Vernon, Ohio, denouncing the war and “King Lincoln.” Four days later, Major General Ambrose Burnside, commander of the Department of the Ohio, ordered Vallandigham’s arrest. During the predawn hours of May 5, 1863, Union soldiers raided Vallandigham’s home and spirited him overnight by train to Burnside’s Cincinnati headquarters. There, Burnside imprisoned the former congressman and charged him with expressing public opposition to the war in violation of Burnside’s General Orders, No. 38 (Department of the Ohio).
On May 6, 1863, Burnside brought Vallandigham before a military tribunal, even though the Copperhead leader was not a member of the military. On May 16, the tribunal found Vallandigham guilty as charged and sentenced him to prison at Fort Warren in Boston Harbor for the rest of the war.
Vallandigham’s arrest, trial, conviction, and sentence spawned a firestorm of criticism and protest in the North. The day after the arrest, a mob ransacked and torched the offices of Dayton’s Republican newspaper, the Dayton Journal. Three days of protests and riots forced Burnside to declare martial law in the area to restore order.
Following the trial, Democratic newspapers denounced Burnside and Lincoln as military despots intent on trampling the Constitutional rights of free speech, peaceful assembly, and trial by jury. Even Republican newspapers such as the New York Daily Tribune and the New York Evening Post challenged the legality of the proceedings.
Rather than let Vallandigham become a martyr to those clamoring for peace, President Lincoln yielded to the pressure. Following a cabinet meeting on May 19, 1863, the president shrewdly announced that he would banish Vallandigham to the Confederacy. On May 26, federal soldiers escorted the Copperhead leader to Tennessee and sent him beyond Union lines.
Vallandigham’s deportation amplified the outrage of Democrats, especially in Ohio. On June 11, 1863, Democrats overwhelmingly nominated the exiled Copperhead for the office of Governor of Ohio. Vallandigham did not remain in the South for long. By mid-summer, he traveled to Windsor, Ontario, where he conducted his campaign for governor in absentia.
By the time voters went to the polls on October 13, 1863, Union forces were riding the crest of decisive July victories at Gettysburg and Vicksburg. The turn of battlefield fortunes removed much of the wind from the sails of Peace Democrats. Consequently, Republican candidate John A. Brough (pronounced Bruff) swamped Vallandigham at the ballot box.
Afterward, Vallandigham returned to the United States under heavy disguise. The outcast attended the Ohio Democratic Convention in June 1864, where delegates elected him to attend the party’s national convention. When Vallandigham addressed the 1864 Democratic National Convention in Chicago in August, he received a mixed reception. Still, his views on the war were persuasive enough to secure a peace plank in the Democratic platform, much to the chagrin of the party’s presidential candidate George B. McClellan. Blackened by the brushstroke of Vallandigham’s disloyalty, McClellan’s candidacy went down in flames as President Lincoln cruised to reelection in November.
Rise of the Copperheads
The Copperheads were not the predominant faction of the Democratic Party when the Civil War began. Their influence increased throughout the conflict due, in part, to the following events:
April 27, 1861: President Lincoln exercised his constitutional powers to suspend the writ of habeas corpus. In the case of Ex parte Merryman, Chief Justice Roger Taney, exercising his authority to hear habeas matters, ruled that Lincoln had no constitutional powers to suspend the writ of habeas corpus. Taney’s ruling did not change the president’s decision. Over the course of the next two years, the Lincoln administration and the Army imprisoned nearly 18,000 American citizens without bringing charges against them.
July 21, 1861: Confederate troops embarrassed the Union forces at the First Battle of Bull Run, inflicting nearly 3,000 casualties on the ill-prepared and overly confident Yankees.
April 16, 1862: President Lincoln signed an act abolishing slavery in the District of Columbia.
July 17, 1862: Congress passed the Militia Act empowering President Lincoln to order state governors to draft citizens into state militias to meet federal manpower quotas.
August 28–30, 1862: Confederate General Robert E. Lee‘s Army of Northern Virginia routed Major General John Pope‘s Army of Virginia at the Second Battle of Bull Run, costing the Union over 14,000 soldiers and paving the way for Lee to invade the North.
September 17, 1862: Major General George B. McClellan’s Army of the Potomac fought to a draw with the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia at the Battle of Antietam forcing Robert E. Lee to end his first invasion of the North, but the Yankees lost another 12,400 soldiers during the bloodiest single day of fighting in the Civil War.
December 11–15, 1862: The Army of Northern Virginia repulsed Major General Ambrose Burnside’s attempt to cross the Rappahannock River at the Battle of Fredericksburg, inflicting over 12,500 casualties on the Yankees, including 1,284 dead.
January 1, 1863: Lincoln used his war powers to issue an executive order abolishing slavery in the states at war with the Union. The Emancipation Proclamation galvanized and reinvigorated Lincoln’s abolitionist supporters, transforming the war from an effort to preserve the Union to a higher moral cause. However, it also soured the outlook of some willing to support a war to save the Union, but not to free Southern slaves.
March 3, 1863: President Lincoln signed the Enrollment Act which established procedures for implementing federally mandated drafts in Congressional districts that did not meet prescribed quotas for volunteer enlistments during the Civil War. By summer, draft riots broke out in New York City, Boston, Portsmouth (New Hampshire), Rutland (Vermont), Troy (New York), and Wooster (Ohio).
April 30–May 6, 1863: During the prolonged Battle of Chancellorsville, Virginia, Robert E. Lee out-generaled Union Major General Joseph Hooker, inflicting over 17,000 casualties on the Army of the Potomac, including 1,606 dead.
May 4–June 24, 1864: Union forces suffered an unimaginable number of over 54,926 casualties, including 7,621 dead, during Lieutenant General Ulysses S. Grant‘s Overland Campaign.
July 30, 1864: Union blunders led to the loss of nearly 3,800 soldiers in just a few hours during the Battle of the Crater outside of Petersburg, Virginia.
July 11–12, 1864: Lieutenant General Jubal Early‘s Army of the Valley nearly penetrated Union defenses around Washington, D.C., coming within a whisker of occupying the nation’s capital.
Gradually, losses of personal freedom, and the specter of forced military service, coupled with continually growing casualty totals with no end in sight, created a war-weariness in the North that heightened the influence of the Copperheads, especially within the ranks of the Democratic Party.
When the party held its national convention from August 29–31, 1864, in Chicago, Illinois, Peace Democrats held enough sway to force a plank into the party platform calling for the immediate end of the war.
Resolved, That this convention does explicitly declare, as the sense of the American people, that after four years of failure to restore the Union by the experiment of war, during which, under the pretense of a military necessity of war-power higher than the Constitution, the Constitution itself has been disregarded in every part, and public liberty and private right alike trodden down, and the material prosperity of the country essentially impaired, justice, humanity, liberty, and the public welfare demand that immediate efforts be made for a cessation of hostilities, with a view of an ultimate convention of the States, or other peaceable means, to the end that, at the earliest practicable moment, peace may be restored on the basis of the Federal Union of the States.
Despite the peace plank, however, when the time came to select the party’s candidate for president, the War Democrats prevailed. George B. McClellan, former commander of the Army of the Potomac, received the nomination. McClellan was a harsh critic of Lincoln, but he strongly supported the war. Because McClellan never embraced the peace plank, his nomination created an unusual dynamic that hampered the Democrats’ chances of unseating Lincoln.
Demise of the Copperheads
Despite the Democrats’ mixed message, President Lincoln’s prospects for re-election were bleak as the war wore on and body counts mounted in 1864. His fortunes changed dramatically, however, before the November election because of three battlefield reversals:
Despite heavy casualties during the Overland Campaign, Ulysses S. Grant’s strategy of relentlessly pursuing Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia began to pay dividends. By late June, Grant had Lee’s depleted army bottled up at Petersburg, Virginia. The vaunted Army of Northern Virginia would never again be an offensive threat.
On September 1, 1864, John Bell Hood‘s Confederate forces abandoned Atlanta. Major General William T. Sherman‘s Union forces occupied the city the next day, driving a wedge into the heart of the Confederacy.
One month later, Major General Philip Sheridan‘s Army of the Shenandoah drove Jubal Early’s Confederate forces out of the Shenandoah Valley, putting an end to threats of Confederate raids in the North and depriving Lee’s forces at Petersburg of vital food supplies.
The collective effect of these Union successes created renewed hope in the North that the war might soon end. Voters who may have lost enthusiasm for the war or who had lost confidence in Lincoln remained in or returned to the Republican camp. When the results of the November election were tabulated, Lincoln, like Lazarus, arose from the dead and swamped McClellan at the ballot box and in the Electoral College. Following Lincoln’s victory, the Copperheads slipped into obscurity.
Legacy of the Copperheads
Among contemporary students of history, Peace Democrats and Copperheads remain a polarizing group. During the Civil War, Republicans painted them as Southern sympathizers. While some Copperheads undoubtedly supported the Rebel cause, most were probably honorable Americans who opposed the conflict for bona fide reasons. Some were pacifists, others firmly believed in states’ rights, some believed the South had the right to go its own way, and still others believed that President Lincoln and the federal government trampled the Constitution and personal freedoms to ensure victory. After Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation recast the Civil War as a conflict to end slavery in the minds of many, new followers, who previously supported the war, also joined the ranks of the Peace Democrats.
Following the Civil War and President Lincoln’s assassination, Radical Republicans, bent on revenge, cast the Copperheads as traitors. Since then, some historians have depicted them as loyal Americans who opposed the war, others have described them as unwitting abettors, and still others view them as active conspirators against the Union. Each of these portrayals may be accurate. Because they comprised such a diverse group, their legacy will likely forever remain cloudy.
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Post by the Scribe on Mar 15, 2024 0:29:39 GMT
Yankees and Rebels, Blue and Gray
“Yankee” and “Rebel” are nicknames that the Northerners and Southerners
gave each other shortly after the start of the Civil War. The Northerners were
called “Yankees” and the Southerners, “Rebels.” Sometimes these nicknames were
shortened even further to “Yanks” and “Rebs.”
At the beginning of the war, each soldier wore whatever uniform he had
from his state’s militia, so soldiers were wearing uniforms that didn’t match.
For example, some uniforms were blue or gray, while others were black or
red. As the war dragged on, that changed. The soldiers of the Union Army
wore blue uniforms and the soldiers of the Confederate Army wore gray.
Today, that’s how many people remember the two sides—the North wore
blue, and the South wore gray.
54th Massachusetts Regiment
When the Civil War began, there was no thought given to enlisting free
African Americans. However, after a string of Union losses in 1862, Congress
passed a law allowing African Americans—freemen and escaped slaves—to
become soldiers in the Union army. By war’s end, 186,000 African Americans had
served in 150 all-black regiments and 30,000 more African Americans had seen
service in the navy.
The first African-American regiment was led by Thomas
Wentworth Higginson. All told, about 13 percent of the Union army was composed of men of color. This number does not count the African-American men
and women who served as cooks, laborers, and carpenters for the army. Some
37,000 African-American soldiers died for the Union during the war. Twenty
African-American soldiers were awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor, and
between 75 and 100 were commissioned as officers.
One of the most notable of the African-American regiments was the 54th
Massachusetts under Colonel Robert Gould Shaw, a white officer. White officers
commanded units of African-American soldiers. The 54th led the assault on Fort
Wagner at Charleston, South Carolina in 1863. According to one account,
Advancing through the cover of darkness along a narrow strip of beach,
they [the 54th] were raked by ferocious rifle and cannon fire from the
fort. They pressed on and scaled the parapets in desperate hand-to-hand
fighting. White regiments arrived to bolster the Union force, but the men
were too few and the enemy fire too fierce.
The assault failed, and 300 soldiers of the 54th died in the attack. Four soldiers were awarded medals for their bravery, including the first Congressional Medal of Honor awarded to an African American.
www.coreknowledge.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/CKHG-G5-U11-about-johnny-reb-and-billy-yank.pdf
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Post by the Scribe on Mar 15, 2024 0:36:06 GMT
Hand-colored wood cut shows Union Maj. Gen. Ambrose Burnside and his Rhode Island troops entering Knoxville in 1863. The scene reinforces the argument that Union armies would be welcomed as deliverers by Southerners coerced into secession. (North Wind Picture Archives/Alamy Stock Photo)
NORTHERNERS FOUGHT CIVIL WAR NOT TO DEFEAT SLAVERY, BUT THE ‘SLAVE POWER’
www.historynet.com/northerners-saw-civil-war-as-a-crusade-to-deliver-deluded-southern-masses/
Yankees argued that the 'Slave Power' had duped and even terrorized regular people into supporting secession
By NANCY TAPPAN6/11/2019
[DIVIDER_FLAT]YANKEES ARGUED THAT RICH SOUTHERNERS DUPED AND EVEN TERRORIZED REGULAR PEOPLE INTO SUPPORTING SECESSION
[divider_flat]In Armies of Deliverance: A New History of the Civil War (Oxford, 2019, $34.95), Elizabeth R. Varon offers a new interpretation of Northern Civil War rhetoric. While the standard narrative emphasizes the Union’s turn to “hard war” against the Confederate populace and infrastructure, Varon, Langbourne M. Williams professor of American history at the University of Virginia, argues that Northerners saw the war as a crusade to deliver the “deluded Southern masses” from domination by a minority elite of slaveholders indifferent to their needs. The rhetoric of deliverance, central to African-Americans’ campaign for freedom and civil rights, extended the benefits of emancipation to whites who would enjoy new opportunities for education, prosperity, and a voice in political affairs if the slaveholding elite were removed from power.
What did deliverance mean to Northerners who talked about it? Historians have this longstanding debate about Northerners’ motivations for fighting the Civil War: whether it was fought for restoration of the Union or abolition of slavery and whether the primary motivation shifted from one to the other over time. In fact, there was a broad spectrum of beliefs among Northerners about war aims. On one end of the spectrum there were radical abolitionists who envisioned an interracial society and on the other there were conservatives who were hostile to abolition but believed the Union should be restored. I was curious about what enabled those people to find common ground and form a coalition to defeat disunionism. I found that the theme of deliverance came up again and again in political rhetoric and arguments. Many Northerners imagined the Civil War as a battle waged to deliver the South from the clutches of the “Slave Power,” a conspiracy of elite slaveholders who held disproportionate sway over national politics and who had duped, bullied, and even terrorized non-slaveholding white Southerners into supporting the project of secession. Deliverance was an expression of an idealistic view of the Union, popular among Northerners at this time, that saw America as bound together by consent and affection, not force and coercion. Northerners felt that in order to win the war they had to do more than compel Confederates’ submission. They had to win Southerners over and restore their love of the Union.
This Northern cartoon shows Southern leaders riding hellbent off a secessionist cliff. (Library of Congress)
Who was the audience for deliverance rhetoric and how was it promoted? This “deluded masses” narrative was ubiquitous in the North. It was publicized in major periodicals such as Harper’s Weekly and Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper. It was in newspapers such as the moderate Republican New York Times and the Democratic New York Herald. You saw it in sermons and iconic speeches by Edward Everett and Abraham Lincoln. I was struck by how often the notion that the war’s purpose was to save Southerners from secession appeared in soldiers’ letters and diaries. Such rhetoric often cast Southern whites as errant brethren and prodigal sons who should return to the national family.
How did Southerners react to deliverance rhetoric?
From the very start, Southerners argued that Yankees were waging a ruthless, remorseless war of conquest and extermination. Southerners did this in part to discredit any Northern attempts to argue that Unionists were fighting in the best interests of the Southern people.
When the Union army occupied New Orleans, how did the deliverance narrative play out?
Confederates portrayed Union occupation commander Gen. Benjamin Butler as a “beast,” but Butler imagined himself a liberator of Southern victims of the Slave Power. He instituted policies aimed at winning Confederate hearts and minds, such as distributing rations to the poor and hiring unemployed workers to clean the streets. He wanted to disenthrall the masses from their subservience to the elite. Eventually, however, Butler and other occupying commanders came to see that their efforts to win Southerners over didn’t really work. The people who said they were loyal Unionists often acted in self-interest, not as a result of a true change of heart.
1864 engraving shows a Northern soldier reading the Emancipation Proclamation to a joyful black family. (Sarin Images/Granger)
Did white Northerners’ deliverance narrative apply to African Americans? African American abolitionists such as Frederick Douglass emphasized that black people played a crucial role in their own deliverance. Hundreds of thousands of slaves ran away to Union lines. About 200,000 African American men enlisted in the Union army and navy. Douglass and other black leaders argued that the war was not only about delivering slaves from bondage, it was more broadly about delivering the nation from the sins of slavery and persistent racial discrimination.
Wasn’t emancipation intended as a punishment for Southern whites?
In the standard narrative, Lincoln’s emancipation policy was driven by the decision to take off the kid gloves and take away Confederate assets, namely slaves. I’m making a different argument. To a surprising degree, Lincoln and his allies justify emancipation as something that will redeem the South, not just punish it. A great deal of Northern rhetoric is devoted to making the case that emancipation will benefit white Southerners by encouraging economic development, education, and democracy.
Explain how Grant’s magnanimous surrender terms to Lee at Appomattox reflected the deliverance sentiment.
Building on Lincoln’s own generous amnesty policy, Grant wanted to speed reunion and change Southern hearts and minds. What we find, of course, is that Grant is disappointed. He soon sees the writing on the wall that ex-Confederates are still defiant, and that they’re not going to repudiate their leaders and accept peace on the North’s terms.
Andrew Johnson employed deliverance rhetoric in laying out his framework for a lenient Reconstruction.
In Johnson’s interpretation of Lincoln’s legacy, the Confederate states had never left the Union and should be swiftly restored in a spirit of forgiveness. Johnson argued that the deluded masses of white Southerners who had been the victims of the Slave Power were being victimized, after the war, by the Radical Republicans. Johnson revived the zero-sum game thinking that wartime defenders of emancipation had rejected. He claimed that if Radical Republicans extended citizenship to black, then whites would suffer and their rights would be diminished.
Conversely, the Radical Republicans used the deliverance framework to argue that the defeated states had to throw off the stain of secession.
Radical Republicans cast emancipation as something that would hurt some Southern whites in the short term but be beneficial in the long term: there would be some pain involved in the transition from slavery to freedom but the ultimate goal was redemption and healing. Republicans tried to reach out to the white Southern masses. For example, through the Freedmen’s Bureau the Republican Congress extended humanitarian relief to white Southerners, ex-Confederates included. But deliverance arguments were more difficult to make after Johnson’s appeasement of the old rebel elite restored their power in the South.
You undertook the daunting task of writing a Civil War history in one volume. Who is the audience for this book?
This book is aimed at general readers who want an accessible narrative that draws on the best modern scholarship, interweaves battle front and home front stories, and unfolds chronologically, capturing the human drama and uncertainty of the war. |
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Post by the Scribe on Mar 28, 2024 2:50:42 GMT
 This was one of my favorite episodes of The Twilight Zone. The final scene was so surreal and poignant. I grew up in a town where authentic Civil War relics were sold like candy but it wasn't until I saw this episode on television that my interest in the war began.
The Twilight Zone Episode 69: The Passersby
midnitereviews.com/2017/07/the-twilight-zone-episode-69-the-passersby/
General Information
Director: Elliot Silverstein
Writer: Rod Serling
Cast: James Gregory, Joanne Linville, Rex Holman, David Garcia, Warren Kemmerling, and Austin Green
Composer: Fred Steiner
Air Date: 10/6/1961
Production Code: 4817
Overview
Following the death of Abraham Lincoln (Austin Green), a traveling Confederate Sergeant (James Gregory) takes a rest in the front yard of Lavinia Goodwin (Joanne Linville)—a woman whose husband, Jud Goodwin (Warren Kemmerling), had supposedly been killed in the Battle of Yellow Tavern. Unable to forgive the men responsible for Jud’s death, Lavinia intends to murder the next Union solider who passes by her property—against the wishes of the Sergeant, whose life was saved by a Lieutenant (David Garcia) in the Union Army.
A ghost tale, “The Passersby” employs a variety of horror clichés in conjunction with a Civil War theme. History buffs and Rod Serling enthusiasts will therefore appreciate this episode, which offers a sobering outlook on the aftermath of the bloodiest, most terrible conflict ever to occur on American soil.
As both Union and Confederate soldiers march along the path to who-knows-where, certain tropes (e.g. a thick blanket of fog enveloping dead trees, overgrownthe-twilight-zone-the-passersby foliage, and shadowy figures approaching from afar) accentuate the ominous picture of death, decay, and post-war trauma that Serling attempts to paint in this episode.
Late one evening, the Lieutenant (at first appearing only as a silhouette with no discernible features) decides to park his horse in front of Lavinia’s home and ask for water—a spectacle that, when complemented by the haunting music of composer Fred Steiner, works to build and maintain a layer of suspense prior to the climactic scene.
Though bittersweet, the twist ending is revealed through an inordinate amount of exposition.
Analysis
the-twilight-zone-the-passersbyFor containing a realistic portrayal of the grief, bitterness, and personal devastation resulting from the casualties of war, “The Passersby” should be commended. Especially worth noting is the lens of neutrality adopted by Serling, who, by refusing to comment on the politics of the Civil War, demonstrates the futility of allowing hatred toward individuals (represented here as soldiers fighting for a cause greater than themselves) to poison one’s perspective on life.
Concluding Comments
“The Passersby” is a poignant, atmospheric episode of The Twilight Zone. By explaining the obvious, however, the conclusion to this offering—an otherwise remarkable story of forgiveness—may evoke criticism from viewers of an astute nature.
midnitereviews.com/2017/07/the-twilight-zone-episode-69-the-passersby/
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