This is worth reading with patient attention.  It provides an overview
of the historians' discussion of the question, was the Civil War a
revolution?  With special attention to "the South".

http://www.rbhayes.org/hayes/content/files/hayes_historical_journal/s...

tinyurl version:

http://tinyurl.com/cfj7mhl

hl

On Sat, 28 Jul 2012 14:55:01 -0400, Hugh Lawson <hu.law...@gmail.com>
wrote:

It was very interesting, Hugh.   All 20 pages :-)

I have to disagree that the CW was a revolution.    When it was all
over -- despite the death and destruction -- there had been  very few
social or political changes.     True,  the blacks were free.  But
their social and political position were not much improved.  (once the
Yankee army left)

The same families that had ruled the South since Jackson, picked up
the pieces and remained in control from 1876 til I was born.   The
only improvement that I see was the South did move more toward
industrialization.    But even that did not help many of the working
class natives.  

Social position of blacks:

(1) they could form legal marriages.

(2) they could own property on same basis as whites.  By 1900 about 25 %
of black farmers owned their own farms. !

(3) they could move about freely.  By early 1900s most
blacksharecroppers hadn't been on the same place more than 5 years.

(4) they could own firearms (and they did!).

(5) they could form their own churches with self-chosen preachers.

(6) families had the power to decide how much field work the wife-mother
would do.  The contribution of women to agricultural family prosperity
is grossly underestimated.  Women took care of chickens, eggs, the
kitchen garden (a littly manly help here).

(7) They could move North, and more of them would have done so, if it
hadn't been for racial discrimination in housing and jobs up North.

Do you have any evidence for this? I don't doubt that being rich

If factory work wasn't better for them, then they wouldn't have taken it
up. I have never heard one single person regret the passing of the old
gives economy. Of course my family were dirt farmers, tenants, and
sharecroppers.

hl

and I lost the end of my sentence.

Willie's point has often been made here, by many others, as if the point
is well-known to be true.  But I don't know what evidence it's based
on. So, I'm not picking on Willie here as an individual, but I'm calling
into question, asking for proof of, something often said.

It seems to me very likely that some families prosperous in Jackson's
day had died out; others had gone bust due to incompetence, gambling,
alcoholism, and so on; surely at least some of the planters rich  before
the war went broke and never recovered their wealth.  

Moreover, there were at least *some* northerners who moved south and
prospered, as well as some immigrants. President Woodrow Wilson was son
of immigrants; James Sprunt was an immigrant.  There must be many
others.  

Besides you can find prosperous living persons whose rebel ancestors
were illiterate, including some who are quite prosperous, as well as
black persons who struggled upward to prosperity, even wealth.

I've never seen a scientific comparison of social mobility, South as
compared to non-South.  Is there one?

hl

On Tue, 31 Jul 2012 09:34:01 -0400, Hugh Lawson <hu.law...@gmail.com>
wrote:

I've never seen one.   But it would be interesting.  

In my previous post,  when I referred to the South being ruled by the
same people -- I had in mind the same families who had ruled
previously.  

Let me give an example I ran across when doing my genealogy a few
years back.    My 3rd Great grandfather was a prosperous local farmer
who was among (according the local paper) a small group of men who
controlled Clay county Ga before the CW.     In 1860 he was 60.

He lost his slaves in 1865,   but not his land nor his social status.
In about 1875,  (can't recall the year) when the Redeemers took back
control of the county -- his son was elected to the legislature.
That was going on all over the South.   New names,  but same old
blood.    No revolution,  there.  

[ snip ]

I like examples, Willie.  

There will always be advantages for people born in the right place, with
parents who can give them a boost, etc.

But these advanges are not specific to regions.

Moreover, the fact that something happens in "the South" doesn't mean it
happens *only* there.  Why should the South be expected to be more
democratic than anywhere else?

hl

[ snip ]

It's an idea some people have about the south:  there must be something
permanent and unchanging that makes the south what it is.  Then they go
to the South, or live there already, and they see something: gasp! there
it is, the visible face of that permanent and unchanging something that
makes the south what it is.

You go to a black belt county and see some hard-up black people. Aha!
there it is, the continuation of slavery; those people must be in some
way slaves,and this is the continuation of that special something, the
unchanging something that makes the South what it is.

Or you see an "our Confederate dead" monument.  Maybe that's the
unchanging thing that makes the South what it is, the memory of the
Confederate enterprise.  That's one of Edward Sebesta's theories: that
what makes the South the South is the ideology of the neo-Confederates,
that if he and other good people can discredit the neo-Conferates, the
South will no longer exist.  People will stop thinking of themselves as
Southerners.

For Wiregrass Willie it was the Celtic blood, or the values of 17th
century Barbadian planters transmitted genetically, or maybe it's just a
habit of deference.

I want to adapt a thought from Ludwig Wittgenstein, one of my favorite
philosophers.  Naming a place does not prove that that place has some
secret unchanging "soul" or "essence" that makes it what it is.

On Sat, 28 Jul 2012 14:55:01 -0400, Hugh Lawson <hu.law...@gmail.com>
wrote:

Hugh,  I just finished reading an unusually good book.     It's been
around since 1947  but I just stumbled across it.    You may be
familiar with it.  

It's called  "The Making of a Southerner" by Katharine Du Pre Lumpkin
(1897-1988)

http://www.amazon.com/The-Making-Southerner-Katharine-Lumpkin/dp/0820...

Lumpkin traces her family from when her great-great-grandfather
settled near Lexington GA in about 1820 thru her own life til the
1950s.

Her grandfather was a large planter and her father -- as a teenager --
fought in the Civil War.     She was able to convey a lot of the
attitudes of the old planters from stories she had heard from her
elders.     Very interesting.    She was about my grandmothers age,
but her family was a lot richer.

I've heard of it, but I haven't read it WW.  It's a well-known book.

HL

My main South project is *not* reading southerners' navel-gazing about
themselves and the south.  It is studying what non-southerners (whom I
call northerners) say about the South.

The most powerful cultural influence on the South is not something
internal to the South.

Concerning culture, consider the relative influence in the South of the
*national* media, publishing, press, most prestigious universities, and
so on. All of these are geographically located in the northeast and the
west coast.  And all of them describe "the South" as to some degree
foreign.  

Northerners are powerfully tempted to think of the South as
alien. They believe this is "natural", but that is a myth. The
alien-ness of the South is mostly an intellectual artifact that they
have constructed.  They do it by a process so simple that you'd think a
child could see through it.

They take America, and separate it into two parts, the more American
part, and the Southern part. After doing that, they compare the parts,
and then conclude that the non-Southern part is the more American part,
and that the South is to some degree alien.  When you lay it out like
that, it seems a bit circular, no?

As Jennifer Rae Greeson has show, the northerners have been doing this
for a very long time, all the way back to the foundation of the United
States.

There is no *southern* movie industry, broadcasting industry, live
theater, culture industry. There never has been.  All the most
prestigious universities are located outside the south.

Now I am not saying that there is something wrong with reading
southerners' books about themselves and the south.  It's just that
southerners being Americans are subject to the powerful cultural
influences that have created and sustain this America vs The South
dichotomy.  So naturally many of them reproduce it in their own
thinking.

Hu. Lawson

On Tue, 31 Jul 2012 09:34:01 -0400, Hugh Lawson <hu.law...@gmail.com>
wrote:

I ran across a statement that might prove you right about things being
better for the Yeoman in the South after the War.     The rich people
left,  and the poor people stayed and prospered.    It's an
interesting thought.

"South in the Building of the Nation"  Volume 10  page 12

Formerly, when a large proprietor was seeking to push out the
boundaries of his estate, he purchased the little homesteads of the
yeomen who were seated about him. These yeomen then, in most cases,
emigrated either to the West or to the Southwest. Throughout the Upper
South one can often still trace in the thick woods the almost
obliterated marks of where these yeomen formerly lived; the scattered
stones of the fallen chimney, the depression in the earth where the
foundation for the cabin had been dug, the sink indicating the site of
an ancient grave -- such are a few memorials of the past system. But
the whirligig of time has brought in a radical change. Under the
present regime, it is not the large proprietor who is buying the
estates of the yeomen, but the yeomen who are buying the estate of the
large proprietor; it is his ancestral home, not the yeoman's, which is
falling to decay and ruin. Practically there is now no emigration of
small landowners from the Upper South simply because the opportunities
for improving their fortunes by acquiring the most fertile soil are no
longer closed to them by the barriers formerly raised by the presence
of a wealthier class.

It's B.S., Willie.  Things were worse for the plain folk after the war,
and worse for the ex-slaveowners too.  The civil war was a catastrophe
for the southern whites.  After all, all of them had been benefitting
from the enslavement of the blacks.

The rich lost the immense wealth of the slaves they owned. The plain
folk lost the assurance that slavery would keep the blacks out of sight
and away from the good things the poor whites wanted.

The white sharecroppers and the black sharecroppers got about the same
deal from the landlord.  

There are no pretty pictures to be drawn from the wreckage of the Old
South.

HL

On Sat, 04 Aug 2012 20:01:49 -0400, Hugh Lawson <hu.law...@gmail.com>
wrote:

In a nutshell -- there is why 90% of Southerners volunteered to fight
in the Confederate army.    

When  I first started reading this group a few years ago,   all I
could see were anti-Southern posters claiming the poor Southerners
fought to "protect slavery".     (They loved the institution ! )

Actually the Plain Folk had no more use for slavery than I do.  But
what they did want was to prevent their rich neighbors from letting
loose the Negroes on them.    For that reason -- they fought to
"protect slavery".   (Which is a little bit different)

The Plain Folk made their mistake in the 1600s when they saw the first
slaves introduced into their community.   How ?   By NOT organizing a
mob and proceeding to burn the Big House down and shooting Old Master
and all his slaves.   After failing to do that -- it was all downhill.

From then on -- it was like Thomas Jefferson said.  They had a wolf by
the ears.    And could not let go.  

[ snip ]

I believe in accepting the world just as it is; if there are parts I
don't like, I support movements to change them.  

But the past is what it was; it is to be understood, but it cannot be
changed.

I don't bother with judgmental hoop-de-doo about the slaveowners. Rich
people in all times and ages struggle to protect their wealth and their
power to command others.  There are always writers, politicians, and
thinkers ready to defend the policies the rich want.

Besides the slaveowners were brought low.  They lost all their slave
property. They paid the same price in lives that the common people
paid--AFAIK. Confederate money and bonds all gone.  After the war their
land declined in value by about 75%.  They were no longer big talkers in
the corridors of national power.  The survivors lived in the knowledge
that the Yankees could interfere in black-white relations whenever the
Yanks could agree among themselves to do it.

Maybe you should do another research project.  Take a county. Find the
rich slaveowners in 1860.  See how they were doing in 1870,

hl

So you don't really accept things the way they are.  Only if you like what you hear, read, see, do you accept things as they are.  Otherwise, you try to change them.  Which is it?

Sounds like you believe only what you want to believe, regardless of historical fact.  If it is unpleasant, it sounds like you just disregard it as irrelevant.  

You are a conundrum wrapped in an enigma,,,,WC

[ snip ]

I don'tunderstand why you are saying this to me, Bob. Time and time
again I have said that secession was motivated by the desire to protect
slavery, that the non-slaveowners had a stake in slavery too.

What should I see, that I have not seen?

hl

What are you talking about??

What historical fact have I denied?

What reality have I denied?

State the historical fact that I have denied, and  describe the reality
that I don't accept.  

Drop the generalities.

HL

Maybe I'm misreading you but I detect a sense of empathy in your posts towards the "former" slave owners.  I wouldn't dwell too much on what they lost.  I would be more inclined to celebrate what the slaves achieved: their freedom.  I can't put that in dollars and cents terms.  That would not be possible.

I don't accept the world as it is.  We can always do better.  But some can do worse as we saw yesterday at a Sikh temple and last week in Colorado.  

On Sun, 05 Aug 2012 13:45:58 -0400, Hugh Lawson <hu.law...@gmail.com>
wrote:

My whole point has been that although the wealthy planters lost a lot
-- they remained in political power in the South.  

You said you liked examples.  Let me return to my g-g-g-grandfather.
He was not rich, nor was he a large planter.   But he was a successful
farmer in the 1850s in SW GA --  and was worth more than most of his
neighbors.   He was also involved in politics in the 1850s.  

The 1860 census lists him with $10,000 real estate and $20,000 in
personal estate.  

The 1870 census lists him as having $4,000 real and $1,000 personal.

At age 67,    in 1877-78 he served as a the state legislator from Ft.
Gaines.

He became  mayor of Ft Gaines Jan 8, 1877.

In 1879, he was listed as one of the 20 top citizens of Ft. Gaines.

Everything is relative.  He lost a lot of luxury (he had to carry his
own juleps to the veranda)  but kept his social and political
position.   He did lose 30 slaves to sing his praises.

BTW,  just as a reference, according to Westegg -- what cost $30,000
in 1860 would cost $719,152  in 2010.    

http://www.westegg.com/inflation/

So -- adjusted for inflation -- Grandpa lost over $600,000 because of
the war.     But he still had his farm and his position.    

Yes, you're misreading me.  

HL

As far as I know,  the big landowners remained powerful on the local
scene.  

HL

Bob, as I understood the discussion between Willie and me, it was about how
much the big slaveowners lost in the war.  I could think of no way of
showing that they lost a great deal without describing some of what they
lost.

On several occasions here, I have argued that emancipation was a big
gain for the freedpeople.  That just wasn't the topic of the particular
post you reacted to.

HL