Confederate Heritage Month 2019, April 26: That whole "states rights" thing in neo-Confederacy

The Kansas City Star brings us another story about a leading politician and neo-Confederate pseudohistory (Lindsay Wise, Missouri Sen. Roy Blunt signed 1990 letter about how ‘states rights’ led to Civil War 04/25/2019).

The particular news here is probably a minor data point in Missouri politics. Blunt signed "a 1990 letter that discusses 'states’ rights' as a cause of the Civil War, but makes no mention of slavery." He was Missouri's Secretary of State at the time. In response to the Star's questions, Blunt admitted he signed it but claimed he didn't read it and that "it’s always been clear to him that slavery was the 'original sin' of the Constitution."

Several paragraphs into the article, Wise gives us more details on the letter which was in response to a student's letter. And it provides a good example of how Lost Cause pseudohistory about the Civil War is part of a larger narrative, based on white supremacist assumptions:

“Why did the States feel that their rights caused them to separate from the U.S.?” the student asked Blunt. “What does the Constitution say about states rights? How have states’ rights changed since the Civil War?”

The typewritten response was signed by Blunt and printed under Missouri Secretary of State letterhead. It says the debate over states rights was at the heart of the Civil War. ...

His response to the student, which runs slightly over one page, single-spaced, does not mention slavery.

It suggests the student read the writings of former Vice President and U.S. Senator John C. Calhoun of South Carolina, “one of the most articulate and ardent supporters of the states’ rights position” and suggests studying the lives of Edmund Ruffin and Jefferson Davis “on the states’ rights side” and Republican President Abraham Lincoln, his Democratic rival Stephen Douglas and Nathaniel Lyon, a Union general, on the “national rights side.”

Calhoun called slavery a positive good. Davis, also a defender of slavery, was the president of the Confederacy. Ruffin was a Virginia slaveholder who claimed credit for firing one of the first shots of the war. He ended up killing himself, wrapped in the Confederate flag.

The letter signed by Blunt concludes with the observation that the states’ rights debate “continues to be waged in our own lifetimes.” It cites, as an example, the “debate whether or not the federal government has the right to require the state of Missouri to pay the costs of racial desegregation in Kansas City and St. Louis schools.” [my emphasis]

In this example as presented by the Kansas City Star, we see the emphasis on "state rights" as the central cause of the Civil War without mentioning slavery, which is a key argument of the Lost Cause/neo-Confederate narrative. And we see how the letter connects that narrative to Republicans' opposition to "racial desegregation in Kansas City and St. Louis schools" at the time.

I've done several posts this year about John Calhoun, the guiding spirit of today's American white nationalists. As he was for the secessionists of 1861.

The Nullification Crisis of 1831-2 was a conflict that was explicitly though not overtly about slavery. In this case, Calhoun defended a "states rights" position and President Andrew Jackson's position asserting federal authority won out. The Congressional lineup around that issue was broadly sectionally divided, with slave states tending to support the states-rights stance and the free states supported the national position.

The notorious Indian Removal Act of 1830 also lined up sectionally, even more clearly than on the Nullification Crisis. The Southerners favored the Act, which extended federal power in controlling territories in the area in question. The Northern opponents used the states-rights argument to oppose the Act. So even then, Southern support for "states' rights" was based on the issue immediately at stake, not on some abstract, legalistic commitment to states' rights as a basic Constitutional principle.

Between the Nullification Crisis and Lincoln's election in 1860, the controversies over slavery had the Southern slaveowners backing the use of national power in favor of slavery and against states' rights. After 1840, the Presidents were increasingly favorable to the slave states. The Fugitive Slave laws were a big point of contention during that whole period; Southern representatives demanded more use of federal power to force free states to return escaped slaves.

After the 1860 Presidential election, slave states did begin to invoke states' rights again. But as their secession ordinances and speeches of secession leaders made very clear, the purpose their secession and treason was defending slavery.

Confederate "Heritage" Month 2019, April 19: Debunking the Lost Cause ideology

Carl Weinberg provided an example several years ago of using Virginia Confederate History Month proclamations to debunk the Lost Cause narrative behind them: The Strange Career of Confederate History Month OAH Magazine of History 25:2 April 2011. The "history" month was April, Confederate Heritage Month by another name.

This particular incident has to do with the 2010 proclamation. "Republican Virginia Governor Robert McDonnell issued a Confederate History Month proclamation that omitted any mention of slavery. Less than a week later and after many protests, McDonnell reissued a new text that prominently included slavery."

A key part of the neo-Confederate/Lost Cause pseudohistorical account is to deny or minimize the role of slavery as the cause of the war. The revised version of the 2010 proclamation, included as a sidebar in the article, opened with, "WHEREAS, April is the month in which the people of Virginia joined the Confederate States of America in a four year war between the states for independence that concluded at Appomattox Courthouse." Weinberg takes off from that passage to provide this helpful dose of real history:

For one thing, there were 500,000 enslaved "people" in Virginia at the time who were legally considered property and could not have taken part in this decision. Further, the [1861] Virginia Ordinance of Secession makes it plain - by reference to "the oppression of the Southern slaveholding states" - that slavery was, once again, the key.

But even if we acknowledge that the Virginia Secession Convention voted to leave the Union on April 17, 1861, the white "people" of Virginia were hardly of one mind on this point. When voting on delegates to that convention took place two months earlier on February 4-the very day that the new Confederate government was seated in Montgomery, Alabama-a majority voted for men known to be against secession. This sentiment was especially strong west of the Blue Ridge mountains, where it prevailed by a five-to-one margin. Once assembled in Richmond February 13, pro-secession delegates failed to win a majority. Meanwhile, western delegates denounced taxation policies (partial exemptions on slaves) and political representation policies (the state version of the 3/5 clause) that favored slaveholders, who were more numerous in the eastern Tidewater and Piedmont regions. Only the attack on Fort Sumter and Lincoln's call for 75,000 volunteers broke the two-month deadlock. Despite the outbreak of war, western Virginia leaders emerged from the convention determined to stay in the Union. At a convention in June in the western city of Wheeling, they renounced secession and formed a new rival state government. Two years later, after much maneuvering, and under the condition that the gradual abolition of slavery be included in its new constitution, the state of West Virginia was admitted to the Union. They had seceded from the secessionists. [my emphasis]

Another clause of the revised proclamation states that slavery was the cause of the war:

"WHEREAS, it is important for all Virginians to understand that the institution of slavery led to this war and was an evil and inhumane practice that deprived people of their God-given inalienable rights and all Vrrginians are thankful for its permanent eradication from our borders, and the study of this time period should reflect upon and learn from this painful part of our history ..."

But another clause picks up parts of the Lost Cause narrative:

WHEREAS, all Virginians can appreciate the fact that when ultimately overwhelmed by the insurmountable numbers and resources of the Union Army, the surviving, imprisoned and injured Confederate soldiers gave their word and allegiance to the United States of America, and returned to their homes and families to rebuild their communities in peace, following the instruction of General Robert E. Lee of Virginia, who wrote that, "... all should unite in honest efforts to obliterate the effects of war and to restore the blessings of peace."

It is a stock piece of the neo-Confederate case that the South lost because they were just crushed by the sheer numbers of the Union forces. This diverts attention from mistakes and problems of the Confederate generals and state governments, as well as from factors like the undermining of the Confederate economy by mass desertions of slaves from plantations after the Emancipatio Proclamation. It also frames the Confederate loss as an inevitable tragedy, rather than a disaster created by the fanaticism, greed, and treason of the planter class and their supporters in mounting a armed revolt against the Union.

That latter clause also perpetuates the unhistorical image of Robert E. Lee as a patriotic, benevolent figure after the war. Lee did urge reconcilation, which for conservative Southern whites meant reconcilation between Northern and Southrn white people at the expense of the freedom and well-being of black citizens.