Leonard Pitts Jr.: Civil War was all about slavery : News-Record.com : Greensboro & the Triad's most trusted source for local news and analysis

"We went to war on account of the thing we quarreled with the North about. I never heard of any other cause of quarrel than slavery. Men fight from sentiment. After the fight is over they invent some fanciful theory on which they imagine that they fought."

-- Confederate Col. John S. Mosby

Ten years ago, I received an e-mail from a reader who signed him or herself "J.D." "I am a white racist," wrote J.D., "a white supremacist and I do not deny it."

From that, you'd suspect J.D. had nothing of value to say. You'd be mistaken. J.D. wrote in response to a column documenting the fact that preservation of slavery was the prime directive of the Confederacy. "I was most pleased to see you write what we both know to be the truth," the e-mail said. "I never cease to be amazed at the Sons of Confederate Veterans and similar 'heritage not hate' groups who are constantly whining that the Confederacy was not a white, racist government ..."

That argument, noted J.D. with wry amusement, plays well with "white people who want to be Confederates without any controversy."

It was an astute observation, the truth of which was deftly illustrated recently by Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell. Seems he issued a proclamation declaring April Confederate History Month in the commonwealth. Said proclamation contained not the barest mention that the Confederacy went to war to preserve slavery, an omission that got the governor pilloried in the court of public opinion.

So McDonnell apologized and tried again, inserting into his proclamation a paragraph observing that this Confederacy we are invited to commemorate was built upon an "evil" and "inhumane" practice. That little bit of cognitive dissonance neatly accomplished, the proclamation was duly reissued.

But there's still a flaw in it. Namely in a line that speaks of how "the people of Virginia joined the Confederate States of America." See, no one asked half a million of "the people of Virginia" about joining any Confederacy. As they were owned by their fellow citizens, they had no say in the matter.

And so it goes in the ongoing effort by apologists for the Confederacy to convince the rest of us that an act of high treason committed in the name of preserving human bondage somehow deserves honor and respect. It's a case that cannot be made on its own dubious merits, so they are obliged to pretend the cause wasn't what it was, to write slaves and slavery out of the story.

McDonnell is hardly the first. Indeed, the practice is nearly as old as the Civil War itself. Confederate President Jefferson Davis once flatly cited "the labor of African slaves" as the cause of the rebellion. After the war, with that cause repudiated, he wrote, "Slavery was in no wise the cause of the conflict." It's a straight line from Davis' amnesia to McDonnell's omission.

The governor seeks to render the Confederacy harmless, to be a Confederate without controversy. He seeks to validate the vestigial Southern impulse that insists, contrary to logic, that the tragic suffering and incontestable bravery of Confederate forebears must somehow redeem the awful cause for which they fought. But the simple truth is, they do not. Nor can they until or unless we agree to murder memory, to kill recollection of our greatest national trauma, to enter into a conspiracy of romantic lies.

Confederate hero John Mosby, quoted above, understood this. Even J.D., the unrepentant racist, did.

It is past time the entire remnant of the Confederacy, all its apologists and battle flag fetishists, understood it, too. The alternative is to continue insisting upon sophistry as truth, and to periodically embarrass themselves and mystify the rest of us with their stubborn fealty to the stinking corpse of a long lost cause. It is to learn for the umpteen-millionth time what the governor was just taught.

Memory dies hard.

E-mail: lpitts@miamiherald.com

Slaan

April 14, 2010 - 7:48 am EDT

"Those who know nothing about the Civil War say it was about slavery,
Those who know a little about the Civil War say it was about State's rights,
Those who know a lot about the Civil War say it was about slavery"

I don't know the originator, but it is so true.

Panacea

April 14, 2010 - 8:38 am EDT

Absolutely. I focused my graduate studies in history on the Civil War.

The war was started and fought over slavery. The men who actually fought the battles, fought either to protect their homes (Confederates), or to preserve the Union. Neither side thought blacks were anything but inferior.

I don't think we should try to erase that controversy from our history. We shouldn't sanitize our knowledge of the Civil War, either by whitewashing the causes of the war or by demonizing them. Doing either lessens our understanding of the very human men and women who served all causes, on both sides. It diminishes the valuable lessons we can learn about both courage and villainy.

Embrace it for what it is: a war fought over a shameful cause by people who combined principle and self-interest. A war that, on some levels, we continue to fight today and cannot put to rest until we come to grips with that duality.

westronandnan@aol.com

April 14, 2010 - 1:52 pm EDT

Panacea: I rarely agree with your posts, but you are spot on with this one. Suffice it to say, the causes were many and varied, but one cannot overlook the fact that cotton and slaves formed the backbone of the southern economy --- and the threat to abolish slavery amounted the financial ruin of the south. As uneasy as many in the south felt with this institution, they felt they had a tiger by the tail --- they didn't know how to turn it loose.

And, truth be known, the institution would have probably collapsed in on itself with the advent of Egyptian long fiber cotton which was greatly superior to the short fiber cotton grown in the south.

Ultimately, the war was caused by incompetent politicians on both sides --- similar to the types we're seeing today --- who let partisanship and regional differences prevent them from finding lasting solutions to difficult problems.

countryboy

April 14, 2010 - 3:03 pm EDT

Well put Pan. The book "The Paradox of Tarheel Politics -UNC CH Press" does a great job in the first few chapters of detailing the effects the Civil War left on NC politics well into the 20th century.

Kit9

McDonnell college thesis states:He argued for covenant marriage, a legally distinct type of marriage intended to make it more difficult to obtain a divorce. … [H]e criticized federal tax credits for child care expenditures because they encouraged women to enter the workforce.
“Further expenditures would be used to subsidize a dynamic new trend of working women and feminists that is ultimately detrimental to the family by entrenching status-quo of nonparental primary nurture of children,” he wrote.
He went on to say feminism is among the “real enemies of the traditional family.”

McDonnells agenda includes opposition to abortion, support for school vouchers and covenant marriage, and tax policies that favor heterosexual families.[35] In his thesis, McDonnell wrote "government policy should favor married couples over 'cohabitators, homosexuals or fornicators.'"[36] McDonnell also "described working women and feminists as 'detrimental' to the family."[36] McDonnell "criticized a landmark 1965 Supreme Court decision" which legalized the use of contraceptives and wrote that "man’s basic nature is inclined towards evil, and when the exercise of liberty takes the shape of pornography, drug abuse, or homosexuality, the government must restrain, punish, and deter."

A crude and ignorant Republican tyrant if ever there was one!

wscbd

April 14, 2010 - 9:14 am EDT

Hey, where's the nutjob, militarybrat... er, universalgenius?

April 14, 2010 - 11:00 am EDT

Maybe he got banned . . . .

jstevenh1952

April 14, 2010 - 1:57 pm EDT

It was over 145 years ago.

The political, economic and social advancement of blacks in America has been remarkable. In each of these categories, blacks have enjoyed tremendous sucess that is uneaqualed by any other developed nation.

Today black Americans command a number of executive positions in Fortune 500 Companies, deep political influence and sucess in virtually all areas of our nation's fabric. The track record America has put forward in equal rights, access and opportunity for black Americans is second to none.

Pitts is right, the war was about the rights of landowners to own slaves. Today, no black is enslaved to any landowner and has not been for nearly 150 years.

Granted today some folks prejudge people because of the color of their skin, social backgrounds and many other reasons, many of which are ignorant. But I like most believe it is time some folks should just move on, and realize that equality has been the practice of this country for most of our life times.

2fer

April 14, 2010 - 3:46 pm EDT

CEOs of Fortune 500 = <1% Afro-American. Afro-Americans as a %age of the US population = >10%.
Comparing median wages in 2006 among people who are working full time with regular employment, for every $100 earned by Euro-American males, Afro-American males earned $72.10. Euro-American women earned 73.50, and Afro-American women earned 63.60. Latino men and women earned less by a significant amount. The gap between Euro-American males and Afro-American males has been growing for about 40 years. This does not correlate to education or IQ. Even though Asian-Americans consistently score better in grades and IQ tests than Euro-Americans, they, too, earn less than their Euro-American co-workers.
The Southern States left the Union in two groups. The first group's legislatures openly stated that they were leaving because of the issue of slavery. South Carolina's legislature concocted a fancy document parroting the declaration of Independence and giving a list of reason for leaving, but one of the legislators spoke up and noted that all the issues had already been resolved in the South's favor save slavery. Mississippi's legislature put out an astonishing document saying that slavery was necessary because white people couldn't do field work in that state's climate. All of the first group expressed the fear that Lincoln and the Republicans would summarily terminate slavery, which was certainly not in the incoming administration's plans. The northern tier of Southern states, did not leave at this time. A few, such as Tennessee, specifically refused to leave the Union over the issue of slavery at first. After Lincoln called upon the loyal states for troops to put down the traitors and terrorists, and made clear that those troops would have to march through the non-seceding states to protect the federal properties seized by those states that had seceded, the remaining southern states reexamined their options and seceded to protect the rights of their sister states, which certainly included the "right" of one man to own another. It is simply dishonest to say that slavery was not the main cause of the Civil War.

April 14, 2010 - 5:16 pm EDT

What is your point? I did not imply that there was equality in the demographic, only that America has suceeded were others have failed. How was I dishonest? I said the civil war was about landowners in the south to own slaves. But I also said it was over.

Read what I wrote carefully. If a person wants to suceed in this country, he can. Hell man, the President of the United States is black! And what's more he got there on the "white vote" not just minorities.

If you aren't cutting it, don't blame the color of your skin or your ancestory. That is a progressive liberal cop-out.

Bosco

April 14, 2010 - 3:04 pm EDT

The War was about secession. Secession was about slavery among other things

bubba

April 15, 2010 - 8:03 am EDT

Stop making sense, Bosco.

That's not allowed when there's a political and social agenda to promote, as is seen in the Pitts column and the enabling support found in many of these comments.

nemo0037

April 14, 2010 - 3:58 pm EDT

IMO, the Civil War was about money. Money that was threatened because the slave owners in the South could not imagine how they could make their profits without slave labor. As with all other wars, the wealthy slave owners convinced the poor white trash to fight to protect their interests. So it has always been... so shall it ever be.

overtaxed

April 15, 2010 - 12:33 am EDT

"Based on 1860 census figures, 8% of all white males aged 13 to 43 died in the war, including 6% in the North and an extraordinary 18% in the South"

nemo, you as do others that post here seem to omit the FACT that "poor white trash" also fought and died to end slavery. I reallize it's difficult for some to comprehend the notion that more whites died to end slavery than those that died in all other US wars combined, but I guess you all knew that didn't you?

universalgenius

April 14, 2010 - 6:41 pm EDT

Slavery was a major catastrophe for the real America in the south where it all began and where all the founding documents were written by the elite slaveowners who owned Pitts descendants and he better get down on his unworthy skinny knees and thank them to the core of his sorry existence since had they not bought the millions of unneeded African slaves from the slave traders who had them conned on off them by the tribal chiefs, he would not be in the white man land but instead in the jungles living in the worst possible inconceiveable sub 3rd world cesspool squalor of disease poverty death hunger and tribal warfare .

The Europeans wish they could turn back the hands of time to erase the mistake of slavery that was the worse economic system ever and nothing but a scheme trick when in fact hired help and sharecropping was the ultimate best system as half of plantations went bankrupt of the excessive cost of this flawed failed system that split the nation when the unducated peasant Marxist Lincoln tyrant came along. Maryland native Booth was a brave hero and knew Lincoln was nothing but a socialist troublemaker when in fact the south planned to liberate all its slaves and forward them back to their roots in Africa probably Liberia where they would have been better off than remaining in the European American nation for both races. Evenso these African slaves lived better than non-elite whites doing manual soft labor for a couple hundred years in exchange for everything being provided for free. We know elite slave owners never abused ther slaves because 100% of them took their masters surnames as an eternal tribute nd gratitude to their former owners. Over 50% of freed slaves went to work for them for wages after the tyrant Marxist Lincoln war in 1865 plus not a single reparations lawsuit was ever filed by a single slave proving they were grateful for what their former masters had done to help them and take them out of the jungle darkness.

American Africans are definitely doing 100 times better than those in Africa but still have never adjusted to living in the European caucasoid race western society.

Maybe some day a time travel machine will be invented and the catastrophic mistake of slavery will be corrected by outlawing it in the new western world as ficticious as that may seem. Still it is not inconceiveable that this could occur with the advancements in science and technology and at that time native African blacks will be much happier as will European American whites and the stench of slavery can be erased permanently. Pitts needs to get on his knees and thank the elite southern white savior slave owners.

April 14, 2010 - 6:51 pm EDT

And HERE HE IS FOLKS...Universalp@nis. Nastiness, bigotry, racism, poor language and no concept that he rolls in his own filth. Thank God his kind are dying out, slowly, but dying out!

mike360000

April 18, 2010 - 4:43 pm EDT

Mr . Leonard Pitts needs some corrections in his article
“Civil War Was All About Slavery.” It appears a lot of people
need educating also, even some who focused their
graduate studies on the Civil War. To begin with it was NOT
a civil war and I will not personally refer to it as such, but as
the War Between the States, abbreviated WBS. Mr. Pitts just
begs to have his article corrected! And I will do it!

Abraham Lincoln did not care one way or the other about
slavery. Here are three quick quotes, in context, to make
my point.
1:" You say you will not fight to free negroes. Some of them
seem willing to fight for you; but, no matter. Fight you, then
exclusively to save the Union."
2: "My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union,
and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save
the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I
could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I
could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I
would also do that."
3: "I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with
the institution of slavery in the States where it exists. I believe
I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to
do so.” From an election speech.

I can give several more examples, many just as condemning.

The novice historian, they can say it was over State’s Rights. This
statement in itself is only partially correct as State’s Rights in
itself is a very broad term. One thing that is a fact is that State
Rights included the right to own slaves according to the laws
of each State. However there is more to it than slavery alone.

The 10th Amendment states: “The powers not delegated to the
United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the
States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”

Strictly and simply stated the 10th Amendment says anything
(ANYTHING) not mentioned, regulated or restricted in the US
Constitution is a Right accorded to the States from which is
granted its’ people by the States! This included the State's Rights
issue of slavery. It also included trade and tariffs.

There is a term called “pretext”, meaning to do something or say
something. Pretexts may be based on a half-truth or developed
in the context of a misleading fabrication. Slavery was one such
issue that carried to the fullest pretext possible and is still
used as an excuse today. The truth being slavery was the pretext
for the WBS, manipulated with and around the 10th Amendment,
confusing and mixing State’s Rights into a reason for war but not
the underlying reason itself.

Economic problems in the USA in the early to middle 1800’s left
the north suffering while the south prospered without slowdown.
Tariffs were enacted to force Southern States to buy more Northern
products in order to help alleviate their depression. One can
reference this when South Carolina passed the Ordinance of
Nullification in 1832, refusing to collect tariffs and threatening to
withdraw from the Union, Jackson ordered federal troops to
Charleston. A secession crisis was averted when Congress revised
the Tariff of Abominations in 1833. So you can see for a fact secession
for at least South Carolina started a long time before 1861 and it was
not about slavery, the pretext. This feud over tariffs continued until
the outbreak of the WBS with ever increasing hostilities. It included
all the Southern States. The question becomes; did the States have
the Right to refuse those tariffs?We now have the groundwork’s lain
and a pretext for war.

A chronology of the makings of the WBS: (Only stated what pretains
to the starting of the war itself. Details left out because of space.)

On Dec 6th 1860 there was an armistice agreed to and signed by the US
Government and South Carolina. Another was signed on Jan 29th 1861 with
Florida, both stating that federal forts would not be reinforced in order to
reduce hostilities between the parties until further agreements could be
made concerning trade and tariffs. A violation of this agreement was
considered an act of war! Note: Basic resupply was allowable. However
Lincoln had no intention of compromising on tariffs once in office and he
is quoted as privately saying so, but Lincoln needed time. So peace talks
were needed to buy Lincoln time. Lincoln had a plan.

Dec 20th 1860 South Carolina secedes from the union because Lincoln
stated as fact that he would double the tariff rates once he was in office.
There would be no compromise concerning this.

US Army Hd Quarters March 12th 1861
Orders to reinforce Fort Pickens in Florida were sent to waiting warship
in direct conflict between the Florida and US Government. Orders were
directly issued President Lincoln. Orders received on March 31st.
(There would be military officiers to resign their commission over the orders.)

March 15th US Supreme Court Judge John Campbell stated Fort Sumter
will be evacuated by federal forces within 10 days. This was to satisfy
Southern demands and reassure them that the US Government was sincere.
That very day Cabinet member Montgomery Blair was assigning a force to
reinforce Fort Sumter, South Carolina.

April 6th. Orders from Lt D.D. Porter on the USS Powhatan. Received
orders from President Lincoln concerning Pensacola. I will execute
them. The federal reinforcement at Pensacola is about to begin. All
the while Lincoln is entertaining a Southern Peace delegation, delaying
them, and no Federal Legislature to contend with. Lincoln took until
July 4th to convene congress. Then he admitted to congress he committed
unconstitutional acts concerning the Southern States.

April 7th, a special envoy directly from President Lincoln tells South
Carolina Governor Pickens that Fort Sumter will be reinforced peaceably or
by force, but it will be reinforced very shortly. South Carolina mobilizes
while it confirms federal reinforcements are actually nearing.

P.G.T. Beauregard fires on Sumter on April 12th.

There is much more to this if one wishes even finer details. It is noted and
cataloged in Library of Congress. I used the Book titled “Truth of the War
Conspiracy of 1861” It is fully documented and referenced. It was wrote in 1917.

During this time the northern press was having a field day blaming the whole
thing on slavery, claiming South Carolina fired on Fort Sumter to start the war
and nowhere was anyone to correct anything wrongfully printed or orders
unconstitutionally given. And that is how the WBS began! Believe it or not,
the facts are there to back this up and more......

Editors Note: It is absolutely impossible to make this article much, if any shorter.
There has to be enough facts included to correctly complete the context of
the subject matter. I actually have a copy of this article which I used as the basis
for this shorter article. Still my original article, while almost 1/2 again longer than
this one, still lacks many fine points that answers more of the questions that
arise concerning these events. I could write several hundred pages in more
fully explaining the causes, this subject matter in deeper detail. So quit saying
the War Between the States was fought over slavery. Slavery was the pretext as
to why it was fought.

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