This year marks the 150th anniversary of the start of the American Civil War. Celebrations, commemorations, remembrances of all kinds are planned over the next four years. Twenty-two states are getting in on the action. But the majority of events, and the people displaying the most zeal for the occasion, are in the South.
Photo: Barnabus, Slayer of 3vilIn December, a mostly white crowd turned out in their antebellum best for the Secession Ball in Charleston, S.C. In February, the Sons of Confederate Veterans descended on the state capitol in Montgomery, Ala., to cheer the reenactment of Jefferson Davis being sworn in as president of the Confederacy. My home state of Virginia, where a third of all Civil War battles were fought, is spending millions in hopes of cashing in on the four-year event. In the South, the Civil War is still big business, which got me thinking: why are the ones who lost the war trying the hardest to remember it? The Civil War devastated the South, and plunged much of the region into a century of poverty and economic stagnation, the effects of which are still apparent in many areas. The South’s relationship with the “Lost Cause” is obviously complicated, but where else in history do we see the losers commemorating a war while the winners, by comparison, largely ignore its anniversary?
For some insight, I turned to Peter Coclanis, a professor of economic and business history at the University of North Carolina whose research focuses on the American South in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Coclanis offered some interesting thoughts on the economic legacy of the Civil War in the South, and why many southerners are still so keen to remember it. Below, I’ve paraphrased his remarks, which should give you more than enough fodder to ask him some good questions. He has agreed to field reader questions so please post them in the comments section and, as always, we’ll post his answers in short course. As we have, right here.
In 1860, the American South was one of the wealthiest areas in the world, an agrarian, capitalist economy that enjoyed a handful of comparative advantages: namely its ability to grow and get to market a small number of crops for which there was strong international demand: cotton, tobacco, and rice in particular. There was also the obvious labor advantage of slavery. But that advantage wasn’t so much economic as it was coercive. Getting people to work in extremely difficult conditions, i.e. cultivating sugar and rice out of the sweltering, bug-infested swamps of Georgia and Mississippi was slavery’s biggest advantage. Without the coercion of forced labor, it’s doubtful people would have ever tilled much of that land, certainly not in the numbers that actually did.
But as impressive as it was, the economic growth of the South lacked qualitative development. It wasn’t moving up the value-added chain. While innovation flourished in the industrial North, it wasn’t exactly stagnant in the South, but channeled into narrow agricultural lines. The voracious global demand for cotton and tobacco masked economic weaknesses that would have huge long-term consequences.
Those consequences are most apparent in the economic inversion that took place following the war. The parts of the South that were generally the richest in 1860 are today its poorest. These were the areas with the highest concentration of plantations: a swath of land stretching from coastal South Carolina down through Georgia, and west into Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana. Today, this region is home to some of the poorest counties in America, with high rates of unemployment, low-skilled labor, and other social ills like obesity and a lack of education. It’s this inversion that’s at the heart of why many southerners—particularly in these areas—remember the war so fondly, or at least the time that preceded it. Faced with their current circumstances, it’s easy to see why so many are so eager to celebrate a time when they were near the top of the world’s economic heap. In 1860, half of the South’s wealth was held in the form of slaves. By the end of the war, it was gone, legally defined into oblivion by emancipation.
What followed was roughly a century of economic stagnation. As late as 1930, per capita income in the South was roughly half the national average. World War II jump-started things, particularly along the Southern coast. Beginning in the postwar decades, much of the South pursued a development strategy to transition away from agriculture toward low-level manufacturing. This worked quite well for a generation or so, and drew millions of southern Americans out of poverty. By the early 1980s, the per-capita income of the South was about 90 percent of the national average. But that was the peak. Globalization, automation and other forces have undercut those gains, and the South has not converged at all upon national norms over the past 30 years.
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When I was a senior at Virginia Tech, I took a Civil War History class taught by J.I. Robertson, a brilliant Civil War scholar. His lectures were phenomenal and gripping, and that class had by far the lowest attrition rate I witnessed for an 8am class. However, there was one thing that was striking about the student demographics in that lecture- it was overwhelmingly white. Even though African-Americans would seem to have had the greatest stake in the outcome of the war, both economically and personally, I rarely saw more than 1 black person in a lecture that typically had around 300 students. I tend to see the same thing when I visit battlefields, whether in Virginia, South Carolina, or Pennsylvania. Why is it, then, that the greatest beneficiaries of the Civil War appear to be less interested in its history than those who, at least economically, lost the most from it?
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Yeah, you would think the black students would had showed up at least so they could be better-armed with knowledge when whining about imaginary–errr, I mean institutional racism, and demanding that blacks be afforded more transfer payments and affirmative action.
Hot debate. What do you think?
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because there’s a vast cultural divide within the black community, and unfortunately, neither of the two sides have an interest in exploring any impact that whites have had on black history aside from the ‘for worse’ part and certainly not the ‘for better’ part.
one side isn’t interested because they’re culturally shallow; they wear their pants around their knees, don’t take the labels off their clothes, and can’t be bothered to learn anything about their history because sports is on TV. black cultural festivals are an opportunity to commit crime and NOT learn about their forefathers and the sacrifices they’ve made in striving for equality.
the other side isn’t interested because, somehow, if it doesn’t strictly involve black people, its white history not black history. in most black history courses…the american civil war is taught like there weren’t even white people fighting at all, let alone a thousands and thousands of white soldiers fighting and dying to defeat the southern oppressors. letters from the time have shown that just as many northerners were fighting to defeat the scourge of slavery as there were fighting to defeat the secessionists….yet that is conveniently ignored in most contemporary teachings in an effort to make the lesson unilaterally black. this is very similar to prior-generation’s white history conveniently leaving out black influence due to whatever racist climate was in place at the time.
Guesticles, You have no idea what you’re talking about. You make a lot of claims about the black community, basically trying to say that there are two types: black people and n-words; and that you know where there priorities lie involving racial contexts. What is your basis for these claims? What gives you aptitude to generalize a race of people into two types of grotesque stereotypes? That is a very prejudice way of thinking.
Prejudice -an assumption made about someone or something before having adequate knowledge to be able to do so with guaranteed accuracy.
And to Aaron D.; my relatives and forefathers haven’t for gotten about those slave quarters. It has been passed down through the years as well as your romantic view of a pre-civil war south. Apparently, those romantics like to parade around and promote this way of life. All the while claiming an “edited” version in which slavery wasn’t involved. It will be reminding this nation of its nastiest truths for the next four years, not just for those with selective memory. 150 years old? Some memory.
“what gives me the aptitude to generalize a race of people into two types of grotesque stereotypes?”
for starters, i’m a black guy caught in between such polar opposite “stereotypes” as they largely exist in today’s america…caught in the middle of one “culture” who tries way to hard for its own good to justify its own existence, and one “culture” who doesn’t try nearly hard enough to justify its own existence.
i’m a black guy who grew up in the era of hypersensitivity, where so-called “black history” courses in college focused solely on black contributions to an abstract world devoid of whites. i’m *the* black guy who, when he refused to accept the “truth” that white history and black history are mutually exclusive (except where the whites have oppressed the blacks, of course), was accused of “not being black enough” and “being ignorant of the struggles blacks have endured.”
stereotype – the peak of the normal distribution curve…although most curves do indeed have fatter tails than we’d normally think.
back to the point brought up by Daniel H, i gather that i’m one of the few historically-minded black men who actually *publicly* acknowledges the positive influence that whites have had in so-called “black history” and are secure enough in reality to go visit a civil war battlefield to learn about the blood that was shed on my forefathers’ behalf. i came to that conclusion after being one of the sole black men around most of the mid-atlantic civil war battlefields i’ve been to.
“Why Does the South Still Commemorate the Civil War, But Not the North?”
My 2 cents for the answer: locational awareness. It had a major impact on the lives of the people in the South. In the North much less so. Partially due to the social and economic changes but also due to the war being fought mainly there. When I was last in Mass. I don’t remember seeing any Civil War battlefields, but now that I am in Virginia, they are everywhere. Win or lose, people will remember the wars and battles that were localy involved much better than those that weren’t.
Who is more likely to remember when Perl Harbor was bombed? Someone who lives in Hawaii , someone who lives in Kansas, or someone in Japan.
Who is more likely to remember the 49 gold rush, people in California or those in NY?
Who is more likely to remember the date of the SanFrancisco earthquake, someone who is 4th generation SF or one whose family never left the East coast?
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I agree 100% with PaulD. I grew up in Alabama, and I can tell you honestly that no one flies the Confederate flag because of our past economic strength. The points about the South’s economic standing pre- and post-war may be true, but have little to do with our reasons for commemorating it. Far more important are the South’s values of state’s rights/freedom from an oppressive gov’t., and the nostalgia of a bygone era of Southern charm/gentility. Racism is surely involved as well, to some extent – although most people in the South do not feel this way, beliefs about race take many generations to change, and there are still a surprising number of people who sympathize with slave owners.
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Clearly a bunch of Yankees on here just like the person that wrote the blog. If you ain’t from the South, you clearly can’t understand.
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Brook:
I lived in the South for 14 years, but I’m originally and now back in California. I loved my time in the south. I heard the “states rights” argument many times. I was never convinced that the war was about states rights nor that more states rights would improve the situation in the south. I’d love the economist to address this, but I feel the war was about wealthy people’s rights (they also ran the state). I don’t see any rights of the states that were taken away except for the right to slavery, followed by the right to maintain racial segregation. What other rights of the states did the losing of the war restrict? It would be interesting to see a good review of these rights and restrictions, and how they helped or hurt the southern economy.
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Regarding: “By the early 1980s, the per-capita income of the South was about 90 percent of the national average. But that was the peak. Globalization, automation and other forces have undercut those gains, and the South has not converged at all upon national norms over the past 30 years.”
Ummm, our economy down here in the South is still rocking while everyone else is suffering. Our home prices are holding and we have JOBS. So you can keep your “national norms” because your national norms clearly weren’t working.
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Well of course your home prices are steady because they never rose high enough to fall and workers in more successful parts of the country consider low wage, no skill jobs a dead end, not a career path.
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Jobs, maybe, but you don’t have careers. I graduated from GaTech (Computer Science) a couple years ago, and couldn’t find even free internship in ATL; I came up to Boston and had literally a dozen interview in the first week and was hired after two.
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Losers have longer memories. Losses have a bigger impact on the losers than wins have on the victors.
Like the south remembers the Civil War, the USA remembers the Maine, Alamo, and Pearl Harbor.
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Last time I was in Germany there was an odd gap in the historic record between 1914 and 1945. They said everyone was on vacation…
If it wasn’t for endemic Northern racism after the war the antebellum and bellum South would enjoy the same historical standing as King Leopold’s Congo, Apartheid South Africa or Ian Smith’s Rhodesia. Move the Civil War forward 80 years and the South’s entire leadership would have been tried and hung for crimes against humanity.
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Sure. Just as most of the North’s leadership would have been hung for war crimes – if they’d lost, of course. Somehow the victors never seem to be charged with anything. Well, unless they’re Israeli, of course.
Ain’t hypocrisy fun?
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And don’t forget 9/11
OK. If the question is “Why Does the South Still Commemorate the Civil War, But Not the North?”, why are they removing the comments of the only Southerner actually posting on here? Apparently, no one really wants to know the answer to the question. They would rather have a sanitized academia answer than the real one.
Hot debate. What do you think?
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I was thinking exactly the same thing. The question is, why do they still celebrate that era? The answer (even if the reasoning is factually incorrect or irrelevant) is neither right or wrong, it’s how southerner’s feel. Listening to them complain about the North today is probably very similar to what their opinions were 150 years ago and should be the first step in studying their psyche.
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Because we have a lot of the same issues today that we had then. We don’t want the federal government telling us how to live. You can keep your Prius and your environmentally friendly light bulbs (which moved the entire light bulb industry out of the US by the way) and give me good ole Texas oil. We want the federal government to stay out of state business, same now as then.
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Oh, I should also mention that one major cause of the lack of continued Northern celebration of its victory in the Civil War had to do with what happened in The Nadir that followed. I’m speaking of the Nadir of American race relations ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nadir_of_American_race_relations ) where Northern whites realized that they didn’t much care for Black people either due to the fact that abolishing slavery didn’t cause them to somehow just vanish from the continent. As blacks moved into Northern cities a large segment of the population probably began to reassess their whole opinion of the war.
Being anti-slavery was not the same as being in support of African Americans. It’s just like Iraq where we defeated the dictator only to win an 8 year commitment to people and a country that we don’t really care about…at best. It’s why the North threw in the towel regarding Reconstruction. Yes its shameful, but that’s the way it was back in the day. The North fought a very bloody war to free people that it supported in abstract, but not in actuality.
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Wow. And they keep removing my comments and leave this one!
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Mike B, you make a very good point about Northerners reassesing their opinion of the war as blacks moved into Northern cities. I think I should point out that a similar phenomenon occured in the 20th century after the Second Reconstruction (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Reconstruction). The period following 1968 can be characterized by more conservatism on the part of the federal government and the American people. Reactions to policies like busing in some Northern cities demonstrates a ‘reassesment’ of the 1960s. Some historians call this phenomenon the ‘Southernization of America.’ Read the introduction below (and Chapter 13 on Southernization) for one take on the matter:
http://sites.google.com/site/hist1970susupennspring2009/Home/introduction-to-the-reader