Six on History: The Civil War
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1) April 12, 1861: Civil War begins as Confederate forces fire on Fort Sumter, History.com
"The bloodiest four years in American history begin when Confederate shore batteries under General P.G.T. Beauregard open fire on Union-held Fort Sumter in South Carolina’s Charleston Harbor on April 12, 1861. During the next 34 hours, 50 Confederate guns and mortars launched more than 4,000 rounds at the poorly supplied fort. On April 13, U.S. Major Robert Anderson surrendered the fort. Two days later, U.S. President Abraham Lincoln issued a proclamation calling for 75,000 volunteer soldiers to quell the Southern “insurrection.”
As early as 1858, the ongoing conflict between North and South over the issue of slavery had led Southern leadership to discuss a unified separation from the United States. By 1860, the majority of the slave states were publicly threatening secession if the Republicans, the anti-slavery party, won the presidency. Following Republican Abraham Lincoln’s victory over the divided Democratic Party in November 1860, South Carolina immediately initiated secession proceedings. On December 20, the South Carolina legislature passed the “Ordinance of Secession,” which declared that “the Union now subsisting between South Carolina and other states, under the name of the United States of America, is hereby dissolved.” After the declaration, South Carolina set about seizing forts, arsenals, and other strategic locations within the state. Within six weeks, five more Southern states–Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia and Louisiana–had followed South Carolina’s lead.
"During the American Civil War, Major General Nathan Bedford Forrest’s Confederate raiders attack the isolated Union garrison at Fort Pillow, Tennessee, overlooking the Mississippi River. The fort, an important part of the Confederate river defense system, was captured by federal forces in 1862. Of the 500-strong Union garrison defending the fort, more than half the soldiers were African Americans.
After an initial bombardment, General Forrest asked for the garrison’s surrender. The Union commander refused, and Forrest’s 1,500 cavalry troopers easily stormed and captured the fort, suffering only moderate casualties. However, the extremely high proportion of Union casualties—231 killed and more than 100 seriously wounded—raised questions about the Confederates’ conduct after the battle. Union survivors’ accounts, later supported by a federal investigation, concluded that African American troops were massacred by Forrest’s men after surrendering. Southern accounts disputed these findings.
"The Civil War was the deadliest of all American wars. No one disagrees with that. But how many died has long been a matter of debate.
For more than a century, the most-accepted estimate was about 620,000 dead. A specific figure of 618,222 is often cited, with 360,222 Union deaths and 258,000 Confederate deaths.
This estimate was not an unreasoned guess, but a number that was established after years of research in the late 19th century by Union veterans William F. Fox, Thomas Leonard Livermore and others. Their work involved an exhaustive examination of army documents, muster rolls, cemetery records, census records, pension records and other resources and documents. In 1900, Livermore published a 171-page book of his work, Numbers and Losses in the Civil War in America 1861-1865.
2011 Analysis Raises EstimateBut in 2011, demographic historian Dr. J. David Hacker published “A Census-Based Count of Civil War Dead,” in the scholarly quarterly, Civil War History, reporting that his in-depth study of recently digitized census data concluded that a more accurate estimate of Civil War deaths is about 750,000, with a range from 650.000 to as many as 850,000 dead.
Hacker, an associate professor of history at the University of Minnesota, believed that a fresh, detailed examination of the numbers from the 1850, 1860 and 1870 U.S. census tabulations might reveal a massive reduction for the young male population in 1870 that would reflect the human toll of the war. And that is what he found. Hacker’s research concluded that the normal survival pattern for young American men from 1860 to 1870 was far less—by about 750,000—than it would have been had no war occurred.
- We Won’t Wear the Name
After witnessing the rise of the “alt-right,” this social studies teacher doubled down on debunking Confederacy myths.
- Exploring the SPLC's ‘Whose Heritage?’ Report
This SPLC report, Whose Heritage?, can help teach the history behind the memorialization of Confederate symbols in public spaces.
- SPLC’s ‘Whose Heritage?’ Report: A Teaching Opportunity
Across the country, schools, monuments and statues pay homage to the Confederacy. A new report can help teach the history behind these public fixtures—and how they spread throughout the South and beyond.
- Imagining a World Without White Supremacy
Meet two innovative educators who help students face their communities’ painful histories and envision brighter futures.
- States’ Rights and “Historical Malpractice”
At these three high schools, each named for Robert E. Lee, students led the way toward change.
- Ater, Renée. “Commemorating Black Soldiers: The African American Civil War Memorial in Washington, D.C.” In Tell It with Pride: The 54th Massachusetts Regiment and Augustus Saint-Gaudens’ “Shaw Memorial,” eds. Sarah Greenough and Nancy Anderson, 112–26. Washington, DC: National Gallery of Art, 2013.
- Barbee, Matthew Mace. Race and Masculinity in Southern Memory: History of Richmond’s Monument Avenue, 1948–1996. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2013.
- Blight, David W. Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2001. [My fave]
- Bonner, Robert E. Colors and Blood: Flag Passions of the Confederate South. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2018.
- Brown, Thomas J. Civil War Monuments and the Militarization of America. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2019.
- ———. The Public Art of Civil War Commemoration. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2004.
- Cook, Robert J. Troubled Commemoration: The American Civil War Centennial, 1961 – 1965. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2007.
- Coski, John M. The Confederate Battle Flag: America’s Most Embattled Emblem. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2005.
- Cox, Karen L. Dixie’s Daughters: The United Daughters of the Confederacy and the Preservation of Confederate Culture. 2nd ed. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2019.
- ———. No Common Ground: Confederate Monuments and the Ongoing Fight for Racial Justice. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2021.
- Clinton, Catherine, et. al. Confederate Statues and Memorialization. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2019.
- Delmont, Matthew. “Why the Confederate Flag Flew During World War II.” The Atlantic. June 18, 2020.
- Dickinson, Michael. “Black Realities and White Statues: The Fall of Confederate Monuments.” Black Perspectives, June 18, 2020.
- Doss, Erika. Memorial Mania: Public Feeling in America. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010.
- Driggs, Sarah Shields, Richard Guy Wilson, and Robert P. Winthrop. Richmond’s Monument Avenue. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2001.
- Foster, Gaines M. Ghosts of the Confederacy: Defeat, the Lost Cause, and the Emergence of the New South. New York: Oxford University Press, 1987.
- Freeman, David B. Carved in Stone: The History of Stone Mountain. Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 1997.
- Ifill, Sherrilyn A. On the Courthouse Lawn: Confronting the Legacy of Lynching in the Twenty-First Century. Rev. ed. Boston: Beacon Press, 2018.
- Janney, Caroline. “The Civil War in Public Memory,” in Cambridge History of the American Civil War, vol. 3, Aaron Sheehan-Dean, ed. (New York: Cambridge, 2019), 481–505.
- Landrieu, Mitch. In the Shadow of Statues: A White Southerner Confronts History. New York: Viking, 2018.
- Levinson, Sanford. Written in Stone: Public Monuments in Changing Societies. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2018.
- McElya, Micki. “Commemorating the Color Line: The National Mammy Monument Controversy of the 1920s,” in Mills, Cynthia J., and Pamela H. Simpson. Monuments to the Lost Cause: Women, Art, and the Landscapes of Southern Memory. 2nd ed. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2019.
- Perry, Andre. “Removing Racist Monuments Is About Making History, Not Erasing It.” The Hechinger Report, November 7, 2017.
- Phelps, Jess R., and Jessica Owley. “Etched in Stone: Historic Preservation Law and Confederate Monuments.” Florida Law Review 71 (2019): 627–88.
- Savage, Kirk. Standing Soldiers, Kneeling Slaves: Race, War, and Monument in Nineteenth- Century America. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1997.
- Seidule, Ty. Robert E. Lee and Me: A Southerner’s Reckoning with the Myth of the Lost Cause. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2020.
- ———. “Black Power Cadets: How African American Students Defeated President Nixon’s Confederate Monument and Changed West Point, 1971 – 1976,” Hudson River Valley Review 36, no. 1 (Autumn 2019).
- Trenticosta, Cecelia, and William C. Collins. “Death and Dixie: How the Courthouse Confederate Flag Influences Capital Cases in Louisiana.” Harvard Journal on Racial and Ethnic Justice 27 (Spring 2011): 125–64.
- Upton, Dell. What Can and Can’t Be Said: Race, Uplift, and Monument Building in the Contemporary South. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2015.
- Whites, LeeAnn. “You Can’t Change History by Moving a Rock: Gender, Race, and the Cultural Politics of Confederate Memorialization.” In The Memory of the Civil War in American Culture, edited by Alice Fahs and Joan Waugh, 213–36. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2004.
- Wahlers, Kasi E. “North Carolina’s Heritage Protection Act: Cementing Confederate Monuments in North Carolina’s Landscape.” North Carolina Law Review 94, no. 6 (2016): 2176–2200.
- Williams, Caroline Randall. “You Want a Confederate Monument? My Body Is a Confederate Monument.” New York Times, June 26, 2020.
- Winberry, John. “‘Lest We Forget’: The Confederate Monument and the Southern Townscape.” Southeastern Geographer (November 1983), 107–21.
In 2007, legendary editor and publisher John Seigenthaler documented The Tennessean's origin story. The publication continues committed to serving diverse communities even amid challenges and crises.
"This story is part of The Confederate Reckoning, a collaborative project of USA TODAY Network newsrooms across the South to critically examine the legacy of the Confederacy and its influence on systemic racism today.
On May 30, a symbol of segregation and racism fell when protesters toppled the statue of Edward Carmack in front of the Tennessee state Capitol.
A former congressman, U.S. senator and failed gubernatorial candidate, Carmack was the second editor of The Tennessean whose career ended abruptly when he was shot and killed in a street gunfight with a rival in downtown Nashville in 1908.
Luke Lea founded the newspaper just the year before, but Carmack was not an anomaly.
The Tennessean was founded as an unabashedly racist newspaper and remained so for decades.
As conversations around the Black Lives Matter movement and disrupting systemic racism intensify in 2020, The Tennessean and its sister newspapers in the South are examining their past editorial positions and coverage. By understanding how we were, how we evolved and the work left to be done, we can help craft a better future for our communities.
John Seigenthaler, the late legendary civil rights advocate, editor and publisher of The Tennessean, documented the newspaper's history in an article he wrote for the newspaper in 2007.
"Under Lea, The Tennessean was wedded to the segregated society that began to take hold in the South, as the meaning of emancipation was crushed by the weight of rulings on race that segregation — a ‘separate but equal society —' was a constitutionally acceptable idea,” Seigenthaler wrote.
Lea and subsequent leaders supported segregation and the poll taxes that kept poor white and most Black people from voting.
In addition, Carmack, when he was previously editor of the Memphis Commercial (now The Commercial Appeal) feuded with civil rights leader and anti-lynching publisher Ida B. Wells, and even stirred a mob into a frenzy to destroy her press when she spoke out against lynching. (The area where Carmack's statue had stood for nearly 100 years has been renamed "Ida B. Wells Plaza" by demonstrators.)
Words matter: A look at a lynching in Lebanon and Fisk student protests
There are several instances of Tennessean stories and headlines during that era that used racist language to describe events.
A March 7, 1916, report in The Tennessean documented how a Black man accused of killing the police chief was lynched by a mob.
The story’s summary read: “Short work made of slayer of Chief of Police Robert Nolen — less than hundred men in crowd that breaks into jail — negro hanged to tree in public square while hundreds look on.”
The Tennessean's report of the lynching of Will Whitley in Lebanon, March 7, 1916.
The story said that despite the pleas of some to stop, “the lynching was proceeded with as calmly as though it had been a legal execution.”
The Tennessean also spoke out against Fisk University students’ efforts in the 1920s to desegregate the historically Black institution.
When Fisk President F. Avery McKenzie agreed to resign, the April 23, 1925, edition of The Tennessean reported: "He (McKenzie) said that at present prominent alumni of the university declare there is no agitation for a negro as the head of the institution, although there were rumors of such agitation during the recent outbreak by students."
His successor Thomas Elsa Jones ended segregation at the university.
A change in ownership led to a new philosophy
The Tennessean’s racist editorial positions began to change after Silliman Evans bought the paper in 1937.
Under a joint operating agreement, The Tennessean and its competitor The Nashville Banner worked on different sides of a building formerly at 1100 Broadway. By then, The Banner, which closed in 1998, had become the segregationist newspaper.
The Tennessean under new ownership opposed the poll tax and supported the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court ruling ending school segregation.
The Tennessean covered the historic sit-ins and marches — led in part by the late U.S. Rep. John Lewis — that resulted in the racial desegregation of lunch counters.
The 1960s saw the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and the Fair Housing Act of 1968 as well as the release of the Kerner Commission report in 1968, which warned of a growing political and socio-economic chasm between Black and white citizens.
Seigenthaler, who had been an investigative reporter at the paper in the 1950s and left to work for Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, returned to Nashville in 1962 to assume the role as editor.
He described the newspaper’s philosophy under his leadership in his 2007 article this way: “The paper, during this period, also maintained its continuing interest in civil rights, urging an end to discrimination in housing, employment and civic affairs."
Infiltrating the Ku Klux Klan
According to the newspaper, a “tirade” by Seigenthaler evolved into a special investigation into one of the most notorious and violent racist groups in America.
On Dec. 7, 1980, The Tennessean published “My Life with the Klan,” reporter Jerry Thompson’s expose of infiltrating the Ku Klux Klan, which had recently reemerged.
"My Life with the Klan" special report by The Tennessean on Dec. 7, 1980.
Thompson wrote: “Now I know, after being ‘inside,’ that many of them — far too many — truly believe the words of (Invisible Empire of the Ku Klux Klan head Bill) Wilkinson when he says, ‘The race war is coming.’ Because they believe it, they are indeed arming for it.”
“Thompson said he was frightened throughout the experience but would do it again if necessary to let the public know about the Klan,” reported United Press International for a Dec. 14, 1980,
The Tennessean continues commitment to diversity and justice
Seigenthaler’s agenda on civil rights and against racism continues to shape the mission of The Tennessean today.
The newspaper has worked hard to hire a diverse staff and cover diverse communities.
The African American community makes up nearly 30% of Nashville’s population, but other minority groups have emerged, including Latinos and people of Middle Eastern and African descent.
Editors and reporters have worked to build deep relationships with diverse communities, which have sometimes been strained because of a story, a headline, an op-ed or an ad, so the work continues.
In recent years, reporters and editors have delivered special projects on the Kurdish community, inequities in the public school system, rising gentrification in historically Black neighborhoods, and most recently the impact of the demonstrations after the slaying of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer on May 25.
In June, the entire opinion section was dedicated to Black voices talking about racism, racial hurt and opportunities for healing.
An Islamophobic ad that ran in June provided The Tennessean a chance to work with longtime allies in the Muslim community to face bigotry of the past and find a path toward healing.
Meanwhile, communities of color have been disproportionately affected by the March 3 tornadoes, the COVID-19 pandemic and the economic fallout.
The Tennessean is determined to tell the whole, fair and accurate story.
We may not have started on the right of side of history, but we are committed today to honoring the dignity and protecting the rights of the communities we serve."
Racists founded and led The Tennessean. Their successors have worked to change the narrative | Plazas
" ... Downs has collected numerous shocking accounts of the lives of freed slaves. He came across accounts of deplorable conditions in hospitals and refugee camps, where doctors often had racist theories about how black Americans reacted to disease. Things were so bad that one military official in Tennessee in 1865 wrote that former slaves were: "dying by scores – that sometimes 30 per day die and are carried out by wagonloads without coffins, and thrown promiscuously, like brutes, into a trench".
So bad were the health problems suffered by freed slaves, and so high the death rates, that some observers of the time even wondered if they would all die out. One white religious leader in 1863 expected black Americans to vanish. "Like his brother the Indian of the forest, he must melt away and disappear forever from the midst of us," the man wrote.
Such racial attitudes among northerners seem shocking, but Downs says they were common. Yet Downs believes that his book takes nothing away from the moral value of the emancipation.
Instead, he believes that acknowledging the terrible social cost born by the newly emancipated accentuates their heroism.
"This challenges the romantic narrative of emancipation. It was more complex and more nuanced than that. Freedom comes at a cost," Downs said."
