The American Civil War Read online

  Dixie—the region of the continental United States lying south of the Mason-Dixon line—was becoming a distinct entity before 1860. It had not so been historically. Indeed, even under the Confederacy Dixie was never “the Solid South.” Its territory and economy were too varied, its people too diverse, to form a cohesive unity. Moreover, “Southernness” drifted, as it does today. It overlapped the Mason-Dixon line to run into southern Illinois and parts of New Jersey, so that Princeton was regarded as a Southern university. Although the majority of Southerners in 1860 were of old English stock, or Scotch-Irish, as Americans denominate settlers from Ulster, there were important elements of the population which came from other directions. The citizens of Charleston and Savannah originated in many cases in Barbados, while the ancestors of those of New Orleans had in many cases made their way down the Mississippi from New France in Canada, staging via such other Frenchified cities as St. Louis, Missouri, and Louisville, Kentucky. Nor was the South solid in terms of how it made its wealth. The South was wealthy. The individual value of its free inhabitants was calculated to be twice that of their equivalents in the North. Not all their money, however, had come from cotton. Cotton was a picky crop. It did well only on certain soils and under particular climatic conditions. Thus it flourished in the “black belt,” so called after the colour of the soil, in the Lower South, in the Sea Islands off the coast of Georgia and the Carolinas, and certain strains had adapted well to the wetter parts of Texas. It was scarcely grown in Virginia, where the staple remained tobacco. In the Mississippi delta the predominant crop was sugar; in the Carolinas and Georgia low country, rice.

  Slave population and slave ownership correlated with the pattern of staple production. The densest areas of slave population were in South Carolina and along the Mississippi River, in Alabama and Mississippi, and in north-central Virginia; slaves formed the majority of the population in South Carolina, and not only there. They formed almost half the population of the whole South, more in the Old South. Slave ownership was a minority occupation, but those owning twenty or more slaves formed the Southern ruling class, dominating both its economy and its politics. In the Confederacy’s first Congress 40 percent of members belonged to the more-than-twenty-slaves ownership group. Very few owned none at all. Slave ownership was the measure of all that was important in the antebellum South: not only wealth—twenty healthy slaves would fetch $20,000—but social position, local authority, and domestic ease and comfort. Financial surplus in the pre-war South almost always went into buying more slaves or more land, which then required more slaves to work. Very big landowners might own a hundred slaves or more. The big holdings were organised as plantations, with a colony of slave cabins near the big house, usually built in neoclassical style with a pillared portico, stables, and nearby accommodation for a slave overseer. A vision, crystallised in the enormously successful novel Gone with the Wind and the Hollywood film made from it, was transmitted, a vision of big plantation life which captured the American and European imagination; a vision of untitled aristocracy, leisured living, peremptory squires, high-spirited, commanding women, waited upon by privileged house slaves, with the liberty conferred by long association with the family to speak their minds to their grown-up former infant charges, living conducted in the context of ample meals, frequent social entertainments, and unworried prosperity. The Gone with the Wind world existed in few places; but exist it certainly did, and it set a model to which lesser planters aspired and, below them, the prosperous farmers also. The wealth of the South was increasing during the 1850s, if only because the price of slaves was rising. The market price of cotton had doubled since 1845 and big producers earned huge profits, as much as 20 percent on their capital, and spent much of it on the luxuries of plantation life, European fashions, fine horseflesh, and French wine. Many big planters did not live on the land at all but left overseers in charge and spent their days in state capitals or country seats, particularly at places like Charleston, South Carolina; Natchez, Mississippi; or the new Garden District of New Orleans.

  Southern towns, or “cities” in American parlance, were, however, all small by comparison with their Northern counterparts. New Orleans was four times larger than any other. Montgomery, Alabama, the Confederacy’s first capital, was the fastest growing but had only 36,000 people at secession, at a time when Chicago had grown to 109,000 in twenty years and both St. Louis and Cincinnati exceeded 160,000. The population of Richmond and Petersburg combined amounted to only 56,000 at secession, and there were no big towns at all between the lower Mississippi and the Atlantic coast; Charleston actually lost population in the years before the Civil War. The South made a virtue of its rurality, emphasising the pastoral nature of founding-father America, but it was in truth an index of the South’s loss of competitiveness with the North and of relative decline. Industrially it could not compare. At the time of independence half the population of the United States lived south of the Mason-Dixon line. By 1860 half of the population lived west of the Appalachians, the majority in the Mississippi Valley.

  The South’s ability to compete economically with the North was limited by educational backwardness. Twenty percent of its white population was illiterate while 95 percent of New Englanders could read and write, and one-third of Southern children went to school against three-quarters in New England and nearly as many in the Atlantic states and the Midwest.

  Illiteracy keeps people poor, and Southerners were poor. Half the population of the United States in 1860 owned only one percent of the national wealth, but Northerners with the initiative to take a risk could and did increase their wealth by migrating from farm to city. Cotton was not the dominant crop of the South, but corn, ground to make coarse flour for corn bread or grits, i.e., porridge, or fed to pigs. The staple diet of the South, outside the big plantation houses, was corn bread, grits, and pork. The same food was eaten in the slave quarters, though more corn and less pork.

  Plantation life formed most Americans’ picture of slavery. It was on the plantation that slaves were found in the largest concentrations and that the distinctive features of slave existence, repressive and enchanting alike, were to be observed. That there were enchanting features all but the bitterest opponents of the slave system conceded. Masters and mistresses commonly, out of self-interest, but also out of humanity and affection, cared for their slaves’ welfare, even happiness, arranging holidays and festivals, giving treats and presents, and celebrating notable events, births, and marriages (though legal marriage between slaves was not recognised in the slave states, nor could it be, since a planter’s solvency ultimately depended on his freedom to liquefy capital by selling his slaves in the market). Good times always alternated, even on the most benevolently run plantations, with harsh; slaves were regularly whipped for misbehaviour or laziness, by master, overseer, or even mistress. The plantation was an intrinsically repressive society. Even the good master so often identified by slaves and ex-slaves presided at the apex of a disciplinary system, in which the overseer, if one was employed, as was generally the case, gave orders, to be imposed if necessary by force, through a layer of foremen, or “drivers,” who reported faults. Overseers were often the sons of planters, learning the business or working to accumulate the purchase price of land or slaves for themselves. There was also a class of professional overseers, earning to support themselves but perhaps also with the hope of accumulating capital; these were typically an insecure group who were frequently dismissed, either for inefficiency or because change of personnel was thought desirable to keep field hands sweet.

  Self-interest prompted slave owners to see to the welfare of their slaves, and most were well-fed. They were not, however, well-housed, the one-room slave cabin being cold in winter and malodorous in summer and infested with parasites and germs at all times. Disease was endemic in the slave quarters; very few slaves lived beyond the age of sixty. The real threat to their well-being, however, was not disease but social instability. There was no legal redress, becaus
e American law did not recognise marriage between slaves, even though it was recognised by the slaves themselves and by some masters. Under benevolent masters, weddings would be formally celebrated, performed by a preacher, black or white, though in an edited form, since the parties could not or would not swear fidelity “till death do us part.” Many slave families’ circumstances were lifelong. But not even the best masters could guarantee that financial circumstances would not force slave sales at times of stringency. Prudently, therefore, sometimes slaves swore “till death or distance do us part.” Equally, some masters did not permit religious formalities for that reason but presided at what were called broomstick weddings, where groom and bride signalled their commitment by jumping together over a broomstick.

  Some slave owners encouraged black “marriage” because it made for contentment and stability on the plantations and formed black community. They supported it, by helping the slaves to build their living quarters, the “cabins” of plantation literature, and by allotting acreage for the slave gardens, chicken runs, and pigsties. On a prosperous and properly run plantation, the slaves could live quite well: the master distributed rations at set times of the week, flour, pork, and cornmeal; the slave added potatoes, peas, and turnips which he grew himself. If the master allowed the slaves to hunt, as was the usual case, he also added possum, raccoon, rabbit, and squirrel.

  The plantation day was a harsh one, working time typically running to twelve hours, though the slaves themselves reckoned more like fifteen. Work normally stopped at dusk. Sunday was a day of rest as, quite often, was Saturday afternoon. At harvesttime, the day would lengthen, though so too would work breaks. Different crops had different timetables. The sugar plantations of southern Louisiana imposed long days during the sugar harvest. Corn shucking, a regular feature of work on most plantations, required intense and prolonged labour but was enjoyed by the slaves because it was dedicated to providing their diet and could be lightened by games and competitions. Almost everywhere, however, on good plantations and bad, under kind and harsh masters, work progressed by the regular application of the whip, twenty, sometimes thirty-nine lashes, inflicted by the overseer or driver, sometimes by the master himself or, in the house, the mistress. The whip was part of slave life. Its use was regulated by public opinion. Cruel masters suffered the disapproval of their neighbours; nevertheless, whipping went on. Some masters prided themselves on never whipping, but they were a minority. Some slaves, notably privileged house slaves, were never whipped, but they were a minority also. An overseer on one plantation, who took the whip to a mammy—the senior house slave, usually a former nurse to the mistress, who traditionally enjoyed the status of a constitutional monarch, to be consulted in all matters of family importance, to advise and to warn—was discharged and sent from the plantation with his family that very day. But his offence was unusual, as was the penalty.

  This daily routine required the slaves to fit personal pursuits into the timetable of the fields, a requirement which fell heavily on the slave wife, since cooking had to be done at the end of a day’s hard work. Masters might frequently report finding their contented field hands chatting or singing around the cabin fireplace as the night fell, but there was little free time in the slaves’ working week. The slaves could, however, usually count on the free Sunday, since the South was God-fearing and churchgoing and the Sabbath had to be respected. By the nineteenth century, moreover, America’s black population was universally Christian. Elements of African religion remained, particularly strongly in the Gullah regions of the Georgia coast, and black Christianity had incorporated African features, including dancing during church singing and the loud affirmatory cries of worshippers uttered during sermons. The two churches which slaves most often joined were the Baptist and the Methodist, probably because of their informality of organisation and the inspirational nature of their services. Until the end of the eighteenth century, however, white churches did not welcome black membership. Black Christianity was correctly suspected by whites who were involved in any way in the slave system as being subversive of the slave order by its message of equality between all human beings and its celebration of poverty and powerlessness. During the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, devoted white Christians found that part of Christian teaching difficult to reconcile with the picture of slavery, so that both Baptists and Methodists began in America as anti-slavery organisations, as the Quakers would remain throughout. Progressively, however, the churches, particularly those with numerous slave-owning adherents, such as the Episcopalians and Presbyterians, began to justify slavery on doctrinal grounds. As a result, the Episcopal Church lost almost all its black members. Meanwhile slaves were finding their own way to reconcile their Christian beliefs with church organisation, and hence the rise of black churches, beginning with the appearance of black preachers. At first forbidden by law to practise, slaves, as well as freedmen, soon appeared as preachers in several churches, notably the Baptist and Methodist, though often they had to do so in the guise of “assistants” to white clergymen. The black liberation movement was later to condemn the black churches for the effect they had of reconciling blacks to their deprivations and of seeking consolation in prayer and Christian practice instead of seeking objective advance by political activity. At a time when political opportunities were not open to blacks, let alone slaves, religion offered the only opportunity for subjective solace, besides bringing undoubted richness and even happiness into the lives of the oppressed. Religion also brought objective advantages, since by a well-known process it opened avenues to literacy. In many states, laws were introduced from the seventeenth century onwards, with increasing severity during the nineteenth, particularly in the Lower South, against teaching slaves to read. Many slaves learnt nonetheless: perhaps as many as 5 percent of the slaves were literate by 1860, in the calculation of the famous black scholar W. E. B. Du Bois. Some were taught by masters and mistresses who had an aristocratic disdain for small-minded laws, some by white playmates, but many were taught by white Christians seeking to transmit the Bible’s message. Slave literacy nonetheless aroused alarm among slave owners and for a strictly practical reason. Slaves were only allowed off the plantation if equipped with a written pass, and the pass system was policed by the “patrols,” gangs of white slave owners or their minions, who literally patrolled the roads, stopping blacks to see their passes and beating slaves who could not produce the necessary card.

  The patrol regime was intermittent, since rich slave owners disliked the duty, generally leaving it to poor whites acting on their behalf or on their own account. Nevertheless, patrolling, if sometimes lax, never lapsed altogether, because it was animated by white fears of slave revolt, which all entertained, more or less regularly and with better or worse reason. Slave revolt was a reality, though more frequent and on a larger scale in the West Indies, Guiana, and Brazil than in America. There were slave revolts in New York in the seventeenth century, in Florida and Louisiana in the nineteenth, but most memorably in Virginia in 1831, when Nat Turner led an uprising that killed nearly a hundred whites. The Nat Turner revolt terrified the South and led to repercussion in many forms, practical and legislative. Fear of slave revolt underlay much of the support for secession. The emancipation campaign, simply a moral issue to Northern emancipationists, speaking, writing, and organising in states with small black populations, was a life-and-death issue in whites’ estimation in states where blacks coexisted with whites and often outnumbered them. Harping on the dangers of slave revolt of course undermined and invalidated the populist defence of slavery, that it suited blacks, that it was their natural condition, that it cared for their welfare and provided for their old age and so on, arguments endlessly rehearsed and as familiar to Southern whites as the celebration of America’s founding freedoms. However illogical, the slave revolt fear was taken seriously by Southerners and particularly by the spokesmen for “the peculiar institution.”

  The economics of slavery required the sale of i
ndividuals to supply labour needs elsewhere in the cotton kingdom, and slave sales inevitably broke up some slave families; perhaps as many as one in four sales entailed the separation of husband and wife, parents and children. Slaves sold away would rarely meet again, which made for functional orphanage and divorce. Masters of any decency normally sought to keep families together, because separation caused disabling heartbreak, but it occurred and it was sometimes deliberately done to discipline a fractious slave. It was this feature of slavery that principally drove the humanitarian motive behind abolitionism, particularly among evangelical Christians, since American blacks were often devout Baptists or Methodists. The tragedy of separation supplied Harriet Beecher Stowe with her most powerful theme in Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Tom wept for his children left behind in Kentucky when he was sold south and millions of Mrs. Stowe’s readers wept with him. When she was introduced to President Lincoln, he supposedly greeted her with the words “So, this is the little lady who wrote the big book that made this great war….” He was as near to the truth as it was possible to get.

  The early 1830s was a critical moment in the history of American slavery. It was the moment when the attack on slavery became a national movement, and one to be forbidden or silenced. Until 1831, or thereabouts, it was possible to shelter from the ongoing debate by adhering to the fashionable view that slavery would wither away, a view widely held as much within the South as the North. The grounds for so believing were manifold, but had much to do with the abolition of the slave trade by Congress and enforcement of its abolition by the British Parliament through the use of the Royal Navy. The suppression of the international trade in slaves was counterbalanced, however, by the meteoric rise of the international trade in cotton, which by 1840-50 had transformed the economy of the South and made many planters rich men. The rise of Southern fortunes encouraged Southern politicians and writers to find words in defence of slavery and Northern writers and politicians to articulate an intellectual attack on it. In 1831 William Lloyd Garrison founded his newspaper, The Liberator, which was to be the mouthpiece of the abolition movement. In 1837 Garrison joined the Tappan brothers of New York in founding the Anti-Slavery Society, which quickly attracted the support of churches, schools, and colleges, notably Oberlin College in Ohio. What lent substance to the anti-slavery movement, however, were the fugitive slave cases that occupied so much newspaper space in the decade before the Civil War broke out. In 1793, Congress had passed a fugitive slave law, giving owners the right to repossess, and to be assisted in repossessing, their runaway slaves, wherever found. In 1850 an even more rigorous Fugitive Slave Act was enacted by Congress, and its passage inaugurated a flurry of cases in which runaways who had found sanctuary in the North were pursued by owners, sometimes assisted by law officers, to be confronted by local anti-slavery activists, often acting with the support of a personal liberty law, passed by several states after 1850.