The Lost Cause Of The North
Dismantling a common modern mythology of the Civil War era
Michele Bachmann has never been one to have a good understanding of history. When she was in Congress, and especially during her 2012 Presidential Campaign, she became known for her many gaffes regarding her understanding of the past of our nation. From telling New Hampshire “You’re the state where the shot was heard around the world at Lexington and Concord,” to talking about President Roosevelt’s “Hoot-Smolly Tariff Act,” to saying John Quincy Adams “would not rest until slavery was extinguished in the country.” Her career, much like the career of all ideologues, is one that views her country in legend as opposed to actual facts.
So why am I talking about another one of her historical gaffes — especially considering she left Congress on 1/3/2015? Because, for once, her gaffe was not her fault, but simply the product of how most Americans view their own history.
Ever since the Civil War ended, the debate on how to teach it in schools has been firmly split into two camps: The side that believes the Union to be unapologetically the good guys and the Confederates to be unapologetically the bad guys and the side that argues that the Confederacy was the “victim” of the “war of Northern Aggression.” The second one is mocked as The “Lost Cause of the South” and was the popular Southern narrative for over a century, with librarians in former Confederate states infamous refusing to put books in their libraries that didn’t conform to this narrative.
Although the “Lost Cause” view was once popular in the South, it has fizzled out in much of the United States in recent years and has relatively few modern advocates. However, the view that the Union never did any wrong — which is based on equally little historical evidence — has only gotten more popular in recent years.
Because of this, it makes sense Bachmann gave the world this gaffe in a recent interview:
“We all know that there was slavery in America’s history, but no other nation did was America did — 600,000 people voluntarily gave their lives to extinguish slavery forever in the United States. No other nation did that. We extinguished it and we went from there to continue to deal with that issue.” ~ Bachmann
I should begin by noting the bizarre idea Bachmann puts forth that it took the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people to abolish slavery is something to be proud of. In most of Europe, slavery was abolished peacefully in the early 19th century. In fact, only two countries — the United States and Haiti — had to go to war in order to abolish slavery.
For that matter, historians estimate between 620,000 and 750,000 Americans died during the Civil War, so Bachmann’s figure is slightly questionable. However, up until 2012, the accepted number of deaths was 618,222 — so we’ll give Bachmann a pass on this piece of small misinformation.
Of that 618,222 figure, it was also believed that 258,000 of them — or roughly 42% of deaths — were Confederate soldiers. Confederate soldiers were specifically fighting to preserve slavery, so Bachmann’s history is now just plain wrong.
However, just because the Confederates were fighting to keep slavery, that does not mean the Union was fighting to end it. In fact, five Union states — Delaware, Maryland, West Virginia, Kentucky, and Missouri — contained a total of 451,021 slaves. These states also had 28,000 total combat deaths — or 11% of total deaths the Union suffered.
For that matter, Bachmann calling these deaths “voluntary” is also wrong. In 1863, Congress passed the Enrollment Act, which was the first draft in American history. This move was controversial, and led to the infamous New York Draft riots that started on 7/11/1863 and ended on 7/16/1863. These riots also quickly became racial, with reports of white Americans (and even Irish Immigrants) beating up black Americans for no other reason than their race.
Why did these men riot? One major reason was that many of them supported slavery and did not want to fight a war that could lead to abolishing it.
Exactly why Lincoln fought the Civil War is a matter of historical debate, however, while we had become known in politics as a famous abolitionist, he denied up and down that slavery was the reason for fighting. In his 8/22/1862 letter to Horace Greeley, Lincoln wrote:
“I would save the Union. I would save it the shortest way under the Constitution. The sooner the national authority can be restored, the nearer the Union will be to “the Union as it was”….My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and it is not either to save or destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave, I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves, I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that.” ~ Lincoln
It should be noted that one month to the day after Lincoln wrote this he signed the Emancipation Proclamation. However, that order did not do nearly as much as most Americans think. Here’s its full text:
“That on the first day of January in the year of our Lord, one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, all persons held as slaves within any State, or designated part of a State, the people whereof shall then be in rebellion against the United States shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free; and the executive government of the United States, including the military and naval authority thereof, will recognize and maintain the freedom of such persons, and will do no act or acts to repress such persons, or any of them, in any efforts they may make for their actual freedom.” ~ Lincoln
The order only freed slaves in Confederate states. To be fair, Lincoln was in a tough position here — trying to maintain both abolitionist support (some of whom, such as the famous Lysander Spooner, wanted the Confederacy to leave the Union in the first place) while also trying to stop the remaining slave states from joining the Confederacy. However, once again, this strikes a massive blow to the narrative that the Union fought to end slavery above all else, because Lincoln couldn’t even end slavery in those states during the war that we’re told was fought to end slavery.
To put it simply, if the Civil War was fought to end slavery, some in the Union didn’t get the message. Ulysses S. Grant, the top Union general and most recent President to have owned a slave in his lifetime, is quoted as having said:
“If I thought this war was to abolish slavery, I would resign my commission and offer my sword to the other side.” ~ Ulysses S. Grant
Grant fought in the Civil War not because he was against slavery, but because he was against the idea of states leaving the Union. James McPherson’s book For Cause And Comrades: Why Men Fought In The Civil War also found this to be the reason for roughly two-thirds of soldiers. This is not to say that abolition was not important to the Civil War (after all, it was slavery that causes states to leave the Union in the first place), but it is to say that treating the average Union soldier as an abolitionist is simply incorrect.
For that matter, let us not forget that the supporters of abolition had some racist views as well. During his 1858 debates with Stephen Douglas, Abraham Lincoln made it clear that he just wanted slavery to end and nothing else. To quote the man himself:
“I will say that I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races, that I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of making voters or jurors of Negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people; and I will say in addition to this that there is a physical difference between the white and black races which I believe will forever forbid the two races from living together on terms of social and political equality. And inasmuch as they can not so live, while they do remain together there must be the position of superior and inferior, and I as much as any other man am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race.” ~ Lincoln
I should note that I’m not attacking (nor am I “canceling”) Lincoln for holding racist views in the 1850s. Everyone was racist in the 1850s (what else were you supposed to be?), I’m simply pointing out that Lincoln was no exception to this rule.
Some abolitionists were even against slavery for racist reasons. Take David Wilmot, a Pennsylvanian Democrat, who introduced the Wilmot Proviso in 1846. The Wilmot Proviso banned slavery in any territory the United States would get from Mexico during the Mexican-American War, and Wilmot was not shy about why he did this:
“I would preserve to free whites labor in a fair country, a rich inheritance, where the sons of toil, of my own race and color, can live without the disgrace which association with Negro slavery brings upon free labor.” ~ Wilmot
To put it simply, the North was just as racist as the South in many ways — albeit they did not think African Americans were literal property.
During the Civil Rights Movement, the state where the Ku Klux Klan had the most influence was not Georgia, Alabama, or Texas, but Indiana. It was West Virginia, a state that was formed because of support for the Union in the western half of the Confederate capital, that turned a former Ku Klux Klan leader named Robert Bryd into the longest-serving Senator in United States history. To this day, the most segregated schools in the United States are found in New York City.
I am not arguing that the Union fought the war unjustly (nor am I making the bizarre argument that the Confederacy were the good guys), but I am arguing that the Civil War was much more complicated than most people realize. While many have tried to focus the conversation on the made-up goods of the Confederacy, I say it’s time we instead very real issues of the Union. Neither side in this conflict was perfect, because this conflict was fought by people and people are not perfect.
