When Fear Takes Hold: What we can learn from the Southern defense of slavery
Why did Southern states secede from the union? Between Lincoln’s election on Nov. 6, 1860 and his inauguration on March 4, 1861 seven states seceded, giving support to the theory that the South objected strongly to Lincoln and his Republican party. But in the 150 years since the war, the debate about the cause has hardly been settled. Added to Lincoln’s election, prime contenders are tariffs, states’ rights, and slavery. But one reason for secession is rarely on the list: security.
It seems odd to go to war – a risky endeavor involving death and destruction – to make yourself more secure, but it happens all the time. Security is why we went into Iraq and Afghanistan, of course. We wanted to make ourselves safe by attacking terrorists on foreign soil, taking the war to them, as the reasoning went ten years ago. But the Southern states, by seceding, tempted an invasion. The war would be fought on their own soil, not in some far away land. How could security have factored into their thinking?
I’ve been reading a special issue of the monthly magazine The Atlantic called The Civil War. If you are interested in the Civil War it is well worth purchasing. It is a collection of articles that were originally published in The Atlantic during the 1850s and 1860s, before, during and after the war. There is nothing like cutting through 150 years of commentary to let the people of the time speak for themselves. One of the articles is titled Charleston Under Arms and it was written by John William De Forest, a Connecticut-born journalist. It recounts his visit to Charleston in January 1861. You may remember that though South Carolina had seceded on December 20, federal forces still held Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor. This is where the first shots of the Civil War would be fired on April 12. De Forest recounts conversations he had with residents of Charleston during this tense and uncertain time before the war began.
South Carolinians were committed to their right to secede. They felt they had done nothing wrong, unpatriotic or illegal. They were clearly upset about Lincoln’s election and distrusted the Republican platform, though De Forest could not understand why. The platform, he explained to one dubious citizen, was “not adverse to slavery in the States; it only objects to its entrance into the Territories; it is not an Abolition platform.” Yet this South Carolinian wasn’t buying it. He replied, “We believe that [the Republican platform] is an incomplete expression of the party creed, — that it suppresses more than it utters. The spirit which keeps the Republicans together is enmity to slavery, and that spirit will never be satisfied until the system is extinct.”
Of course, the South had a great deal to lose economically if slavery were abolished. I am no economist, but it is not hard to imagine the wealth that could be lost and how desperately some might resist such a reversal of their fortunes. Yet the Southern gentleman had a reputation of being indifferent to money. It is one of the ways that the North and South had diverged culturally. Mark Noll in The Civil War as a Theological Crisis explains that the North was experiencing “the expansion of consumer capitalism, in which unprecedented opportunities to create wealth were matched by large-scale alienation and considerable poverty in both urban and rural America.” The reputation of the Southern gentleman, on the other hand, was as an aristocratic man of honor who was above the base pursuit of money for its own sake. A rivalry emerged in which each was contemptuous and yet secretly admiring of the other, contributing to a climate of distrust and resentment that found its full expression in the argument over the future of slavery in the United States.
But it was not a defense of Southern wealth that lay at the bottom of one South Carolinian’s concern regarding the Republican determination to end slavery. I will quote directly from the article:
When I [De Forest] asked one gentleman what the South expected to gain by going out, he replied, “First safety. Our slaves have heard of Lincoln,—that he is a black man, or black Republican, or black something, —that he is to become ruler of this country the fourth of March, —that he is a friend of theirs, and will free them. We must establish our independence in order to make them believe that they are beyond his help”…
My impression is, that a prevalent, though not a universal fear, existed lest the negroes should rise in partial insurrections on or about the fourth of March.
Above all this man expressed a fear of a violent slave revolt that would threaten the safety and security of his community. First safety. His fear was not unfounded. Slave revolts had taken place in which whites and blacks alike were killed. You will remember from your American History classes the names of John Brown and Nat Turner. These revolts caused fear and concern in the South. What we find in this quotation is that during the brief time between Lincoln’s election and the beginning of war, the threat of slave insurrections felt more real and imminent than any threat that might come from an invading Union army. Blinded by fear, the South would risk war to defend an evil institution.
What can we learn from this glimpse into Southern fears? Too often we view history a bit smugly, as if we have the perfect vantage point to understand motives, discern causes, and judge the right from the wrong, the wicked from the good. Used this way, history is not about the truth of another time or place, but is a part of the story we are telling about our own goodness. To avoid this pitfall, rather than sit in judgment of Southern fears, we might learn from them instead by asking a difficult question: Is it possible that our own fears are blinding us, too, preventing us from seeing some uncomfortable truth about ourselves?
Even more to the point, though slavery is long abolished, racism has been harder to eradicate. Are there ways in which we are as blind as South Carolinian slave holders to the continued suffering of the black community? Might a contemporary fear of loss of safety have a hold on us? I ask only because of the continuing presence of segregation in our schools and communities; I ask because according to Michelle Alexander, law professor at Ohio State and author of The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, “More African American men are in prison or jail, on probation or parole than were enslaved in 1850, before the Civil War began”; I ask because of lingering issues of voting rights discriminations and the undertones and sometimes overtones of racism in some attempts to delegitimize Barack Obama’s presidency.
Look, my point is not to make people feel bad. I know that for white America to admit it still harbors racist fears and delusions of racial supremacy is a really uncomfortable place to go. But sometimes allowing ourselves to feel bad is the only way to be truly good. Instead of running from our fear and pretending everything is okay, feeling bad opens the door for change. The Civil War ended almost 150 years ago but the battle for racial equality is far from over. I hope you won’t be afraid to learn more about the fears and struggles of the past. Perhaps you can join the Raven Foundation as we look at the struggles for integration in the 1940s when baseball led the way forward in the Lookingglass production of “Mr. Rickey Calls a Meeting.” We are also offering an opportunity to explore new research into the theological arguments for and against slavery that were taking place before the Civil War, arguments that have left powerful handprints on our public life today. Raven is partnering with the Center for Applied Christian Ethics at Wheaton College to bring you leading Civil War scholars on March 16-17 for this historical and relevant conversation. Don’t miss these great opportunities to look together at our shared history – it might even feel good!
Slave Rebellion, Fear, and the Civil War
On Racial Newt-rality
We live much of our lives in fear. We fear being exposed as frauds. We project to the world an image of ourselves that’s not entirely true in an attempt to gain the approval of others. We conceal the bad, dirty, and ugly parts of ourselves and project other parts of ourselves that we think people will perceive as good, clean, and beautiful.
But there is another aspect of this self-deceptive pattern that is even more devious. We have a tendency to project onto others the bad, dirty, and ugly parts of ourselves. To paraphrase René Girard, “We are most indignant at the evil of others by which we ourselves are consumed” (Deceit, Desire, and the Novel, 73).
Few of us are immune from this pattern of self-deception. It’s an infectious social disease that permeates human culture and it is on full national display during political season as we inspect and scrutinize candidates. We saw it televised on Monday night at the Republican national debate.
The 24 hour news channels have been running the highlight of that debate since Monday evening. (You can see the video below.) It started when Fox News moderator Juan Williams asked Newt Gringrich a question about a claim Gingrich made while campaigning in Iowa. Gingrich stated last November that "Black Americans should demand jobs, not food stamps." He also claimed that “Really poor children in really poor neighborhoods have no habits of working and nobody around them who works. So they literally have no habit of showing up on Monday. They have no habit of staying all day. They have no habit of ‘I do this and you give me cash,’ unless it’s illegal.”
Williams asked, “Can’t you see that this is viewed at a minimum as insulting to all Americans, but particularly to black Americans?”
As Gingrich replied, “No, I don’t see that,” the audience erupted in approval. Williams then asked if the comments were “intended to belittle the poor and racial minorities.”
“First of all, Juan,” Gingrich rather belittlingly responded, “the fact is that more people have been put on food stamps by Barack Obama than any president in American history. Now, I know among the politically correct you’re not supposed to use facts that are uncomfortable.” He went on to claim that liberal “elites despise earning money” and that he wants to help people “learn how to get a job, learn how to get a better job and learn someday to own the job.” The all white audience loved the confrontation and enthusiastically cheered for Gingrich. After the debate Gingrich explained the enthusiasm by stating, “There was a spontaneous sense that somebody finally had the courage to just tell the truth about how we’ve got to go about helping people…”
The point I’d like to emphasize here is Williams’ term “racial minorities.” Williams has been criticized by many on the right for asking a racially loaded question, while many on the left praise him for stating the obvious and then accuse Gingrich of being a racist. Now, I don’t know if Gingrich is a racist, but Williams did ask a racially loaded question and race was an obvious issue at the debate. Williams was the only black person in the room, and I specifically mention “the all white audience” because the incident exposed an uncomfortable truth about American self-deception when it comes to race and racism.
It has been said that slavery is America’s original sin, but America’s original sin is deeper than slavery, for only black people were enslaved. The end of slavery did not end racism, nor did it end its counterpart, white supremacy. Both continued through the practice of lynching and segregation. It is a bad, dirty, and ugly part of American history that we would rather sweep under our cultural rug by ignoring its impact on modern American society. “We don’t have race issues anymore,” many argue. “We have economic issues.” There is some truth in that statement. Poverty doesn’t discriminate between races. But my personal experience, which is confirmed by the experience of Monday’s debate, is that racism still plays a huge role in our culture. If we are ever going to move beyond racism in our country, we need an honest discussion about how it continues to infect our lives.
So, let’s be honest. I’m infected with racism. Like the all white audience at the debate in South Carolina, I live in a mostly white world. I can go throughout my day without ever seeing a black person. My neighborhood is an all white suburb just north of Chicago, my church is 95% white, and when I shop I see white faces. The only time when I see black people is when I venture to Chicago, where many neighborhoods are all black.
Segregation is illegal, but don’t be deceived – whether you live in the North or the South, the United States continues to be segregated. We have an implicitly segregated society, and segregation, whether explicit or implicit, fosters racist attitudes. And here’s the ugly truth we don’t want to admit: we like it that way. Because of our self-deception, we would rather not deal with the bad, dirty, and ugly truth of racism that continues to infect our nation. We would rather show our indignation toward those racists out there than deal with the racism that infects us.
Is Newt infected by the evil pattern of racism? Probably. But so am I. When it comes to racism, we cannot afford to be neutral. Any accusations of racism that I levy against Newt will be an attempt to conceal my own pattern of racism. That pattern needs to be transformed by a different pattern: the pattern of intentional acts of solidarity with people of other races. Those intentional acts might include advocating for and participating in local intercultural events, seeking friendships with people of other races, and moving to a more diverse neighborhood. These intentional acts, and others like them, are our only hope for overcoming America’s implicit segregation and continued racism. Until we have the courage to live in the pattern of solidarity, segregation and racism will continue to infect American culture.