Monuments and the Civil War Trust

The Confederate memorial on the grounds of the Alabama capitol

The Confederate memorial on the grounds of the Alabama capitol

A few times a year, ever since I subscribed to the Civil War Monitor, I get mail from the Civil War Trust. They raise money to acquire battlefield land for preservation. Ideally they then hand it over to the National Park Service or some other dependable group to manage. As one might gather from the name, they focus on Civil War battlefields, but they’ve lately branched out into the Revolution and War of 1812. About as often as I get mail from them, I think about sending them money. (I haven’t yet, but may still in the future.) I hear good things about their work from people I trust.

The Civil War Trust also did a piece of less than good work. It stood to reason that they would have something to say eventually about the growing challenge to Confederate monuments in the wake of the Charleston murders. They came out with a petition defending the monuments, about which Kevin Levin and Al Mackey have already written. I think it deserves examination, even if I tread over some of the same ground that they have.

After briefly laying out the circumstances, as these things do, the Trust tells its readers

It is our privilege as a free people to debate our history. However, we must remember that such freedoms come at a tremendous cost, paid for in the blood of brave Americans in uniform who sacrificed all to forge the country we are today. We owe these men and women a debt that can never be repaid.

I don’t care for talk about debts owed to soldiers as I think it easily shades over into glorification of the military and warfare in itself, if it ever meant anything else. But I know that most people feel differently. Accepting the premise for the sake of argument, we come to an immediate problem. The monuments to the Confederate military and leadership could only commemorate the bloody price paid for freedom and to forge the modern United States if those Confederates paid the blood dues out of the bodies of members of the United States military. This reading, however perverse, has the apparently esoteric virtue of comporting with history. I say esoteric because having identified the monuments under threat by implication, the Trust’s petition then tries to distract us from them:

Recognizing this debt, generations of Americans up to this day have built memorials honoring those who served in the military and have fallen in battle. These monuments are silent sentinels recognizing the soldiers who crossed the frozen Delaware River with Washington, fought amid the boulder-strewn hillsides of Gettysburg, served in the trenches of Vicksburg and Petersburg, landed on the beaches of Normandy and the islands of the Pacific, and most recently served in the deserts of Afghanistan and Iraq.

Leaving aside my pacifism, I understand the debt that people feel to those who died fighting the good fight. Surely this debt arises from their participation under the banner of a just cause and in service to noble aims. Those aims might not fit with a clear understanding of preserving American freedoms, of course. My grandfather fought on islands in the Pacific against an enemy that did not in any meaningful sense threaten American freedoms. Neither the Japanese, nor the Germans, nor the Italians, proposed to launch grand invasions of American soil, conquer it, overthrow the American government, and replace it with one created in their own image. But we all know the monstrous crimes of Nazi Germany. The Japanese did similarly horrific, if less industrialized, things in China and the Pacific. Defeating them served the cause of freedom generally.

If all of that holds true, then how must we read the references to Gettysburg, Vicksburg, and Petersburg? The Trust doesn’t go into specifics; it means for us to take the dead of those battles indiscriminately, the United States Colored Troops who died in the Crater as much martyrs to freedom as the men in gray who killed them. Somehow, both slavery’s soldiers and the solders who ultimately fought to destroy slavery had equally noble causes. We owe this debt alike to both parties. Only one freedom concerned the Confederacy and the Confederates: the freedom to enslave. If this counts as a nobility, then I propose we cultivate meaner virtues.

The Trust tells us

It is important to remember that many of these memorials are historic in their own right some more than 200 years old. In countless instances, these monuments were erected by the veterans themselves, who wanted to remember their leaders, their units and their fallen comrades. Many of these memorials were also paid for not with public money but through small dollar donations made by survivors and local citizens, determined to give of their limited means to honor the military.

No Civil War monument has yet had its two hundredth birthday. Once again the Trust considers every monument alike, as if all faced the same criticism. It rightly sees the monuments as artifacts in their own right, but then flees from considering anything but the most superficial reading of them. The authors do not, beside appeal to bad math, consider when the monuments went up or under what circumstances. Nor does it look to their content. The Trust doesn’t care if they lie about the Confederacy’s cause or if veterans put them up to celebrate the defeat of Reconstruction. It chooses not to inquire about monuments erected as protests against the civil rights, nor how many of these monuments served as rallying points for the resistance of the same. It even lumps together Confederate monuments built with public money on public land and those elsewhere, as though no difference existed between a kitsch statue of Lee in one’s backyard and one bearing the unquestionable imprimatur of the state.

The Trust asks for understanding and nuance while systematically eschewing the same. They say it outright:

we have a sacred duty to protect these war memorials, from all of America’s conflicts, whether they rest on the battlefield, in national cemeteries, or on town squares.

The Trust then calls on Congress to preserve and protect the lot, presumably even including those on private property that the owner would want removed and those on public property that the community wants gone.

Given my past iconoclasm, I can surprise no one by declaring myself unpersuaded. I remain convinced that the worst outcome involves the monuments, as a whole, remaining as they now stand. Simple battlefield markers noting where a unit stood and what it did can remain untroubled, of course. They serve a perfectly good educational purpose, provided their inscriptions get the facts right. Nor do I propose removing individual grave markers in cemeteries, though I do think the nation should get out of the business of erecting tombstones for dead Confederates. Memorials celebrating the Confederacy and/or lying about its cause present a different problem, especially when on public land and far from battlefields. Leaving them as-is continues the endorsement of their message, informing any who see them of untruths and exhorting them to mourn slavery’s end.

These monuments require correction or removal. If the Trust wants to have them as museum pieces, then I’d be happy to see them relocated somewhere and presented as ways the memory of the Civil War served, and still serves, the cause of white supremacy. Removal without that presentation comes next. If some private group wants to have the things and no corrective seems likely, then best have them out from under the smiling gaze of state buildings. If the owners simply wish to destroy the monuments, I consider that a missed opportunity for education but still superior to leaving them undisturbed.

If the monuments must remain in their present locations, then I think correctives must go beyond a simple plaque or a contrary monument elsewhere on the grounds. At the very least any companion monument should stand in a position of similar or greater prominence, easily visible from the original, and accompanied by interpretative materials that situation the two together. Though the best outcome, this one seems the least likely to me. Just as the original monuments had a clear, unambiguous message, so must any new pieces clearly counter it. I don’t foresee many plaques appearing with words like “the people who erected this other monument lied, and here’s how” with illustrative quotations and statistics. This would risk turning heritage sites designed to give one a bland, patriotic feeling of a sanitized past with all the messiness and conflict of actual history. Someone could learn something.

I have come down hard on the Civil War Trust today, but I think no harder than the petition deserves. I still think they do good work. They have among their officers competent historians. They produce good educational content, some of which I’ve highlighted before. But with this petition they fell prey to the inherent tension between their real estate business, and the fact that Lost Cause cash spends as well as the rest, and the educational mission which informs that business. They did this bad thing, but it does not undo the good they have done and I trust will continue to do.

The Kickapoo Pioneer Calls for Help, Part Two

George W. Brown

George W. Brown

Part One

The Kickapoo Pioneer sounded desperate. Faced with a rising antislavery movement that had a provisional government for Kansas already in operation, a constitution written and soon up for ratification, a secret military order revealed, and well-heeled Yankees footing their bills, its pages called the situation a crisis. The abolitionists threatened to undo all the proslavery good that Kansans and Missourians had managed. The South had the men and boldness to step up and save things, but proslavery Kansas could not do it alone.

George Brown reported all of this in the November 17 Herald of Freedom, adding in his own commentary:

the editor brays piteously for help. Power is departing. The handwriting is seen upon the wall. Pro-slavery men, do come immediately to Kansas, and rally around the black flag, else all your hope will perish, and all your money will be lost which you have expended in sending enemies into Kansas to wrest from the “abolitionists” their liberties. The fertile plains of Kansas are literally black with opponents of slavery. They come in wagons, they come by steamboats, they throng our public thoroughfares, they are seen in every department of life, and something must be done to stay the tide-this avalanche of Freedom, else all, all is lost.

Brown knew how to gloat, even if all the antislavery party had done in Kansas rested on the weakest legal foundations. No Congress authorized the free state movement. So far as the law cared, Wilson Shannon and the legislature stolen fair and square back in March governed the territory. But he could turn the Pioneer’s distress to his own purposes. Antislavery whites beyond Kansas’ borders could read from his piece that whatever they had heard, Kansas had a clear future as a free state. Thus the more cautious might hazard it instead of Nebraska.

Twice Brown invokes blackness and both times he does it on multiple levels. To nineteenth century Americans, the black flag meant no quarter and war to extinction. Pirates, the enemies of all mankind, flew the black flag. So did guerrilla bands. By tying the flag to proslavery men, Brown named them as similarly enemies to all and asserted that they would not have any scruples about any atrocity that would secure their goals.

The black flag bore the imagined color of the slave and Brown painted Kansas that hue with antislavery people as well. In the nineteenth century, you called your opponents black to associate them with evil. They used negro as a neutral term for African-Americans. Calling opponents of slavery black thus constituted a kind of double slur, first tying them to evil and then proclaiming them like unto both in a way inferior to enslaved people. Therefore, proslavery Americans could twice damn the emerging antislavery party as “Black Republicans”. By turning the insult back on them, Brown essentially said that not only did freedom prevail but also imply that it lived up to all the fears that it augured to the proslavery mind. The white South could rush to Kansas if they liked, but they would find a territory already lost to them.

Eli Thayer

Eli Thayer

This confidence opens Brown to the charge that he, like the Pioneer, wrote to solicit for aid from abroad. Brown’s piece accompanies a profile, with a picture, of Ely Thayer. It carries with it a confidence that Brown probably did not feel as fully as he let on, given the late exposure of the Kansas Legion. If the free state movement had made progress, then it remained an illegal group that had essentially declared itself legal and asked Kansas to agree. That Kansans did agree in large numbers did not erase those Kansans who did not, nor their allies in Missouri. If Brown did not nightly expect that a proslavery posse would ride to his doorstep and arrest him for his antislavery publications, then he had to know that it could happen. Should it come to pass, then he would either go quietly or unpredictable violence might ensue. Maybe he had ice water for veins, or sufficient confidence to laugh off the real threats, but his gloating carries at least a hint of trying too hard.

The Kickapoo Pioneer Calls for Help, Part One

George W. Brown

George W. Brown

The Herald of Freedom on Patrick Laughlin, parts 1, 2, 3

 

The November 17 Herald of Freedom had two pieces directly about Patrick Laughlin and his exposure of the Kansas Legion. One called him a perjurer, but insisted that if Laughlin had it right then proslavery men should shake in their boots because the free state movement had a virtual army. The second reported his killing of Samuel Collins in a dispute arising from the Legion’s exposure. George Brown further included two pieces reacting to items from the Kickapoo Pioneer. The first dismissed the story that a proslavery man caused a panic in Lawrence by putting out word that the law had come to seize Brown for illegal antislavery printing, but had another promise that Lawrence had plenty of well-armed men ready to defend the community. The second took a rather different approach. Under the heading “Signs of Distress” he included this from the Pioneer

THE CRISIS HAS ARRIVED.-The time has come when it behooves every proslavery man to be up and doing. If Southerners wish to see Kansas enter the Confederation as a slave State, they must no longer hesitate about taking up their line of march; they must come thicker and faster than ever before. Our enemies (the abolitionists,) are making every exertion to populate this Territory with hordes of their followers.

Those dastardly abolitionists raised $100,000 in the East to send along to Lawrence, used to form

a secret, midnight organization, where they meet and concoct ways and means to accomplish every kind of rascality and dishonesty to thwart the influence and strength of the pro-slavery party

Some of the cash even went to pay the passage of abolitionists to Kansas. I can’t vouch for the precise sum, but the Pioneer had basic facts right. The Massachusetts and then New England Emigrant Aid Societies had raised money to send antislavery men to Kansas. While the principals denied it at the time, it seems that the Society at least looked the other way if some of its funds went to weaponry and some of its shipments included rifles. Here every proslavery man’s nightmare had come true: not only did antislavery whites threaten to spark a slave revolt, they actively stockpiled arms for the purpose.

Thus, the Pioneer held, the South must get its act together and beat the antislavery men at their own game. The section must raise funds “”to meet every emergency” and fill Kansas with men sound on the goose. Otherwise

the glorious achievements that have been so valiantly won at the ballot-box in past elections will amount to nothing

The South, “gallant and glorious,” had the money and the men, the Pioneer said. Surely they would not abandon their fellows. Now they must act or lose the Territory. Proslavery Kansans would welcome help “in the noble cause”. Together they would defend the section’s rights and put down the “abolitionists and fanatics” who “have already been allowed too much sway, and are consequently becoming more impudent every day.” Together, proslavery Kansas of all vintages would

Strike terror to their black hearts and make them repent of past transgressions with a solemn promise never to darken the peace, happiness, and perpetuity of our glorious Republic by lifting an arm or raising a voice to proclaim negro freedom in our Territory, which soil by right belongs to the South and must be owned by the South at the sacrifice, if need be, of her best and bravest men.

I don’t think the piece requires Brown’s title to communicate distress. The Pioneer’s editor sounds desperate. They could see the free state movement organizing and news of its secret military order had to keep them up at night. With a shadow government now operating and an alternative state organization in the offing, it had to look like the early gains for slavery might come to nothing. The Pioneer may have exaggerated to get more sympathy, but the proslavery party had at least a potentially serious threat on its hands all the same.

 

The Herald of Freedom on Patrick Laughlin, Part Three

George W. Brown

George W. Brown

Parts 1, 2

In addition to George Brown’s two articles naming Laughlin directly and discussing his writing on the Kansas Legion, he devoted space in the November 17 Herald of Freedom to either the same or very similar stories. In both cases Brown responded to items in the Kickapoo Pioneer, the lone proslavery paper that expressed doubt about Laughlin’s revelations. The Pioneer, as quoted by Brown, had word from Lawrence of a great fright to “the decency” of Lawrence. A proslavery man supposedly started the rumor that the sheriff and some border ruffians would come up to Lawrence to enforce the legislature’s laws against antislavery publications. George Brown proudly broke those laws on the day they went into effect and had received threats from Robert Kelley of the Squatter Sovereign over it in the past.

According to the Pioneer, 

Immediately on receipt of the news the town was in an uproar-the sensation created was immense. The rust was rubbed off guns, and old swords were introduced to the grind stone to give them extra keenness. The chief of the Decency, the editor of the Herald of Freedom, brought forth his powder kegs; and, it is said, shed tears of joy to think that his days of martyrdom were at hand.

Night came and no proslavery men arrived, but the anonymous proslavery man had a good laugh at Lawrence for his trouble. He’d pulled the fire alarm and seen all his marks scurry for safety.

Brown knew a hit piece when he read one and made his opinion of it, and his version of events, clear in his introduction:

It is all news in this quarter, and will be read with a smile at the extreme gullibility of the proslavery press. The Pioneer may rest assured that an incident of the character which he mentions would cause no excitement in Lawrence. The “impliments” [sic] are always ready for service, and will require no burnishing when the contest comes.

Did it really happen? Given the situation in Kansas and the recent exposure of the Legion, the free state party could very well have felt vulnerable enough to react strongly to proslavery men arriving. Brown himself wrote of how embattled he had earlier felt in a private letter that later went public. He could have lied to save his pride. However, Brown published in Lawrence and had readers there. It seems far more likely that had a panic really erupted he would have turned it around into demonstration of proslavery perfidy.

Brown parted with a telling threat. Come on down and try something, proslavery men. Lawrence had no rusty guns or dull blades, but rather fresh arms standing ready for use. Exposed or not, the Kansas Legion still had its arms and willingness to fight in self-defense.

The Herald of Freedom on Patrick Laughlin, Part Two

George W. Brown

George W. Brown

Part One

George Washington Brown had a great deal to say about Patrick Laughlin in the pages of the November 17 Herald of Freedom. He published a report of Samuel Collins’ death at Laughlin’s hands, but gave over a considerable portion of the issue to related matters. Under the headline “Pat Laughlin’s Exposure”, Brown laid into Laughlin’s original article in the St. Joseph Cycle. He introduces it as the work of “a son of Erin, calling himself Pat Laughlin”.

the pro-slavery press are nearly frightened out of their boots on account of it. Pat says, “blessings I have not enjoyed since I became connected with this secret order.” His object in making the development was that he might “have some sleep on an easy conscience.”

Brown relates how Laughlin, by his own admission, swore that if he revealed as a perjurer and traitor. Therefore, Brown writes:

Pat stands before the country, according to his own showing, as a “perjurer before heaven, a traitor to his country, subject to the scorn of all men, the frown of devils, and utter abandonment of God,” else a falsifier and libeler, and wholly unworthy of credit the best way he can fix it.

The oath did include those words, so Laughlin could hardly complain that Brown treated him unfairly. Laughlin had to either lie in exposing the Kansas Legion or have made himself a liar in swearing his oath. Either way, Brown could fairly claim that Laughlin indicted himself. Who should believe such a man?

While Brown’s offering of the perjurer now vs. perjurer then distinction, he ultimately insisted that Laughlin lied from start to finish, inventing it all:

If Pat’s statements were true, the Free State men of Kansas are thoroughly organize don a military base, and are well qualified to resist the usurpations of the “border ruffians.” If they believe the tale they will not dare, as they value their lives, to send another marauding expedition into the interior of the Territory. We give it as our private opinion that there is something on which to base the story; that it is not wholly a fabrication; though we are suspicious that much of it arises from the fertile imagination of this worthy son of Erin, else from that of his amanuensis.

Brown did a great job of having it both ways. Laughlin invented everything, he insisted. However, even if he hadn’t, Laughlin made himself a liar so he should not be trusted. But if one did trust Laughlin, then he hinted to his readers that the free state men did have an armed organization. Maybe it didn’t match Laughlin’s account, but if it did then Missouri men should stay clear for their own safety. And even if it fell short, who could say how far short? Small bands of border ruffians might just find themselves with a nasty surprise all the same.

A cartoon attacking the Catholic Church's perceived attempt to "take over" American life

A cartoon attacking the Catholic Church’s perceived attempt to “take over” American life

Brown concluded with a gratuitous dig at Laughlin. An Irish immigrant might not speak English. Many in the nineteenth century came from the western reaches of the island where the language had not quite come to dominate yet. But Laughlin had lived in the country for years and interacted successfully enough with anglophones.

Failing that, Laughlin must have had an amanuensis, who wrote under his name. Here Brown reversed the usual complaint proslavery men made of slave narratives. Some better-educated person had written, presumably inventing along the way, on behalf of the slave. Everyone knew they couldn’t produce such work on their own. It would go well beyond the facts to say that the Irish had it as bad as slaves, or that they served as slaves (PDF), but nineteenth century Americans proved versatile enough to express their prejudices similarly from time to time.

 

What did ordinary Confederate soldiers fight for?

A Reunion of Cherokee Confederates

A Reunion of Cherokee Confederates

When speaking of the Confederacy, laypeople and those with a cripplingly narrow focus on matters military often make two related claims. First they will say that the Confederacy cared only incidentally about slavery, but really got worked up over states rights. This mangling of history remains far too common, but I think that most increasingly see it more as a declaration of the speaker’s sympathy with the Confederacy’s actual aims than a judgment earned under the sometimes cruel tutelage of facts. Furthermore, I doubt one would have to go far in any part of the country to find plenty of laypeople and military history enthusiasts who would contest it fiercely.

The second claim has more life in it, coming in at least two variations. The first insists that the Confederacy used slavery as a kind of manufactured issue, a hot button to marshal popular support for more esoteric policies that nobody would have gone to war over. Usually the speaker claims the tariff. I’ve even seen renditions that specify it down to a few cents on the tariff. While cents counted for a great deal more in the nineteenth century, this still seems to cut very close to the bone. The second variant holds that the Confederate political leadership absolutely fought for slavery, the common soldier never. He had no stake in the institution but the smooth operators in the state capitals convinced him that he did. In either case, the speaker usually trots out Robert E. Lee as proof positive that antislavery Confederates existed.

Whatever version of the argument one makes, it holds that essentially the common Confederate soldier lacked the intelligence, education, or sophistication to make sound political judgments in his own interest. In doing so on the part of the vast majority of Confederate soldiery and a large portion of the slave states’ male population of military age, the speaker condemns a large part of the South’s white population. If this takes a form slightly more polite than calling the lot of them a bunch of lack-wit fools, than it does not differ meaningfully in substance. As one would expect, many of the same people take great offense to the very unfair stereotypes which depict the South as a land of backwards, lack-wit fools.

The foolish and unsophisticated exist in every time and place, of course. One could make an argument that Southern indifference to Yankee innovations like public education played a part in giving the South more than its share, but this rarely comes up. Instead we must take it as given, even obvious, that a poor white farmer could not possibly have any interest in saving slavery and would not have allowed racism to irrationally dictate his actions. This requires that his racism, from his perspective, actually entail irrationality. Usually that works the other way around. From the perspective of the racist, racism seems entirely rational and sensible.

Leaving the question of rationality aside we do have some facts to consider. On first blush, these may seem to support the proposition that ordinary Confederate soldiers, and other pro-confederacy whites, had little personal interest in preserving slavery. Further consideration will reveal otherwise.

One must grant that a vast majority of Confederate soldiers did not themselves own slaves. Slaves cost a great deal and the average soldier hardly counted as a man of wealth and property. However, a vast majority of American soldiers who enlisted after 9/11 neither owned property threatened in New York, Virginia, or Pennsylvania, nor had loved ones injured or imperiled in the attacks that day. Did the American government manufacture a grievance for them, which they in their innocence could not see through? Must we believe that they forgot that none of their loved ones died that day? I suspect that any questioned on the point would find the argument risible. Just as they could have an interest in and commitment to the United States and its nebulously defined “way of life” independent of the immediate details of their personal lives, so could white Southerners have a commitment to the South and its own distinctive way of life. This way of life, to the degree it differed from that of other sections, largely revolved around the prosecution and maintenance of slavery.

In this light, a soldier could hope to own slaves in the future as his share of the Dixie-flavored American Dream. He might have slaveholding relatives. He probably, except in the most rugged and remote sections of the South, at least knew one slaveholder by sight. He might have, either personally or through close family, more substantial connections still. Eugene Genovese sketches out a web of such connections, a “conjecture of […] economic, political and cultural forces, incuding intense racism” between poor whites and planters which “made secession and sustained warfare possible” in his 1975 article Yeoman Farmers in a Slaveholder’s Democracy (JSTOR paywall, article accessible through a free account), taking Joshua Venable “dirt farmer of of Hinds County, Mississippi” as a case study:

Josh owned no slaves, worked forty acres of so-so land more or less competently, and struggled to keep his head above water. Fortunately for him, he was kin to Jefferson Venable, owner of the district’s finest Big House, Ole Massa to a hundred slaves, and patron to the local judge as well as the sheriff. Moreover, Josh Venable’s wife was kin to John Mercer, himself “massa” to only ten or twelve slaves but decidedly a man on the make.  […]

Now, poor Josh Venable himself rarely got invited to Cousin Jeff’s home and virtually never to the dining room table. Rather, he was usually invited to an outdoor affair-a barbecue to which many of the nonslaveholders of the neighborhood were also invited to celebrate lay-by or the Fourth of July. Josh also had to notice that he was only invited when many neighboring slaveholders were urged not only to come but to bring all their “niggers.” Still, kin was kin, and Josh got an ostentatious welcome as a member of the family. Ole Massa Jefferson, his own self, once took him by the arm to the barbecue pit to meet the new state senator, whom Ole Jeff had just bought and who might come in handy.

Here we have personal ties to planters. Joshua and Jefferson hardly seem like the best of friends, but Jefferson still had him over and treated him well on the occasion. This sort of behavior naturally creates a kind of sentimental alignment, even among the unrelated.

Josh resented his cousin-so much that he continued to hope that he would someday own even more slaves himself and maybe even reach the pinnacle of success-some day he might be able to make Cousin Jeff a low-interest loan to cover his famous gambling debts, not to mention those debts for somewhat unclear expenditures in New Orleans.

New Orleans served as the antebellum South’s Las Vegas, for those who want to read between the lines.

Josh’s resentment shades into aspiration. He doesn’t loathe Jeff for his success. He wants to become like Jeff, but better, and valuable to him. Ambition can account for plenty of that desire, but more went into it. Josh wanted to help Jeff out with money, just as Jeff helped out others:

Everyone, including Josh, knew that his cousin may have been a little stuffy, may have put on airs, but that he always had a helping hand for anyone in the neighborhood, lack or white. Josh raised some extra corn and a few hogs. What was he supposed to do, hand-carry them to Cincinatti? Wait to sell them to unreliable drovers, who specialized in hard bargains? Cousin Jeff was already ready to pay a fair price even though he could just as easily have increased the orders through his factors and not bothered with such local trivia.

Josh also knew any number of local farmers who raised two or three bales of cotton. If they had to spend $125 each for a cotton gin and then pay the costs of individual marketing, they could not have covered costs. Yet, there was good Ole Jefferson Venable, and the two or three other such worthies, ready to gin the cotton for a fair service charge of 9 or 10 per cent and market it with his own large crop to insure a fair price for his poorer neighors. No one ever accused Ole Jeff of trying to make a dollar off his neighbors. On the contrary, he was quick to send food and supplies to help someone down-and-out. And everyone saw how he sent a few of his hands to help a sick neighbor get in his small crop when everything hung in the balance. If it were not for Ole Jeff and a few others like him, how many of the poorer farmers could make it?

Jefferson and others like him would even hire on the sons of neighbors, giving them odd jobs that might lead to more. One could become an overseer, often a stepping stone to one’s own plantation. If a yeoman had a good year or two and found a deal, he might buy a slave. Should that slave not have immediate work, then the planter would “rent him for a year.” If a farmer ended up with a bumper crop and needed extra labor at a cash-poor time, one of the Jefferson Venables of the area would send a slave over to rent.

And everyone remembered how the local planters sent their slaves to throw up houses for new settlers and did everything possible to get them started.

Put yourself in the shoes of a Joshua Venable. The area’s Jeffersons might not make you feel like quite an equal, but they’ve gone out of their way to help you out and support you. Why would you see them as enemies? Furthermore, since so much of what they did involved using slave labor directly, or indirectly, on your behalf wouldn’t you associate their patronage closely with their slavery?

Even without the planters to serve as patrons, protectors, and role models, it made perfect sense to tie one’s aspirations to future slaveholding. White hands might decide to try somewhere else in a year. They could hare off to Texas or Arkansas. They would demand treatment that slaves could not. Should one find white labor that would not go off to greener pastures and would work as hard as a slave, then even after winning the labor lottery you still needed more hands than the local white population could supply. One would inevitably look to slavery, a fixed fact of life for as long as anyone could remember, as the way to get ahead. Thus one would stand ready, if perhaps not always eager

to ride patrol, to help discipline the slaves, and to take part in the political and police aspects of the slave regime-in short, to think and act life slaveholders even before becoming one. That many were motivated by racism, sadism, or a penchant for putting-on-dog is undeniable. But even without those pleasantries, the path of social duty emerged as the path of self-interest.

It doesn’t take false consciousness or foolishness to arrive at that conclusion and consequently stand ready to fight to save slavery. It would even, necessarily, require ubiquitous racism. The advantages of the system in itself would make converts and produce the racism to order. A poor farmer did not have precisely the same stake in the system as a great enslaver did, but their social, cultural, political, and economic interests all closely aligned.

Genovese’s example concerned poor farmers in the plantation belt. They could hold in the upcountry with fewer slaves. Raw racism may play a larger role, as the undeveloped upcountry with its mostly white populations often understood that the presence of planters meant also the presence of slaves. They’d rather have neither than both, a position not that far from that of some Kansas free state men. If the upcountry men disliked having planters, a species of outsider, dictate to them then they disliked Yankee dictation all the more and might understand further integration with the nation by internal improvements and the resulting commercial intercourse. That could bring the slaves in, and had helped bring them to former upcountry tracts in the past.

But the upcountry white belts did, ultimately, have weaker ties to the Confederate cause because of their smaller investment in and immersion with slavery. The more upcountry-style Border States did not secede. West Virginia bolted Virginia to come back. Sometimes fierce resistance erupted in Eastern Tennessee, western North Carolina, and elsewhere beyond slavery’s easy reach. If the South had men with little investment in the slave system, then they lived in those places. If such men fought routinely for the Confederacy, we would expect them to exhibit a high degree of loyalty to it. Yet instead we observe districts ranging from divided to actively rebellious just where we would expect the slavery-indifferent, easily fooled Confederate soldiers to appear most often.

A South Carolina artilleryman at Petersburg.

A South Carolina artilleryman at Petersburg.

I understand the desire to see one’s ancestors, personal or figurative, in only the best light, but it doesn’t make for good history. In the absence of clear evidence to the contrary, it seems far more reasonable to operate under the assumption that people of a time and place act within the general norms rather than against them. This holds true even before we consider the clear fact that the Confederacy made no secret of its purpose, but rather trumpeted it loudly. That alone ought to make it clear that men who signed on knew they fought for slavery and accepted the fact, but even if the Confederate leadership managed a remarkable conspiracy of silence and dissembling, as apologists imagine, the social, economic, and political patterns one sees in Genovese and elsewhere would make a powerful, if somewhat less quotable, case that most Confederates both knew they would and chose to fight and die for slavery.

The Herald of Freedom on Patrick Laughlin, Part One

George W. Brown

George W. Brown

The Squatter Sovereign, as one might expect, greeted news of Patrick Laughlin’s killing of Samuel Collins with apparent glee. The death of a free state man at the hands of a proslavery man warranted celebration, even if the editors chose to give Collins twelve companions against whom Laughlin struggled almost alone. I hoped to find a proslavery paper less keen on the affair to examine for contrast, or to learn that the Sovereign’s public joy spread to other papers, but haven’t had any luck. My access to the Leavenworth Herald falls off in early September of 1855 and much thereafter has even survived, it seems the Library of Congress doesn’t know of it. The Kickapoo Pioneer does survive, but in libraries states away. We’ll survive the lack, but it does mean that the only contrast comes from George Brown’s Herald of Freedom.

The October 27 edition has nothing to say about Laughlin, Collins, or the Kansas Legion. Given that the fight happened on the 25th and some distance away, one can hardly blame Brown for not knowing or not having the time to set the type and still meet his deadline. Owing to uncertain paper supplies, Brown elected to go skip a few weeks, so the next paper did not come out until November 17. That issue includes several interesting pieces, some of which may appear in future posts, but on the Collins killing, Brown had little to say. He offered up no excited headline, only “Murder.”

We see in the St. Joseph Cycle, that a fatal rencounter [sic] occurred a few days ago at Doniphan, between Pat Laughlin, the perjurer-according to his own confession-and SAMUEL COLLINS, a Free State man, and late Delegate to the Big Springs’ Convention, growing out of Pat’s exposure of a secret organization said to exist in the Territory. The Cycle represents Pat as acting in self-defense, but nobody believes the statement. COLLINS had resided about a year in the Territory, and was a man of intelligence and much personal worth. We shall have further information as regards the facts in a few days.

As a person who answers to “Pat”, I find Brown’s use of it as a kind of slur deeply amusing. I suspect that he intended to play on anti-Irish sentiment by stressing it, given the frequent overlap of antislavery and nativist sentiment.

Brown confesses to lacking the necessary facts for a larger piece, which seems unlikely weeks after Collins died. From context, Brown means that he lacked trustworthy antislavery witnesses to tell him what “really” happened. We suffer the same lack today, though I suspect we would find more of actual events by comparing those missing accounts with the proslavery version than by taking either at face value. His defense of Collins involves recourse to Collins’ reputation. This suggests to me that Brown knew they stood together for a free Kansas and little else about Collins. I’ve read him vouch personally for men he knew in the past, but he makes only a token and decidedly impersonal effort here. Most likely Brown only knew Collins by reputation and politics, but took the latter as sufficient to guarantee the former. A good man opposed slavery and a good man would not go spoiling for a fight. Therefore Laughlin, who he knew as a bad man for breaking his oath of secrecy, could not possibly have acted in self-defense.

The Squatter Sovereign on Patrick Laughlin

Patrick Laughlin killed Samuel Collins in a dispute over his published revelations on the Kansas Legion, which I’ve taken some time to examine. I found them reprinted in the Squatter Sovereign for November 6, 1855. The killing itself justified the printing, which consumed most of the Sovereign’s second page. The Sovereign customarily used its first page for short fiction and poetry, this amounted to front page news in the estimation of John Stringfellow and Robert Kelley. After the usual endorsement of David Rice Atchison for President, the Sovereign printed a paragraph on the turning season and then progressed to the matter at hand.

It transpired that not every proslavery paper in Kansas much cared for Laughlin. The Sovereign reports

The “Kickapoo Pioneer,” a Know-Nothing paper published in this Territory is the only pro-slavery (?) Journal that has had the temerity to question the veracity of Mr. Laughlin’s exposition of the midnight order of abolitionists in this Territory. It should be remembered that its editors are Know-Nothings, and that Mr. Laughlin is an Irishman, and therefore in the opinions of these scape-graces, his statements are “not worth much.”

The Know-Nothings dreamed that their anti-Catholic, anti-immigrant movement could save the Union by uniting the sections against the fruit of Rome, Ireland, and Germany. Knowing how things went at the end of the decade, we can easily forget that for a brief time they formed a significant force in American politics. Here we have both a reminder of that and at least a point of tension within the proslavery party. I’d very much like to see what the Pioneer said in its own words, but no one seems to have digitized it.

After dismissing the Pioneer’s editors a bunch of anti-Irish bigots and casting aspersions on their commitment to slavery, Stringfellow and Kelley pressed on to the main event:

GREAT EXCITEMENT AT DONIPHAN! AN ABOLITIONISTS KILLED!!

GREAT EXCITEMENT AT DONIPHAN! AN ABOLITIONISTS KILLED!!

I couldn’t do the glee with which the Sovereign reported the killing justice without including the headline. The news so pleased them that their grammar fell over. For the most part, the paper tells the same story as the witnesses did. Collins confronted Laughlin and demanded a retraction. However:

In accordance with this determination, he and some TWELVE brother Abolitionists proceeded Wednesday last to seek out Mr. Laughlin, and demand an unqualified retraction of his recent confession

John Stringfellow, Speaker of the House of Kansas

John Stringfellow, Speaker of the House of Kansas

Collins had relatives with him and they did involve themselves, but nothing in the witness testimony suggests a band of thirteen abolitionists chasing after Laughlin. Accurate news probably had time to reach the Sovereign before printing, but word of these things can grow in the retelling. Or John Stringfellow could have lied to paint the antislavery party in a darker light. He could say to the South that his party had done so much on their behalf in Kansas but now they had monstrous legions arrayed against them. They desperately needed all the help they could get to hold the line. Should that help not arrive, then Kansas’ proslavery men could go down overwhelmed by numbers or prevail against all odds, valiant specimens of white manhood either way.

The Constitution and Ritual of the Kansas Legion, Part Five

Cyrus K. Holliday, Grand Vice-General of the Kansas Legion

Cyrus K. Holliday, Grand Vice-General of the Kansas Legion

Parts 1, 2, 3, 4; Squatter Sovereign article

Patrick Laughlin published the constitution and rituals of the Kansas Legion, but his article included more information still. It appears that when the Grand Encampment had their first session, on February 8, 1855, they passed a resolution that offers a useful reminder that their movement did not consist entirely of twenty-first century egalitarians, but rather nineteenth century white Americans. In April, the legion’s founders wrote their constitution. In February, they had this to say:

Whereas, while we regard the Freedom of Kansas Territory as the highest of all political considerations which may now or hereafter engage our attention as a free and intelligent people, we at the same time regard it as impolitic and wrong to adopt any line of policy that may in any manner interfere with the domestic relations of our neighboring States or Territories–therefore,

Resolved, that we hold it to be just and proper in our relations with our sister States as a fundamental principle of action, and most promotive of the public good of the Territory, that laws preventing the emigration of either Slaves or Free negroes be enacted by our coming General Assembly and eventually engrafted in the constitution of the State.

Andrew Francis wanted to join the free state movement because he understood its goal as largely the same as his free white state party: no black Americans in Kansas. Missouri need not worry, as Kansas would let Missourians come and take back their absconded slaves. Kansan whites need not worry, as they would not let any black person free or slave remain long in their territory. Every black person would lose if they had their way, and therefore every white person would win.

David Wilmot

David Wilmot

Not every antislavery Kansan went along with that, as recurrent debates over Jim Lane’s black law demonstrate, but they could not carry the state on their own. For every Charles Robinson, who would make black men and women of all races into voters, the United States had at least dozens of David Wilmots bent on constraining slavery only as a way to make the continent whites only. The egalitarians could grumble about it and write protests, but without the numbers they could accomplish little else. Worse, if they insisted too forcefully they might break the tide of resentment that repeated theft of elections had engendered in white Kansans and send some of the black law men back over to the proslavery side. I don’t know that we could say which course would have led to a better outcome any easier than they could have.

James Henry Lane

James Henry Lane

Laughlin concluded his exposure of the Legion with suitable fireworks:

Now that I have shown the foul, treasonable and murderous plottings of a party in which preachers of the Gospel stand pre-eminent-it is my duty to give also to the world, in order to make my statements more perfect, the Grip, Signs, and Passwords of this modern army, made up of the chivalrous sons of darkness.

Thus Laughlin told Kansas, and anybody in Missouri who cared to read it as well, not just what he knew or the contents of documents. He also provided the means to infiltrate a meeting. They need not take his word for it, but could go see for themselves. While present they could note the faces, then return home and tell their friends.

The article concludes with a statement of Laughlin’s character. Seven men swore to having known Laughlin since he came to Kansas and

take pleasure in saying that his demeanor has been that of a gentleman, and that they consider his statements perfectly reliable in every respect.

The seven worthies included James Forman and James Lynch, both of whom took part in the Laughlin-Collins clash. I suspect we know now just how Collins came to see Lynch as his enemy. Two other Formans, John and A.P. signed as well, likely relatives of James.

 

The Constitution and Ritual of the Kansas Legion, Part Four

Cyrus K. Holliday, Grand Vice-General of the Kansas Legion

Cyrus K. Holliday, Grand Vice-General of the Kansas Legion

Parts 1, 2, 3; Squatter Sovereign article

 

You had to swear twice to join the Kansas Legion. The first time, you swore not to reveal what you would learn of the group and its business at the meeting where they planned to induct you. Then, reeling from the stunning revelation that this secretive group of antislavery men constituted a secretive group of antislavery men, must swear a more binding oath. The Constitution and Ritual of the Kansas Legion set this down word for word and Patrick Laughlin published it with the rest of the Legion’s secrets.

The Howard Report also contains a version of the oath, as remembered by Andrew Francis. Francis uses the Kansas Regulators. He joined after Laughlin’s original publication, some time shortly after October 11. At his induction, Andrew Reeder impressed on Francis that the Regulators had nothing to do with the Kansas Legion that Laughlin exposed. Other witnesses, notably Martin F. Conway, also testify to two organizations. Given the similarity between the groups, their identical politics, the short timespan between the fall of one and the presumed rise of the next, I don’t take this claim very seriously. Francis’s testimony suggests that he tended to take people very much at their word. That considered, I see the Regulators as unlikely to differ substantially from the Legion. Most likely, the members changed their name and altered a few habits rather than founded an entirely different group.

The oath that the Legion specified might not perfectly match the oath Francis recalled, even if he originally swore the same words. That could come down to actual changes, imperfect memory, or local variations in usage, but the two bear examination together all the same. The official oath begins

I, _____, in the most solemn manner, here, in the presence of Heaven and these witnesses, bind myself that I will never reveal, nor cause to be revealed, either by word, look or sign, by writing, printing, engraving, painting or in any manner whatsoever anything pertaining to this institution, save to persons duly qualified to receive the same. I will never reveal the name of this organization, the place of meeting, the fact that any person is a member of the same, or even the existence of the organization, except to persons legally qualified to receive the same.

The Howard Committee

The Howard Committee

This substantially matches Francis’ oath. He references “the Almighty” instead of “the presence of Heaven” and phrases the obligations differently, but captures the same meaning. Francis adds that the oath required him to obey, to the cost of his own life, the commands of his superiors. The Legion’s oath has nothing like that. Instead, one must

support, maintain and abide by any honorable movement made by this organization to secure this great end [a free Kansas], which will not conflict with the laws of the country and the Constitution of the United States. I will unflinchingly vote for and support the candidates nominated by this organization, in preference to any and all others.

One could take the obedience unto death part as read, but the text doesn’t really suggest that. Someone could have added it in accord with local usage, but one wouldn’t expect local variants to have much traction in the immediate surrounds of the men who wrote down the original. A more severe version of the oath might have gone out after Laughlin put the Legion in the papers. Francis might have remembered things told to him informally as part of the oath. Or he might have resented the Legion/Regulators for letting him think Wilson Shannon supported them and added it out of spite.

Francis’ oath also bound him to commercial non-intercourse with proslavery men, to whatever degree he could manage. The Legion’s oath has no such provision. Nor does it require, as Francis claims he swore, that one must bear arms. However, the Legion’s constitution provides that encampments of thirty or more must form military companies and the prescribed rituals consistently refer to members as soldiers, so I don’t think he went far off script in reading that between the lines.

The Legion’s oath concludes

To all of this obligation I do most solemnly promise and affirm, binding myself under the penalty of being expelled from this organization, of having my name published to the several Territorial Encampments as a perjurer before Heaven and a traitor to my country-of passing through life scorned and reviled by men, frowned on by devils, forsaken by angels, and abandoned by God.

Frnacis didn’t call these lines out as such, but if they appeared in the oath he swore then they might well have discomfited him on religious grounds. He mentions such scruples in his testimony, as well as concerns about swearing to oppose the legislature’s work conflicting with his oath as a lawyer.

The induction ritual continued with a recitation of the familiar free soil grievances and the insalubrious effects of slavery upon the prosperity of the land. The Colonel would then teach the secret handshake, knocks, and passwords. The new member must not forget to whisper the latter. It wouldn’t do for every Atchison, Stringfellow, and Kelley to learn them.