The Battlefield and Beyond: Essays on the American Civil War

Introduction

1 INTRODUCTION clayton e. jewett T he inspiration for this collection of essays on the American Civil War came about from historian Jon L. Wakelyn’s years of influence not only on my career, but also that of countless students and colleagues engaged in the field of southern and Civil War history. Mere mention of the Civil War conjures thoughts of guns and blood, destruction and death, glory and honor. The military aspect has always garnered more attention from the masses and publicists than any other facet of the sectional conflict. It grabs people’s attention, it sells books. In turn, it elevates certain figures, deserving or not, to fame. It was planned this way, a product of the southern Civil War military commanders who perpetuated the myth of the “Lost Cause.” Even before the Civil War ended, southerners began to support a romanticized memory of the Confederacy. Such organizations as the Southern Historical Society, under the leadership of Jubal Early, catapulted military leaders, such as Robert E. Lee, Braxton Bragg, and Stonewall Jackson, to fame.1 To grasp the Civil War, however, we must move well beyond the myths of the “Lost Cause” and better understand the critical issues that encompass society and the larger context of war. If we have learned anything from the decades of scholarship, it is that the Civil War is not confined to the bloody battlefield and has much to do with issues of race, gender, politics, the press, the economy, memory, and more; the essays in this collection testify to that. At first glance it might appear that this is simply a potpourri of pieces on the Civil War. Taken together, however, the collection provides the reader with an encompassing view of the critical issues surrounding the Civil War and its aftermath, and the original scholarship makes a serious contribution to the field of southern and Civil War history. In our nation’s past, race and warfare have gone hand in hand. Prior to the birth of this nation, southerners laid the foundation of their rule on the grounds XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX clayton e. jewett 2 of slavery. Leaders used slavery to place the colonies on equal economic footing in the world in order to purchase French assistance in the revolution against Great Britain. In other words, the United States bought its freedom on the backs of slaves. It was slavery that allowed the southern states to control the world supply and price of cotton from the 1790s to 1860 and provided the impetus for secession from the Union. It was the issue of slavery that built this nation, defined its growth, and allowed a minority of the southern population to control the social, economic and political sphere.2 In this collection of essays, Orville Vernon Burton examines the topic of slavery. In “The Silence of a Slaveholder: The Civil War Letters of James B. Griffin,” Burton analyzes the Civil War letters of a prominent South Carolina slaveholder. Burton’s astute analysis reveals that, although apparently silent on the issue of slavery, Griffin’s letters contain a wealth of information regarding African American life during the Civil War. Burton sheds further light on the war’s disruptive influence on the slave family and southern racial relations, eroding the paternalistic system of slavery. As Burton points out, it was the Civil War, the most seminal event in American history, that began to alter those racial relationships. While Burton emphasizes the nature of slave life and changing racial relationships , Leonne M. Hudson focuses more on the internal struggles of race facing the Confederate government and military—the arming of black men. Most northerners and southerners believed, or at least wishfully thought, that the military conflict would last only a matter of months. When this proved to be untrue, slaveholding Confederates eventually faced the difficult question of what to do with their slaves, and as the gears of war slowly continued to grind, Confederates readdressed issues of racial and gender relations. In “Robert E. Lee and the Arming of Black Men,” Hudson examines the Confederate dilemma of being outnumbered and questioning the possibility of arming slaves to counter that Union strength. The predicament lay in the conflict between arming slaves for a better chance of winning the war or holding steadfast to a racist political ideology and hope for a military miracle. Slaves already were impressed as cooks, musicians, miners, mechanics, and more. Placing a gun in...