My Civil War courses are in the middle of reading two essays about the 1850s and secession by James McPherson and Charles Dew. It is interesting that every year I end up having to spend the most time on two specific issues at the beginning of the semester. Even if my students claim not to have spent considerable time studying the Civil War they arrive in my class believing certain things.
The first is that the states in the Deep South seceded over the issue of states rights. Perhaps that should come as no surprise given the pervasiveness of the Lost Cause, but it is hard to pinpoint where they would have picked this up apart from a previous class on American history. Why does that particular belief stick? The tough part is asking students to distinguish between the act of secession and the reasons for it. Secession was never an end in itself; rather, it was always a means to an end. Throughout the 1850s white southerners worked tirelessly to maintain control of the federal government as a means to protect the institution of slavery. They flexed its power during the Compromise of 1850 and its inclusion of a strong Fugitive Slave Act, the debate surrounding the Kansas-Nebraska Act, and the Dred Scott decision. Southerners clearly believed that the protection of slavery was best done by working within the confines of the federal government. Students are surprised to learn that it was northerners who pushed the states rights argument in response to the Fugitive Slave Act in the form of Liberty Laws. Sure, we could focus on the “Fire-eaters”, but that would ignore the fact that southerners voiced their preference to protect slavery by working within the federal government through their elected officials. It was not until Abraham Lincoln was elected in 1860 that the states in the Deep South took the necessary steps to secede as the only alternative given their perception of Lincoln and the Republican Party as constituting an immediate threat to slavery. As my students now understand, this is exactly what Alexander Stephens and Jefferson Davis claimed they were doing in speeches about the purpose of the new Confederate government.
The other issue which we’ve briefly touched on, but will explore in much more detail in the coming weeks, is the reasons why men on both sides went to war. To the extent that we’ve discussed it students have a much easier time understanding why white southerners joined Confederate ranks early on before the draft. The threat of invasion and defense of home come easily to mind as well the defense of a new government. Understanding the place of slavery, of course, is much more difficult for them given that most soldiers were not slave owners. They’ve been taught that a non-slaveowner had no interest in maintaining a slave society. I may add a chapter from Joseph Glatthaar’s recent study of the Army of Northern Virginia on just this topic. On the other hand my students have a real difficulty identifying with northern volunteers. The emphasis on the preservation of the Union or fighting to maintain the integrity of the nation seems foreign and even a bit naive to some. I honestly do not know how to explain this. Perhaps it’s a general mistrust of nationalism and government that can be traced to the Vietnam era. Our policies in Iraq over the past eight years clearly have not helped to promote confidence in government and pride in country.
Finally, (and I don’t mean to get all political on you) I can’t help but wonder if the rhetoric on the far right is not reinforcing this general mistrust and lack of confidence in the federal government, specifically among younger Americans. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t mind a vigorous critique of federal policies and skepticism since it functions as an important check on the power of government, but much of what I am hearing smacks of fear mongering and outright hatred. Who in their right mind would be willing to make the ultimate sacrifice or identify with nation and flag if even ten percent of Glen Beck’s characterization of our government is accurate? Even without knowing how much time they spend pondering such things I can’t help but think that it has contributed to a growing difficulty in the individual’s ability to identify with abstractions such as “Union” and “Nation.”
The pervasiveness of our misunderstanding of secession as well as the difficulty of many to appreciate the appeal of “Union” and “Nation” throughout the United States in 1861 is a challenge that any good history teacher welcomes. It’s in these moments in the classroom that we come to understand our common bonds as well as the distance between ourselves and past generations.