Tuesday, March 4, 2014

If the South Had Won Gettysburg

 http://monsieurboursier.fr/civilisation/us/usslavery/pics/house-slaves.gif

The passage below is taken from a novel, though one based upon common sense and the historical realities of North and South.  The “Jim Crow” laws did indeed have their basis in the North: New York in the 1820s dealt with the threat of a black swing vote by raising property qualifications for black voters; and the author aptly describes a “lost cause” myth which would have developed in the postwar North to glorify its defeat, and find a convenient scapegoat.
Bernhard Thuersam, Chairman
North Carolina War Between the States Sesquicentennial Commission
"Unsurpassed Valor, Courage and Devotion to Liberty"
"The Official Website of the North Carolina WBTS Sesquicentennial"

If the South Had Won Gettysburg

“Southerners were appalled, as well as perplexed, at the growing problems of discrimination and segregation in the North.  That the North would have fought for the freedom of the black man, then turn around and display animosity at him for moving into the North and expressing his newly-found freedoms, seemed hypocrisy at its worst to the average citizen of the Confederacy. 

The turn of the century brought to the United States what became known as the “Jim Crow” laws, named after a traditional song and dance, ironically of the South. Contemporary Southern social analysts have blamed the animosities felt in the North against the former slaves and sons and daughters of formers slaves, on several things.

First, there was the idea in the north that the Civil War had, in essence been a “black man’s war” in which hundreds of thousands of northern boys had sacrificed life and limb for the emancipation of the black man.  The immediate woes that beset the United States after the war ended in defeat for the North needed some focal point, and the poor, uneducated former slave – the stranger to Northerners – became the convenient scapegoat.

In addition, the freeing of slaves flooded the job market in the North with workers who were willing to work for “slave wages” – much less than the ex-Union soldiers, also looking for jobs at the end of the war in 1863.  Many veterans were fired from jobs and replaced with ex-slaves.  The results were riots all over the North over nearly a decade.

The Southerner’s more lenient attitudes toward black people stemmed from generations of living with blacks, growing up with them, working beside them in the fields, and later, in the factories.  Most Southerners would have admitted, even during the War between the States that they had always felt an uneasiness – a guilt, even – in seeing blacks held in servitude as slaves.

The stories of mistreatment and whippings had always been regarded in the South as ludicrous, pre-war propaganda by Abolitionists who had never seen a black man or woman.  Certainly there were instances of a cruel overseer who applied punishment a little too often, but slaves in the old South had been considered property – and expensive property, as well – and were to be treated like an item of value.  As one Southern social historian put it, you wouldn’t take a sledge-hammer to your brand new, expensive horseless carriage the first time it didn’t run; you would find out why it wasn’t working and fix it.

Southerners saw black men and women grow up, fall in love, marry, give birth, laugh, cry, and mourn the deaths of family members. There was something wrong here, many felt.  These black people were not really property, like a plow or a horseless carriage.  Under the skin, though many a Southerner, we are a very much alike. 

It had to be a terrible moral burden, a society-wide, sublimated guilt about slavery that, once the war was over and the name-calling by Abolitionists had ended, could finally be seen in its true light, and was dealt with swiftly by the hurried measures to free the blacks from bondage.  To the average Southerner, blacks were not only property, but people too.  To the Northerners, blacks were first a symbol, then a threat.”

If the South Had Won Gettysburg, Mark Nesbitt, Thomas Publications, 1980, pp. 88-89)

5 comments:

  1. It is all so very true. Yes, there are many examples of blacks and whites living and working together side by side. One that always comes to my mind is about the largest slave owner in Lauderdale County Alabama before the war and his family. They owned over three hundred slaves. The owner lived in a single story five bedroom house. His family cooked and ate every meal with their slaves seven days a week. They had three generations that was just as their extended family. They equally took part in weddings, funerals and births as a family. I am not making excuses for slavery or Jim Crow laws. I believe forced servitude upon on any person is wrong, just as working men and women across this country are slaves to .gov. Talking about a blight on the land, Most working men and women have been a slave to the free stuff people and .gov their entire careers. A fine example of this indentured servitude occurred just yesterday when John Kerry "gave" the Ukrainian government ONE BILLION DOLLARS for economic development. The last I checked our Constitution of these United States does not make provisions for stealing money from U.S. citizenry and "giving" it to foreign countries or giving money to anyone for that matter. Many things in our nations history has been intentionally omitted such as the fact that a "free black man" could do anything but vote up until the CW. He could own property (slaves, land, etc.), marry a white woman, etc. One of the largest slave owners in Alabama was a free black man. At one time, the largest slave owner in Louisiana was a free black man. He owned over six hundred slaves. Speaking of alternative histories, I was thinking just today if one could ask Bull Connor who took a bold stand on the side opposing integration could be asked what he thought of the current state of social affairs in Birmingham ( a city that is bankrupt, crime ridden and in physical and social decay) today would say. What would Dr. Martin Luther King say? Yes there was inequalities, but there was also order, the infrastructure of the city, jobs, families, and almost no crime amongst the black or white populace whatsoever. On we could go, but if the South had of won at Gettysburg, things would probably be very different in a positive way. In closing I'd like to say that less than one half of one percent of the populace of South before 1860 lived like Rhett Butler and Scarlet O'Hara. Most were like my ancestors who lived in two room pens and were not fighting the "rich mans war", but for their God given rights. Deo Vindice

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    1. Yes, some of my warmest memories are the relationships I had with Southern blacks and much is documented on NamSouth.

      http://freenorthcarolina.blogspot.com/2010/11/my-black-north-carolina-kinfolk.html

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  2. Father born Central Ga., 1919. Grew up, worked with wand knew all the blacks in his small town. Never saw clan, and only one time heard of a black being beaten for doing something to a white woman several towns away. Clan just wasn't what they've been portrayed as being. There's no "white guilt" here.

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    1. There is no question that the majority of lynchings were of blacks, but not all by any means. From Tuskegee Institute.

      27.4% Of Lynchings Were White
      http://www.namsouth.com/viewtopic.php?t=2538&highlight=tuskegee

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  3. Friction between the races is a liberal creation. They needed a victim to implement their policies. Slavery was ending the industrial revolution was fast making slaves too expensive. Were some blacks abused of course. Much like some women have been abused by bosses. Probably within 30 to 40 years, slavery would have ended due to cost. The stories of rampant abuse were just that stories. A slave was just too valuable and expensive not to be taken care of. While inherently evil slavery was never what has been taught and accepted. I do know there was generations of blacks and whites that lived and worked together in peace in the South. That is something that cannot be said of the North.

    Badger

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