"What Shall We Do with the Negro?": Lincoln, White Racism, and Civil War America

6: HERESY, DOGMA, AND THE CONFEDERATE DEBATE

six HERESY, DOGMA, AND THE CONFEDERATE DEBATE T he Confederacy came into being as a slaveholders’ republic. Faced with the election of a “Black Republican” and alarmed by the strength of a party they deemed hostile to slavery, secessionists sprang into action and carried the day. Focusing on one state after another, these “fire-eaters” led the Lower South out of the Union and established a government designed to serve more reliably the peculiar interests of slaveholders. Under the new Confederate administration, they believed, state rights would be respected, the central government would be restricted, slaveholders would be secure, and slavery would be protected. The South’s institution of racial slavery was the bedrock on which whites erected their new Confederacy. But the architects of the Confederate South were looking backward rather than forward; they were anticipating a static government that could resist the dangers of the past rather than meet the challenges of the future. When war engulfed the Confederacy, every aspect of life changed. Established customs gave way to unexpected innovations, pressing crises disrupted daily life, and eternal verities dissolved. By every measure, the Civil War transformed the South far more than it did the North. The armies claimed a higher proportion of men, inflation raged far more virulently, families suffered far more on the home front, and social customs changed more drastically under the pressure of a militarized existence. To the immense surprise of Southerners, the Confederacy became what historian Emory Thomas has aptly called a “revolutionary experience.” The revolution that Confederates endured left little untouched. Inevitably, it undermined slavery, the core institution of the new nation. The military crisis of the Confederacy subjected slavery to a variety of 172 southern developments stresses and strains, visiting upon slave owners many unpleasant developments . The traditional expectations of planters had little relevance to a society disrupted and disarranged by war. As the Confederacy struggled to survive, no area of life could remain immune from change, and events began to alter slavery in fundamental ways. Slave owners lost the extensive control that they were accustomed to have over their bondsmen. National priorities began to impinge on what had always been a remarkably local and “domestic ” institution. Ultimately, slavery itself came into question, as a result of the Confederacy’s crisis, and the political pressures unleashed by war proved far more potent than the promptings of religious conscience. Two factors influenced the degree to which Southerners would change slavery during the war: the scope of the military crisis and the flexibility of political leaders. In rapid order military demands increased, quickly reaching a point at which government action became necessary to exploit slavery as a vital resource for war. Political leaders then faced a challenge in deciding how many unwelcome changes to make, for altering the fundamentals of slavery threatened both the institution and assumptions of racial subordination . Substantial change to the core of Confederate beliefs meant heresy, whereas adherence to familiar dogma threatened defeat. Events would prove that the slave South possessed only a limited capacity for radical innovation . What capacity there was resided primarily in its military leaders and in President Jefferson Davis. Their determination and realism pointed the way toward change. But white Confederates also proved to be intransigent, loyal to their past and adamant about slavery and white supremacy. In the final military crisis of the Confederacy, political leaders debated proposals to arm and free the slaves. In doing so, they cast light on the nature of their society and the unshakeable core of the white South’s racial values. In the antebellum South little had interfered with a slave owner’s control of his plantation and his slaves. The region was rural, plantations often were far apart, and slavery as an institution fell very much under the regulation of the individual planter. Using paternalistic arguments, white Southerners described slaves as belonging to their owner’s “family,” and the planter was the undisputed head of that family, black and white. Although the statute books contained a few mild laws designed to protect slaves from mistreatment, the power of the state primarily supported the slave owner and guarded his investment. Few citizens questioned the behavior of a Heresy, Dogma, and the Confederate Debate 173 neighbor toward his slaves, since none of them wanted to endure outsiders’ meddling in their own plantation’s affairs. The individual slave owner ruled his personal kingdom. On his own property, he...