Seriously, It Was About Slavery

Title: Battle Cry Of Freedom

Rating: 5 Stars

Let’s get the easy part out of the way first. This is generally considered the best one volume history of the American Civil War. It’s one of the finest histories that I’ve read of any period. I believe that this is the fourth time that I’ve read it. Sure, it’s a bit long (clocking in at around 870 pages), but it covers not just the war but the decade or so leading up to it. It covers, among many other things, the Wilmot Proviso, the Kansas-Nebraska Act, the Compromise of 1850, the Lincoln Douglas debates, Bleeding Kansas, and John Brown. Not only is it complete, but the narrative form in which it is written makes for propulsive reading. Even though it’s based upon historical events that took place over 150 years ago, I found myself on the edge of my seat rooting on the boys in blue. I really can’t recommend this book enough.

Without exhaustively going into all of the ways that the book is wonderful, let me just concentrate on just a few of the interesting things that I read.

In writing about another book about this period of time, I entitled the post It’s The Slavery, Stupid (click here to read it). In the many decades since these events have taken place, many people have tried to muddy the waters of the roots of the war. In some cases this was even done for understandable reasons. After a horrendous war, somehow the country had to be stitched back together. If it took one side talking about states’ rights or bravely standing up to the tyranny of the North or things like that, so be it.

Well, it’s been long enough that we don’t have to do that anymore. A simple look at the speeches of the time put the lie to any high flown theoretical arguments. It was about slaves. Since the founding of the country, Southern politicians had dominated the federal government. After all, of the first dozen presidents, the only ones that did not own slaves had the last name of Adams.

As our nation expanded westward, it became clear that most of this additional territory was not conducive to using enslaved labor. At the same time, the population of the Northern states was greatly outstripping that of the South. Those two facts led Southern politicians to the inescapable conclusion that they would inevitably lose power in the House and in the Senate.

They addressed this by attempting to expand our country Southward where slave labor could still be used. There were fairly serious talks with Spain to acquire Cuba. There was talk of taking over Mexico and some people even attempted to take over governments in Central America.

None of it came to pass. When Lincoln was elected President, even though he specifically said that he did not plan to limit slavery where it was already in place (in fact, he believed that he could not due to constitutional issues), the fact that he was not willing to extend slavery was just too much for the Southern leadership to bear.

In the years leading up to the Civil War, everything that inflamed the Southern leadership was based on slavery. Alexander Stephen’s famous Cornerstone speech specifically called out slavery. The Confederate constitution was a near copy of the US constitution except for provisions preventing slavery from ever being curtailed.

Another interesting fact is how deluded the South was. They legitimately thought that one Confederate soldier could beat ten Union soldiers. They thought that England would immediately recognize them once the Confederacy withheld their precious cotton from their looms. They overlooked the massive population, manufacturing, and transportation advantages of the North. Even in the later years when it was clear that the Confederate army and economy would be destroyed, they were still thinking that they could somehow make some magic happen. As I read the book, I was continually being reminded of the Black Knight, the Monty Python character that still wanted to continue to fight even after his arms and legs were cut off.

As much as Robert E Lee is lionized in the South, it seems to me that he was the exact wrong general to lead the Confederacy. He was a military genius, but his personality was that of a gambler, always willing to bet it all on the next throw.

The Confederacy was such a large area that occupying it would have been insanely expensive if not impossible for the Northern states. Therefore, what was important to the Confederacy wasn’t to win some impressive military victory over the North but not to lose. For example, you can’t point to any victories of the Taliban over the United States, but after a 20 year war, guess who’s running Afghanistan?

However, Lee (and to be fair, most of the leaders of the South), playing not to lose was not in his personality. Both of his invasions of the North ended in Southern tragedy. His failed battle at Antietam resulted in Lincoln issuing the Emancipation Proclamation and his failed battle at Gettysburg took away any future initiatives. In my opinion, James Longstreet, with his defensive mindset, would have made a more effective strategist for the Confederacy.

Finally, it’s amazing how much the Southern leaders gambled and lost. In 1861, Lincoln had no plans to stop slavery in their states. By the end of the war, all of their slaves had been freed, their railroads destroyed, their land burned, and, if I recollect, some twenty-five percent of their fighting age male population was dead. Even their cotton was no longer king. During the four year period of the war when the South’s cotton exports dropped so propitiously, the English found other cotton sources in India and Egypt.

Before the war, the Southern states were some of the wealthiest states. Now, when I look at the latest list of the poorest states in the US, in the bottom fifteen I see (in order of largest poverty rate): Mississippi, Louisiana, Arkansas, Alabama, South Carolina, Tennessee, Georgia, Texas, and North Carolina. Nine of the fifteen poorest states all were part of the Confederacy. The only two Confederacy states that were not in the bottom fifteen were Virginia and Florida. Since the Civil War was 160 years ago, that strikes me as an amazing result.

Read Battle Cry of Freedom. Who knows but you might find yourself turning into a Civil War geek.