Lies My Teacher Told Me About Christopher Columbus: What Your History Books Got Wrong (28 page)

As the war continued, neither states' rights nor white supremacy proved adequate to the task of inspiring a new nation. As early as December 1862,

JOHN BROWN AND ABRAHAM LINCOLN

Pres. Jefferson Davis denounced states' rights as destructive to the Confederacy, The mountainous counties in western Virginia bolted to the Union. Confederate troops had to occupy east Tennessee to keep it from emulating West Virginia, Winn Parish, Louisiana, refused to secede from the Union. Winston County, Alabama, declared itself che Republic of Winston. Unionist farmers and woodsmen in Jones County, Mississippi, declared the Free State of Jones, Every Confederate state except South Carolina supplied a regiment or at least a company of white soldiers to the Union army, as well as many black recruits. Armed guerrilla actions plagued every Confederate state. (With the exception of Missouri, and the 1863 New York City draft riots, few Union states were afflicted with such problems.) It became dangerous for Confederates to travel in parts of Alabama, Florida, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Texas. The war was fought not just between North and South but between Unionists and Confederates within the Confederacy (and Missouri).50 By February 1864 President Davis despaired: “Public meetings of treasonable character, in the name of state sovereignty, are being held.” Thus stales' rights as an ideology was contradictory and could not mobilize the white South for the long haul.

The racial ideas of the Confederate states proved even less serviceable to the war effort. According to Confederate ideology, blacks liked slavery; nevertheless, to avert revolts and runaways, the Confederate states passed the “twenty nigger law,” exempting from military conscription one white man as overseer for every twenty slaves. Throughout the war Confederates withheld as much as a third of their fighting forces from the front lines and scattered them throughout areas with large slave populations to prevent slave uprisings.1 When the United States allowed African Americans to enlist, Confederates were forced by their ideology to assert that it would not work-blacks would hardly fight like white men. The undeniable bravery of the 54th Massachusetts and other black regiments disproved the idea of black inferiority. Then came the incongruity of truly beastly behavior by Southern whites toward captured black soldiers, such as the infamous Fort Pillow massacre by troops under Nathan Bedford Forrest, who crucified black prisoners on tent frames and then burned them alive, all in the name of preserving white civilization.

Contradiction piled upon contradiction. After the fall of Vicksburg, President Davis proposed to arm slaves to fight for the Confederacy, promising them freedom to win their cooperation. But ifservitude was the best condition for the slave, protested supporters of slavery, how could freedom be a reward? To win foreign recognition, other Confederate leaders proposed to abolish slavery altogether. Some newspaper editors concurred. “Although slavery is one of the principles that we started to fight for,“ said the Jackson Mississippian, if it mim be jettisoned to achieve our ”separate nationality, away with it!” A month before Appomattox, the Confederate Congress passed a measure to enroll black troops, showing how the war had elevated even slaveowners' estimations of black abilities and also revealing complete ideological disarray. What, after all, would the new black soldiers be fighting far? Slavery? Secession? What, for that matter,

would white Southern troops be fighting for, once blacks were also armed? As Howell Cobb of Georgia said, “If slaves will make good soldiers our whole theory of slavery is wrong.”

In part owing to these contradictions, some Confederate soldiers switched sides, beginning as early as 1862. When Sherman made his famous march to the sea from Atlanta to Savannah, his army actually grew in number, because thousands of white Southerners volunteered along the way. Meanwhile, almost two-thirds of the Confederate army opposing Sherman disappeared through desertion,54 Eighteen thousand slaves also joined Sherman, so many that the army had to turn some away. Compare these facts with the portrait common in our textbooks of Sherman's marauders looting their way through a united South!

The increasing ideological confusion in the Confederate states, coupled with the increasing ideological strength of the United States, helps explain the Union victory. “Even with all the hardships,” Carleton Deals has noted, “the South up to the very end still had great resources and manpower.” Many nations and people have continued to fight with far inferior means and weapons. Beals thinks that the Confederacy's ideological contradictions were its gravest liabilities, ultimately causing its defeat. He shows how the Confederate army was disbanding by the spring of 1865 in Texas and other states, even in the absence of Union approaches. On the home front too, as Jefferson Davis put it, “The zeal of the people is failing.”

Five textbooks tell how the issue of states' rights interfered with the Confederate cause,5 Only The American Adventure gives students a clue of any other ideological weakness of the Confederacy or strength of the Union. Adventure tells how slavery broke down when Union armies came near and that many poor whites in the South did not support the war because they felt they would be fighting for slaveowners. Ac/venterf also quotes original sources on the evolution of Union war aims and asks, “How would such attitudes affect the conduct and outcome of the war?” No other textbook mentions ideas or ideologies as a strength or weakness of either side. The Civil War was about something, after all. Textbooks should tell us what.

JOHN BROWN AND ABRAHAM LINCOLN

This silence has a history. Throughout this century textbooks have presented the Civil War as a struggle between “virtually identical peoples.” This is all part of the unspoken agreement, reached during the nadir of race relations in the United States (1890-1920), that whites in the South were as American as whites in the North.58 White Northerners and white Southerners reconciled on the backs of African Americans, while the abolitionists became the bad guys.

In the 1920s the Grand Army of the Republic, the organization of Union veterans, complained that American history textbooks presented the Civil War with “no suggestion” ihat the Union cause was right. Apparently the United Daughters of the Confederacy carried more weight with publishers,“ The UDC was even able to erect a statue to the Confederate dead in Wisconsin, claiming they ”died to repel unconstitutional invasion, to protect the rights reserved to the people, to perpetuate the sovereignty of the states"60 Not a word about slavery, or even disunion.

History textbooks still present Union and Confederate sympathizers as equally idealistic. The North fought to hold the Union together, while the Southern states fought, according to The American Way, “for the preservation of their rights and freedom to decide for themselves.” Nobody fought to preserve racial slavery; nobody fought to end it. As one result, unlike the Nazi swastika, which lies disgraced, even in the North whites still proudly display the Stars and Bars of the Confederacy on den walls, license plates, T-shirts, and high school logos. Even some (white) Northerners vaguely regret the defeat of the “lost cause.” It is as if racism against blacks could be remembered with nostalgia.61 In this sense, long after Appomattox, the Confederacy finally won.

Five days after Appomattox, President Lincoln was murdered. His martyrdom pushed Union ideology one step further. Even whites who had opposed emancipation now joined to call Lincoln the great emancipator.62 Under Republican leadership, the nation entered Reconstruction, a period of continuing ideological conflict.

At first Confederates tried to maintain prewar conditions through new laws, modeled after their slave codes and antebellum restrictions on free blacks. Mississippi was the first state to pass these draconian “Black Codes.” They did not work, however. The Civil War had changed American ideology. The new antiracism forged in its flames would dominate Northern thinking for a decade. The Chicago Tribune, the most important organ of the Republican party in the Midwest, responded angrily: “We tell the white men of Mississippi that the men of the North will convert the state of Mississippi into a frog pond before they will allow any such laws to disgrace one foot of soil in which the bones of our soldiers sleep and over which the flag of freedom waves.“65 Thus black civil rights again became the central issue in the congressional elections of 1866. ”Support Congress and You Support the Negro,“ said the Democrats in a campaign broadside featuring a disgusting caricature of an African American. ”Sustain the Presi dent and You Protect the White Man.“64 Northern voters did not buy it. They returned ”radical“ Republicans to Congress in a thunderous repudiation of Pres. Andrew Johnson's accommodation of the ex-Confederates. Even more than in 1864, when Republicans swept Congress in 1866 antiracism became the policy of the nation, agreed to by most of its voters. Over Johnson's veto, Congress and the slates passed the Fourteenth Amendment, making all persons citizens and guaranteeing them ”the equal protection of the laws.” The passage, on behalf of blacks, of this shining jewel of our Constitution shows how idealistic were the officeholders of the Republican Party, particularly when we consider that similar legislation on behalfofwomen cannot be passed today.

During Reconstruction a surprising variety of people went to the new civilian “front lines” and worked among the newly freed African Americans in the South. Many were black Northerners, including several graduates of Oberlin College, This passage from a letter by Edmonia Highgate, a white woman who went south to teach school, describes her life in Lafayette Parish, Louisiana.

The majority of my pupils come from plantations, three, four and even eight miles distant. So anxious are they to learn that they walk these distances so early in the morning as never to be tardy.

There has been much opposition to the School. Twice I have been shot at in my room. My night school scholars have been shot but none killed. A week ago an aged freedman just across the way was shot so badly as to break his arm and leg. The rebels here threatened to burn down the school and house in which I board yet they have not materially harmed us. The nearest military protection is 200 miles distant at New Orleans.

Some Union soldiers stayed in the South when they were demobilized. Some Northern Republican would-be politicians moved south to organize their parry in a region where it had not been a factor before the war. Some went hoping to win office by election or appointment. Many abolitionists continued their commitment by working in the Freedman's Bureau and priva[e organizations to help blacks obtain full civil and political rights. In terms ofparty affiliation, almost all of these persons were Republicans; otherwise, they were a JOHN BROWN AND ABRAHAM LINCOLN

The white woman at left, whom textbooks would call a “carpetbagger.” could hardlyj expect to grow rich teaching school hear Vicksbutg, where this illustration was done. | This woman risked her life to bring basic literacy to African American children and'j aduIts during Reconstruction.

diverse group. Still, all but one of the twelve textbooks routinely use the disgraceful old tag carpeibaggers, without noting its bias, lo describe Northern white] Republicans who lived in the South during Reconstruction.

Many whites who were born in the South supported Reconstruction.! Every Southern state boasted Unionists, some of whom had volunteered for ilic Union army. They now became Republicans. Some former Confederates,! including even Gen. James Longstreet, second in command under Lee at Gettys-. burg, became Republicans because they had grown convinced that equality for | blacks was morally right. Robert Flournoy, a Mississippi planter, had raised a company of Confederate soldiers but then resigned his commission and returned home because “there was a conflict in my conscience.” During the war he was once arrested for encouraging blacks to flee to Union lines. During Reconstruction he helped organize the Republican party, published a newspaper, EqudRights, and argued for desegregating the University ofMississippi and the new state's public school system.hs Republican policies, including free public education, never before available in the South to children of either race, convinced some poor whites to vote for the party Many former Whigs became Republicans rather than join their old nemesis, the Democrats. Some white Southerners became Republicans because they were convinced that black suf frage was an accomplished fact; they preferred winning political power with blacks on their side to losing. Others became Republicans to make connections or win contracts from the new Republican state governments. Of the 113 white Republican congressmen from the South during Reconstruction, 53 were Southerners, many of them from wealthy families.69 In sum, this is another diverse group, amounting to between one-fourth and one-third of the white population and in some counties a majority. Nevertheless all but one textbook still routinely apply the disgraceful old tag scalawags to Southern white Republicans,

Carpetbaggers and scalawags are terms coined by white Southern Democrats to defame their opponents as illegitimate. Reconstruction-era newspapers in Mississippi, at least, used Republicans far more often than aaperbaggffi or scdlawags. Carpeibaer implies that the dregs of Northern society, carrying all their belongings in a carpetbag, had come down to make their fortunes off the “prostrate [white] south.” Scalawag means “scoundrel.” Employing these terms would be appropriate if textbook authors made clear that they were terms of the time and explained who used them and in what circumstances. But textbooks incorporate them as if they were proper historical labels, with no quotation marks, in preference to neutral terms such as Reconstruction Republicans.