Tag Archives: sociology

Sherman Behaving Badly

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It’s always disheartening to read reports of your favourite generals and presidents saying horrible things on the subject of race, but given the times, there’s a distasteful story for just about every personality in the war, North and South. Today, it’s Sherman:

Blinded by his implacable racism, Sherman could see no worthwhile moral or legal debate to be had over slavery. History had forced this institution on the South, Sherman thought, and its continued prosperity depended on embracing it. “Theoretical notions of humanity and religion,” he flatly declared, “cannot shake the commercial fact that their labor is of great value and cannot be dispensed with.” Further, Sherman believed that slavery benefited both races. In 1854 he assured his brother that blacks thrived in the Southern heat and later told David F. Boyd, one of his professors at the Louisiana military academy and eventual friend, that he considered slavery in the South “the mildest and best regulated system of slavery in the world, now or heretofore.”

Still, slavery did trouble Sherman in one way: He grew increasingly worried that the political fight over it would threaten the stability of the Union. However, while he occasionally singled out Southerners for overreacting to antislavery sentiment — once writing that they “pretend to think that the northern people have nothing to do but steal niggers and preach sedition” — Sherman overall displayed a clear sympathy for their side in the growing schism. He was emphatic in an 1859 letter to his wife that the South should make its own decisions regarding slavery and then “receive its reward or doom.” Sherman thus anticipated Jefferson Davis’ famous plea of two years later that the South simply be left alone.

One of the things I love about Sherman was his pragmatism. He disagreed with the root cause of the war, but once the South went in for treason, he embraced the waging of it wholeheartedly. Ironic then, by his quote above of letting the South decide its own doom, that he wound up as the angel that avenged its choice.

Parole

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This article was short, but very helpful. I’m familiar with the prisoner exchanges and the idea of surrendered soldiers being “paroled”, but had never realised the “make an effort” component of it:

Following centuries-old precedent, the United States and Confederate governments used parole and prisoner exchange early in the Civil War, relying on the honor of the parties involved to comply with any terms.

On January 27th, 1862, in return for parole, Col. Milton J. Ferguson of Wayne County gave a pledge of honor to obtain the release of Lieutenant Colonel George W. Neff of Kentucky within 60 days or to surrender to the jailer in Ohio County.

In the interim, Ferguson could neither return to active service against the United States nor provide any aid or information to its enemies.

http://www.wvpubcast.org/newsarticle.aspx?id=23360

“Passing”

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Yesterday’s post about Eliza, the 1/64th black slave sold into sexual slavery, reminded me of a discussion from my university race relations class. A quick Google search (possibly hampered by my increasingly foggy memory – university’s starting to feel like a long time ago) doesn’t reveal much on the “one fatal drop” theory we discussed, but the Brazilian alternative “mulatto escape hatch” brought up this Wikipedia article on racial identity.

What it comes down to is, when do slaveowning societies stop considering a mixed race person to be black? In Brazil, mulattoes were able to move far more smoothly into society. In America, “one fatal drop” of black blood meant you were forever considered to be black. So despite Eliza being only 1/64th black and looking like a white woman, she was considered a purchaser’s bargain, not a societal catch.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passing_(racial_identity)

**UPDATE**

Found it! It’s the “One Drop Rule”

According to Jose Neinstein, a native white Brazilian and executive director of the Brazilian-American Cultural Institute in Washington, in the United States, “If you are not quite white, then you are black.” However, in Brazil, “If you are not quite black, then you are white.” Neinstein recalls talking with a man of Poitier’s complexion when in Brazil: “We were discussing ethnicity, and I asked him, ‘What do you think about this from your perspective as a black man?’ He turned his head to me and said, ‘I’m not black,’ . . . It simply paralyzed me. I couldn’t ask another question.”

The Washington Post story also described a Brazilian-born woman who for 30 years before immigrating to the United States considered herself a morena. Her skin had a caramel color that is roughly equated with whiteness in Brazil and some other Latin American countries. “I didn’t realize I was black until I came here,” she explained. “‘Where are you from?’ they ask me. I say I’m from Brazil. They say, ‘No, you are from Africa.’ They make me feel like I am denying who I am.”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-drop_rule

Slavery in Canada

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An odd choice of topic for Valentine’s Day, but this Wikipedia entry (pulled up when I was investigating comparative slavery systems for that Atlantic Monthly article) contained a paragraph that warmed the cockles of my patriotic heart:

By 1790 the abolition movement was gaining credence in Canada and the ill intent of slavery was evidenced by an incident involving a slave woman being violently abused by her slave owner on her way to being sold in the United States. In 1793 Chloe Clooey, in an act of defiance yelled out screams of resistance. The abuse committed by her slave owner and her violent resistance was witnessed by Peter Martin and William Grisely. Peter Martin, a former slave, brought the incident to the attention of Lieutenant Governor John Graves Simcoe. Under the auspices of Simcoe, The Slave Act of 1793 was legislated. The elected members of the executive council, many of whom were merchants or farmers who depended on slave labour, saw no need for emancipation. White later wrote that there was “much opposition but little argument” to his measure.

Isn’t that us in a nutshell? Plenty of griping, but resigned to the pragmatic solution. Take that, South Carolina.

The Atlantic – Still Relevant!

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One of the best in-print observations of the sesquicentennial is by The Atlantic Monthly (altogether fitting, since it was one of the most influential magazines in the 1860s), who’ve assigned blogging duties to Ta-Nehisi Coates.

I’ve seen Coates in a few talking-head spots (and, if I recall correctly, a Colbert Report interview) and he’s always fascinating; well-versed in popular culture yet deeply intellectual. Go figure, this sums up his regular column, too.

The most recent is an investigation into Ron Paul’s controversial (read: ridiculous) pro-Southern stance on the war, which he considers to have been unnecessary, claiming compensated emancipation would’ve solved all the problems. Coates approaches the topic as a scientist:

One of the more unfortunate aspects of blogging about the Civil War is that a great deal of time is expended on debunking, as opposed to discovery. Instead of looking at, say, Unionism in Tennessee, or Native American participation in the Confederate Army, we end up revisiting black Confederates again. I’ve tried to avoid this. But history is political and the deployment of comfortable narratives is a constant malady. Moreover, I get something out of these repeated debunkings that I didn’t realize until this weekend. My wife recently noted that is not unusual for scientist to spend as much, or more, time disproving things, as opposed to proving. She added that sometimes in disproving, they actually make a discovery…

The problem debating this sort of thing is the side of dishonesty and intellectual laziness is at an advantage. It will likely take more effort for me to compose this post, then it took for Ron Paul to stand before the Confederate Flag and offer his thin gruel of history. Those attempting to practice history need not only gather facts, but seek out facts that might contradict the facts they like, and then gather more facts of context to see what it all means.

He presents some facts:

We know that states like Mississippi and South Carolina were, in 1860, majority black and thus compensated emancipation in Hammond and Calhoun’s South Carolina would not simply mean the end of this broad aristocracy, but the prospect of a free white populations outnumbered by a free black population. We can thus surmise that it is no coincidence that South Carolina inaugurated the Civil War.

We know that to alleviate fears of black majority, compensated emancipation was usually partnered with a proposal of colonization–that is the removal of African-Americans from slave states to colonies in Africa or the Caribbean. We know that colonization was a polarizing issue in the black community, and by 1860, much of its popular support had collapsed. Thus we know that any contemplation of compensated emancipation must grapple with how several counties, and some states in the South, would react to finding themselves suddenly outnumbered by free black people.

Then asks more questions:

2.) Was a mass payment toward slave-holders even possible? We know that in 1860, slaves were worth $3 billion in 1860 dollars (75 billion in today’s dollars.) Did the American government have access to those sorts of funds? If so, how would they have been garnered?

4.) Assuming compensation, how would Southerners have reacted to a substantial black minority in their midst? What would the labor system have looked like? What would have happened with black male suffrage? How would the white working class reacted to finding itself in competition with blacks?

6.) Why didn’t England have a war over slavery? What were the specific differences between England slave colonies and the Antebellum South?

upon which, in the comments, his readers expound.

I would have to assume on 2, there would never have been enough money to buy the slaves outright, considering both the numbers (4.5 million, if memory serves) and southron intransigence. I can easily envision a situation like Germany’s WW1 reparations, which it just finished paying a couple of years ago (!), where the Union would make payments over time. Imagine the implications of that, with the South changing from Slave Power to perpetual creditor. And if you consider the financial rollercoaster of the late 1800s and the risk of a missed payment, I’m sure any arrangements would include a penalty for default that would have fallen on the freed slaves somehow.

It’s an antidote to the Ron Paul incident, and the recent Jim Crow revival for voting rights, to see an educated black man, at a liberal publication, asking tough questions. Isn’t this every Republican’s worst nightmare?

http://www.theatlantic.com/personal/archive/2012/01/crowd-sourcing-american-history/251771/

Death & Grieving in the Civil War

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I’m in the early chapters of  Drew Gilpin Faust’s This Republic of Suffering, which talks about how the Civil War impacted American attitudes towards death and grieving. This site has an excellent summary of its own on the topic.

For family members and friends in the North, the prospect of loved ones dying far away from home, and being interred in what most considered to be profane Southern soil, led to a great deal of anguish and outrage. Indeed, many Northerners were deeply disturbed by this prospect because it upset normal social scripts ingrained in American culture when a family experienced a death. In normal times, death occurred in the home, people had a chance to view the body before it disappeared forever, and burial took place in a familiar space, which usually included previously deceased family members and neighbors. These were not normal times for sure, so some families, particularly the more affluent families in the North, would do whatever they could to bring the body of a loved family member’s home, either by making the trip south on their own, or paying someone to locate, retrieve, and ship the body north.

As a result of these desires—to maintain familial control over the final resting place and, if possible, to have one last look before the bodyvanished—a new form of treating the dead appeared on the social scene, and paved the way for the birth of an entirely modern funeral industry. Undertakers who contracted with Northern families began to experiment with innovative means to preserve bodies that had to be shipped long distances on train cars, often during the hot summer months. The revolutionary practice that emerged in this context, embalming, provided both the military and Northern communities with a scientific, sanitary, and sensible way to move bodies across the land.
Read more: Civil War, U.S. – rituals, world, burial, body, funeral, life, history, cause, rate, time, human, The Presence of Death, Disposing of the Dead http://www.deathreference.com/Ce-Da/Civil-War-U-S.html#ixzz1dPv97rPrhttp://www.deathreference.com/Ce-Da/Civil-War-U-S.html