Empire for Liberty: America in the Long Nineteenth Century

[RossN]

Once again a fascinating look volksmarschall. I'm only vaguely familiar with the Confederacy (despite once writing an AAR on them) but they loom very large in the imagination, even if that image, as you say yourself is one that was under threat even internally.

 

[volksmarschall]

Once again a fascinating look volksmarschall. I'm only vaguely familiar with the Confederacy (despite once writing an AAR on them) but they loom very large in the imagination, even if that image, as you say yourself is one that was under threat even internally.

I'm glad you find it fascinating and engaging RossN! As you well know, that is an integral part of what I try to accomplish with any AAR. Since most of us here on the forums have some attachment or interest to history, in the most abstract and general sense, I sometimes feel at heightened obligation as someone who publishes and works fairly regularly in academia, to bring out some of the aspects of history that "fall through the cracks" so to speak. (I mean, we're already all familiar with political and military history of the ACW...no need to retread that ground with just a bunch of changing dates and battle names to fit with the game's version of the CW.)

The Civil War has begun, and the Confederates have won some impressive victories, as earlier updates explain, but I think you--and all other readers--can gauge what our primary focus will be on. Though, of course, we do have an important election to hold since the war fired in Spring of 1860!

 

[Specialist290]

It's funny that you mention the notion that the Civil War itself dealt the Old South a mortal blow that it would never recover from even had the Confederacy won -- a few weeks back I was just reading "The Most Hated Man in the Southern States" by @Director (though hosted at another site which the forums won't allow us to link to) which touches on much the same idea, though in a rather more literary than historiographical vein.

 

[volksmarschall]

It's funny that you mention the notion that the Civil War itself dealt the Old South a mortal blow that it would never recover from even had the Confederacy won -- a few weeks back I was just reading "The Most Hated Man in the Southern States" by @Director (though hosted at another site which the forums won't allow us to link to) which touches on much the same idea, though in a rather more literary than historiographical vein.

It's a small world. But knowing Director personally, I'm not the least bit surprised he would touch on the same material.

And I'm sure you know from your studies, history suffers from a bad case of romanticism, or particular historiography schools become commonplace over other schools of scholarship. Since most of us have some affinity to "history", I like to pull out all the stops. Since this is heavy on the cultural side of historiography, this was a perfect moment to touch on this topic.

 

[Tankman987]

It's funny that you mention the notion that the Civil War itself dealt the Old South a mortal blow that it would never recover from even had the Confederacy won -- a few weeks back I was just reading "The Most Hated Man in the Southern States" by @Director (though hosted at another site which the forums won't allow us to link to) which touches on much the same idea, though in a rather more literary than historiographical vein.

I apologise for asking but is it in the Alternate History forums?

 

[Specialist290]

It's actually over at the "Hawk and Badger Railroad" fansite for the Railroad Tycoon series, but you can probably find it easiest just by Googling the title.

 

[RossN]

I'm glad you find it fascinating and engaging RossN! As you well know, that is an integral part of what I try to accomplish with any AAR. Since most of us here on the forums have some attachment or interest to history, in the most abstract and general sense, I sometimes feel at heightened obligation as someone who publishes and works fairly regularly in academia, to bring out some of the aspects of history that "fall through the cracks" so to speak. (I mean, we're already all familiar with political and military history of the ACW...no need to retread that ground with just a bunch of changing dates and battle names to fit with the game's version of the CW.)

The Civil War has begun, and the Confederates have won some impressive victories, as earlier updates explain, but I think you--and all other readers--can gauge what our primary focus will be on. Though, of course, we do have an important election to hold since the war fired in Spring of 1860!

Well said, and I'm grateful you bring all that to this AAR!

Oh yes the election that does promise to be interesting!

 

[Director]

Or you can look in my signature below. Hey, @Specialist290, you called...

I apologize for not getting in here sooner - as @volksmarschall knows, I've been sequentially ill and then swamped with work. As we expect, the political and cultural insights are fascinating. The Confederacy is a magnificent example of how far romantic delusion can be sustained, and - like the fall of Germany in WW2 - a striking example of what sacrifices a people can make in pursuit of that dream. Even those of us who detest what it stood for can find it fascinating.

At one time, I was engrossed in Railroad Tycoon 3 - it was all I played for a solid year (while I was hiding out from writing 'HistoryPark: Here There Be Dragons'), and I wrote some scenarios for it including one on the Civil War. The 'Most Hated Man' AAR assumes the South had a dynamic, modern, centralized, profitable railroad and a tycoon who invested his profits by industrializing.

The Confederacy, as volksmarchall said above, began as a small government and state-centered nation. The stresses of the war deformed that model and the Davis administration found itself increasingly unable to convince states like Georgia and North Carolina that their survival was only possible under a more centralized, more powerful government. In 'Most Hated Man' I posit a Confederate victory coming rather late in the war (by use of railroads of course), after years of runaway inflation, worthless currency, famine, massive casualties and deep political unrest. The post-war economic collapse of the Confederacy actually makes things worse not better (nationalizing the railroad is a massive disaster), and President McClellan sagely retrieves the peace by holding out the promise of easy re-admission to the Union without requiring emancipation. The Confederacy futilely attempts to prevent re-secession by force of arms and the whole house of cards collapses... little remains at the end but South Carolina (as I remember). I don't say that was likely, but it doesn't seem implausible.

@RossN - American elections are always 'interesting', sometimes dangerously so. I'm half-afraid and half-fascinated to see what this one has in store...

 

[volksmarschall]

The stresses of the war deformed that model and the Davis administration found itself increasingly unable to convince states like Georgia and North Carolina that their survival was only possible under a more centralized, more powerful government.

I need to find it. Years ago for my CW seminar class as undergrad, we read a book that explained these troubles where the Dixie Leviathan was unable to get certain states to move away from the decentralized confederacy model which exacerbated tensions in the CSA by wars end. The remaining armies divided among these lines and led to the sudden collapse of the CSA.

Great read highlighting the push for centralized govt and the push back from certain states.

If I find it I'll make sure to swing it your way and list it in our suggested reading pitch that closes most of our updates in this AAR.

 

[UlrichVonBaden]

Have been thoroughly enjoying this aar, your attention to detail and tying so much disparate strands of American history together makes for a thought provoking and compelling read. Thanks for making me interested in U.S. History again!

 

[volksmarschall]

Have been thoroughly enjoying this aar, your attention to detail and tying so much disparate strands of American history together makes for a thought provoking and compelling read. Thanks for making me interested in U.S. History again!

Well thank you for coming on board to read, and enjoying what you found! It makes me grateful, especially since I take the time to tie the disparate strands of historiography together for the sake of the readers who may otherwise not be as familiar with the material as I. Since we all have a certain appreciation of history, I figure it would be naturally appreciative among the readers. And anyone who can, nominally, credit me for making them interested in anything is quite the compliment.

 

[volksmarschall]

CHAPTER VIII: The Politics of the Civil War

Let us pause in life’s pleasure and count its many tears while we all sup sorrow with the poor; there’s a song that will linger forever in our ears. Oh hard times come again no more! 'Tis the song, the sigh of the weary, Hard Times, hard times, come again no more. Many days you have lingered around my cabin door; Oh! Hard times come again no more…There's a pale drooping maiden who toils her life away, with a worn heart whose better days are o'er: Though her voice would be merry, 'tis sighing all the day, Oh! Hard times come again no more.

~ Stephen Foster, “Hard Times Come Again No More.”​

The 1860 Election​

The politics of the American Civil War is a contentious and important issue. As just mentioned at the end of Chapter VII, the American South rapidly centralized and codified its power and political-economy to fight the war. While the Confederacy had fewer major cities, and industrial centers, in comparison to the Union, the Confederacy had a better initial thrust toward centralization and codified power than the Union. What historians have come to call the “Dixie Leviathan” is considered to have been far more centralized, organized, and well-established than the Union in the initial years of the Civil War.[1]

The political culture of the American Civil war changed the United States forever. This is why historian James McPherson has called the Civil War “the war that forged a nation.” The Civil War also transformed the particularism of the United States into a political universalism. As the fight to keep a nation together, in conjuncture with emancipation and expansion of civil rights, the Civil War became the nexus of the struggle that was perceived to be the struggle of all humanity. As such, the Civil War equally transformed the consciousness of America. The cause of America was not just the cause of America, but the cause of all mankind. (While many philosophies would reject this, it is evident that the rise of the messianic consciousness and the myth of America as the “redeemer nation” emerged from the Civil War.)

***​

As already mentioned, President Douglas had hoped for two outcomes with the outbreak of the Civil War. First, he anticipated that a display of force would bring the Confederacy back into the fold. The rallying and march of tens of thousands of federal troops was meant to achieve a shock value that the Union was serious that the Confederacy was not allowed to break the sacred compact that they had signed on to in the Constitution Convention. Second, if this failed, Douglas wanted a quick and decisive military victory. A quick victory would boost his re-election hopes, as well as that of the Democratic Party that was bitterly divided—even in the north. Democrats in Pennsylvania and New York were steadfastly pro-war, pro-commercialist, and pro-business. Democrats in the Midwest were far closer to the Jeffersonian-Jacksonian populist and agrarian spirit, and later became the nexus of the “Copperhead movement” within the Democratic Party as the war dragged on.[2]

The failure of both outcomes was a cause of alarm for Douglas. Although the Democratic Party nominally reinvigorated its commitments to winning the war and preserving the Union, the early Copperhead movement pushed Clement Vallandigham to challenge Douglas as the Convention. Vallandigham, like Douglas, was a young and energetic congressman from the Midwest (Ohio). He was an ardent Jacksonian and populist, a democrat, who believed the South’s democratic withdrawal was good enough to allow the Confederacy to withdraw without war. He was an early opponent to “war unionism” that was binding all three major northern parties together. While he was defeated on the first ballot, it was a bad sign for Douglas that 1/3 of national northern Democrats were already getting cold feet over the war after the defeats at New Orleans, Lexington, and Peterson’s Hill, along with smaller engagements.

Ohio congressman Clement Vallandigham, one of the leading Copperheads within the Democratic Party. He challenged President Douglas for the Democratic nomination in the 1860 Convention. He also ran for Governor of Ohio while in exile in Canada during the middle of the Civil War.​

In comparison, the Know Nothings and Republicans were firmly pro-war. The American Party nominated Nathaniel Prentiss Banks for President, and the Republicans nominated John C. Fremont, with Abraham Lincoln as Vice President. Unlike the Democrats, both parties hadn’t experienced any insurgent anti-war movements during their conventions. Both parties also established implied planks calling for an end to slavery. The nomination of Fremont frightened Confederate Democrats, as well as Copperhead Democrats in the north. The Republican Party, in its nomination and platform, solidified itself as being in the for the long haul.

While the South had to rapidly centralize, industrialize, and organize for the war, the same was true for the Union. While the Union had better lines of communications, logistics, and infrastructure, it would be wrong to associate any of these advantages with a stronger centralized and organized federal government. As mentioned, most historians believe that the Confederacy initially had a more strongly centralized and organized body politic and political-economy. These, along with other factors, many historians believe to be among the causes for initial Confederate advantages over the Union (not discounting better experienced officers and frontier soldiers).

It is safe to say that the challenge to the Douglas Administration was great and mounting. The inability to coerce the Confederacy back into the Union by the election was catastrophic for his bid. The tide of the war, and the tide of public opinion, had turned against him. After all, he was the compromise candidate in the 1856 election to simply deny Jefferson Davis reelection. While many historians have become more partial to Douglas, and have rated his attempts to prevent slavery epxansionism and earnest and honest attempts to ending the war as quickly as possible, he still failed. The noble and honest Douglas took his defeat graciously however. Having only won his home state of Illinois, the Republicans swept through the Midwest and Mid-Atlantic, losing only Maine, Maryland, and Connecticut to the Know Nothings (who still performed admirably well in the rest of New England where the Democratic Party all but collapsed).

Fremont’s victory marked the Republican ascendency in American politics, an ascendency that would remain virtually unchallenged and unrivaled until William Jennings Bryan. It also marked the rise of what historian and political philosopher Richard Bensel notes as the “Yankee Leviathan.” One of the aspects of the Jacksonian philosophy of Douglas and the northern war Democrats was a reluctance of nationalization and federalization in order to fight the war. This was exactly the opposite in the war politics of the Republican Party. While the Republicans were divided between abolitionist and anti-slavery forces, the “radicals” grew in power as the war went on, especially after the 1862 election.

The Republican victory was also bad news for the Confederacy. Although at war, the Confederacy had hoped for a Democratic victory. While Douglas was adamant about fighting the war, the Confederacy knew the anti-war Democrats would be able to leverage more political capital if Douglas was President rather than Fremont or Banks. Douglas’s defeat, and the decimation of northern Democrats, meant that—however absurd the idea was—the small hope the Confederacy had with the Copperhead Democrats had vanished.

President John C. Fremont and Vice President Abraham Lincoln respectively. The 1860 election marked the triumph and ascendancy of the Republican Party in national politics. Although the party remained internally divided between state capitalists, old stock Protestant moralists, and the scions of the Federalists and Whigs in the Northeast, agrarian populists and nationalists in the Midwest, and general anti-Catholic and anti-immigrant nativists migrating away from the Know Nothings to the Republicans, the party was generally united for its only time in history during the Civil War. The Republican ascendancy wasn't broken until the election of William Jennings Bryan.​

***​

The 1860 election in the Union was not the only election at the time. The Provision Confederate Congress that had organized and gathered the political force of the Confederacy upon secession needed proper and formal electoral backing and support. The politics of the Confederacy split along two party lines: Whigs and Democrats.[3] The Whig Party, which took its name from the Whigs of the American Revolution, stylized themselves as the heirs of the liberal and revolutionary tradition of the United States. They also called for rapid centralization and modernization. The Democrats were divided between the more conservative and traditional elements of the Confederacy: the Old South (anti-centralization and therefore anti-Whig) and the “war Democrats” who were largely supportive of the centralizing and modernizing ideology of the Whig Party.

Jefferson Davis ran for President as a member of the Democratic Party. His announcement led him to run unopposed. No one decided to challenge Davis, the former President of the United States, and one of the most well-known and popular, if not the most well-known and popular, politician in the whole of the Confederacy. Davis, however, was part of the modernization “war Democrats” faction of the party. He found universal support among the newly inaugurated Whig Party, which was strongest in Virginia and the Eastern seaboard states. The Democrats were strongest in the Deep South, Mississippi, and the frontier.

The election of Davis to the Presidency marked one of the oddest events in the history of modern politics in any nation. The former elected head of state of one country, now the elected head of state of a new country. Benedict Arnold would be proud. And surely if Dante was alive today, Davis would be inserted into the mouth of Satan with Brutus, Cassius, and Judas in the ninth circle of hell.

But the politics of 1860 set the course and tone for the rest of the Civil War. It is not entirely difficult to understand. The stress of the war mandated that both sides centralize their federal authorities to conduct the war. Organization became key, and the development of war economies were established by 1862 in both the Union and Confederacy. The initial volunteer enthusiasm gave way, and both sides were forced to enact conscription laws to continue the war. This made the pro-peace movements in both the Confederacy and Union grow in strength. This tore the politics of the two countries into pro-peace and pro-war camps. At the same time, the decentralized, localized, populist, and agrarian politics that had characterized the Jefferson-Jackson consensus rapidly faded, but the partisans of that ideal in both the Union and Confederacy would increasingly be the agitating and militantly anti-war (in the Union) or anti-Whig and anti-Davisonian cohorts in the Confederacy.

As many political theorists note, the politics of the Civil War was not only transformative for the United States, it also established the new standard of power politics in the United States. But what should be clear, even as I pointed out in the preceding chapters, the Confederacy was not fighting for “states’ rights” or “localism” or “the ideals of the Old South.” No document indicates this—quite the opposite. But the Civil War undoubtedly transformed the political culture of the United States, for better and worse.


[1] See Richard Bensel, Yankee Leviathan: The Origins of Central State Authority in America, 1859-1877.

[2] Copperhead was a pejorative term used to denote pro-peace forces in the Democratic Party that also opposed abolitionism. As such, they were routinely pilloried as closet pro-Confederate partisans. The anti-Copperhead Democrats were referred to as “war Democrats” or “Union Democrats.”

[3] In reality, the Confederacy was officially “non-partisan,” but all of its senior members were formerly of the Democratic Party. In the game, the politics of the CSA are divided between Whigs and Democrats. As such, I’m reflecting this in the write up.

SUGGESTED READING:

Richard Bensel, Yankee Leviathan: The Origins of Central State Authority in America, 1859-1877.

Don Doyle, The Cause of All Nations: An International History of the American Civil War

Bruce Levine, The Fall of the House of Dixie: The Civil War and the Social Revolution That Transformed the South

Stephanie McCurry, Confederate Reckoning: Power and Politics in the Civil War South

James McPherson, The War that Forged a Nation
​

Bonus, Iron and Wine's rendition of Stephen Foster's immortal "Hard Times Come Again No More," one of the greatest works of classic Americana in music. Foster is considered the "Father of American Music."

 

[stnylan]

Interesting to see Lincoln play second fiddle in 1860 here. I wonder if he will yet stand alone.

 

[Specialist290]

I'm going to have to take a close look at the recommended reading list here. Growing up, the "states' rights" argument was almost the default party line, and it took me quite a while to properly "unlearn" it.

 

[volksmarschall]

Interesting to see Lincoln play second fiddle in 1860 here. I wonder if he will yet stand alone.

Fremont needs love! But we can't have no Lincoln at all during the ACW. That's like heresy!

I'm going to have to take a close look at the recommended reading list here. Growing up, the "states' rights" argument was almost the default party line, and it took me quite a while to properly "unlearn" it.

Don't feel bad. High school textbooks still teach the CW wrong, and the north isn't not guilty of romanticizing the moralism of the war to gain some sort of moral high ground. Enough with that, this AAR, despite all the timeline changes, will teach more American history than what most get from "schooling."

But Bensel's work, which I tagged to you in the P&H group, is really wonderful reading. That's the one to read if my formal endorsement is worth anything.

 

[Director]

Interesting to see Davis not just elected but want a Presidency, and not once but twice... a contrast to our history where he reluctantly accepted an office he never wanted.

The election of Fremont strikes me as a very bad idea. His command of the St Louis depatment in the Civil War shows him to be a weak, vain man - more fond of talk than action. His wife apparently had steel enough for them both (she was a Benton).

I don't know that I would agree that the Confederacy was more centralized than the Union at the start of the war. Less diverse and more unified in outlook, certainly. And the prospect of leading an armed rebellion would have sharpened their outlook. As with so much else, one can scarcely improve upon Dr Johnson: "When a man knows he is to be hanged...it concentrates his mind wonderfully."

Reading Paul Freedman's "Ten Restaurants That Changed America". Most interesting; even fascinating. Delmonico's - that supposed haunt of the Confederate sympathizer in New York - is prominently featured.

 

[volksmarschall]

Perhaps Davis wanted the presidency out of spite of feeling of having been robbed re-election in this timeline! And Fremont was a disastrous commander yes, far from the legacy he had won as "the Pathfinder" as nothing more than a explorer. We'll see how all the politics plays out in the rest of the chapter. And we'll see just how weak or vain Fremont is, and what power his cabinet might have over the course of the work, and whether our esteemed and famous VP has any cards up his sleeve.

Reading Paul Freedman's "Ten Restaurants That Changed America". Most interesting; even fascinating. Delmonico's - that supposed haunt of the Confederate sympathizer in New York - is prominently featured.

As a professor at my esteemed institution, I have to automatically say it's a good book and should be read! But I'll take your own endorsement of it here that I should probably read it some time.

 

[RossN]

Very interesting election(s). Is there any chance we could see a map to show who carried which state?

 

[volksmarschall]

Very interesting election(s). Is there any chance we could see a map to show who carried which state?

Sadly, no. Only because I don't want to take the time to carve out an election map. Davis, in this writing, ran unopposed in the Confederacy. So he won all states. Douglas won Illinois, while Banks (the American Party since I have scripted them into the game as the nationalist-reactionary party) won CT, Maryland, and Maine. So if you can picture an American map, you can color in accordingly.

Stickler, I know!

 

[volksmarschall]

This post is intentional so as to have the new formal update on a new page, the same page as the readers will be on and won't have to have a back and forth in page breaks.