Jamie:

This song is nothing but about the conquering of us Southrons and the pervertion of our Christianity.

Come off it. Here is what the “Christianity” of the Southern secessionists meant:

That in this free government all white men are and of right ought to be entitled to equal civil and political rights; that the servitude of the African race, as existing in these States, is mutually beneficial to both bond and free, and is abundantly authorized and justified by the experience of mankind, and the revealed will of the Almighty Creator, as recognized by all Christian nations; while the destruction of the existing relations between the two races, as advocated by our sectional enemies, would bring inevitable calamities upon both and desolation upon the fifteen slave-holding states [Texas Declaration of Secession]

With us, all of the white race, however high or low, rich or poor, are equal in the eye of the law. Not so with the negro. Subordination is his place. He, by nature, or by the curse against Canaan, is fitted for that condition which he occupies in our system. … It is, indeed, in conformity with the ordinance of the Creator. It is not for us to inquire into the wisdom of His ordinances, or to question them. For His own purposes, He has made one race to differ from another, as He has made “one star to differ from another star in glory.” The great objects of humanity are best attained when there is conformity to His laws and decrees, in the formation of governments as well as in all things else. (Alexander Stephens, Vice President of the Confederacy)

The sooner that such “Christianity” was perverted and destroyed, the better.

Lydia:

I would be willing to concede that the leaders of the initially seceding states probably didn’t think slavery was “all that bad,” and furthermore that it was one of the specific issues in which, they suspected, the curtailment of states’ rights would begin.

There’s no need to speculate about this matter. The secessionist leaders were quite clear. Four of the seceding states (South Carolina, Mississippi, Georgia, and Texas) issued Declarations of Secession which explicitly cite the protection of slavery and white supremacy as their primary reasons for seceding. (South Carolina and Mississippi mention no other reason at all.) There are voluminous notes from secessionist conventions and speeches from leading figures such as Alexander Stephens which state that “all the agitating questions relating to our peculiar institution—African slavery as it exists amongst us—the proper status of the negro in our form of civilization … was the immediate cause of the late rupture and present revolution” and that race slavery was to be the “cornerstone” (Stephens) of their new government. The primary reasons mentioned are (1) the increasing defiance of federal fugitive slave laws in the Northern states, (2) attempts by Northern states to emancipate slaves that were carried into their borders by slaveholders, (3) the federal government’s restrictions on the expansion of slavery into the territories, (4) the growth and spread of abolitionist sentiment, (5) fear of slave uprisings inspired by Northern abolitionism, (6) the victory of Lincoln and the Republicans in the elections of 1860, which believed would worsen (1)-(5). Issues such as the tariff and abstract concerns about growing federal power vis-a-vis the several states were mentioned, but hardly portrayed as the chief reasons for the break and rarely discussed in any detail until the former Confederates began to write their post-war, post-Reconstruction memoirs in the 1870s and 1880s. If you look at the statements they were making at the time, however, these issues drop distinctly into the background. (The most the tariff receives in any of the declarations, for example, is three paragraphs; South Carolina’s and Mississippi’s secessionists were so far from giving a hoot about abstract principles of states’ rights that they complained about the “nullification” of federal Fugitive Slave Laws by Northern states as one of the reasons they gave for seceding.)

(Note that none of this means that Lincoln went to war to free the slaves. He clearly did not. But that does not mean that the secessionists did not secede in order to protect slavery from the alleged threats posed to it by the Northern states and the federal government.)

Lydia:

Think about it: What “Dixieland” says is that the singer loves his home region, that one of the reasons he loves it is because old times are not forgotten there, and that he intends to live and die there.

Context, please. “Dixie’s Land” was written by Dan Emmett in 1859 for his blackface minstrel show; here are the actual lyrics of the first verse and chorus, as they were originally sung:

I wish I was in land ob cotton, Old times dar am not forgotten, Look away! Look away! Look away! Dixie Land. In Dixie Land whar’ I was born in, Early on one frosty mornin’, Look away! Look away! Look away! Dixie Land. CHORUS: Den I wish I was in Dixie, Hoo-ray! Hoo-ray! In Dixie land, I’ll take my stand to lib and die in Dixie; Away, away, away down south in Dixie, Away, away, away down south in Dixie.

Now besides the “moonlight and magnolias” caricature of the romanticized South, with the clever euphemisms of “land of cotton” and “old times there are not forgotten” conveniently used to paper over the reality of plantation slavery—which ought to be creepy enough in itself—it is also worth noting that the song was written by white men for white men in blackface to sing, putting the words into the mouths of caricatured Black slaves. The singer is singing about his love for the land of his bondage and his longing to return there as soon as possible to “lib and die” on the plantation.

If you don’t find that creepy, I don’t know quite what to say.

Lydia, again:

Now I know, I’m all ready for the liberal outrage. How dare I say nice things about Dixieland (or even about “Dixieland”) when the old-time customs the southerners really wanted to preserve were slavery, discrimination, Jim Crow laws, and sundry other nasties, right?

But there is an odd double standard here. Saddam Hussein’s old-time customs were hardly nice, yet Dubya is probably one of the most Left-hated Republican presidents of all time on the grounds that he took it upon himself to go in without any immediate provocation and effect regime change so that, among other things, Saddam wouldn’t go on doing unpleasant things to his own people.

(1) How many of those Leftists go around singing the praises of “Land of Two Rivers” (the Iraqi national anthem under Saddam Hussein)?

(2) I mention (1) because there is actually a change of subject between the first paragraph above and the second. In the first you mention an objection that might be raised against praising the Confederacy; in the second you say that someone who condemns the Feds in the Iraq War ought to also condemn the Feds in the Civil War. That’s a perfectly just reply, but it’s not a reply to the objection raised in the first paragraph, because condemning the Feds and praising the Confederacy are not the same thing. You can (and indeed, I think there are awfully good reasons to say that you should) condemn both the Feds and the Confederacy.

Stephen Carson:

Cole, you ask a good question: “the South didn’t secede over state’s rights (I mean, what, were they just doing it to prove a point?)” I believe there is a good answer. As probably best documented in Tom DiLorenzo’s The Real Lincoln, there was ongoing contention over tariffs imposed on the South by the North which came to a head with the election of Lincoln whose whole career had protectionist tariffs as its theme (bet you never knew that… I didn’t). The upshot is that the South, with good reason, felt that the North was draining the South and spending the money on themselves.

Stephen, it is certainly true that protectionism, and the tariff in particular, were mentioned as injuries that the Southern states had suffered at the hands of the Northern states and the federal government. But the efforts to portray this as one of the chief causes of secession are frankly indulging in fantasy. South Carolina’s and Mississippi’s Declarations of Secession never once mention the tariff; indeed, neither mentions any reasons for secession other than the preservation of slavery and white supremacy. (MS: “Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery—the greatest material interest of the world.”) Texas’s mentions protectionist legislation in passing; here is everything that they had to say about it: “They have impoverished the slave-holding States by unequal and partial legislation, thereby enriching themselves by draining our substance.” Besides that single sentence, the declaration spends 13 paragraphs discussing slavery and the Federal government and Northern states’ hostility to it. (“She [Texas] was received as a commonwealth holding, maintaining and protecting the institution known as negro slavery— the servitude of the African to the white race within her limits— a relation that had existed from the first settlement of her wilderness by the white race, and which her people intended should exist in all future time”; also: “We hold as undeniable truths that the governments of the various States, and of the confederacy itself, were established exclusively by the white race, for themselves and their posterity; that the African race had no agency in their establishment; that they were rightfully held and regarded as an inferior and dependent race, and in that condition only could their existence in this country be rendered beneficial or tolerable.”) Georgia’s Declaration spends the most words on discussing protectionism; that is to say, it mentions it in 3 paragraphs and suggests that Northern commercial interests were behind anti-slavery agitation in the North after their political program of protectionism was defeated. However, it also spends 13 paragraphs discussing slavery, which it names first and last as the primary cause for secession. The records of the secession conventions and an analysis of the Confederate Constitution seem to reveal similar results. Vice President Alexander Stephens, it seems, was right when he declared of that Constitution, that “Our new Government is founded upon exactly the opposite ideas [from those of the Declaration of Independence]; its foundations are laid, its cornerstone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery, subordination to the superior race, is his natural and moral condition. [Applause.] This, our new Government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth.”

It’s certainly true—as DiLorenzo, among others, reveals—that Lincoln’s motives, in going to war against the seceding states, were far from noble. However, it’s vitally important to realize that that doesn’t mean that the Confederates’ motives were any more noble than Lincoln’s.

Chris:

You [Cole] say, “The North didn’t fight to end slavery.” But remember the Battle Hymn itself—“As He died to make men holy, let us die to make men free.” That’s what they were singing, after all!

I suspect that Chris and Cole are both right but that they are discussing different things under the rubric of “the North” (which was not, literally speaking, a participant in the war, but rather a geographical region). “The Battle Hymn of the Republic,” and its predecessor “John Brown’s Body,” were soldiers’ songs, and it’s true that many soldiers who fought for the North saw themselves as fighting to end slavery. It’s equally true that, for the first half of the war at least, Lincoln (together with his administration) saw himself as fighting to crush secession, and not to end slavery (and that if he could save the Union without freeing a single slave, he would do so). Here, as elsewhere, it’s important not to conflate the thoughts, reasons, and judgments of government leaders with those of the rest of the country.