Review - Bitterly Divided

[TheDoctorKing]

Williams, David. Bitterly Divided: The South’s Inner Civil War. New York: New Press, 2008

The myth of the Lost Cause, amply supported by generations of public monuments, re-enactments, and products of popular culture like “Gone With The Wind” and “Gods and Generals” tells us that white Southerners were united in their support for the Confederacy and fought tirelessly in the doomed struggle. In the last fifty years or so, mainstream historians have noticed that African Americans were able to act for themselves and reluctantly popular perceptions have come around to a realization that most Southern blacks probably didn’t support the Confederacy. There has even been some public recognition of the role of pro-Union white Southerners in disputed areas like eastern Tennessee, northern Alabama, the Ozark Mountains of Arkansas, and, of course, Kentucky and West Virginia. But only now has careful archival research brought us solid evidence of the pervasive nature of resistance to the Confederate cause throughout the South. David Williams’ work in this book is an important step in making the results of that research available to a larger audience, and I encourage all interested in the history of the Civil War to read it. It also raises important questions for us as users of the AACW game system as to whether and/or how to incorporate this new understanding of Southern public opinion into the game.

Williams begins by tracing the outline of the myth of Southern white solidarity as it grew up after the Civil War. This is not a major focus of his research, but he devotes an introductory passage to showing how this idea became the common popular understanding after the end of Reconstruction. White elites defused class-based resistance to their rule among poorer whites, allowing the isolation of blacks (who were outnumbered by whites in most Southern states) and the destruction of the Reconstruction coalition. White leaders in the South for the next fifty years were careful to ensure respectable social benefits for poor whites as the price of their cooperation in the disenfranchisement of the blacks and the domination of state politics by powerful landholders. And the leaders were careful to tell poor whites, through schoolbooks, public commemorations of the Civil War period, monuments, “patriotic” societies like the Sons of Confederate Veterans, and the like, the carefully constructed myth. The myth was never fully accepted by Southern poor whites. People throughout the South had stories of their own ancestors’ resistance to the Confederacy. But the culturally accepted story proved to be stronger even than the true memories, which people shut away as funny family stories with no bearing on their political behavior or class attitudes.

Before the Civil War, poor whites were entirely aware that the deck was stacked against them and that the slave system impoverished and subjugated them to a slave-owning elite. It was a common saying in the South that a “nigger was lucky because he had only one master, while a poor white man was every rich man’s slave”, that is, of an entire system. There were many abolitionists and abolition societies in the South in the 1830s, especially among evangelical Protestant and Pietist groups. But the rise of a pro-slavery ideology in the 1840s and 1850s, and the decline of religious fervor after the end of the “second great awakening”, meant that overt abolitionism was also mostly abandoned in the South. There were a few brave souls who held out, like Elizabeth Van Lew of Richmond, who was so outspoken that her neighbors just thought she was crazy – crazy like a fox as she was one of the most important figures in the Underground Railroad in Virginia and an important Union spy in the city throughout the war. But non-slave-owning Southern whites did not learn to love the slave system, even though they generally abandoned overt resistance. There was a great reservoir of resentment among poor Southern whites. The rulers of the South realized that this was a problem, and it was one element in their decision to push for secession, according to Williams. With the rise of the Republican Party, Southern whites realized that here was a real threat to their political dominance in their own states. They had been able to cling to national power through their 50% stake in the Senate, but this depended on control of state legislatures. If the Republicans, who had managed to gain the support of poorer Midwestern farmers through promises of free land in the West and government-funded economic development programs, could make inroads with Southern poor farmers, the whole edifice of Southern “slave power” could come crashing down.

Ironically, it was secession and the measures that the Confederate government had to take to retain their independence that made this latent opposition real and ultimately caused the downfall of the Confederacy, according to Williams. The campaign for secession in the winter of 1860-61 gave the first sign of this internal division. Several state governments wisely decided to have their legislatures vote on secession, and the traditional elite-controlled power structure delivered the needed acts of secession without much possibility for popular resistance. However, a number of states held general elections for state conventions to pass ordinances of secession. These elections were rife with fraud and intimidation– as were all elections in the antebellum period, especially but uniquely in the South. However, Union voters made their voices heard in many places, and several states including Virginia, North Carolina, and Tennessee, refused to secede. The Deep South states knew they would be unable to make secession work without the Upper South, and they pressured leaders in those states to overturn the decisions of their state conventions. Ultimately a combination of popular enthusiasm after the bombardment of Fort Sumter and political manipulation and fraud gained formal support for secession in all the slave states except the “border” states of Missouri, Kentucky, Delaware, and Maryland. Union supporters in western Virginia, who had been driven out of their state convention, formed their own government and ultimately were able to create the new state of West Virginia. Union men in Tennessee, North Carolina, Georgia, and Alabama attempted the same thing, but they couldn’t get the Union military support that the West Virginians had, and so were reduced to a guerrilla struggle.

The majority of southern whites probably would not have voted for secession, but once it had taken place, there was generalized acceptance at first outside of those regions I have discussed. Recruitment for the Confederate army in the first months of the war was high. However, the Confederate government’s rapid decision to implement conscription (not as fast as usually happens in the game – April, 1862) led to disaffection throughout the Confederacy. The increasingly harsh methods that the government used to enforce conscription, the class-based provisions of the conscription law, and the general disorder and corruption associated with the draft, made that disaffection worse. Within a year, mass resistance had broken out throughout the Confederacy, and there were large areas where Confederate government officials had no authority and even military parties could only go in large numbers and at constant risk. Williams’ book details this process through dozens of anecdotes and a wealth of reporting from within the Confederate government. The resistance was apolitical at first – as the Confederate economy collapsed, families could ill spare the labor of young men who were subject to conscription. Small groups of deserting soldiers or young men refusing to be conscripted would take to the hills and forests. As the military and local officials searched for them, they would often take harsh reprisals against the families of these “layouts”. The gangs of deserters and draft dodgers would then take arms against the government, often making contact with pro-Union elements. Sometimes, if the oppression was serious enough, they would flee the area, often making their way to Union lines where they would then join the Union forces.

Ultimately, about half a million people from Confederate states, about half of whom were white, served in the United States Army. Thousands more fought in poorly-organized guerrilla bands, some no more than bandit gangs of men just trying to remain out of the war and others well-organized resistance groups like the 1000-strong “Ozark Mountain Feds” under the command of Thomas Jefferson Williams. Multi-state covert organizations like the “Peace Society” and the “Heroes of America” formed, with secret passwords and bloodthirsty initiation rituals – there is a sort of comic-opera feel to some of them, but they were at least as serious as their northern Copperhead equivalents, and much more harshly punished when caught. The southern government and local gangs of Confederate sympathizers hanged and tortured and burned on an epic scale to try to regain the upper hand, but these groups remained strong throughout the war. Each new conscription act added to their strength.

At the same time, white women, especially in the cities, contributed to the resistance by urging their menfolk to desert the Confederate army and by rioting, over and over again, as the economy repeatedly failed to deliver affordable consumer goods. One bread riot in Richmond was only quieted by the direct intervention of Jefferson Davis and a troop of Virginia militia. Davis addressed the women and then the troops offered to shoot them if they didn’t go home. Several of these women were arrested and spent many months in jail, in a separate cell block near where Union POW’s were held in Richmond’s Libby Prison. Southern women served as spies for the Union – the famous Confederate cavalry raider John Hunt Morgan was finally caught by the Yankees thanks to a woman Union sympathizer who rode eighty miles in bad weather to pass crucial information on his movements to the forces tracking him.

One important function that pro-Union southerners served was to help refugees flee to Northern lines. Escaping POW’s, runaway slaves, draft dodgers and others found many people to help them in their quest to reach friendly territory. Many of the stories of the Underground Railroad come to us from the period of the war.

Whites who resisted the Confederacy were notably poorer than those who supported it. While there were occasional wealthy Unionists, comparisons of the property of people executed for "treason" against the Confederacy in several states show that their average wealth was much lower than that of their accusers and/or killers. The same holds true for white soldiers in Union units from southern states when compared with CSA soldiers from the same state. Poor white southerners knew that the Civil War was a "rich man's war but a poor man's fight", and their fight against secession was clearly class struggle in their eyes and in the eyes of their opponents.

Blacks, even poorer and more harshly oppressed, naturally, opposed the Confederacy for the most part. It is not uncommon now to look at the Civil War as, in part, an enormous slave rebellion. While slaves generally refrained from Haitian-style uprisings on the plantations, nonetheless hundreds of thousands of them fought for their freedom in the Union army and in guerrilla bands, while others, remaining in the south, contributed to the Union war effort by providing intelligence, helping escaped POW’s and white draft dodgers, and sabotaging production facilities. The depopulation of the rural south caused by the draft of poor whites and the mass flight of blacks was one of the most serious blows to the Confederate economy during this period.

So, if you’ve gotten this far, what are the implications of this information for the game?

First, some of the generalized resistance caused by the draft can be taken into account by reducing National Morale. NM appears to affect the morale of units in battle, cash income and “free” recruit companies produced each turn, and perhaps other factors as well. Ultimately, low enough morale will cause the collapse of the government and victory for the other side. The NM penalties for using the draft should be much higher, though. The CSA draft acts were a terrible blow to the unity and enthusiasm of southern whites. Currently, a limited draft causes a loss of about 3 NM, and full mobilization costs 5. These costs should be dramatically increased. Furthermore, significantly low NM should mean that pro-Union local defense militias or partisans will appear in areas that already have respectable levels of Union loyalty.

Second, those areas that are loyal to the Union should provide manpower to the USA, in the form of recruit companies and/or partisan units rising up, even if CSA NM is high. This effect could need to be triggered by the entry of USA forces into the region, although this might require coding changes. Additionally, there are some areas in Union-controlled territory that should provide manpower to the CSA on a similar basis, especially in eastern Maryland and southern Indiana and Illinois.

Third, the effects of black resistance on the Confederate war effort are insufficiently modeled. There is a political option to incorporate black troops into the USA army. It is unclear to me if this results in more recruit companies if more southern territories are occupied, but it should. The U.S. army formed 144 regiments of black infantry and cavalry and 14 regiments of artillery, of nine batteries each. That is the equivalent of over 1000 recruit companies in game terms. Moreover, blacks were an important source of labor for USA armed forces in the south from the very earliest days of the war. Areas in the “black belt” of the Deep South or the Tidewater plantation zones along the eastern seaboard should give the US money to represent this labor power. Finally, these areas should also be sources of intelligence for the USA if Union troops are close enough. They should have a fairly high loyalty to the Union at all times, or else rapidly become pro-Union if USA forces are nearby.