Independence: An American History Lecture Series From the Confederate Secession in 1863 to 1992

By Glenn Swanson

What if the Confederates won the Battle of Gettysburg and successfully seceded, leaving the North intact with 11 fewer states? What might have been the progression of the country in the next 130 years? This is a creative effort to answer those questions. Much would be the same, but much would be potentially different. This is an exploration.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Book Vine Press
• Release date: May 15, 2019
• ISBN: 9781950955053

Glenn Swanson

An old soul, living out of time. Poignantly aware that remnants of recollections of past exsistences have bled over into this incarnation. Trying to live graciously and gratefully while inflicting my will on this exsistence. Reaching out but resigned to the surety of being born alone, living alone and facing death alone. Currently living on the Gulf Coast, but Lake Superior calls to me.

Book preview

Copyright © 2019 by Glenn Swanson.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without express written permission from the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other non-commercial uses permitted by copyright law.

Printed in the United States of America.

Book Vine Press

2516 Highland Dr.

Palatine, IL 60067

About 150 years ago the great conflict known as the American Civil War began; four years later it ended. Everyone agrees that the North won. What if it didn’t?

Lee surrendered to Grant at Appomattox; slavery was ended; the debate over whether a state could secede from the Union was decided in the negative; states that had declared secession from the Union were denied equal status in the Union until they had fulfilled several requirements, and the last states did not earn full equality until 1877.

But what if the war was fought over something more fundamental yet unstated? What if there were more cultural underpinnings to this conflict than have ever been argued and why not until now?

The most obvious difference between the two adversaries in this conflict was that one section had legalized slavery and the other did not. Yet only the most delusional could believe that slavery as an institution was not doomed, and that those who argued that slavery was a positive good were fighting a rear-guard action to the elimination of an institution that most other nations had already abolished. They were really only buying time against the inevitable, the Dred Scot decision of 1857 notwithstanding.

Slavery was also an economic reality which could not quickly or conveniently end without significant disruption. Yet it ended, and the South did not fall into long-term economic ruin and obvious subservience to the North. While there was certainly economic disruption as the South recovered from conquest as much as the elimination of slavery, the long-term result was much more positive.

The Constitutional question was decided, and even though a Texas governor recently suggested that his state might consider secession again, to think that the South as a region would be as economically viable as a separate entity in the 1860’s could have been seriously entertained by only a few, perhaps the same few who thought slavery could be a sustaining form of an economic system in the second half of the 19th century. Texas had been an independent country for 10 years before it joined the Union fifteen years before the Civil War started. They did not want to be independent then; they do not really want to be independent now.

When Lee surrendered, Grant allowed the Confederate soldiers to return to their homes with their personal arms after promising not to fight against the United States again. The only Confederate executed at the end of the war was the commander of the notorious prison camp at Andersonville. More people were executed for the assassination of Lincoln after the war was over than for those who fought against the federal government during the 4 long years that cost perhaps 750,000 American lives.

The victory by the North preserved the Union and ended slavery, the post-war Reconstruction period did not transform the South as the Radical Republicans hoped, and the former leaders of the South were back in power, completely by the end of the century. Although the 14th Amendment in 1868 made significant change possible in the future, the official policy in the South from 1896 to 1954 was embodied in formal and legal segregation.

So how did the sacrifice of 250,000 or more southern deaths in those four years end in victory? In 2008 the United States elected a man who was part African-American as President of the United States. The Progressive, New Deal and Great Society eras of the 20th century seemed to enshrine a statist, collective, and secular humanistic philosophy in the country. Immigrants from around the world rapidly expanded the population of the country, giving it far greater diversity than it had known in its first 300 years starting with the earliest colonies. And yet the election of 2012 loomed as the culmination of the Southern victory nearly 150 years earlier.

A popular theme has been that the ideals of the American Revolution, embodied formally in the Declaration of Independence in 1776 and further developed in the Constitution in 1787 were completed by the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments, which could only come as a result of open conflict between the two sections of the country which defined the combatants during the Civil War. The Progressive Amendments of the early 20th century continued that apparent trend.

But amendments, like armistices and treaties, are really only pieces of paper, rewritten or burned when necessary, ignored or reinterpreted by those who do not like them. They are representative of a time and place; they are not universal truths; they are practiced only by those who are governed by them.

So what was the American Civil War all about? Perhaps it was about a way of life, a life that centered on family, traditional values, a hierarchy where there was a clear top and clear bottom with an insignificant middle. As we headed for the election 2012, the victory of the South in the Civil War was becoming more apparent, and whether Obama won re-election or not, the values of the old South represent the dominant views of the country. Even Obama himself has seen the future and could only hope to win re-election if he adopted the values of the old South. These are not the blatant values of a John Calhoun, or an Andrew Johnson, or a Pitchfork Ben Tillman, or an early George Wallace or Strom Thurmond. Those people had a public persona that offended many northerners; their underlying values, however, are now more pervasive in the country, and certainly more pervasive among the people in control. They have adapted to modern technology, have learned how to project their views more nationally and not just regionally, and have sweetened their message to appeal to the more subtle prejudices that people keep beneath the surface, ones that are no longer publicly acceptable as they were during Jim Crow, during the Little Rock school integration, during the civil rights marches of the 1960’s.

Ethnic prejudice is no longer only against African-Americans. The number of conservative Republicans in the African-American political population is at least intriguing, if not eye-popping. Yet this Republican Party is not the one that Lincoln headed during the Civil War. The Party of the North, of emancipation, of Big Business, of Reconstruction is now a conservative party, dominated by southerners and luring non-southerners into its orbit with its message. Not only have northerners moved south, not just to take advantage of warmer climes, they have moved south philosophically. Except for the northeast and the west coast—and those areas have rifts--, the drift in the rest of the country is south.

What will this mean for the future of the United States? Such a momentous question was on the minds of Americans when Lincoln was assassinated in April 1865. Lincoln was no revolutionary, but he may have nudged the country in a different direction from where it eventually headed for the ensuing century and a half.

What if Lincoln had not been assassinated is for the novelist, not the historian. Where will the country go after the election of 2012 is still in the realm of pundits, but pundits and historians both have been struggling with optimism v. pessimism, whether the country is in decline, whether the end of the American Empire is in sight. Perhaps 2012 is a bump in a still long road; perhaps, however, it is the South’s ultimate victory in the long fundamental conflict over what the United States should be. The South kept alive the idea of the Lost Cause for many years after 1865; but it may never have been completely Lost.

"In recent years, however, the Southern labor system has begun to move north. As Wal-Mart has evolved from an Ozark discount chain to the nation’s largest private-sector employer, it has brought its everyday low wages and ferocious anti-unionism to every one of its outlets. Meanwhile, the transformation of the Republican Party into an organization based in and dominated by the white South has turned Northern Republicans more anti-union."

1332

Introduction

Itook up this project as a result of my talking about the Civil War with my US History students during the 2011-12 school year. They can confirm this drift that led to this book. Later in the spring I decided to investigate whether this kind of project had been done before, and in fact there is a book by MacKinlay Kantor entitled If the South had Won the Civil War . It was first published in 1960 so I felt it was safe to do an attempt anyway, and I had a different perspective and a different idea of how to do it.

He referred to his book as science fiction, but I don’t like the term science when dealing with humans and their social experience. It’s not historical fiction because it is a futuristic look, although many of the people and events are real. The future after 1863 is purely from my imagination, and there would be as many views as there would be people who talked or wrote about this trajectory. Perhaps the appropriate genre is alternate history.

I inadvertently found the British film What if the South had Won the Civil War when I was perusing my new Kindle, thinking it might be a serious look following Kantor’s theme. However, it was British satire, an unflattering view not only of the South but of what the United States would have looked like had the South both won the war and conquered the North. Nevertheless, I watched it through, seeing points I wanted to consider in my own fictional though not satirical account. For me, there would have been no fictional movie Birth of a Nation nor book Gone With the Wind, but the movie created satirical accounts of them. However, there were real pictures of lynchings, the grotesque photograph of Chief Big Foot after Wounded Knee, and photos of people like Whitman, Twain, and Susan B. Anthony, from their supposed exile in Canada. The movie gave me additional points to ponder, but it was not in the same vein as the Kantor book, and I can understand why I had never heard of it. Caricature does not usually make a lasting impression, although Voltaire and Monty Python managed the test of time. There is a grain of truth in every stereotype.

Afictional account of the Civil War where the North did not win and the Confederacy became independent:

The format would be 10 lectures given by a history professor to a fictional class, celebrating the 150th anniversary of the United States without the Confederacy, which became independent after a victory at Gettysburg in 1863. Both sides negotiated a settlement to take place on Sept. 1, after a cease fire had occurred on July 15th. Stalemate was apparent after the battle and pressure on both sides resulted in independence for the South.

The essays would be about the US and not the Confederacy, although clearly there would be interaction.

Each essay would have a follow-up seminar with the students with in depth discussion on readings, photos, paintings, and movies.

I. The Peace and separation

II. Westward expansion and Industrial growth

III. immigration and imperialism

IV. Populism and Progressivism

V. WW I

VI. The 1920’s

VII. The Depression

VIII. WW II

IX. The Cold War

X. Social Change

XI. Closing Thoughts about post-1990

Introduction

This book is an alternative history of the United States from 1863 to 1992 with a postscript.

The format is 10 lectures given by a history professor to a fictional class, celebrating the 150th anniversary of the United States without the Confederacy, which became independent after a victory at Gettysburg in 1863. Both sides negotiated a settlement to take place on Sept. 1, after a cease fire had occurred on July 15th. Stalemate was apparent after the battle, and pressure on both sides resulted in independence for the South.

The lectures would be about the United States and not the Confederacy, although clearly there would be interaction between the two countries.

Each lecture would have a follow-up seminar with the students with in-depth discussion on readings, photos, paintings, and movies. The book represents an 11 week course about a second half of an introductory United States History course.

I. The Peace and separation

II. Westward expansion and Industrial growth

III. immigration and imperialism

IV. Populism and Progressivism

V. WW I

VI. The 1920’s

VII. The Depression

VIII. WW II

IX. The Cold War

X. Social Change

XI. Closing Thoughts about post-1990

United States History Part II: 1863-1992

I

Peace and Separation

Welcome to this class, a part II whether or not you took part I. The format of this course will be eleven lectures, with seminar meetings twice each week to discuss readings, and other resources from the different periods I plan to talk about and the larger concepts I outline in each lecture.

Your TAs will give you the other specs of the course, how you will be assessed, how you will earn the all-important Grade (which personally I don’t care about, even if you do).

This first lecture is called Peace and Separation, and it starts with the defeat of the North in the historic Battle of Gettysburg in July of 1863, just as last semester’s course ended with the same event. While General Lee and his army hoped for a decisive knock-out blow that would force Lincoln and his government to its knees and accept an imposed peace from the newly formed Confederate States, the end result was only a partial, but nevertheless important, victory.

The Army of Northern Virginia led by Meade at Gettysburg collapsed during the battle, losing thousands of soldiers and retreating headlong to the safety and security of Washington, D.C. However, Lee’s army was also severely battered and, after an initial pursuit towards the American capital, was forced to halt and ultimately withdraw beyond the Potomac. Supply lines were over-extended, the Northern army still had dangerous elements harassing the Confederate army, and fanatics in the North were determined that Washington, D.C. would not fall. In both the long and the short run, Northern resources, not the least of which was manpower, stymied Confederate advances.

While the fire-eaters in the South—as the most fanatical of them were called-—would have loved to have conquered and subdued Washington, the reality of an independent South was in their grasp and the more pragmatic among the Confederate leaders were willing to settle for the achievable—Confederate independence—rather than total victory. Lee’s army was short on all kinds of supplies, and even though the capture of Gettysburg was temporarily a source of many of them, they were not enough to sustain an extended campaign if the knock-out blow were not achieved.

In the North, anti-war and anti-Lincoln sentiment reached a crescendo in the days following the loss at Gettysburg. The army was back in defense mode, even though the navy had enormous advantages over the Confederate states, threatening to strangle them economically. Sentiment for the earlier feeling by General Winfield Scott, who had advocated for the South to depart in peace earlier in the decade, resurfaced enthusiastically, fueled by Copperhead and generally anti-war sentiment in the mid-west and anti-draft riots in the east. The threat of even more internal disruption and violence within the North encouraged many leaders to more than seriously consider an end to the hostilities. Lincoln, a pragmatist above all else, knew the war could not continue under his leadership, but he also felt the war could or should not continue at all. Always sensitive to the pain and suffering of the common soldier, Lincoln saw no point in the continued slaughter such as had happened at Gettysburg. He had no intention of resigning, but he also knew his role as President meant that he had to see the conflict to the end, even though end would not mean victory.

As for the institution of slavery, Lincoln articulated a position in his run for the Senate in 1858: a house divided against itself cannot stand.

"In my opinion, it will not cease, until a crisis shall have been reached, and passed.

A house divided against itself cannot stand.

I believe this government cannot endure, permanently half slave and half free.

I do not expect the Union to be dissolved—I do not expect the house to fall—but I do expect it will cease to be divided.

It will become all one thing or all the other. "

His conclusion did not come to pass. The Union divided into 2 things, one supporting slavery, the other not. Reluctantly, because he had already issued the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1st of the year, Lincoln could not end slavery throughout the land. That final victory over an institution whose destiny deserved to end much earlier, would not be of his doing or in his term.

The United States would certainly not have smooth sailing with its black population in the next 150 years, but it did not have slavery and its path would be different from its new southern neighbor. Tension would be inevitable on the issue of slavery and its concomitant issue of race, or as I prefer, ethnic difference. Prejudice, de facto segregation, bigotry, and mischaracterization would ultimately work both ways in the North, more so after the flood of immigrants who would arrive at the end of the century and into the next.

But the stigma was off for the North, and the moral high ground with the Europeans was with the United States and not the Confederacy. Economic self-interest would overcome idealistic or moral considerations when profits through trade were to be had. The same kind of relationship held true between North and South as with Europe: post-war trade benefited most people on all sides. Prejudice came in second in the race with profits, but the long term problems would be addressed over the course of time. And in 1863, the grumbling by 50 percent of the population who had few rights—the women—would only get worse until the nation would finally confront the shortcomings addressed in the ideals of the Declaration of Independence if not in the Constitution.

When representatives of Jefferson Davis’ government proposed peace negotiation as early as July 6th, two days after the rout at Gettysburg, Lincoln and many other northern leaders were open to settlement talks. The threat of an attack on Washington was receding, Pennsylvania troops had rallied to ensure that Confederate soldiers would make no further inroads into their state, and the defense of Washington had solidified with the addition of more troops and the support of the American Navy. Lee was also a shrewd enough military man to realize that his strength had been his mobility and the growing realization that defense in modern war had more advantages than offense. An attack on Washington, D.C. would have been costly and likely not successful. Many northerners were not as pessimistic as Lee and thus were open to negotiation in the face of another potential disaster that would have dwarfed the defeat at Gettysburg.

The historian is entitled to ask the What if? Questions, but as soon as he or she begins to try to answer them the author becomes a fiction writer and not an historian. What if Longstreet had wheeled east and captured Washington, D.C.? What if Meade’s forces had turned the tide of battle and chased Lee’s battered army across the Potomac, perhaps battering them badly enough for the South to have called for the ceasefire? These are fun speculations, well worth the time in parlor room discussions, but not the focus of the historian and the work towards explaining what in fact did happen. The interpretations of cause and effect are enough for historians to continue to write about the same subjects, sometimes finding new information, sometimes changing the weight of what they already know. To do even that requires the understanding of what did happen, and that is where we must start in a history course. I’ll let future historians among you return to put your own interpretations on these events, but if you take that route there is still a long road to travel before you will be both knowledgeable and confident to pose different conclusions.

Unfortunately for the Confederacy, delay in coming to terms of what would follow an armistice did not strengthen their position. While sentiment in the North for a peace settlement was strong, other realities of what would follow a seceded Confederacy intruded, and the North’s resources in either manpower or materiel were not diminished by delay. One painful reality was that while the defeat at Gettysburg was being absorbed, the victory at Vicksburg on the same day meant that the core of the South was cut off from its western members. The South had no navy to seriously challenge the Union, and the Mississippi River essentially belonged to the North. Even defeatists in the North were not inclined to cede this resource to a victorious South, which had won an enormous victory at Gettysburg but which was struggling in most other arenas of the war. There was also enough sentiment among Texans that they should return to being an independent country as they had been for a decade prior to the run up to what came to be called the War of Confederate Secession. If they were to be cut off from the South because of the Mississippi River, they might have more success playing both sides of the conflict by being a neutral third nation, friendly with each side rather than aligned with one over the other. They also still had a neighbor to the south which was unhappy with its defeat and subsequent loss of territory nearly twenty years earlier. Revenge is a dish which often simmers for a long time before it is served. The French postponed the serving of the dish by interfering in Mexico’s politics, but the end result was both the expulsion of the French and strengthening of Mexican nationalism. That, in turn, strengthened Texan nationalism.

Meanwhile, economic power, and especially industrial power in the North, was continuing to grow, and the