The Old South - Described

From Temple's "East Tennessee in the Civil War":

But, while the North was capturing and organizing new states in the North-west, and extending its empire of thought to the Pacific, the South was slowly moving on as it had done fifty years before. The negro and the mule were the two great factors in its growth, and they leisurely moved on in the old way. They tilled the fields and raised the cotton, the sugar, the rice and the tobacco on which all prosperity depended. Kentucky, Tennessee and the West furnished the mule, the corn, the hay and the bacon. Southern harbors were filled, for the most part, only with coasting vessels. The harbors and the great natural highways to a large extent remained unimproved, because of the supersensitive scruples of Southern statesmen on constitutional questions.

Free, universal education was unknown. The great body of the people were poorly educated, many not at all. The result was, that they were generally thriftless, nerveless and non-progressive. As a rule, only the sons of wealthy men were thoroughly educated. The most promising sons of the rich planters were sent to the University of Virginia, or to Princeton, or Yale, or West Point, to be educated for the bar or the army, with the hope of their ultimately going to congress or becoming governors or great generals, while some were educated for the ministry or for the profession of medicine. The army or a political life was thought to be the highway to honor. Many of the young men on the great plantations grew up with no definite aim, no high purpose. They frolicked, and played cards, and followed the yelping hounds; they "sat down to eat and drink, and rose up to play."

Manufacturing received but little encouragement; It served to develop a spirit of independent thought among the operatives, inconsistent with the safety of slavery. Skilled laborers, especially of the higher grade, would read and think and talk. Slavery was naturally repugnant to them, because it degraded them and their own labor. It tended to lower all laborers to the level of slaves. Trading was only tolerated as a necessity. Mining was almost unknown. The mechanic arts were only practiced in a small way. Planting and war were the only honorable callings aside from the learned professions. Even the learned professions were considered inferior in dignity to the other two. The little land owners who cultivated their fields with their own hands did not rise into the honorable dignity of planters. They were farmers, laborers, "poor whites."Only the man with his broad acres, his drove of Negroes, and his overseer was styled a planter. Without the appendage of an overseer—the most cruel and despicable of men—the position of no planter was high.

The great planter was a man of power. He was courted and honored. The doors of society opened wide at his approach. No wonder he became arrogant and haughty. Yet he possessed many noble qualities. He was brave, generous, magnanimous, sincere and honorable. Certainly in his day he had his good things—"was clothed in purple and fine linen, and fared sumptuously every day."From the serene heights of his fancied exaltation, the great planter looked down with cold contempt on the large body of Northern men. He regarded them as little tillers of the soil, petty traders, low shop-keepers, enslaved mechanics, howling fanatics and lovers of money. They were mean in spirit, cowardly, narrow, selfish and abased. Mammon was their God. If they gave to objects of charity, it was on a cold calculation that they would get back in some way two dollars for every one given. The operatives in factories were the slaves of the lordly manufacturers, with fewer comforts than the bondsmen of the South.

The Folly of Fort Sumter

From Temple's "The Civil War In East Tennessee":

With this avowed purpose on the part of Mr. Lincoln, which he carefully pursued, it may afford a curious theme for speculation as to what would have been the fate of the Southern Confederacy if Sumter had not been assaulted, or if some similar act of open war had not been resorted to. Would it have gone on exercising the powers of government over the states which had seceded until its authority had become securely cemented and established? Would Virginia, Tennesseeand North Carolina have joined the seceded states? Sooner or later this is most probable. Would the people of the North have acquiesced in this dismemberment of the government? Yes, at that time, in preference to civil war. In this very contingency such men as Greeley, Seward, Thurlow Weed and Crittenden, and thousands of others, if they did not all say, as Mr. Greeley did, let the cotton states "go in peace," they did all insist in spirit that there should be no coercion to restrain them from going. Previous to this time, Expresident Pierce had written to Jefferson Davis, assuring him that if there was to be fighting "it will not be along Mason's and Dixon's line merely. It will be within our own borders, in our own streets, between the two classes of citizens to whom I have referred." "The Albany Argus," a Democratic paper said: "The first gun fired in the way of forcing a seceding state back into the Union would probably prove the knell of its final dismemberment."

So high was the tide of public opinion running, at the time of the inauguration of Mr. Lincoln, against the party that had elevated him to power, especially against the Abolition part of it, that it is almost certain that any attempt at coercion against the people of the seceding states, would have been followed in the North by mobs, riots and civil war. Mr. Lincoln saw and knew the hazardous condition of affairs around him. He knew that a blow prematurely struck at secession was more likely to produce a revolution in the North than to end the existing one. In addition to his earnest desire to avoid the shedding of blood, there was necessary on his part the most cautious statesmanship. A single false step would prove fatal to the Union. He must so act as to put the South clearly in the wrong before the world in the event of a conflict of arms. There must be no divided North. He delayed, apparently hesitated, and seemingly negotiated with the enemy. He refused to reenforce Sumter, and only attempted to send provisions to the starving garrison. No troops were mustered for the national defense, not one; no force was used; no threats were made. Never did Mr. Lincoln exhibit a more masterly wisdom, or pro founder sagacity than in this crisis. By his discretion, secession came to a standstill. The North was petrified with fear. A majority had turned with rage against the triumphant party. In the South there was danger, as Mr. Gilchrist said, that some of the states would return to the old Union.

And now came the stupendous folly of firing on Sumter. That single act, in "one hour by Shrewsbury's clock" united the divided North. Without that, or some equally foolish deed, the North could never have been brought to the point of resisting the South, and secession would have triumphed. But when the nation's honor was assailed, and the national flag brought low, sympathy was in a moment turned to wrath, and men everywhere rushed to arms. That first shot, as it went sounding round the world, announcing the commencement of the conflict, was also sounding the death knell of the Southern Confederacy, But for that shot, it might be in existence to-day as a government. But it accomplished its purpose in the direction intended. By it, Tennessee, Virginia and North Carolina were induced, most unwisely but most naturally, to rush to the help, not of the aggrieved party, but of the aggressor. But it did more than this—something not anticipated. It lost to the South, Delaware, Maryland, West Virginia, East Tennessee, Kentucky and Missouri. And still more; by this needless act, the North was brought together in one hour as one man in the determination to avenge the nation's insult, and to lift up and restore the fallen and dishonored flag. Thus Mr. Davis by that shot did what no other power on earth could have done—united the divided North.

The Southern people were sadly mistaken. They expected a divided North. Such would have been the case if the leaders had waited in patience for the fruit to ripen. There can scarcely exist a doubt that a large majority of the Northern people would have voted, in the spring of 1861, to let the seceding states go in preference to the alternative of Civil War. So shocking, so dreadful was the idea of such a war that men were ready to give up everything rather than have such an affliction. But when the nation's honor was insulted, the feeling of brotherhood was turned into rage, that of peace into determined relentless war.

To the last the South was mistaken. They believed the Northern people would not fight. They expected easy victories. Washington, as they boasted, would soon be their capitol. One enthusiastic orator—a senator in the Confederate congress—boasted that they would soon quaff wine from golden goblets in the palaces of New York. Another gentlemen boasted that he would call the roll of his slaves at the foot of Bunker Hill Monument. The boast was universal, and perhaps the belief also, that one Southern man could whip five Yankees. An Alabama gentleman reached the climax when he declared in a public speech that they could whip the North with pop-guns made out of elder stalks.1

It really appears as if Providence intended that the Southern people should be the instruments of the destruction of their own favorite institution. At a period when there was, for the first time in twenty years, peace between the two sections, they broke that peace by the repeal of the Missouri Compromise, and thus turned loose the angry winds of sectionalism. This in the end, through successive steps, led to secession. And when war came, the conviction gradually grew on the minds of men that that was the opportunity offered by Heaven for destroying slavery. It had caused one war, said they ; it should not cause another. Let it perish—by the war. And thus the folly of men was made to do the will of God.

The Real Reason for the Civil War

From "East Tennessee in the Civil War" By Oliver Temple:

Diplomacy and negotiation, however, to say nothing of conciliation, were still open to the Southern States when war was inaugurated by them. At this very time, as is shown in detail elsewhere, the people of the North were ready to concede to the slave states nearly everything they might demand, if they would forego their determination to leave the Union. They could have had whatever they demanded. But no concessions, no guaranties, it is believed, would have satisfied the ambitious leaders. They asked for none; they would have accepted none, They wanted independence and that only.

The controversy—at least the essential part of it—could have been adjusted. It ought to have been. A terrible responsibility lies at the door of one section or the other in that it was not settled. There was no necessity for war. It could and should have been avoided if the North had stood out defiantly in the winter of 1860-1861—if Mr. Lincoln and congress had obstinately refused any concessions, or had manifested no spirit of conciliation, no return of brotherly love—they would have stood forever before the world as haughty and implacable in their overwhelming strength. But they exhibited, in this hour, no implacable hatred, no haughty confidence born of conscious superiority of power.

"Put it in your book," said to the author, an intelligent and most worthy gentleman from Alabama, an ex-Confederate surgeon, who served in the army during the whole war, part of the time under Forrest—" put it in your book, that there should have been no war, that the differences should have been adjusted; that the people of the North and of the South were of substantially the same blood and did not hate each other, and that the war was the work of ambitious politicians and bad men on each side. The great body of the people on both sides were opposed to the war."

It would be surprising, if we could exactly ascertain, how small the number of men in the South is who are actually responsible for the inauguration of the war. Up to the close of the presidential election in 1860, it is doubtful whether as many as a thousand in all the Southern States were working for the distinct object of separation. Previous to the time of firing on Sumter, it is doubtful whether in a single state, aside from South Carolina and Mississippi, a majority of the people were in their hearts honestly for a separation from the Union. They professed to be, it is true. But every one familiar with the fearful despotism of public opinion, in the cotton states, on the subject of slavery, will readily realize how impossible it was to resist this public sentiment in the winter and spring of 1861. In most of the states but few men were found brave enough to do so, and in some of the states secession swept over them with the suddenness and fury of a tropical tornado.

The War of Secession is generally regarded as the "Slaveholders' War." It would be more correct to call it the "Politicians' War." In the beginning it was the work alone of ambitious politicians. Gradually the circle widened and other classes were drawn into it. Finally whole sections were seized with the idea. Thus, from a beginning started by a few men, the movement spread over eight states.

Slavery was the remote, but not the immediate, cause of the war. This institution was as secure in 1861 as it was in 1820, and if the South had waited and willed it, it could have been so hedged around by constitutional guaranties and safeguards as to place it forever beyond the power of government to molest. Slavery was made the excuse, the pretext for the war. It was the rallying cry of the daring leaders when they would inflame the minds of the Southern people with madness.