Annette Gordon-Reed, "The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family"

Nat Turner's Rebellion

I came across this on Civil Warriors.

The South, Race, and Rock 'n' Roll

I have been listening to my iPod a lot lately. For some strange reason music helps me write and since I am in the midst of writing my graduate thesis my iPod has not left my side. Recently I have realized something that I haven't noticed in the past. During the late 1960s and early 1970s there were numerous songs recorded that dealt with the South and issues of race.

First, there is "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down" by The Band. This song is about a white soldier, Virgil Caine, who served in the Confederate Army. In the song Caine claimed "Like my father before me, I will work the land, Like my brother above me, who took a rebel stand. He was just eighteen, proud and brave, But a Yankee laid him in his grave..." This song embraces the myth of the Lost Cause and makes no mention of slavery or slaves.

Then there is The Rolling Stones' "Brown Sugar," which is about interracial sexual relations in the Slave South. Here is the song's opening verse: "Gold coast slave ship bound for cotton fields / Sold in a market down in new Orleans / Scarred old slaver knows he's doing alright/ Hear him whip the women, just around midnight / Brown sugar how come you taste so good?/ Ah, brown sugar just like a young girl should." I don't know why, but this song makes me think of Thomas Jefferson.

There is also the well known feud between Neil Young and Lynyrd Skynyrd. Young's "Southern Man" was a scathing attack on the South's treatment of African Americans. This attack angered the members of Skynyrd, who responded with "Sweet Home Alabama."

A New Graphic Novel About Confederate General Patrick Cleburne

Whoopi Goldberg is an Idiot

Whoopi Goldberg's recent mocking of John McCain on The View is particularly maddening as both a historian and a libertarian/conservative. I am sure that everybody has seen the clip by now but here it is anyway:

"Should I be worried about slavery?" This is just insulting to McCain because it paints him, as well as other people favoring a stricter interpretation of the Constitution, as not only wrong, but bigoted racists as well. Of course, if I were McCain I would have made light of the situation and jokingly said "yes."

This attack besides being smug also displays Whoopi's ignorance. First of all, the Constitution did not legalize slavery because it was already legalized in various states at the time of ratification. There was a general consensus among the founders that slavery was an issue for the states to decide. There was also a consensus that slavery was a dying institution, which is evidenced in the clause that outlawed the Atlantic slave trade in the year 1808.

Yes, Whoopi, slavery was legal in several states at the time the Consitution was ratified. Many founders did own slaves, but slavery was not legalized in the Constitution. Being a strict constituionalist does not mean that you are a racist, but it does mean that you believe that there is a limit to what the constitution will allow. Those who are strict constitutionalists do not believe that one can just imagine various rights and then use to filmest of constitutional arguments to support them. Why does The View continue to give a soap box to moronic radicals like Whoopi, Joy, and Rosie?

Lerone Bennett Is Still Preaching His Gospel of Lincoln Hatred

Lerone Bennett recently gave a lecture on Abraham Lincoln's "true" legacy as a racist, hate filled demon that wished to make America a white nation. Thankfully the crowd that gathered to hear this disgusting brand of pseudo-history numbered under fifty.

The Ithaca Journal reported:

"“He was not a great emancipator, he was not a small emancipator, he was not even a regular-sized emancipator,” Bennett said, drawing laughs."

Bennett a raised the usual half-baked arguments such as this: "“The Emancipation Proclamation did not free the slaves; the 13th Amendment to the Constitution freed the slaves. If you meet a historian in Ithaca who says the Emancipation Proclamation freed the slaves, call the police — because you are either dealing with a charlatan or an innocent who needs to be protected from himself.”"

Yes, Mr. Bennett, the Emancipation Proclamation itself did not free any slaves. And yes it was the 13th Amendment that officially freed all the Nation's slaves. However, the proclamation gave authority to the Union Army to free any slave that they came across throughout the South. With the issuance of the Emancipation Proclamation, Lincoln made emancipation the policy of the executive branch and the US military. After January 1, 1863 all Union Armies were now made into a tool of emancipation. Bennett, in his book Forced Into Glory, made a habit ignoring this fact because it did not fit the story he was trying to tell.

Bennett also ignored that many former slaves, as historian Allen Guelzo has argued, dated their freedom to the day that they heard about the proclamation. Lincoln didn't physically free the slaves, but rather most slaves freed themselves. Lincoln's proclamation, however, made sure that those who ran away to Union armies were not returned to their masters.

Bennett also made the claim that Lincoln "opposed equal rights for blacks and Latinos, and supported the deportation of all blacks living in the states. As a lawyer in Illinois, Lincoln sent runaway slaves back to slavery, he said."

Where do I start? The issue of Latino rights in 1863 was not a pressing issue because outside of Texas, California, and the lands of the Mexican Cession there were not that many Latinos living in the United States.

Lincoln was opposed to equal rights for blacks as was just about everyone else in America. Here is where I will make a concession to Bennett. Lincoln did hold some racist views, which was normal for the era. He did not think that blacks were equal to whites, but he also didn't think that they should be slaves. Lincoln also favored giving blacks the right to vote, which is what some historians believe was a deciding factor in his murder at the hands of John Wilkes Booth.

Bennett was partially correct when he argued that Lincoln wanted to deport all African Americans to Latin America or Africa. Lincoln did favor colonization for a brief time because he believed that blacks and whites would not be able to live peacefully with each other. He quickly abandoned this scheme when he was met by fierce resistance on the part of many black leaders including Frederick Douglass. Lincoln's colonization scheme was just one of many ideas that he proposed to solve the slavery problem.

I will make another concession to Bennett. Lincoln, as an Illinois lawyer, did return a slave to slavery. He hated the institution of slavery, which is generally accepted among historians, but Lincoln was also a firm believer in the supremacy of the law over personal beliefs. This was an unfortunate episode in Lincoln's law career, but it should in no way be interpreted as anything other than a dumb choice on the part of Lincoln.

Over the years, Bennett has garnered some praise for his stance on Lincoln's legacy, but those who offer this praise are usually other Lincoln hating, pseudo-historians. Bennett should not be and is not taken seriously by professional historians. He has revealed himself to be exactly what he accuses Lincoln of being: a hateful, bigoted, racist, shameful, disgusting man.

For those who want to read a much better analysis of Lincoln the emancipator, I recommend reading Allen Guelzo's Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation. Guelzo's book also contains a devastating critique of Bennett's 600 plus page screed, Forced into Glory.

Confronting a Horrendous Family History

I posted this on my other blog, Student of the Civil War.

Elly DeWolfe Hale has confronted her family's tragic past. She is a descendant of the infamous DeWolfe family, which made a fortune in the slave trade. A recent article reported:

"Here in Seattle, Elly DeWolfe Hale was far removed from her early American ancestors, a wealthy, illustrious family whose legacy still colors life in Bristol, R.I."

"Then came a letter that unmasked a shameful secret:"

"Hale's storied forebears, the DeWolfs, weren't just distillers and merchants, they were human traffickers who built their fortune on the slave trade. In fact, as Hale and other relatives were to discover, the DeWolfs were the largest slave-trading family in U.S. history."

" Over three generations -- even after the trade was outlawed in 1808 -- the DeWolfs shipped 10,000 Africans to the Americas to sell as slaves or conscript as labor for their sugar plantations in Cuba. About a half-million of the slaves' descendants are alive today."

"Suddenly, Hale, who had grown up in Reno, Nev., and thought of herself as a modern, progressive child of the West, felt the national stain of slavery lapping at her heels."

""We are connected to the past and the future in ways we don't realize," she mused last week, still visibly moved by her struggle to reconcile the consequences of her family history."

Full article.

Lee's Slave Hunters.

I have just come across a Ted Alexander's 2001 North and South article entitled "A Regular Slave Hunt." This article highlights a sad and little known aspect of Lee's Gettysburg campaign. Alexander wrote that in June and July 1863 Confederate forces rounded up hundreds of free blacks and escaped slaves throughout southern Pennsylvania.

Alexander has provided evidence, eyewitness testimony, to show that Confederate forces participated and what amounted to slave hunting. Some of the most disturbing evidence came from Rachel Cormany, who left a detailed account of some of the abductions. Cormany wrote: "[Confederates] were hunting up the contrabands [escaped slaves] and driving them off by droves. O! how it grated on our hearts to have to sit quietly and look at such brutal deeds--I saw no men among the contrbands--all women and children. Some of the colored people who were raised here were taken along--I sat on the front step as they were driven by just like we would drive cattle...One woman was pleading wonderfully with her driver for her children--but all the sympathy she received from him was a rough "March along"--at which she quickened her pace again." Alexander was not precise about how many blacks were captured by Confederates; an estimate for Chambersburg places its count at 250 and an estimate for York states that a little more than 100 were abducted in this town.

Alexander went on the state that most of the Confederates who participated in these kidnappings were guerrilla forces who "operated on the fringes of Lee's army." He did provide evidence that General James Longstreet knew about these abductions and that the famed General George Pickett's division participated in the kidnappings. Alexander, however, left some rather important questions unanswered. Were the orders to abduct free blacks and escaped slaves general orders or were they issued independently of the high command? To what extent did Lee's regular forces participate in the kidnappings? We know that Pickett's division participated, but did others do the same? This is a disturbing aspect of the Gettysburg campaign that deserves to be fully examined, but, unfortunately, Alexander's article leaves us with more questions than answers.

Atlantic Emancipations 200 Years Later.

This years marks the 200th anniversaries of the abolition of the Atlantic slave trade in the United States and the year during which Pennsylvania's gradual emancipation law finally bore fruit. The Library Company of Philadelphia is hosting a conference marking the anniversaries of these events, which will feature some of the most prominent scholars within the field. (the conference website can be viewed here.) The keynote speaker will be Pulitzer Prize winning historian Steven Hahn, author of A Nation Under Our Feet. The conference will also feature other important historians such as Gary Nash. It will be held on April 10-12. It is free and registration is open to the public.

The president that slavery elected...maybe...maybe not.

Why was Thomas Jeffereson elected president in 1800? A better question is; who elected Jefferson president? I'm conflicted over the answer to this seemingly simple question. The argument can be and has been made, most notably by Garry Wills, that slavery was the reason Jefferson was able to capture the presidency over John Adams. In his book, Nergro President, Wills argued that Jefferson and the South were able to come to power due to the 3/5 clause (article 1, section 2, paragraph 3) of the Constitution. (a short review of Wills's book can be found here.) The "slave power," as Wills labels it, handed Jefferson a majority of votes in the Electoral College. This is true, but, as much as I don't like Jefferson, I must admit slavery was not solely responsible for his election to the presidency. Jefferson, according to John H. Aldrich, was also the choice of the people (or the choice of the white males population who were the only people that could vote). Aldrich, using voting records, was able to show that Jefferson also captured the popular vote; Jefferson had 150,778 votes to Adams's 138,685. A map of the election results can be seen here. It seems as if the will of the people and the "slave power" combined to make Jefferson president over Adams....Though one could also argue that Congress elected Jefferson, but I won't delve into that.