In 1941 we had the first angry Southerner film. BELLE STARR was a real life plain Jane woman who joined the guerrillas to continue fighting the North after the War. Hollywood picked the most arguably beautiful and talented actress in America, Gene Tierney to play her. The films images of slave life are racist in the extreme, and the diatribes against Northerners are angry and bitter. Rarely shown today, other films over time would deal with the "Hell no, I ain't forgettin'" Southerner. Here are some clips:
CAVALRY is an unusual film. It is pro- North and is about stopping Southerners from setting up an independent country out West. The film deifies Lincoln who is not shown except in shadow, as if his image is too sacred for film. The rape of women and burning of plantations is shown, but it is Southerners who are shown destroying their own homes! Now that's a twist on history! That said, this is an exciting film and for its time contains truly exciting action scenes. For the record, however, I think Sherman's march had more to do with the rapes and burning of the South than Southerners did! This is a review from the site that you can go to to watch the film. " this is one of the better 1930's westerns that you'll find. I've not been a big fan of the westerns that Robert N. Bradbury directed during the 30's, especially the early John Wayne films he attempted to Direct. However, this film is one that he got right. It has solid acting and a good story, which begins with a few action scenes from the end of the War Against Northern Agression (aka U.S. Civil War). It then transitions to the westward flight that many former soldiers, both Yank and Reb, undertook with their families to build a new life in the territories West of the Mississippi. The story is rounded out in the second half of the movie with an indian attack on a wagon train, a couple of U.S. Cavalry charges, and a conspiracy against the U.S. Government to establish a new country for Southerners out west. There are some excellent stunts performed on horse back, such as men falling off of horses at full gallops while supposedly being shot during a gunfight on horseback chase scene. Bob Steele does a fine job as the hero. By the way, Bob Steele was born Robert Adrian Bradbury in 1907 in Portland, Oregon, into a vaudeville family. It is his Dad, Robert North Bradbury, who was the Director and the Screenwriter for this film."
Eli Wallach and Clint Eastwood did not not realize they were creating two of the most iconic characters in film history
Sergio Leone was Italian, but as a Marxist had decided to go back to the roots of the Civil War and its effect on the loser. Freed from the propaganda of the North ( he discovered Lincoln did not end slavery and studied the camps Southern troops were held prisoners in), he did not reach the conclusion of Karl Marx a century earlier. Marx had hailed Lincoln's EMANCIPATION PROCLAMATION as giving meaning to the first half of the war. Leone saw instead a war that shouldn't have happened, reducing battlefields to killing fields without purpose. Reflecting the world wide anti- Viet Nam war movement beginnings, the film became a huge hit and catipulted Clint Eastwood to super stardom. THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE UGLY was condemned by most critics, banned in Norway, but loved by the public.
The futility and human waste of Civil War battles shocked film critics at the time
The critics were appalled that Yankee soldiers were shown as sadists, that a battle for a bridge was shown as a useless exercise. Marxists had for decades promoted the war as a war to end slavery, by going to original historical documents director Leone had discovered this was false, and refused to go along with the propaganda. He would later renounce his Marxism.
The battle for the bridge sequence remains a powerful anti-Civil War message
Today the film is legend. It ends up on Best Films lists, it has been called the greatest western ever made, time has only increased its stature. And Norway years after banning the film, allowed it to be shown. There were lines around the block.
Believe it or not, the film is not only available legally for you to see, it also contains the 20 minutes cut from the original American release. If your family has never seen the film before, you just might want to call them in for this. THIS MAY ONLY BE UP A COUPLE MORE DAYS.
THE GRAY GHOST could be easily viewed by Southerners and Northerners alike.
Not so Nick Adams in THE REBEL. Johnny Yuma wanders the West in search of
his soul, and often as with this premiere episode, the bad guys were yankees!
THE REBEL tapped into the anger the South still held over the war. The following song
I AM A GOOD OLE REBEL typifies that anger:
O I'm a good old rebel, Now that's just what I am, And for this Yankee nation, I do not give a damn, I'm glad I fought against her, I only wish we'd won, And I ain't asked any pardon, for anything I've done...
I hate this Yankee nation, And everything they do, I hate the Declaration of Independence too, I hate the glorious Union, 'Tis dripping with our blood, And I hate the striped banner, And fit it all I could...
I rode with Robert E. Lee, For three years, there about, Got wounded in four places, And I starved at Point Lookout, I caught the rheumatism, A camping in the snow, But I killed a chance of Yankees, and Id like to killed some more....
Three hundred thousand Yankees, are stiff in Southern dust, We got three hundred thousand, Before they conquered us, They died of Southern fever, And Southern steel and shot, I wish there were three million, Instead of what we got....
I can't take up my musket, And fight 'em now no more, But I ain't gonna love 'em, Now that is certain sure, And I don't want no pardon, For what I was and am, I won't be reconstructed, And I do not give a damn...
O I'm a good old rebel, Now that's just what I am, And for this Yankee nation, I do not give a damn, I'm glad I fought against her, I only wish we'd won, And I ain't asked any pardon, for anything I've done...
Taking a quick break from the TV and film Civil War analysis for this tragic story. Jeff Davis is the forgotten man of the Civil War. Imagine teaching World War 2 and "forgetting" to mention Hitler. Jeff hated the segregation of the North ( in Illinois blacks could not even enter) and he urged blacks and whites to live together. To that end he adopted a black child. Bet you didn't see that on Ken Burns Civil War! BTW- Lincoln supported sending all the Blacks - slave or free, back to Africa. Gee, I wonder why you weren't told that.....
God’s children, of African, Asian, European, Hispanic, American Indian, and Jewish ancestry, were once told stories about the men and women who helped make America great. When I was a child, the heritage of our ancestors was very important to both young and old but, today, political correct thought has taken the place of historical truth and many schools, streets and parks, named for our beloved forefathers and mothers have been changed.
I write this article as the Sons of Confederate Veterans of Virginia, a Southern fraternal-historical group–www.scv.org, is looking for a location to unveil a historically correct statue depicting Confederate President Jefferson Davis and two of his sons Joe and Jim Limber. Jim was a black child adopted by the Davis family and Joe was tragically killed by a fall in 1864 at the Confederate White House in Richmond , Virginia.
It is ironic that a statue of Abraham Lincoln, Union President, 1861-65, was earlier unveiled in Richmond, Virginia but plans of the Sons of Confederate Veterans to erect a statue of Confederate President, Jefferson Davis, has apparently been met with less enthusiasm…And this comes from the old Confederate Capitol and where Davis and his family are buried. It is also reported that the SCV has even received a cool reception from Jackson , Mississippi , as a possible site for the statue, the state Davis and his family called home during the last years of the president’s life…But, there is good news with the following show of support recently published in Jackson Mississippi Clarion Ledger newspaper:
The Director of Beauvoir— Davis ’s last home—says he’d love to have the life size bronze sculpture of the former President of the Confederacy. Richard Forte says the statue of Davis , with his hand extended, looks like it’s welcoming people to Beauvoir. (www.beauvoir.org)
Why do today’s Historians praise the memory of Abraham Lincoln but ignore the many accomplishments of Jefferson Davis?
Some people write that Lincoln supported the abolition of slavery but Davis was a racist. If you read Lincoln ’s first inaugural address from 1861, you will discover that Lincoln supported a bill that would have given the South a way to stay in the Union with slavery protected by a Constitutional amendment. If the South’s only intention in seceding from the Union was to keep their slaves, wouldn’t they have accepted such a deal?
In 1989, a magazine article caught my eye which I had to read from beginning to end. This was not an ordinary story but about a black child, a Confederate President’s First Lady and the Southern Presidential Family. The story was written by Gulfport , Mississippi freelance writer, Mrs. Peggy Robbins and is entitled, “Jim Limber Davis.” This is my summary of Mrs. Robbins’ splendid story.
On the morning of February 15, 1864, Mrs. Varina Davis, wife of Southern President Jefferson Davis, had concluded her errands and was driving her carriage down the streets of Richmond , Virginia on her way home. She heard screams from a distance and quickly went to the scene to see what was happening.
Varina saw a young black child being abused by an older man. She demanded that he stop striking the child and when this failed she shocked the man by forcibly taking the child away. She took the child to her carriage and with her to the Southern White House.
Arriving home Mrs. Davis and maid ‘Ellen’ gave the young boy a bath, attended to his cuts and bruises and fed him. The only thing he would tell them is that his name was Jim Limber. He was happy to be rescued and was given some clothes of the Davis ‘ son Joe who was the same size and age.
The Davis family were visited the following evening by a friend of Varina’s, noted Southern Diarist-Mary Boykin Chesnut, who saw Jim Limber and wrote later that she had seen the boy and that he was eager to show me his cuts and bruises.
The Christmas of 1864, would be memorable for the Davis family and probably the best Christmas Jim Limber would ever have. A Christmas tree was set up in Saint Paul ’s Church, decorated and gifts placed beneath it for orphan children.
The end of the War Between the States was coming and Richmond was being evacuated. Varina and the children left ahead of Jefferson Davis. The president and his staff left just hours before the occupation of Union troops.
Varina and the children were by the side of Jefferson Davis at his capture near Irwinville , Georgia and again the family was separated. Jefferson Davis was taken to Virginia to spend two years in prison.
Mrs. Davis and her children were taken to Macon , Georgia and later to Port Royal outside of Savannah . At Port Royal their Union escort, Captain Charles T. Hudson, made good at his earlier threats to take Jim Limber away.
As the Union soldiers came to forcibly take young Jim, he put up a great struggle and tried to hold onto his family as they to him. Jim and his family cried uncontrollably as the child was taken. His family would never again see him or know what happened to him.
The Museum of the Confederacy in Richmond , Virginia is home to a portrait of Jim Limber Davis in the Eleanor S. Brookenbrough Library. I thank Mrs. Peggy Robbins who wrote the Jim Limber Davis story in 1989 and the Southern Partisan Magazine for publishing her story in the second quarter Issue-Volume IX of 1989.
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Calvin E. Johnson, Jr., Freelance writer, author of ‘When America Stood for God, Family and Country’ and member of the Sons of Confederate Veterans.
or I should say one of the offshoots of the Klan. The original group had been ended by its founder Nathan Forrest, a seasoned Southern Calvary fighter. He disbanded the group when it started to turn more and more to violence. Many different local groups rushed in to fill the void, all of their actions, names and different outfits would over time be attributed to the KKK, though they were not affiliated with that group.
THE BIRTH OF A NATION had caused the KKK to reform. To rise up in the ranks of the Democratic Party you had to join it. Harry Truman, Supreme Court Justice Black and many others rose through its ranks. Klanswomen had rights other women did not enjoy. They could start their own businesses, borrow money from banks and they helped form the early suffragette movement for the vote. Early feminists often spoke at Klan halls, as did the founder of Planned Parenthood. When the early feminists came out for prohibition, the Southern Baptists who were all anti-booze had no problem supporting it.
Oddly the film had made the KKK a huge fad- in the North. Over 1 million men and women, dressed in Klan robes marched on Washington, D.C. Indiana was Klan- the government and law enforcement were in cahoots. The Klan was anti- lynching during this time because - they didn't need to and it might bring the Feds around. Why lynch when the politicians, jury, cops and judge were all KKK or sympathizers?
Some however wanted the violence. Between 20,000 and 30,000 Klansmen formed a secret group called the Black Legion in Ohio and Detroit. Keep in mind this was a small number of the membership, that's how huge the Klan was in these two areas. They bragged about killing civil rights workers, including Malcolm X's father. They were controlled by no one and a murder trial brought them down. Hollywood decided to do a film about The Black Legion. Even Orson Welles got in the act when he did an episode of the radio show THE SHADOW called THE WHITE LEGION.
The KKK did not approve of the actions of THE BLACK LEGION, so they left the production of the film alone. However, when Hollywood announced it was doing a film about the Klan bomb and death threats poured in. Ronald Reagan received hundreds of death threats. The film was shot in secret to avoid attacks. STORM WARNING was a stunner when it opened, but is largely forgotten now.
By 1965 America was pouring troops into Viet Nam and civil rights struggles were in the streets and headlines all over America. Perhaps that's why SHENANDOAH became a huge hit all across America. James Stewart is a father who believes slavery is wrong, so he refuses to support the Confederacy. But he loves Virginia and can't support the North either. He is a pacifist who is against war and forbids his sons to fight. Over the course of the film, he is dragged into the war.
No Civil War film reflected such unusual views before, but what the film was actually reflecting was America in 1965. Not 1863.
When John Huston's dream of making THE RED BADGE OF COURAGE came true he picked the wrong time to do it. The old studio moguls were replaced by the new young turks who believed films should be made by consensus, not gut feelings. The initial public reactions to screenings were used to cut the violence and grim battle sequences down. No film made before had shown the horrors of war, and audiences were shocked. The film which deals with courage and bravery on the battlefield even cut was a huge success. Would it have been a success if the realistic violence had been left in? We will never know.
Audiences who went to see William Wyler's FRIENDLY PERSUASION were lulled into into thinking they were seeing a film about Quakers, family love and old school values. However, while they certainly got all that, they also had the Civil War thrust at them and the argument of a son who wants to fight and a father whose religion teaches him to hate war. Being anti-war when it came to the Civil War was not an accepted belief at any time. Yet Wyler got away with presenting this point of view by making it seem a natural part of the nation's fabric. It is also a very good movie.
THE HORSE SOLDIERS has two excellent stars, John Wayne and William Holden and is the only Civil War centered film directed by John Ford. It also has a weak script however, and while the film remains exciting and stunning to look at, a lack of character development keeps this film from being classic John Ford. It is very good and exciting John Ford, but lacks the layers of personality his best films have. Based on a true story, soldiers must go behind enemy lines to disrupt the Confederate supply line. All the films here are worth seeing, but one wishes THE HORSE SOLDIERS had gone through one more re-write. It is that close to being a classic.
The films we covered in this part raised a question Civil War films hadn't really raised before. Was the war worth fighting? Did the brutality of war outweigh the glory? The scene in Atlanta when the railroad station is filled with the dying and the wounded raised the question in passing. But it took men who had been in World War 2 and had seen battle to understand there was a horror to war that no cause could override.
Now it was time for a new medium, TV, to deal with the war. And an Italian western director would deal with the futility of the war in THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE UGLY.
Over the next week this site will examine the shifting portrayals of the Civil War, and conclude with a look at Lincoln in pop culture. If you are not signed up for updates you may do so by entering your email in the REGISTER box to the side of the page.
GONE WITH THE WIND
It is difficult to believe today, but THE BIRTH OF A NATION was hailed by progressive liberals upon its release and would go on the earn over 1 billion dollars. Woodrow Wilson said, "It is history written with lightening bolts" but it would also spark violent protests, picket lines and anger from Blacks in the North.
The film followed a Southern family caught up in the war, and wars aftermath. It would provide images that would be confused with facts to this day. The reconstruction period contains the libel that Blacks in government were drunk and lazy. Lincoln is shown as not wanting to punish the South but cut short of his humanitarian efforts by assassination- a bit of wishful thinking.
The battle scenes however stunned veterans still alive from the war. Director D.W. Griffith had captured the battle field and to this day those scenes seem documentary like. The film also shows the Ku Klux Klan as the saviors of the South as Reconstruction is used as a punishment against the South. That the founder of modern day liberalism, Woodrow Wilson, saw this and hailed the film despite this historical fudging shows that the facts of the war were already being re-shaped by a new generation.
Black Civil War veterans from both sides may have noticed that the history was being re-written as both Confederate and Union Black soldiers stopped going to the reunions and parades after the second one!
The Civil War had passed from a period of severe punishment to a loss for potential change. President Johnson allowed Northern troops to dictate policy in the South, people who remembered their homes burned down and women raped didn't care for that. Johnson, whom Lincoln's wife always believed was involved in the murder plot against Lincoln (he had met with John Wilkes Booth many times, was against the war and showed up drunk for Lincoln's second inauguration), moved to make the Democratic Party the party of the South. The Democrats would run on the ticket of keeping the ex-slaves in line and looking the other way at lynchings.
President Grant opened the door to Blacks to go into the Southern government - the true lost story of Reconstruction. Democratic Party slanders of drunken black lawmakers, rapes of white women, began to spread.
Grant's own party thought he went too far, he had no support from the Democrats, and he would back away from Reconstruction. At this point I argue, the chance for any gains in the South as a result of the bloody Civil War, were lost. The North brought the concept of segregation ( America's version of apartheid) and Blacks lived in fear and without essential services or rights, for decades.
The false views of Lincoln started then (as did the myth he ended slavery. He didn't). The North looked away from what blacks were going through in the South. Yet how to treat the war itself?
How to reconcile the death. The rapes. The destruction of entire states such as Mississippi which before the war had been the biggest money earner?
The North noticed the South had a Memorial Day for the Confederate dead and General Logan co-opted it to make it for the dead on both sides. The marches of both North and South together played a role. But what really did it- was another Progressive leader- Teddy Roosevelt. In order to rally the nation, sick of war and largely pacifistic, the Civil War vets of both sides would be hailed. The heroism of all sides would be championed, the actual reasons for the war and the odd outcome that made the freed slaves a different kind of slave would be better left, not discussed.
Lincoln became a Saint, the courage of both sides would make it possible to present both sides as heroes. Enter Buster Keaton.
Buster Keaton got his name from magician Harry Houdini. Houdini was in a travelling medicine show with Keatons' dad and saw Joseph Frank Keaton take a fall and come out without a mark. Houdini named him Buster.
The image of the slave happy working in the field and in the plantation had been seen in BIRTH OF A NATION. THE GENERAL would present the southern soldier a yankee could cheer for. The film is now considered one of the best ever made, but at the time audiences didn't know what to make of it. You can watch the film at the link above.
The idea of an Old South began to catch the nations imagination. And one film would present that idea and change the way an entire nation viewed the war. That film was called GONE WITH THE WIND.
It is impossible to convey the love of this film in Atlanta for decades. It is as if the people had a bond with the film and felt it was their story. It wasn't, but it was a reflection of how we looked at the South and that odd bird called the Old South. There was a parade for the film when it opened in Atlanta. For years it would only play every 7 years, and its myth grew.
The secret to the film is that it speaks to women. Any woman who has lived through war, known people who went off to war, had to keep going even in wars loss would connect with the film.
Frats and sororities in the South would relive the dances, Confederate flags would appear in schools. This wasn't because of the facts of the war- it was because of GONE WITH THE WIND.
For years it would end up on lists along side CITIZEN KANE as one of the best films ever made. Today women go into the military, it has been dropped from some Best Films lists, blacks don't care for the presentation of plantation life. But for over 50 years the film spoke to Americans, and it is still a powerful and moving experience- though it may not make it another generation. Here is an excellent series on the film, I'll give you time to digest all this before the next post.
Historian and Yale Professor Dr. Jay Winik's recent commentary in the Wall Street Journal, "Security Comes Before Liberty" (read it with the lights on), shows an excellent grasp of history but fails and frightens in its conclusions. Each of the American leaders mentioned in the article pushed the country further and further away from the original concept of the United States. Unlike what Dr. Winik maintains, civil rights in this country were not returned to their previous levels after they had been curtailed in the name of national security. Each time there was a small erosion of our rights and monumental growth in the scope and breadth of our government. Our country, which has become an empire, was not built in a day but with one small step at a time. As with wartime taxes, social programs, the institution of executive orders and the like, our government has shown a remarkable inability to keep itself in check.
The greatness of this country comes from the people and not from the government. Dr. Winik is certainly correct in his analysis of the dictatorships of each of these presidential regimes. But I believe his ultimate conclusion indicates a true lack of understanding about the foundations of this country. His words should scare any liberty loving American to death. Dr. Winik seems to believe that the preservation of this country should be accomplished at all cost and that we must trust the government to do whatever needs to be done in its self-preservation. I believe the preservation of this country means nothing when compared to the individual liberties believed by our founders to be as necessary as breathing.
Dr. Winik also seems to postulate that somehow the acts of our Presidents should be revered, that simply because they're history they take on an almost gospel like reverence. I would answer that each of these Presidents violated the law and could and should have been tried and convicted of treason.
The thought of placing your life in the hands of any human being should be a scary prospect. Trusting our Presidents with the ultimate care of each of us is a dangerous game. The reason: concentration of power breeds corruption and ultimately dictators. Our founders knew this and that is why we have three governmental branches, not just one.
The sole area of Dr. Winik's commentary that I agree with has to do with the rights of those who are not citizens of this country but are living within our boarders- those on visas, green cards, etc. Our immigration policy should reflect concern for our citizens and not non-citizens. Certainly no one should be abused in any sense. They should simply be deported. But again, this action concerns "non-citizens".
As with gun control laws, law-abiding citizens are the ones that will ultimately pay the price for increased restrictions on civil liberties. There has been no information presented to the public which proves the just passed homeland security measures would have done anything to prevent the September terrorist attack. What would have aided their apprehension is tighter immigration control which does not impede the rights of citizens. This, coupled with a balanced foreign policy toward the Middle East, should have been the first steps taken by our government to ensure our future safety. Unfortunately our leaders don't seem to have the stomach to stem the flow of new human fodder for the voting booth or the willingness to occasionally say NO to Israel.
As with Lincoln, Wilson and Roosevelt, today's leaders will opt to sacrifice the lives of our soldiers and the liberties of our citizens before they would begin to question whether we actually did something to precipitate the attacks. At very least our policies created an environment which provided moldable masses eager to be led by a nut like Bin Laden. But there is no self-examination when you are infallible, the greatest, the best and above reproach.
I actually owe Dr. Winik a debt of gratitude. He has provided an accurate assessment of a few of America's best-known leaders who were willing to put themselves and the government ahead of the people. Thank, indeed.
The naivete of Dr. Winik's analysis amazes me. He has accepted the actions of each of these men on their face instead of reflecting on the myriad of issues involved in World War II or the War Between the States for example. The actions of these leaders cannot be analyzed in a historic vacuum. And this is what he has done. Bottom line: His commentary left me with a lingering chill. Perhaps, though, his thoughts will propel others as it did me to further speak, shout and thrash about as much as necessary to ensure the United States is still a country worthy of our citizenship.
Sherman himself admitted after the war that he was taught at West Point that he could be hanged for the things he did. But in war the victors always write the history
by Thomas J. DiLorenzo
One hundred thirty-six years after General Robert E. Lee surrendered at Appomattox, Americans are still fascinated with the War for Southern Independence. The larger bookstores devote an inordinate amount of shelf space to books about the events and personalities of the war; Ken Burns’s "Civil War" television series and the movie "Gettysburg" were blockbuster hits; dozens of new books on the war are still published every year; and a monthly newspaper, Civil War News, lists literally hundreds of seminars, conferences, reenactments, and memorial events related to the war in all 50 states and the District of Columbia all year long. Indeed, many Northerners are "still fighting the war" in that they organize a political mob whenever anyone attempts to display a Confederate heritage symbol in any public place.
Americans are still fascinated by the war because many of us recognize it as the defining event in American history. Lincoln’s war established myriad precedents that have shaped the course of American government and society ever since: the centralization of governmental power, central banking, income taxation, protectionism, military conscription, the suspension of constitutional liberties, the "rewriting" of the Constitution by federal judges, "total war," the quest for a worldwide empire, and the notion that government is one big "problem solver."
Perhaps the most hideous precedent established by Lincoln’s war, however, was the intentional targeting of defenseless civilians. Human beings did not always engage in such barbaric acts as we have all watched in horror in recent days. Targeting civilians has been a common practice ever since World War II, but its roots lie in Lincoln’s war.
In 1863 there was an international convention in Geneva, Switzerland, that sought to codify international law with regard to the conduct of war. What the convention sought to do was to take the principles of "civilized" warfare that had evolved over the previous century, and declare them to be a part of international law that should be obeyed by all civilized societies. Essentially, the convention concluded that it should be considered to be a war crime, punishable by imprisonment or death, for armies to attack defenseless citizens and towns; plunder civilian property; or take from the civilian population more than what was necessary to feed and sustain an occupying army.
The Swiss jurist Emmerich de Vattel (1714-67, author of The Law of Nations, was the world’s expert on the proper conduct of war at the time. "The people, the peasants, the citizens, take no part in it, and generally have nothing to fear from the sword of the enemy," Vattel wrote. As long as they refrain from hostilities themselves they "live in as perfect safety as if they were friends." Occupying soldiers who would destroy private property should be regard as "savage barbarians."
In 1861 the leading American expert in international law as it relates to the proper conduct of war was the San Francisco attorney Henry Halleck, a former army officer and West Point instructor whom Abraham Lincoln appointed General-in-Chief of the federal armies in July of 1862. Halleck was the author of the book, International Law, which was used as a text at West Point and essentially echoed Vattel’s writing.
On April 24, 1863, the Lincoln administration seemed to adopt the precepts of international law as expressed by the Geneva Convention, Vattel, and Halleck, when it issued General Order No. 100, known as the "Lieber Code." The Code’s author was the German legal scholar Francis Leiber, an advisor to Otto von Bismarck and a staunch advocate of centralized governmental power. In his writings Lieber denounced the federal system of government created by the American founding fathers as having created "confederacies of petty sovereigns" and dismissed the Jeffersonian philosophy of government as a collection of "obsolete ideas." In Germany he was arrested several times for subversive activities. He was a perfect ideological fit with Lincoln’s own political philosophy and was just the man Lincoln wanted to outline the rules of war for his administration.
The Lieber Code paid lip service to the notion that civilians should not be targeted in war, but it contained a giant loophole: Federal commanders were permitted to completely ignore the Code if, "in their discretion," the events of the war would warrant that they do so. In other words, the Lieber Code was purely propaganda.
The fact is, the Lincoln government intentionally targeted civilians from the very beginning of the war. The administration’s battle plan was known as the "Anaconda Plan" because it sought to blockade all Southern ports and inland waterways and starving the Southern civilian economy. Even drugs and medicines were on the government’s list of items that were to be kept out of the hands of Southerners, as far as possible.
As early as the first major battle of the war, the Battle of First Manassas in July of 1861, federal soldiers were plundering and burning private homes in the Northern Virginia countryside. Such behavior quickly became so pervasive that on June 20, 1862 – one year into the war – General George McClellan, the commanding general of the Army of the Potomac, wrote Lincoln a letter imploring him to see to it that the war was conducted according to "the highest principles known to Christian civilization" and to avoid targeting the civilian population to the extent that that was possible. Lincoln replaced McClellan a few months later and ignored his letter.
Most Americans are familiar with General William Tecumseh Sherman’s "march to the sea" in which his army pillaged, plundered, raped, and murdered civilians as it marched through Georgia in the face of scant military opposition. But such atrocities had been occurring for the duration of the war; Sherman’s March was nothing new.
In 1862 Sherman was having difficulty subduing Confederate sharpshooters who were harassing federal gunboats on the Mississippi River near Memphis. He then adopted the theory of "collective responsibility" to "justify" attacking innocent civilians in retaliation for such attacks. He burned the entire town of Randolph, Tennessee, to the ground. He also began taking civilian hostages and either trading them for federal prisoners of war or executing them.
Jackson and Meridian, Mississippi, were also burned to the ground by Sherman’s troops even though there was no Confederate army there to oppose them. After the burnings his soldiers sacked the town, stealing anything of value and destroying the rest. As Sherman biographer John Marzalek writes, his soldiers "entered residences, appropriating whatever appeared to be of value . . . those articles which they could not carry they broke."
After the destruction of Meridian Sherman boasted that "for five days, ten thousand of our men worked hard and with a will, in that work of destruction, with axes, sledges, crowbars, clawbars, and with fire.... Meridian no longer exists."
In The Hard Hand of Warhistorian Mark Grimsley argues that Sherman has been unfairly criticized as the "father" of waging war on civilians because he "pursued a policy quite in keeping with that of other Union commanders from Missouri to Virginia." Fair enough. Why blame just Sherman when such practices were an essential part of Lincoln’s entire war plan and were routinely practiced by all federal commanders? Sherman was just the most zealous of all federal commanders in targeting Southern civilians, which is apparently why he became one of Lincoln’s favorite generals.
In his First Inaugural Address Jefferson said that any secessionists should be allowed to "stand undisturbed as monuments of the safety with which error of opinion may be tolerated where reason is left free to combat it." But by 1864 Sherman would announce that "to the petulant and persistent secessionists, why, death is mercy." In 1862 Sherman wrote his wife that his purpose in the war would be "extermination, not of soldiers alone, that is the least of the trouble, but the people" of the South. His loving and gentle wife wrote back that her wish was for "a war of extermination and that all [Southerners] would be driven like swine into the sea. May we carry fire and sword into their states till not one habitation is left standing."
The Geneva Convention of 1863 condemned the bombardment of cities occupied by civilians, but Lincoln ignored all such restrictions on his behavior. The bombardment of Atlanta destroyed 90 percent of the city, after which the remaining civilian residents were forced to depopulate the city just as winter was approaching and the Georgia countryside had been stripped of food by the federal army. In his memoirs Sherman boasted that his army destroyed more than $100 million in private property and carried home $20 million more during his "march to the sea."
Sherman was not above randomly executing innocent civilians as part of his (and Lincoln’s) terror campaign. In October of 1864 he ordered a subordinate, General Louis Watkins, to go to Fairmount, Georgia, "burn ten or twelve houses" and "kill a few at random," and "let them know that it will be repeated every time a train is fired upon."
Another Sherman biographer, Lee Kennett, found that in Sherman’s army "the New York regiments were . . . filled with big city criminals and foreigners fresh from the jails of the Old World." Although it is rarely mentioned by "mainstream" historians, many acts of rape were committed by these federal soldiers. The University of South Carolina’s library contains a large collection of thousands diaries and letters of Southern women that mention these unspeakable atrocities.
Shermans’ band of criminal looters (known as "bummers") sacked the slave cabins as well as the plantation houses. As Grimsley describes it, "With the utter disregard for blacks that was the norm among Union troops, the soldiers ransacked the slave cabins, taking whatever they liked." A routine procedure would be to hang a slave by his neck until he told federal soldiers where the plantation owners’ valuables were hidden.
General Philip Sheridan is another celebrated "war hero" who followed in Sherman’s footsteps in attacking defenseless civilians. After the Confederate army had finally evacuated the Shenandoah Valley in the autumn of 1864 Sheridan’s 35,000 infantry troops essentially burned the entire valley to the ground. As Sheridan described it in a letter to General Grant, in the first few days he "destroyed over 2200 barns . . . over 70 mills . . . have driven in front of the army over 4000 head of stock, and have killed . . . not less than 3000 sheep. . . . Tomorrow I will continue the destruction."
In letters home Sheridan’s troops described themselves as "barn burners" and "destroyers of homes." One soldier wrote home that he had personally set 60 private homes on fire and opined that "it was a hard looking sight to see the women and children turned out of doors at this season of the year." A Sergeant William T. Patterson wrote that "the whole country around is wrapped in flames, the heavens are aglow with the light thereof . . . such mourning, such lamentations, such crying and pleading for mercy [by defenseless women]... I never saw or want to see again."
As horrific as the burning of the Shenandoah Valley was, Grimsley concluded that it was actually "one of the more controlled acts of destruction during the war’s final year." After it was all over Lincoln personally conveyed to Sheridan "the thanks of the Nation."
Sherman biographer Lee Kennett is among the historians who bend over backwards to downplay the horrors of how Lincoln waged war on civilians. Just recently, he published an article in the Atlanta Constitution arguing that Sherman wasn’t such a bad guy after all and should not be reviled by Georgians as much as he is. But even Kennett admitted in his biography of Sherman that:
Had the Confederates somehow won, had their victory put them in position to bring their chief opponents before some sort of tribunal, they would have found themselves justified...in stringing up President Lincoln and the entire Union high command for violations of the laws of war, specifically for waging war against noncombatants.
Sherman himself admitted after the war that he was taught at West Point that he could be hanged for the things he did. But in war the victors always write the history and are never punished for war crimes, no matter how heinous. Only the defeated suffer that fate. That is why very few Americans are aware of the fact that the unspeakable atrocities of war committed against civilians, from the firebombing of Dresden, the rape of Nanking, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, to the World Trade Center bombings, had their origins in Lincoln’s war. This is yet another reason why Americans will continue their fascination with the War for Southern Independence.
Jeffrey Rogers Hummel, associate professor of economics at San Jose State University, discusses the major points of contention on U.S. Civil War history, the inextricable link between the Union and liberty in Northern doctrine, why moral rights should supersede constitutional limitations, how the North could have ended slavery in the South without contesting secession, the inability of chattel slavery-based economies to cope with runaways, the numerous bad precedents set while central governmental power grew during the Civil War and why the Articles of Confederation are better than the Constitution.
Jeff Hummel is the author of Emancipating Slaves, Enslaving Free Men: A History of the American Civil War (Chicago: Open Court, 1996). He teaches both economics and history, and before joining the SJSU economics faculty in the fall of 2002, lectured as an adjunct at Golden Gate University and Santa Clara University. He served in the U.S. Army as a tank platoon leader during the early seventies, was Publications Director for the Independent Institute in Oakland, CA, in the late eighties, and was a National Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, for the 2001-2002 academic year.
The majority of academic historians have as their first and foremost goal remaining a member in good standing of their profession. This means never seriously challenging the template of ideas that is closely guarded by the gatekeepers of the profession – the "senior scholars" who edit the journals, make recommendations for jobs and research grants, sit on editorial boards of university presses, review books in the New York Times and other prominent newspapers, and even appear frequently on cable television documentaries. These are people who have built reputations and careers on perpetuating their view of history, and they do all they can to protect their "human capital." "Academic freedom" is not all that it’s cracked up to be.
Consequently, some of the most interesting and worthwhile works of history increasingly come from outside of academe, where researchers and writers are much more free to pursue the truth as they see it without having to kowtow to the petty academic "gatekeepers." The work of Paul Johnson would be a good example, or Gore Vidal, John Steele Gordon, and others. Indeed, when Charles Adams proposed to his former publisher, Simon and Schuster, that he turn the chapter on the "Civil War" from his book, For Good and Evil: The Impact of Taxes on the Course of Civilization into a book, the publisher loved the idea but told him that the "gatekeepers" would not give it a fair hearing, and so they declined. (The book was subsequently published as When in the Course of Human Events: Arguing the Case for Southern Secession, by Rowman and Littlefield).
Nowhere are the "gatekeepers" more zealous than in guarding the Official View of Abraham Lincoln and the War to Prevent Southern Independence. For the Lincoln Myth is the cornerstone of the ideology of the American state, from which flows a steady stream of pelf and perks to the gatekeepers in their role as court historians. That is why they must be especially troubled that yet another "outsider" – this time a New York Times editorialist no less (!) – has written a book that challenges some of the gatekeepers’ Lincoln mythology.
The book is The Great Tax Wars: Lincoln to Wilson – The Fierce Battles Over Money and Power That Transformed the Nation, by Steven R. Weisman. Weisman covered politics, economics, and international affairs for the New York Times for more than 30 years, and is currently one of the paper’s editorial writers. The book is a general (popular) history of the income tax in America beginning in the 1860s, but there are several passages that really stand out with regard to the Lincoln regime. In particular, in discussing southern secession Weisman writes (p. 22):
South Carolina went first. The state’s grievances had been long-standing and not simply focused on slavery. Its major complaint went to the heart of the nation’s finances – tariffs. A generation earlier, South Carolina had provoked a states’ rights crisis over its doctrine that states could "nullify" or override, the national tariff system. The nullification fight in 1832 was actually a tax revolt. It pitted the state’s spokesman, Vice President John C. Calhoun, against President Andrew Jackson. Because tariffs rewarded manufacturers but punished farmers with higher prices on everything they needed – clothing, farm equipment and even essential food products like salt and meats – Calhoun argued that the tariff system was discriminatory and unconstitutional. Calhoun’s antitariff battle was a rebellion against a system seen throughout the South as protecting the producers of the North (emphasis added).
It is clear to Weisman, and to anyone else who briefly studies the antebellum, North-South tariff battles, that tariff exploitation was just as important to South Carolina (and the rest of the South) in 1860 as it was twenty-eight years earlier (See Mark Thornton and Robert B. Ekelund, Jr., Tariffs, Blockades, and Inflation: The Economics of the Civil War). After the sharp recession of 1857, the Republican Party gained enough political momentum to have the U.S. House of Representatives pass the Morrill Tariff, which more than doubled the average tariff rate, during the 1859–60 session, before Lincoln’s election and before any southern state had seceded. It was signed into law two days before Lincoln’s inauguration by President Buchanan, a staunch Pennsylvania protectionist. (Lincoln lobbied vigorously for the bill, telling a Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania audience a few weeks before his inauguration that it was the most important issue facing their congressional representatives, bar none).
To the South the tariff was all cost and no benefit; its manufacturers did not significantly benefit from it, whereas it caused Southern consumers to pay more for hundreds of items. Worse yet, they could not pass on the higher cost of living caused by the tariff to their customers, since they sold some three-fourths of what they produced on fiercely competitive international markets. To add insult to injury, protectionist tariffs that restricted trade left America’s trading partners with less money with which to purchase American exports, especially the cotton and tobacco that was grown in the South. Thus, protectionist tariffs imposed a triple dose of harm to the South, but benefited the North in two ways: it protected Northern manufacturers from competition, allowing them to raise their prices; and most of the money raised by the tariff was being spent in the North. To the South, protectionist tariffs were an unconstitutional instrument of plunder, just as Calhoun argued; to the North they were a convenient instrument with which they could plunder their fellow citizens in the southern states.
Weisman is undoubtedly familiar with the reasons that Jefferson Davis gave for secession in his first inaugural address. The word slavery does not appear in the address, which instead emphasized economic exploitation of the South by the Northern special-interest groups that had become so powerful in Congress.
There can be no cause to doubt that the courage and patriotism of the people of the Confederate States will be found equal to any measure of defence which may be required for their security. Devoted to agricultural pursuits, their chief interest is the export of a commodity required in every manufacturing country [cotton]. Our policy is peace, and the freest trade our necessities will permit. It is alike our interest, and that of all those to whom we would sell and from whom we would buy, that there should be the fewest practicable restrictions upon the interchange of commodities.
The typical approach of academic historians (and many others) is to smear, denigrate, and demonize Jefferson Davis, good little court historians that they are. But Weisman paints a more accurate portrait of Davis, whom he describes as a hero of the Mexican War, former Secretary of War, a U.S. Senator, and "a vigorous exponent of the view that the war was, at its core, not a fight to preserve slavery but a struggle to overthrow an exploitative economic system headquartered in the North" (p. 52).
Moreover, writes Weisman, "There was a great deal of evidence to support Davis’s view of the South as the nation’s stepchild" (p. 52). "The South had to import two-thirds of its clothing and manufactured goods from outside the region, and southerners paid artificially high prices because of the high tariffs.... The South even had to import food…." The North’s economy was based on "a kind of state capitalism of trade barriers, government-sponsored railroads" and "public investment in canals, roads and other infrastructures," paid for in large part with Southern taxes. "Southern resentment of the tariff system propelled the Democratic Party to define itself as the main challenger" to this corrupt, mercantilist system, writes Weisman (p. 53).
This system of "state capitalism" was also called "The American System" by Henry Clay, Abraham Lincoln’s political idol. Lincoln devoted his entire involvement in politics prior to becoming president to pursuing this agenda first as a Whig, then as a Republican. He became the Republican Party nominee precisely because of his long record as a "state capitalist" or mercantilist, just as Jefferson Davis was chosen to lead the South because of his opposition to the same policies.
Some court historians, such as Harry Jaffa and his followers (MacKubin Thomas Owens, Ken Masugi, and Thomas Krannawitter, for example) wrongly state that the statement of this fact – that Northern interest groups were using the apparatus of the state to plunder their fellow citizens – is somehow "Marxist analysis" and should therefore be dismissed. But the Jaffa-ites are ignorant of the long history of the classical liberal or libertarian "class" analysis. Unlike Marxian class analysis, which claims that the working class is exploited by the capitalist class, libertarian class analysis merely recognizes that in any democracy there will inevitably be a collection of interests, which may change in its composition from time to time, that will be the "tax consumers" or net beneficiaries of government intervention, who benefit at the expense of net taxpayers. It has nothing to do with Marx’s bogus class analysis, but focuses instead on the reality of interest-group politics in democracies that has been studied for literally hundreds of years, even before the time of Adam Smith. Indeed, Adam Smith’s Magnus Opus, The Wealth of Nations, was a critique of mercantilist exploitation in the England of his time (1776) and includes a good bit of libertarian class analysis. Nothing could be further from the doctrines of Karl Marx than the writings of Adam Smith, but the Jaffa-ites are completely ignorant of this difference.
The Northern political regime was clearly fearful of the free-trade doctrines of Adam Smith in 1860, so fearful that some Northern newspapers that were affiliated with the Republican Party advocated the bombing of southern ports before Fort Sumter because of their understanding that the new Confederate Constitution had outlawed protectionist tariffs altogether. With a 33%–50% tariff in the U.S. and a modest 10% tariff rate in the Confederacy, much of the trade of the world would have been diverted to the Southern ports, and this was not to be tolerated.
The Newark [N.J.] Daily Advertiser, which was a Republican Party mouthpiece, warned on April 2, 1861, that the "free-trade doctrines of Adam Smith" were dangerously popular in the South as southerners had "taken to their bosoms the liberal and popular doctrine of free trade" and that they "might be willing to go . . . toward free trade with the European powers." This "must operate to the serious disadvantage of the North," as "commerce will be largely diverted to the Southern cities." And, "We apprehend that the chief instigator of the present troubles – South Carolina – have all along for years been preparing the way for the adoption of free trade." This must be stopped, the New Jersey paper editorialized, by "the closing of the [Southern] ports" by military force (see Howard C. Perkins, Northern Editorials on Secession, p. 601). This of course is exactly what Lincoln set out do to, two weeks after Fort Sumter, in announcing a naval blockade of the South. In doing so he offered the nation one reason and one reason only for the blockade: tariff collection.
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September 7, 2004