Today's Disunion column is "Women at War," the war being the American Civil War.
"Much has changed since then. A new generation of scholars has rediscovered the Civil War as a drama in which women, and gender tensions, figure prominently. Thanks to new research into diaries, letters, newspapers and state and local records, we now know that women were on the front lines of the literary and rhetorical war over slavery long before the shooting war began. They were integral to the slave resistance and flight that destabilized the border between North and South. And they were recruited by both secessionists and Unionists to join a partisan army, with each side claiming that the “ladies,” with their reputation for moral purity, had chosen it over its rivals. So what do women have to do with the origins of the war? The answer is: everything."The quality of this Disunion series that chronologically follows the lead-up to the Civil War is outstanding. The commentary's quality varies from equally outstanding, to insane.
The most consistently high quality commentary was in response to the column that quoted and discussed directly Jefferson Davis's and his confed's VP's speeches that proclaimed in detail how the confederacy was about slavery, first, last and always. The reason this column's commentary was so consistently high quality is that there were no neoConfeds jumping in to insist the war wasn't about slavery. It was impossible to argue with pres. Davis, I guess. There was one commentator though who did get in, "Why do you always have to drag in slavery when talking about the Civil War?"
3 comments:
Yes, Southern leaders at the time shouted from the rooftops that the Civil War was about slavery.
That is -- at the time. Later when then lost, they made up all kinds of excuses.
One of the most amazing examples is the Southern Ultimatums -- Five ultimatums, issued by Southern leaders, and reported in Southern newspapers, loudly and proudly.
All five Southern Ultimatums were about the same thing -- the SPREAD of slavery.
In fact, these Five Ultimatums specifically denied states had any rights whatever to decide slavery themselves!
Kansas, for example, had just voted 98% to 2% to keep slavery out forever. But the FIRST Southern Ultimatum was that Kansas had to "accept and respect slavery".
These Southern Ultimatums were insane. Not only did they demand the spread of slavery against the wishes of the new states and the people there--- they demanded that the US Congress push slavery there BY FORCE. And the Ultimatums told state legislators in Kansas what laws they must pass!
It's crazy.
Every US history book should have at least two documents on the cover. One -- the Gettysburg address. Two -- the Southern Ultimatums.
http://fivedemands.blogspot.com/
[ "Such sources are the most powerful argument for recognizing the centrality of women to the story of the war’s causes. For example, there is no more chilling account of how it felt to be a Southern Unionist in the midst of secession fever than that of Elizabeth Van Lew of Richmond, Va. Van Lew was a native-born white Southerner, but one who harbored a loathing for slavery and a belief that her state, as the mother of the Union, should represent moderation and compromise. As she watched a secessionist procession snake through the streets of Richmond in the wake of Virginia’s vote to join the Confederacy, she knew the time for compromise had passed. “Such a sight!” Van Lew wrote. “The multitude, the mob, the whooping, the tin-pan music, and the fierceness of a surging, swelling revolution. This I witnessed. I thought of France and as the procession passed, I fell upon my knees under the angry heavens, clasped my hands and prayed, ‘Father forgive them, for they know not what they do.’”
For Van Lew, secession was a kind of collective madness that had descended on the South." ]
To me as well, it long has seemed that so many centuries of slaveholding had driven these people insane.
Love, C.
O, and thank you so much for the links you provide on your blog to these Ultimatums in the Richmond Enquirer. I am certain this is the first I've learned of them. Not that they are surprises, exactly, but -- well, they just floor me.
Madness.
Love, C.
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