The Most Persistent Myth About the Confederacy

“Fate of the Rebel Flag” by William Bauly (Library of Congress)

I’ve been questioned a number of times about whether the Black Confederate narrative is really “the most persistent myth” in Civil War history. Certainly, there are other candidates.

One of the top contenders must be the popular notion that the Confederacy was intended as an experiment in the defense of “states’ rights” against a federal government in Washington, D.C. that, by 1860, had become overstepped its proper authority. This is another way of arguing that secession was carried out in defense of a constitutional principle rather than a defense of slavery.

It’s easy to undercut such a view, but before doing so let’s keep in mind that the balance between federal and state authority was debated during the antebellum period. Neither the North or South was consistent in its position on this issue. That shouldn’t come as a surprise given the reality of a two-party system in both regions of the country throughout much of this time.

Just look at the response to the Compromise of 1850 as one example. It was the Southern states who pushed for the power of the federal government during the 1850s to protect the institution of slavery through the enforcement of the Fugitive Slave Act and court cases such as the famous Dred Scott decision. Northern states, on the other hand, insisted that states had the right to resist the Fugitive Slave Act by passing Personal Liberty Laws which effectively nullified the power of the federal government in their respective communities.

In the late antebellum period Southern nationalists rallied around embracing the power of the federal government to expand slavery, not only into the western territories, but as part of a broader hemispheric vision of a slave empire that persisted into the war itself.

So, how did the Confederacy fair in its supposed mission to defend states’ rights and limited federal power between 1861 and 1865?

• Conscription (before the United States)

• Tax-In-Kind

• Tariff (higher than the 10 to 15 percent rate proposed by Hamilton in his Report on Manufacturers (1791)

• Regulated agriculture by imposing acreage controls on cotton and tobacco

• Confederate National Investment in Railroads (amounting to 2.5 million in loans, $150,000 advanced, and 1.12 million appropriated)

• Confederate Quartermasters leveled price controls on private mills and were later authorized to impress whatever supplies they needed.

• Government ownership of key industries

• Use of forced labor in government owned industries

• Government regulation of commerce

• Suspension of habeus corpus (According to historian, Mark Neely, 4,108 civilians were held by military authorities)

This is just a partial list. Feel free to add additional items in the comments section below. Historian John Majewski describes the Confederacy’s wartime policy as “Confederate war socialism.”

Of course, it should come as no surprise that both the Confederacy and the United States centralized power during the war for the obvious reasons.

After the war, former Confederates like Alexander Stephens latched on to the idea that secession and the war had been carried out in defense of states’ rights and limited government. This Lost Cause narrative not only ignored the centrality of slavery to their arguments on the eve of secession and some of the most public debates throughout the war, it minimized their committment to their own vision of a strong central government that would ensure their continued ownership of other human beings.