On Separatist Nationalism in the American Antebellum South
From 1861 to 1865, war raged on American soil in a civil war that shook the nation to its core. In the decades that followed, questions as to the origins, sociology, conduct, and long-term effects of the war have sparked tremendous controversy. Cast almost as a great theatrical tragedy upon the stage of history, it seems the politicians and generals played key roles in the coming, conduct, and outcome of the war. Yet, at times, ordinary Americans had equally significant influence. The storied portrayal of this great drama may appear thus because of the men and women who have recorded and re-recorded its significance again and again. Each time, the historian chooses what and whom to enter into the “historical chronology,” thereby shaping what becomes “history.” Perhaps the placement of players upon the stage of the American Civil War has as much to do with their respective roles as it does with the historians who continue to reinterpret the tale with each passing generation.
One may wonder whether the slave question, in and of itself, had the power to so divide and so vex the nation as to produce Civil War. A simple answer may take that premise in the affirmative, however, a more careful exploration of Antebellum America may develop a more detailed response. Therein lies the impetus of the phenomena that created a sense of nationhood in the region of the country that would become the Confederacy. A social and political dichotomy had existed in America since before the Revolution that would manifest in the philosophy of governance of the young nation.
Virginian planter, Renaissance man, and Founding Father Thomas Jefferson championed an individualistic social and political platform rooted in a sense of agrarian populism and property rights. The Jeffersonian vision for America told of a wealthy patriarchal society of gentlemen farmers, each of whom lived off the land in semi-autonomous family units, isolated from the aristocratic and industrial chaos of Europe. In opposition to this philosophy stood a man whose person and ideas set in antithesis to Jefferson's. New York political magnate and leading advocate for the Constitution and Federalism Alexander Hamilton strove to create a different sort of nation. Hamilton's America would utilize its abundant resources to build an economic and military power; one guided and protected by a strong central government. Upon this model, Hamilton's Republic would rise into its own sphere of power and influence, holding the expansionist nations of Europe in check.
Jefferson Hamilton
These two opposing worldviews would shape the nation's first political parties, and come to define, in some ways, a growing sense of sectionalism in America. As the first European immigrants settled along what would become the east coast of the United States, climate may have played some role in the economic and social future of the country. In what would become the southeastern US, a warm and balmy climate made agriculture an ideal economic foundation. This in turn elicited a demand for manual labor, one easily fed by the established African slave trade with Europe and the Caribbean. In the north, or “New England,” the advance of industrial production and chilly climate helped make agriculture less pertinent, and created a demand for skilled labor. An argument exists to the extent that climate not only influenced the country economically, but also socially and politically, helping to reinforce if not engender established differences between New England and the “Sunny South.” Jefferson himself had this much to say about the differences between people of New England and the South: “In the North they are: cool, sober, laborious, persevering, independent, jealous of their own liberties and just to those of others, interested, chicaning, superstitious and hypocritical in their religion. In the South they are: fiery, voluptuary, indolent, unsteady, independent, zealous for their own liberties, but trampling on those of others, generous, candid, without attachment or pretensions to any religion but that of the heart.”
One might ask if these perceived differences, real or imagined, would have provided enough of an impetus to create Southern nationalism somewhat organically, or what role the slave question may have played. Indeed, Southern dependence on agriculture and slavery had become ingrained in the economy of the entire nation well before the eve of the Civil War. The “peculiar institution” had nearly prevented the formation of the Constitution at the Philadelphia Convention, and only compromises on a “Fugitive Slave Clause” and the infamous “Three-Fifths Clause” secured the creation of a united republic. In a theme that would dominate the next eighty years of national politics, slavery became a virtual “elephant in the room.” This elephant continually stamped its feet on the Capitol and in the public dialogue, driving a wedge between states that depended on slavery, and those that did not.
Geopolitical Developments on the Slave Issue in the Early Republic and Antebellum Eras
While the South remained committed to the institution of slavery, one should not assume she did so out of any particular love for the practice. Rather, the development of the Southern ethos remained heavily rooted in Jeffersonian ideology. Jefferson himself treated slavery as a necessary evil; a belief shared by many Southerners. Yet, a profound belief in the virtues of agrarianism and rural life also became central to the structure of a developing “Southern” society. Jefferson had said that “Those who labor in the earth are the chosen people of God...whose breasts He has made His peculiar deposit for substantial and genuine virtue...” The man from Monticello held a vision of the country shared by those who, like him, lived in and around the “plantation” lifestyle. The celebration of this lifestyle as a social and moral ideal would come to define a growing sense of Southern identity.
The contrasts to life in the industrial North with that of the South helped to shape this identity. Politically and socially embodied by Hamilton's Federalists and the Whigs that succeeded them, the interests and growth of industrial capitalism seemed to flourish in New England. This seeming race to modernity threatened Jefferson's “agrarian utopia” in the eyes of many Southerners, and deepened the realization of social and political “sectionalism” between an industrial North and an agrarian South. Whereas industrialization mostly utilized free and skilled labor, agriculture merely required a large and hardy workforce, and slavery came to define the difference between the seemingly divergent economic systems.
As America expanded westward, disputes over whether these new territories would become slave or free states become a topic of fierce contention. Despite an ability to compromise, Congress continued to reflect an expanding divergence on the slave issue that seemed to worsen with each passing year. A rising voice of abolition, primarily in New England, continued to flood Congress with anti-slavery petitions. This raised tensions to such a feverish pitch on the Capitol that in May of 1836, Representative James Henry Hammond proposed what became known as the “Gag Rule,” prohibiting any further mention of slavery in Congressional proceedings in a measure that would survive eight years. Each time slavery reared its head in matters of national policy, whether in regards to the expansion of western territories or fugitive slave laws, both public and gubernatorial relations between slave states and free states continually worsened. The growing demands of abolitionism in the North became increasingly visceral, portraying slavery as a national sin. Slaveholders, and by association, the Southern slave states, exemplified a base, evil, and corrupt society in the minds of many abolitionists. By compromising with the South in the creation of the Constitution, leading abolitionists like William Lloyd Garrison decried the whole country and government as essentially complicit in the evil of slavery.
The increasing tempo and prevalence of abolitionism in the North angered and alienated many Southerners, feeding and supporting the rise of Southern separatist nationalism. Many southern leaders felt driven to justify Southern culture and the institution of slavery. Arguably, South Carolina Congressman John C. Calhoun stood the foremost among these leaders. Calhoun, while willing to compromise to maintain the Union, clung to a Jeffersonian sense of state sovereignty that led him to question whether the South could remain part of the United States. He argued passionately for distinctly “Southern” interests in the expansion of slavery and balance of slave-holding representation in the government. His speeches on the floors of the House and Senate reflected the concerns of his constituents and his “section;” fears about the growing power of abolition and industrial capitalism, and what he considered attempts by these interests to “subdue” the Southern “section.” Calhoun's ability to delineate Southern social and political goals made him a hallmark of growing Southern nationalism.
John C. Calhoun
In the wake of the Mexican-American War, the Wilmot Proviso restricted slavery from the newly conquered territories. This enraged many in the slave states who had sought to establish land and plantations there. In another display of Southern nationalism, individual Southern states began organizing independent paramilitary expeditions to conquer lands in Latin America. One such prospective “filibusterer” voiced a popular refrain in the South, declaring ““We (the slave states) have been swindled . . . out of the public domain....(we must) strike with effect, after the fashion of Texas.” While none of these expeditions met lasting success, the fact that they took place, and the fact that the federal government seemed unable or unwilling to curtail them, exemplified the weakness of the national government and the growing boldness of the Southern nationalists.
It seemed the ship of state had veered toward disunion. Men like Alabama Representative William Yancey and South Carolina Congressman James Hammond both encouraged and rose upon increasing extremes of Southern nationalism. An orator of famous ability, Yancey traveled throughout the South in the 1850s, fanning the flames of secessionism. Hammond became heavily associated with themes of scientific racism that had taken root in Europe, and promoted the institution of slavery on the basis that the latter represented a foundation of natural scientific order. Together, secessionists like Yancey and Hammond became known as “fire-eaters” by their opponents. This growth of Southern nationalism, fueled by abolitionist antagonism, sought to fuse Jeffersonian agrarianism and property rights with conceptions of Manifest Destiny, the “virtue” of slavery as a vital institution of “superior” Southern society, and an almost mythical sense of Southern ethics and heritage dating to the knights of the Middle Ages.
Together, these factors, real or manufactured, served as the basis of an emerging “Southern identity.” Denigrated by abolitionist fervor, dismayed by the rapid expansion of industrial capitalism, and angered by the increasing hostility to slavery with regards to the western territories, a crucible of negative reinforcement seemed to drive the slave states together in common economic and political interests. This played into the hands of the “fire eaters,” who had worked for years to turn these economic, social, and political interests into marks of pride; Southern, nationalist pride.
By 1860, the slave question had crippled the nation's two party system, allowing a new phenomenon to rise to power. Championing a platform of industrialization, free labor, public education, and the containment of slavery, the Republican Party had risen steadily throughout the 1850s and won the White House in the 1860 elections. It seemed the end of the Union had finally arrived in the eyes of many Southerners. When South Carolina finally seceded on 20 December, 1860, it seemed the floodgates of secession and strife had opened at last. When Fort Sumter fell in April of 1861 and Lincoln marshaled troops, a cascade of secessionist ecstasy swept the South, galvanizing what would become a new Southern Confederacy. In total, thirteen states would join this Confederacy, completing a sectional split at least thirty years in the making. Federal response vacillated between inaction and military incompetency, and when Federal troops finally met Confederate at Manassas, Virginia, in July of 1861, the resulting rebel victory cemented a jubilant Southern nation that would fight on for another four years.
Firing on Fort Sumter
Yet, one should not solely credit the “leading characters” in the creation of the seemingly organic developments within the abolitionist and Southern nationalist movements, respectively. Southern nationalists, observing the startling “liberal” trends of the North, reinforced their own sense of gentile and chivalrous ethics to distance themselves from the North. Thus, one may trace the elevation of Southern women within the Southern ethos to the latter's sense of nationalism and cultural identity. If Southern men became knights, their women became ladies; ladies whose sole sphere of action remained the home. Still, even within this sphere, the Southern woman became a cornerstone of the Southern nation, especially when war came. The women of the South rallied to the new Confederacy with fervor to match any man, organizing community groups, making uniforms, urging their men to fight, caring for the wounded, and holding hearth and home together while their “knights” battled the “Yankee invaders.” In such a way, one can see the ways in which Southern “knights” depended on their noble “ladies.”
When one considers the development and growth of Southern nationalism in the antebellum period, topics like slavery or state sovereignty often seem to occupy a great deal of space. Traditional imagery might conjure images of a wild-hared John C. Calhoun delivering fiery speeches in the halls of Congress, or a distinguished gentleman planter standing gazing out across hundreds of acres of cotton. While these observations certainly have their place in the historical record, the historian must decide what, where, and when to look for facts and details when interpreting the past. After all, these interpretations define what becomes “history” and what becomes lost to time. Indeed, some of the more obscure features of the “ordinary folk” of history may only just have begun to find their place alongside the “Washingtons and Lincolns and Roosevelts” of history. In understanding the philosophical, pragmatic, and popular ethos of what became the “Southern cause,” one can gain a fuller picture of the phenomenon that continues to both inspire and intrigue modern observers.
Bibliography
1. David Donald, “American Historians and the Causes of the Civil War,” The South Atlantic Quarterly, vol. 49 (1960)
2. E.H. Carr, What is History? (New York: 1963, Alfred A. Knopf)
3. James McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era (New York: 1988, Oxford University Press)
4. Alexander Hamilton, “Federlist No. I” (New York, The Independent Journal, 27.10.1787
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/1404/...#link2H_4_0001
5. Cash Koeniger, "Climate and Southern Distinctiveness," The Journal of Southern History, vol. 54, (February 1988)
6. (U.S. Const. art. 4. sec. 2. cl. 3.), (U.S. Const. art. 1. sec. 2. cl. 3.)
7. Edward L. Ayers, In the Presence of Mine Enemies, (New York: 2003, W.W. Norton and Company, Inc.)
8. John C. Calhoun, “Slavery: A Positive Good.” (Speech delivered to the United States Senate, 06 February, 1837.)
http://sciway3.net/2001/john-c-calhoun/Slavery.htm