I wanted to follow up on yesterday’s post about public memory, the Civil War and Robert E. Lee with some more discussion and documents from the year’s just after the Civil War.
One of the things that all historians do is look for the earliest sources and those closest to events and facts we are seeking to understand. In some ways, this core imperative is more clear in ancient history or any period more than a few hundred years ago because historians of the distant past must cope with what is often the extreme scarcity of sources whereas modern historians often have the opposite problem: the sheer volume of source material that is impossible ever to fully digest and process. But the fundamental task is the same: recapturing the past on its own terms before subsequent events, needs, agendas and memory packaged them for use or simply distorted them for subsequent ages. This isn’t a matter of uncovering lies in most cases. We are constantly in the process of reshaping our history to serve our present needs. Indeed, we are constantly in the process of doing this in our own lives, reshaping our own personal story into a coherent backdrop to the person we are in this moment.
One of the people I wrote about in the Lee post was Montgomery Meigs, one of the small but still significant number of Southern career military officers who chose to fight for the Union. Another of those was General George Henry Thomas. Thomas was a Virginian who was disowned by his family for remaining loyal to his oath to the United States. He distinguished himself in numerous battles in the western theater, particularly at Chickamaugua. But he died young at age 53 and is today relatively unknown.
The passage I quote here is from an 1868 report Thomas wrote to then Commanding General of the Army Ulysses S. Grant about the Department of the Cumberland, a military district Thomas oversaw, which included Tennessee, Kentucky and parts of several contiguous states. It contains much of what we discussed yesterday unfolding in the decades after the Civil War in their embryonic form in the immediate aftermath of the South’s formal surrender.
In addition to what I wrote above about proximity to events, we must also always remember the observer’s attitudes and biases. Thomas was no disinterested observer. He was the commanding general of a military occupation. He was also a southerner who had remained loyal to the union at great personal cost. Many southerners who remained loyal to the Union were particularly bitter toward other southerners’ betrayal of the Union. That was the case with Vice President Andrew Johnson, a unionist Tennessee Democrat who became President on Lincoln’s assassination. Johnson’s attitude toward the vanquished South was merciless and unforgiving. But for a complex set of reasons, after becoming President, he shifted rapidly toward sympathy for the defeated South and southern leaders’ desire to reenter the Union with as much of the racial status quo of the antebellum era intact. This historical accident set in motion the chain of events that led to Johnson’s impeachment, though not removal from office, in 1868. He was succeeded by Grant in 1869.
So Thomas was no disinterested participant. But he was a keen observer not only of defeated Southerners’ use of intimidation and violence to block reconstruction and citizenship for ex-slaves but early efforts to repackage the rebellion as a battle for American ideals of freedom, liberty and above all patriotism. In a great line he notes how confederate myth-making was already sanitizing the rebellion so that “the precipitators of rebellion might go down in history hand in hand with the defenders of the Government.”
Here we see the beginnings of confederate nostalgia, from the first born in violence, especially against black citizens but also northerners and Union troops as well. We also see the battle for the post-war settlement and memory which in many respects they eventually won.
Here is an at length portion of Thomas’s report. The key portion is the part which begins with this sentence which I have bolded below:”The controlling cause of the unsettled condition of affairs in the Department is that the greatest efforts made by the defeated insurgents since the close of the war have been to promulgate the idea that the cause of liberty, justice, humanity-, equality, and all the calendar of virtues of freedmen, suffered violence and wrong when the effort for Southern independence failed.”
The causes of this lawlessness are different in different States, and apply more particularly to Kentucky and Tennessee than to West Virginia. From the latter State there have been no complaints received other than that of the Governor in its application for troops before mentioned, the sending of which accomplished the object for which they were needed. In Tennessee, where a majority of the late rebels are disfranchised, they and the sympathizers with them have a hatred of the State authorities which is unconcealed and aggressive. In localities where the disfranchised element is strong a spirit of persecution toward those in sympathy with the authorities, those who recognize the political rights of the enfranchised negroes, and the negroes themselves, especially shows itself, in utter contempt of all law. Violence is openly talked of. The editorial articles of the public press are such as to create the most intense hatred in the breast of the ex-rebels and their sympathizers.
The effect of this is to cause disturbance throughout the State by inciting the ruffianly portion of this class of citizens to murder, riot, and maltreat the white Unionists and colored people in localities where there are no United ‘States troops stationed. The local authorities often have not the will, and, moreover, often have not the power to suppress or prevent these outrages.
In Kentucky disfranchisement cannot be alleged as a reason for the disturbance. Here the mass of the people are in sympathy with the State authorities, and those politically opposed make no attempt to resist them. The colored people are quiet and peaceable. They have no political rights, not being enfranchised ; yet ruffians are permitted to tyrannize over them without tear of punishment. The testimony of negroes is rejected in the State Courts, and United States Courts are difficult of access to an ignorant people without friends or influence. In some districts some ex-Union soldiers are persecuted by their more numerous rebel neighbors, until they are forced into a resistance which sometimes ends with loss of their lives, or they are compelled in self-defense to emigrate. An appeal to the Courts affords but little hope for redress, as the magistrates and juries too often decide in accordance with their prejudices, without regard to justice.
The controlling cause of the unsettled condition of affairs in the Department is that the greatest efforts made by the defeated insurgents since the close of the war have been to promulgate the idea that the cause of liberty, justice, humanity, equality, and all the calendar of virtues of freedmen, suffered violence and wrong when the effort for Southern independence failed. This is of course intended as a species of political cant, whereby the crime of treason might be covered with a counterfeit varnish of patriotism, so that the precipitators of rebellion might go down in history hand in hand with the defenders of the Government, thus wiping out with their own hands their own stains. This species of self-forgiveness is amazing in its efficiency, when it is considered that life and property were justly forfeited by the laws of the country, of war and of nations. Under this inspiration the education of a great many people, moral and religious and political, has been turned into channels where all might unite in common. The impoverishment of the South, resulting from war and its concomitants, the emancipation of the slaves and consequent loss of substance, the ambiguity and uncertainty of political rights and financial values, as well as personal rivalries, have all combined to strengthen the efforts of the pernicious teachers. The evil done has been great, and it is not discernable that an immediate improvement may be expected.
Reading this again, I am particularly struck by passages such as this: “whereby the crime of treason might be covered with a counterfeit varnish of patriotism, so that the precipitators of rebellion might go down in history hand in hand with the defenders of the Government.” That captures quite a lot, indeed quite a lot of the succeeding century and a half.
