“Apparently Obligatory Irrelevant Reference to Slavery”
Considering the centrality of slavery to the Civil War, it’s hard to talk about the war without talking about slavery. Apparently, that still bothers some folks.
Take, for instance, a comment left by “Mark” in his Amazon review of my book The Battle of Jackson, Mississippi (Savas Beatie, 2022). He left his review back in November 2022, but I just happened upon it today. He said: “The narrative is marred by the now apparently obligatory irrelevant reference to slavery.”
In The Battle of Jackson, I wrote about slavery in a couple contexts. Most importantly, I wrote about the use of slave labor to construct hasty defenses around the city once word arrived that Ulysses S. Grant had crossed the Mississippi and might be bound for the state capital. When construction didn’t proceed apace enough, white laborers joined in the work.
To me, that’s a pretty essential part of the story.
Days later, as Grant’s forces closed in and Jackson’s panicked citizens fled, I included a few accounts of how the city’s enslaved residents reacted to the tumult. That provided a useful perspective that I, again, thought relevant to the story.
Elsewhere in the book, as I gave a brief history of the state and the city, I mentioned the role of slavery. Mississippi was the wealthiest state in the U.S. at the time of the Civil War, with most of that wealth derived from the value of chattel slaves and concentrated in the hands of the planter class. Cotton, also a source of the state’s wealth, was planted, harvested, processed, and transported by enslaved labor.
At the very least, these are all relevant details, although I would argue they’re all important to the story (and the construction of defenses an essential component). It amazes me that someone would dismiss them as “apparently obligatory irrelevant reference[s].”
But then again, I’m not amazed at all. Some people remain so steadfastly stuck on the debunked Lost Cause myth that any discussion of actual history is “irrelevant.” They don’t want to hear it, so it must not be important. That kind of willful ignorance abounds, unfortunately. I’m sure folks like Mark would rather brush me off as “woke” rather than deal with actual historical facts and context.
I admit, in my book’s tour of battle-related sites in Jackson, I did include mention of the Medgar and Myrlie Evers Home National Historic Monument. “While not a Civil War-related site,” I conceded, “I nonetheless found it one of the most poignant spots to visit in Jackson.” I went on to add that the site “serves as an important story in the thread ‘From Civil War to Civil Rights.’” While the “Civil War to Civil Rights” thread might not be everyone’s cup of tea, at least some readers have the intellectual curiosity to explore that connection. As someone who generally believes more history is better than less history, I’m glad to facilitate those kinds of connections. My own exploration of that connection has given me a deeper, more relevant appreciation for both eras.
In my experience, discussions about slavery do work better in some contexts than others. I have been to historic sites, for instance, that contorted themselves into odd shapes in order to work in something about slavery that otherwise didn’t seem to fit. But Mark’s comment suggests that any such discussions are phooey to begin with—just some sort of woke virtue-signaling, I suppose.
Anyone ignorant enough to dismiss slavery as “irrelevant” is exactly the sort of person who needs to study the war—but probably won’t because he thinks he already knows all he needs to know.
Talk about being irrelevant.
Well said.
Thanks!
Totally Agree !! Let’s face and deal with the facts.
Thanks!
Funny how we never hear anyone complain about an “obligatory reference” to Robert E. Lee
I’ll be honest: Because I’m a Stonewall Jackson fanboy, I always try to sneak in a mention of Jackson into anything I do if I can, even if it’s a red-herring listing in an index. It’s sort of like my writerly “where’s Waldo.” 🙂
In “The Battle of Jackson,” there was a legit tie-in, though: His death on May 10 and subsequent funeral, and the fall of the city of May 14, competed for newspaper coverage. Do a newspaper search for “Jackson” + “May 1863” and the fall of the Mississippi state capital takes a back seat to the fall of the general by a HUGE margin.
Looking at some of the responses, I’m afraid my comment here has been misunderstood – please accept my apologies. I was trying to convey that those get upset and rant about historians mentioning slavery when writing about the war never seem to have any problem with historians regularly mentioning RE Lee. I’ll try to be more clear in the future!
Yeah, the Civil War doesn’t make sense but for slavery. It is what it is.
Keep up the good work, Chris. I have a brass plaque from my maternal GGF in Latin that translated states, “Don’t let the b**tards wear you down.”
Great quote–although that b**tard’s three-star review brought my average review score down. B**tard! LOL
Amen, to your comments. Phooey to Mark’s. Wite supremacist attitudes still reign in my part of PA, including the staff at the local historical society. Make me sad.
Makes you sort of wonder what sort of “history” folks are getting at the historical society.
I’ve just about given up on them. They also refuse to admit James Buchanan had a boyfriend (Rufus King).
I commend you for facing and publicly addressing this issue. One of the reasons that the study of the Civil War is so appealing is that its historians are mainstream and objective people whose work is free of extreme and prejudicial perspectives. Those “willfully ignorant” folks you mention are not true “students” of history. They freely distort history to justify their own unresolved emotional issues.
Thanks, George. I appreciate it. Some people, unfortunately, don’t want history–they want their favorite stories. There’s a difference they don’t (want to) understand.
I find far fewer today deny the centrality of slavery to the Secession Crisis, than those who believe the Union war effort was predicated ab initio upon the destruction of slavery, and the universal brotherhood of man. Too many modern commentators take their 2025 value structures and biases and march righteously into the past, finding easy targets for their chest thumping. The rather modest number of true abolitionists in 1860 would have been astonished at this vast army of new recruits, no doubt in most cases not reflecting their ancestors actual viewpoints. The truth of that Age of course is more complex and nuanced, less amenable to self serving generalizations, and, as Lincoln took it, necessarily evolving. I just wish the victorious Union had shown the later foresight of Marshall, Truman and Vandenburg, with a massive internal Reconstruction Plan that might have defanged the impotent and self destructive rage of the defeated whites, and elevated and assisted the newly enfranchised, but ultimately abandoned, blacks.
Agreed, Mr. Pryor. And for that we can thank Andrew Johnson.
I think one of the great tragedies of American history is that Lincoln never articulated his plan for Reconstruction. After his death, things got vengeful, and then the competing visions of Johnson and the Radical Republicans almost guaranteed failure. Like, didn’t anyone give forethought to the fact that there would suddenly be millions of formerly enslaved people?
I think it is one of the great ifs of history : what would Lincoln have done in Reconstruction?
I suspect much less than many suppose. The nation was war weary and looking westward. Also nation still profoundly racist. Would Lincoln have made difference in outcomes? Yes but I suspect only at the margins. Alas.
Excellent points. And they can be extended to the current chic view of Andrew Johnson. How quickly we have forgotten John F. Kennedy’s book ‘Profiles in Courage,’ in which he extolled the courage of Senator Edmund G. Ross of Kansas, for voting for acquittal in the dishonest Andrew Johnson impeachment trial. (Lotta that kind of thing was going around recently.) In 2025, the dishonest power brokers that wanted to dissemble the South for profit are the ones that are celebrated. I am confident that this, too, shall pass, as do nearly all faddish/dishonest things. Johnson was not a perfect President, but he certainly would have won Lincoln’s approval for resisting what was eventually done to the South.
To wit, though Lincoln did not leave detailed plans for post-war America, didn’t he make plain what he intended? He told Grant to “let ’em up easy,” to parole all Confederate soldiers, and to allow each man who owned a horse or mule to take it home to work his “little farm” – which was overwhelmingly the agricultural situation of the South. On March 4, 1865 he said, “With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation’s wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.”
Certainly what came after his death did not reflect this.
Thank you, Chris. Sometimes history is ugly, but it is always real. I appreciate your describing all of it.
Thanks, Bob!
While I would never call slavery in America “irrelevant,” I am constantly bemused by the claims of the Noble Crusaders that the “Lost Cause” was invented after the Civil War to provide an excuse for the South having fought for slavery. Anyone who has done his 19th century America reading knows that more than 30 years before the war the South was loudly – and justifiably – complaining about the Federal Government growing beyond the Constitutional directive that it be small and limited, and as such the South was suffering the abuse of its Constitutional rights, as well as illegal tariffs and taxes. As for the latter, what was being done to the South clearly violated Article 1, Section 8, Clause 1 of the Constitution. As for the States Rights issue, which is claimed to have been invented after the war, the birth of States Rights Gist in South Carolina in 1831 is evidence alone to debunk that lie.
Many times, to find the truth of an issue, we cut to the bone. In the United States, who declares war, and for what reason? Congress declares war, and has thus far always done so at the request of the President. Do we have, in the National Archives, the document bearing Congress’ declaration of war on the Southern Confederacy, for the purpose of ending slavery – which, by the way, Congress did not outlaw until after the Civil War – and the date Congress did so? I think this document should be brought out of the Archives and published, and it will undoubtedly be the concluding evidence in this matter. I for one would be most happy to read it.
Yours is a more sophisticated iteration of Lost Cause mythology than one usually sees, but it is still discredited by the plain historical record, and mountains of scholarship.
You say that the South was loudly complaining for 30 years about the expanding government, and that the South was “suffering the abuse of its Constitutional rights, as well as illegal tariffs and taxes.” . . . Another way to look at it is to simply acknowledge that Southern slave interests dominated, or held in check, the federal government for most of the life of the nation up till the Civil War. Southern slave interests repeatedly demanded grand compromises from the nation at large. They had to be mollified on the slavery question when the constitution was ratified, and mollified again and again whenever free soil threatened to eclipse the power of slave soil (1820, 1850). It wasn’t enough that the Southern Slavocracy enjoyed disproportionately more representation in Congress based solely on the number of people they held in bondage.
Slavery, it was well understood, needed special protection in order to survive—it needed to expand. But in time, the burgeoning Northern population spelled doom for the institution. New states carved from Western Territories promised to tip the scales of power permanently from slave to free soil. When this minority Special Interest Group (slaveholders) could no longer compel the majority to abide by its terms (Southern states had no use for states rights when it came to the Fugitive Slave Act), the previously ratified rules of governance lost their appeal. Instead, they chose to separate, and copied the U.S. constitution nearly verbatim. One notable exception was to pencil in a prohibition on any state outlawing slavery whether they wanted to or not (so much for states rights!).
Southerners were not, as you suggest, the aggrieved victims of tyranny, illegal tariffs, and taxes. They were a special interest block heavily invested in slavery who gradually lost the political power to dictate how the rest of the nation would develop. Read Charles Dew’s book, “Apostles of Disunion,” on the secession commissioners. The architects of secession made no bones about it — secession was necessary to preserve slavery.
Rationalizations, like those you expressed, are modern-day efforts to diminish the overarching centrality of slavery, to somehow disassociate it from the fight because it sullies the cause. But the secessionists themselves were much more forthright about it. It’s just history.
You are mistaken. Mr. Woodbury. The CSA Constitution did not prohibit the States from abolishing slavery. This applied to Congress only.
Reply to STEFAN, above. . .
In point of fact, the Confederate Constitution forbade any state in the Confederacy from ever abolishing slavery, whether they wanted to or not. It was not a “state right” that they could abide. The CSA constitution also explicitly guaranteed that people in one state could take their slaves to any other state. Additionally, the document guaranteed that any new state accepted into the Confederacy could not make slavery illegal.
If that is really true, I wonder if you might explain the slave states’ insistence on using the power of the federal government to recover runaway slaves in the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 and their condemnation of northern “personal liberty” laws. Southerners were perfectly happy for federal power as long as it was used to promote slavery and not restrict it.
The old mythology dies hard … when the slave holding oligarchs in the deep south seceded after the 1860 presidential election they did so PROUDLY, making slavery the centerpiece of their rationale for leaving the union. … they would be puzzled, and likely a little pissed off, by this present day dissembling about the importance of their “peculiar institution.”
Slavery was the ‘cornerstone’ of the Confederate war machine.
Indeed–and of Southern political, social, and economic structures. And as you yourself have documented well in your own work, the Confederacy could not have fielded armies without the work supplied by enslaved labor.
Somebody hit a nerve with my man, C-Mack! I gave your book an excellent review!! LOL! Honestly, I don’t even recall the references to slavery in the book (I read it when it first came out so it’s been a minute) so it clearly was not a prominent theme of the book or anything. Nor did it need to be since you wrote about a specific campaign not about “The Impending Crisis.” We can have a discussion about this over beers next time I see you (ABT in Boston?) but the historical record is what it is and it demonstrates the Cotton States (led on by the fire-eaters in Charleston) pulled the trigger on secession in reaction to the election of the first Republican POTUS and that was over the party’s anti-slavery (even just containment of it where it was) orientation. It’s other Whig-like polices didn’t bring that reaction when the Whigs pursued them after all. The post-Sumter states though (due to the size of the “conditional Unionists” in them) are more complicated and lumping them in with SC and MS is also, in my view, a misreading of history. They voted against secession until war broke out and the conditional Unionists–who agreed that the Constitution provided states with the right to withdraw from the Union (the failure to include “perpetual union” in the Constitution after it replaced the Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union apparently being significant to them) –sided with those who had exercised THAT claimed “states right” and swung the votes in their conventions. I genuinely see that as a different matter but it doesn’t change the fact that the issue that got the secession ball rolling was the Cotton States Slave Power reacting to a Republican POTUS and seeing it as a turning point in the long-running slave/free debate with the tide turning against their side. Given how long the federal government had catered to them with Northern Doughfaces like Buchanan carrying water for them, it was a petulant overreaction that ultimately led to about 750,000 dead Americans. And the end of their “peculiar institution.” Making it as stupid and counterproductive for them as it was tragic for everyone. As an aside, as you noted, the shoehorning of slavery themes where they are not really the particular story (“let’s find where a former slave lived on this battlefield and put an interpretive marker there!”) probably leads to some pushback here too leading to comments about “obligatory slavery references where they are irrelevant. ” (As an aside, I’ve not been to Medgar Evans’ home in Jackson but did have a (too abbreviated due to a flight to catch) chance to go through the Mississippi Civil Rights Museum in Jackson. A powerful museum.)
I appreciate the nuance you bring up regarding the upper South, which did initially hold off. And Lincoln’s tender approach toward the Border States, which might have followed the lead of the upper South, further illustrates your point.
I agree, the Mississippi Civil Rights Museum was powerful stuff. It might be my favorite museum.
And yes to beers in Boston if not sooner!
I can only imagine the outrage and subsequent rant we might get from Alexander Stephens at the insistence of LC apologists insisting slavery was not the cause of session and the cornerstone on which the confederacy was founded. The slave power had no issue with the Federal government and the power it wielded as long as it was wielded to benefit them. As soon as the saw the balance of power swinging the other way suddenly there was an issue.
Right on brother Chris! Keep up the good work ?
Thanks, Joe!
I have discussions with people who are similar to Mark in their beliefs about the war and slavery’s cause. These people rely on memory (that passed down from past generations) and what they or their parents/grandparents were taught in school when the Lost Cause myth still reigned as “fact.” It can be maddening. We historians have a tough job to combat these fellow Americans and at the same time fighting against those that use presentism to judge the views of past Americans.
What I find just as ‘interesting’ is that a supposed ‘review’ written in late 2022 was just recently discovered! LOL.
But I used the word “supposed” because it just doesn’t come across as actual or genuine, not to me anyway. In other words, I think it’s someone (the ‘Mark’ mentioned) pushing buttons, plain and simple. And the article and responses and posts on sites like ECW here are exactly what ‘he’ wanted. I’ve seen posters like that referred to as “bots”, I’ve seen their offerings labeled as “drive-bys”, and the really creative ones call them “Russian this and that”, and similar things. People like this Mark show up on social media discussions involving subjects like, say, World War 2, and will leave comments like “Hitler was totally misunderstood, he really wanted to do good for this world”, or “the Imperial Japanese Army NEVER mistreated prisoners or captives”, and anything else that the rest of us know is pure drivel. In other words, I wouldn’t take the Marks of this planet or their comments seriously, because they don’t have that as their intention. They are all about pushing our buttons!
And please, do not interpret my words here as defending these kinds of clowns. They are jerks being just that, jerks! Well, that’s how I see it.
It was just “discovered” because I don’t typically read the Amazon reviews of my books–as evidenced by the fact that it took so long for me to “discover” this one. But my publisher of late has been pushing for reviews because they help with algorithms (go figure!).
Those darned algorithms will be the death of us all!
I may have missed it in the earlier comments, but has Jeff Davis had his say in this discussion? Here he is: “In a message to the Confederate Congress, April 29, 1861, Davis attributed the conflict to ‘a persistent and organized system of hostile measures…devised and prosecuted’ by northern congressmen ‘for the purpose of rendering insecure the tenure of property in slaves.’ With an interest of such ‘overwhelming magnitude, ’worth thousands of millions of dollars’ and ‘indispensable’ to the prosperity of southern agriculture, jeopardzed by the conduct of the North, Davis said, ‘the people of the Southern States were driven…to the adoption of some course of action to avert the danger with which they were openly menaced.’”
(The Imperiled Union: Essays on the Background of the Civil War. Kenneth M. Stamp (Oxford University Press 1989), 192-193.
Thank you for your historically accurate, relevant and factual references.
Even distinguished educators such as yourself are entitled to be frustrated by such willful ignorance. I know you will never stop sharing historical truth.