I recently started reading RACE AND REUNION by David W. Blight, a
professor of history at Amherst College. The book, originally published in
2001, focuses on linkages between the post-Civil War period of 1865 - 1915 and
21st century racism in this country, specifically, how post-war cultures in
both North and South deliberately reinforced institutional racism, in doing so obliterating
historical assumptions that the war’s ending chattel slavery also eliminated most
vestiges associated with the institution.
Today’s mainstream culture is the product of longstanding virulent historical
racial bias reaffirmed in the cultural fabric of the United States over the 50
years following the American Civil War, where over 620,000 Americans died. Author
Blight identifies three main "memory storylines" or
"visions" that drove how the country remembered the Civil War between
1865 and 1915.
The first is the 'reconciliation vision,' rooted in North and
South—separately and together—coming to terms with the overwhelming number of
dead from the battlefields, prisons, and hospitals. An equivalent percentage of
the population war dead today –that is, using the same percentage of Americans
from the overall population of the United States who died between 1861 and 1865
in the Civil War and applying that percentage to the current population in this country--would mean 15 million dead Americans. The horror of the carnage drove reconciliation efforts between North
and South for fifty years following Appomatox, in effect creating stronger
unity between the former enemies, although the initially the South came grudgingly to the table.
The second was the
‘white supremacist vision,’ which took many forms immediately after the war
ended. Terror and violence opposed the idea of reconciliation with freed slaves
at any level, creating, essentially, a segregated memory of the Civil War
perpetuated on Southern terms. The ‘Lost Cause’ myth of the former Confederacy
found tremendous footing in the post-war South, its adherents stressing the
noble, heroic nature of the doomed effort.
The third and final memory vision was the ‘emancipation vision,’ reflected
in African Americans' complex remembrance of their own fleeting freedom within
the politics of Radical Reconstruction. This freedom was temporarily bolstered
by the presence of Union troops and military governors stationed in the
vanquished Confederacy to oversee emancipation's progress. In 1877, with the
election of President Rutherford B. Hayes, part of the deal struck with
Southern Democrats placing Union Army veteran Hayes in the Oval Office was the
complete removal of Union troops from the South, giving white supremacists full
control over every aspect of former slaves’ lives.
Although not prominently featured in school history books today, the
North was a silent witness to Jim Crow laws, while fostering their own brands
of blatant racial discrimination and suppression in every part of the country
between the Civil War and World War I. The institutionalization of racism
continued unabated, the carnage of the Civil war not moving the country towards
any real confrontation with its checkered past.
What was the sacrifice in the Civil War about? Author David Blight
argues that the visions of reconciliation and the rise of white supremacy in
the South together muted the emancipation vision, rendering it all but
irrelevant to society’s greater concerns. In the words of the author, "the
inexorable drive for reunion both used and trumped race," essentially silencing
the emancipation vision for 50 years and beyond. True emancipation would have
to wait for 100 hundred years following the end of the Civil War to realize modest achievements on the long path to the justice that continues to elude black Americans today.
I will talk more about RACE AND
REUNION, in upcoming blogs.
Rod Haynes
BUF Black Lives Matter
