The
presidential messages of Jefferson Davis were filled with assertions of
the South’s legal right to secede and form a more perfect union, and
determine its own form of government to the letter of Jefferson’s
Declaration of Independence. Not losing sight of this, even in early
1865, one Confederate congressman stated that “This is a war for the
Constitution, it is a constitutional war.”
Bernhard Thuersam, Chairman
North Carolina War Between the States Sesquicentennial Commission
"Unsurpassed Valor, Courage and Devotion to Liberty"
"The Official Website of the North Carolina WBTS Sesquicentennial"
Southern Nationalism and Secession:
“Contributors
to Confederate periodicals explored parallels between the Confederacy
and other fledgling nations or independence movements – the Dutch
republic, the “young kingdom of Italy,” and the Polish and Greek
rebellions.
But
the authors were careful do dissociate the South from genuinely radical
movements; it was the conservative European nationalism of the
post-1848 period with which the Confederacy could identify most
enthusiastically. The Dutch struggle, an essayist in the July, 1862,
issue of the Southern Presbyterian Review explained approvingly, was
like the Confederate, for in both situations, “not we, but our foes, are
the revolutionists.”
The Daily Richmond Enquirer was even more explicit about the Poles:
“There
is nothing whatever in this movement of a revolutionary, radical or Red
Republican character. It is the natural, necessary protest and revolt
of, not a class or order, but an ancient and glorious nation, against
that crushing, killing union with another nationality and form of
society. It is . . . the aristocratic and high-bred national pride of
Poland revolting against the coarse brute power of Russian imperialism .
. . At bottom, the cause of Poland is the same cause for which the
Confederates are now fighting.”
The
Southern government welcomed a Spanish analogy between Napoleon’s
invasion of Spain and northern advances across the Potomac. British
recognition of the new Italian state encouraged [Robert] Toombs to see
parallels there, as well. “Reasons no less grave and valid than those
which actuated the people of Sicily and Naples,” he explained, had
prompted the Confederacy to seek its independence.
But
the nationalist movement with which the Confederates most frequently
identified was . . . the American War of Independence. A central
contention of Confederate nationalism, as it emerged in 1861, was that
the South’s effort represented a continuation of the struggle of 1776.
The South, Confederates insisted, was the legitimate heir of American
revolutionary tradition. Betrayed by Yankees who had perverted the true
meaning of the Constitution, the revolutionary heritage could be
preserved only by secession. Southerners portrayed their independence
as the fulfillment of American nationalism.
Secession
represented continuity, not discontinuity; the Confederacy was the
consummation, not the dissolution, of the American dream. A sermon
preached in South Carolina explained that “The doctrines of the original
Puritans were, and are, the doctrines of the Bible . . . but the
descendants of the Puritans have gone far astray from the creed of their
forefathers.”
[Southerners
strived] to avoid the dangerous “isms” – feminism, socialism,
abolitionism – that had emerged from Northern efforts at social
betterment. But the logic of Confederate nationalism . . . was to
prescribe significant shifts in the Southern definition of Christian
duty. Secession thus became an act of purification, a separation from
the pollutions of decaying Northern society, that “monstrous mass of
moral disease,” as the Mobile Evening News so vividly described it.”
(The Creation of Confederate Nationalism, Drew Gilpin Faust, LSU Press, 1988, pp. 13-14, 27, 29-30)
Can you please recommend a book on Jefferson Davis for me? Thank you (again)!
ReplyDeleteYes, Ma'am and you ought to come to our Fall PATCON as you might win the rifle with his quote!:)
DeleteJefferson Davis, American
http://www.amazon.com/dp/0375725423
Thank you! Just ordered the book - should be here in a few days.
DeletePATCON sounds like it would be a wonderul time to meet some mighty fine, good people. If Hubby and I were a lot younger, we would probably make the long trip (the rifle IS awfully tempting, though) :0)
Spend a night on the way and enjoy yourselves.:)
Delete