Forthcoming: Northerners Enlisted To Save The Republic

The Union War, Gary Gallagher, Harvard University Press, 256 pages, $27.95, April 4, 2011.

Harvard University Press: Even one hundred and fifty years later, we are haunted by the Civil War—by its division, its bloodshed, and perhaps, above all, by its origins. Today, many believe that the war was fought over slavery. This answer satisfies our contemporary sense of justice, but as Gary Gallagher shows in this brilliant revisionist history, it is an anachronistic judgment.

In a searing analysis of the Civil War North as revealed in contemporary letters, diaries, and documents, Gallagher demonstrates that what motivated the North to go to war and persist in an increasingly bloody effort was primarily preservation of the Union. Devotion to the Union bonded nineteenth-century Americans in the North and West against a slaveholding aristocracy in the South and a Europe that seemed destined for oligarchy. Northerners believed they were fighting to save the republic, and with it the world’s best hope for democracy.

Once we understand the centrality of union, we can in turn appreciate the force that made northern victory possible: the citizen-soldier. Gallagher reveals how the massive volunteer army of the North fought to confirm American exceptionalism by salvaging the Union. Contemporary concerns have distorted the reality of nineteenth-century Americans, who embraced emancipation primarily to punish secessionists and remove slavery as a future threat to union—goals that emerged in the process of war. As Gallagher recovers why and how the Civil War was fought, we gain a more honest understanding of why and how it was won.

About the Author
Gary W. Gallagher is John L. Nau III Professor of History at the University of Virginia.

CWL: Gallagher's outstanding work on the Confederacy and its armies motivation is well respected. CWL looks forward to Gallagher's close study of Federal soldiers' diaries and letters.

Intriguing Thesis---- The Mayor, The Cops, The Immigrants and The Quick Fall of the Big Easy in 1862

Mutiny at Fort Jackson: The Untold Story of the Fall of New Orleans, Michael D. Pierson, University of North Carolina Press, 2008. 264 pp. $30.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-8078-3228-8.

Reviewed by Judith Gentry (University of Louisiana at Lafayette)on H-CivWar (August, 2010)

Mutiny and Unionism in Civil War New Orleans

The title of this book is misleading, as very little of it is about the mutiny at Fort Jackson. It might better be titled A Study of Unionism and Other Disaffection in Confederate Military Units and among Civilians in or near New Orleans in 1862.

Michael D. Pierson has done an excellent job of describing and analyzing the small number of sources focused on the night of the mutiny, but the heart of the book is a discussion of the impact of the mutiny on Admiral David G. Farragut’s ability to rescue New Orleans from the Confederates; the extent of Unionist sentiment (or at least disaffection from the Confederacy) in New Orleans and southeastern Louisiana; the background and the social, economic, and political context that caused the mutineers and deserters and other New Orleanians to have little affection for the Confederacy; and the role of Benjamin Butler in protecting existing Unionists and building additional support for the Union in New Orleans.

Pierson reveals, as the book unfolds, a series of provocative thesis statements. For the ease of the readers of this review, I have arranged them in chronological order. The peculiar Louisiana version of the Know-Nothing Party, which emphasized anti-immigrant rhetoric and actions, controlled the New Orleans government from 1856 until May 1, 1862, when Butler established martial law. Once Louisiana seceded from the Union, the New Orleans mayor used his direct control of patronage, which traditionally had been used to win elections for the Know-Nothings through violence and intimidation of opponents by police officers and government workers rampaging through the streets in what was commonly called the “mob,” to support the Confederacy.

By 1858, such tactics had reduced voting by immigrants by 50 percent and caused most immigrants to keep a low profile on politics. In 1861 and into the spring of 1862, both the mob and the police were used to suppress dissent and encourage volunteering for military service. Poverty and joblessness also coerced volunteering by New Orleanians who had no love for the Confederacy. By September 1861, the government had help from the mob in coercing military-age men to participate in local units of the state militia. In the emergency of February and March 1862, as Farragut’s fleet entered the lower Mississippi River, several of the militia units were reorganized into units of the Confederate army and placed on ships that carried them to Fort Jackson or Fort St. Philip downriver from New Orleans. Others were sent to other forts nearer to New Orleans.

Although the police and mob were effective in keeping Unionists in New Orleans quiet, Pierson argues, Unionists existed. Some simply preferred the prewar U.S. life. Secession and war had closed down the economy of New Orleans and left the working class in extreme poverty. Other Unionists were immigrants who had never felt welcome in New Orleans and had endured Know-Nothing harassment. “Merchants and white wage workers, in addition to African Americans, came to support the Union in large numbers during the war.... New Orleans offered considerable aid and comfort to the United States” (pp. 49-50). The fact that much of this aid took place in 1861 and 1862 rather than later in the war made New Orleans unusual.

An important reason why the Confederates in New Orleans suppressed Unionism was that the existence of Unionists undercut the central moral justification for secession: that secession was necessary because the Northern states were oppressing all white Southerners and trying to take away the rights of all Southerners to enjoy the prosperity and freedom of the nation. The author argues that the importance of the mutiny at Fort Jackson has been underestimated.

This review is continued at H-Net Reviews

The second image is Fort Jackson as it appears today and the image's source is Civil War Librarian, June 2008.

CWL --- Reluctant Rebels: Religion and Rebellion

Reluctant Protestant Confederates: The Religious Roots of Condititional Unionism, Charles F. Irons, in Virginia's Civil War, Wallenstein and Wyatt-Brown, eds., Univesity of Virginia Press, 2005, pp. 72-86.

'Evangelical Christians throughout the Confederacy gave active endorsement to the rebellion' is a somewhat tried and somewhat true statement. Exceptions to the statement occur regularly when examining the attitudes of evangelical Christians in the Upper South, particularly in Virginia. An examination of resistence to secession by Christians in Virginia reveals that 'white Virginians considered slavery and secession distinct and divergent moral issues.' (72-73)

Also, evangelical Virginians accepted 'civil debates over the future of slavery with more grace' than those evangelicals hailing from the Deep South. Virginia's Protestants' vigorous defense of the Union until Lincoln's call for troops in mid-April 1861 'persuaded them that they held the moral high ground' and easily interpreted 'their rebellion a just resistence to a tyrant.' (76-77)

Unionism among Virginia's Protestants seems paradoxical by today's understanding of Confederate nationalism. During the 1840s and 1850s, Upper South pastors endorsed slavery and demanded loyalty to the 'higher power' of the national government. Loyalty to the Union was a religious duty for Virginia Christians, even after October 1859, the month of the Harper's Ferry raid. Discussions of slavery were channeled away from congregational meetings by Upper South clergy. On the other hand in the Lower South, discussion of slavery were not only channeled away from congregational meetings but also from political meetings. In the Upper South, Protestants believed that slavery discussions must be contained in 'the civic sphere'. This is exemplfied by Augusta County, Virginia and Baltimore, Maryland; the Methodist Episcopal Church's Northern jurisdiction contained the Baltimore Conference, which housed both anti-slavery and pro-slavery worshipers. (79-80)

Many Episcopal Methodist Virginians willingly remained in fellowship anti-slavery congregants in the Baltimore Conference, even through October 1859 as John Brown raided Harper's Ferry.
The Conference remained undivided until mid-April 1861. The call for troops by Lincoln, in order to supress the rebellion, caused an over night change in Virginia's Christians. Irons cites several pastors' change as occuring within a few days of April 17. For Protestants, disunion and disobedience to authority was a sin, unless some party breeched the contract. Protestants in the Upper South understood that Lincoln's call for troops abrogated the contract that held the democratic republic together. (80-81)

'Did the Deep South's greater material interest in slavery compel the churgoers of this region to read the Bible differently and to reach different conclusions' about the secession?' Yes.
And did the Upper South's successful attempt at keeping the Baltimore Conference within the larger organization of Episcopal Methodism support Unionism up until mid-April 1861? Yes

Virginia's Christians swung their support from Unionism to rebellion due to Lincoln's call for troops. Virginians, in particular Robert E. Lee who was a Unionist, Episcopalian and slave holder, decided to join the Lower South in rebellion because Lincoln abrogated the South's Constitutional contract with the Federal government. (81-84)