The Cultural Roots of Disunion - NYTimes.com
December 1, 2010, 10:00 PM
The Cultural Roots of Disunion
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By JAMES C. COBB
Disunion
follows the
Civil War as
it unfolded.
TAGS:
ABRAHAM LINCOLN, CIVIL
WAR, SECESSION,
SLAVERY
The traditional take on how the Union came apart after Abraham
Lincoln’s election rests on the irreconcilable political and economic
differences between North and South over slavery. Yet the secession
crisis didn’t emerge overnight, and the long build-up to it also
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involved concerted efforts on both sides to construct self-serving
pseudo-ethnic and civic identities. These identities consciously
exaggerated the cultural antipathy between the two sections — and
contributed greatly to their eventual split.
These differences had roots going back before the founding of the
Republic. And while it’s become commonplace to see corrosive
sectional pride as a strictly Southern thing, recent historians have
argued that it was in fact the North that struck the first blow for
regional chauvinism. Often shrouding their sectionalism in the
soaring rhetoric of early American nationalism, Northern partisans
like geographer Jedediah Morse and lexicographer Noah Webster
shamelessly touted New England as the model for American identity
and character, pointedly contrasting its Yankee “industry … frugality
[and] piety” with the Southern slaveholding culture of “luxury,
dissipation and extravagance.” “O, New England!” Webster
concluded. “How superior are thy inhabitants in morals, literature,
civility and industry.”
Employing similar juxtapositions of New England virtues and
Southern vices, later writers, including Harriet Beecher Stowe,
helped to inspire and nurture a broader vision in which the
Northern states were synonymous with America — with the South
standing as the antithesis. By 1823 New Yorker Gerrit Smith could
already remark on the almost “national difference of character
between the people of the Northern and the people of the Southern
states.”
Library of Congress
A Northern take on the Confederate states’ early efforts to man a volunteer army
during the Civil War. CLICK TO ENLARGE
It is hard, today, to comprehend how thoroughly sectional divisions
defined antebellum politics. At the 1814 Hartford Convention, which
sought to resolve regional tensions resulting from the War of 1812,
New England Federalists demanded constitutional protection of
their region’s interests and even threatened to secede. Underlying
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/12/01/the-cultural-roots-of-disunion/[12/30/2010 5:34:12 PM]
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December 29, 2010
The Messianic
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Why William Lloyd
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December 29, 2010
The General’s
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rallies himself to the fight.
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The Cultural Roots of Disunion - NYTimes.com
the Federalists’ national agenda was a sectional one, which pushed
for a central government powerful enough to protect and advance
New England’s trade and shipping activities at home and abroad.
Indeed, in the years to follow, New England’s most eloquent
champion, Daniel Webster, consistently cloaked his support for
sectional policies like protective tariffs and internal improvements in
the language of national interest.
Eventually Webster removed the cloak: by the end of the 1840s, he
was making no secret of his hope for a politically cohesive “North,”
rooted in a coalition of Northeastern and Western free states (settled
in part by New England émigrés), that would dominate the country.
Webster’s wishes were realized in the late 1850s with the meteoric
ascent of the Republican Party, whose strikingly concentrated
Northern base made it, as historian David Potter observed, “totally
sectional in its constituency.” By then, however, the North and
Midwest’s demographic and economic strengths were such that,
although the Republicans had almost no support elsewhere, it
appeared they would soon dominate national politics while the
South, with its demographic and economic clout on the wane, would
be powerless to prevent it.
Perhaps because their region’s lines of
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and symbol for their increasingly
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particularized and embattled region.
Some, like George Fitzhugh and Thomas
R. Dew, invoked the slave society of ancient Greece as a laudable
analog. But, as cultural icons went, an Athenian in toga and sandals
was no match for a dashing English cavalier.
The legend of the cavalier, which gained currency amid mounting
criticism of the South in the 1830s, held that white Southerners were
descended from the Norman barons who conquered England in the
11th century and populated the upper classes of English society.
According to the story, they had emigrated to the Southern colonies
after losing out in the English Civil War to the plebeian Puritan
“Roundheads” or “Saxons,” whose kinsmen had later settled the
North. As one Virginian asserted in 1863, “the Saxonized mawworms creeping from the Mayflower” could claim no “kinship”
whatsoever with “the whole-souled Norman British planters of a
gallant race.” Zeal for the cavalier legend had also been stoked by the
enormously popular writings of Sir Walter Scott, whose tales of
Scotland’s struggles against English oppression seemed to evoke the
South’s struggles against the North. Scott was so beloved in the
South that Mark Twain would later blame the Civil War primarily on
Southerners’ affliction with “the Sir Walter disease.”
Outside Virginia, few Southerners could show evidence of familial
ties to English cavaliers (and it’s likely that even fewer cavaliers had
Norman ancestors). But that didn’t keep the legend from quickly
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/12/01/the-cultural-roots-of-disunion/[12/30/2010 5:34:12 PM]
The Cultural Roots of Disunion - NYTimes.com
taking firm root, so much so that even Europeans saw it as
potentially a nail in the coffin of the American Union. In 1835
France’s Louis Phillipe warned that the cultural divide between the
Puritan North and Cavalier South meant that Americans, “as a
people, have conflicting interests and ambitions and unappeasable
jealousies.”
There were, however, limits to the legend’s influence. The cavalier
story may have become what historian James McPherson called “the
central myth of Southern ethnic nationalism” among more affluent
or literate Southerners by the 1850s, but efforts to promulgate it
more widely ran into problems. In the rural South, with its poor
communications networks and relatively high illiteracy rates, new
ideas didn’t travel far or quickly, and local traditions held tight. Nor
did the myth hold much water with yeoman farmers, who made up a
significant portion of the Southern population and who, with the
rising price of slaves in the 1850s, saw their dreams of joining the
planter class dashed. Indeed, a rather clueless proposal to feature
the figure of a “cavalier” on the official seal of the Confederacy was
derailed by concerns that it would remind the slaveless two-thirds of
the South’s free population that they were fighting for an institution
they could not enter.
These regional cultural differences not only contributed to the
growing sectional crisis, but also may have helped tip the balance
during the war. After all, Northern troops consistently spoke of an
affinity with, and an obligation to, the Union, which they readily
conflated with their Midwestern and Northern homes. Conversely,
the failure of the South to create what Alabama fire-eater William
Lowndes Yancey described as a shared “southern heart” led many
soldiers to echo the sentiment of the Georgia private who declared,
“If I can’t fight in the name of my own state, then I don’t want to
fight at all.” It would take a fierce four-year conflict, ending in a
bitter and ignominious defeat, to forge anything approaching the
sense of kinship and common cause that the white South’s leaders
had tried to instill before its ill-fated struggle for independence
began — an identity that we still recognize today.
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James C. Cobb is Spalding Distinguished Professor of
History at the University of Georgia. His latest book
is “The South and America since World War II.”
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The Cultural Roots of Disunion - NYTimes.com
141 READERS' COMMENTS
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READERS' RECOMMENDATIONS
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Mark
St. Paul, MN
December 2nd,
2010
8:13 am
1
ekeizer4
Oregon
December 2nd,
2010
8:13 am
EdgyInChina
Illinois
December 2nd,
2010
8:13 am
Roger Bigod
Shreveport, LA
December 2nd,
2010
8:14 am
Recommended by 95 Readers
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To some degree, this difference of character persists today. I suppose I
would consider myself a "Northerner," because I cannot comprehend
how some states and cities in the South can celebrate the 150th
anniversary of the Civil War by celebrating "states' rights," the Good Ol'
Confederacy, and secessionary zeal -- all the while ignoring the specter of
slavery as if it were merely a footnote in the brave, bold history of the
South. When people slap the Confederate flag on bumper stickers or
advocate flying it above state capitols, it makes me ill. No matter what
good qualities -- chivalry, independence and tradition are all invoked -- it
may represent to a certain segment of the population, there is no denying
that it also represents the enslavement of other human beings. That is a
caveat that cannot be explained away or ignored. It seems to me the
equivalent of claiming the swastika represents German pride -- and
therein lies the unbridgeable divide between the so-called "Northern"
and "Southern" schools of thought. Neither side can fathom the morals
or reasoning of the other, and so the U.S. remains polarized 150 years
after the Civil War.
Recommended by 109 Readers
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So are you saying that we (USA) are headed for yet another 'civil war'???
Our regional differences seem to be growing and indeed driving us apart.
All one has to do is cruise the internet to see the vitriol spewed forth each
day, and indeed each of the political parties, and talk radio seem to be
adding fuel to this fire as each day goes by.
Recommend
4.
NEXT
"By 1823 New Yorker Gerrit Smith could already remark on the almost
'national difference of character between the people of the Northern and
the people of the Southern states.'"
Recommend
3.
of 6
The North and the South are as culturally apart as any two nations. We
have little in common, as far as I'm concerned, except our contempt for
each other. One look at the consistent Blue State / Red State map makes
it very clear: we don't belong together. That sounds radical today, but I
think 150 years from now our descendants will wonder why it wasn't
obvious to us. The North was right to emancipate human beings held as
slaves; having done it, we should have not only allowed the South to
secede, but demanded it.
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2.
REPLIES
Recommended by 29 Readers
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The genetic theories on both sides were bogus. Some Cavaliers came to
Virginia during the English Civil War, encouraged by the Governor at the
time, Berkeley. But there's a list of the 50 or so gentry families in
Fischer's "Albion's Seed", and half of then weren't gentry in England. And
the dates of arrivals of some are after the war was over. William
Randolph, surely a First Family dude, arrived around 1670, a decade
after the war was over. And if you look at the genealogy, many of the
immigrant founders were second sons of who were probably emigrating
for economic reasons.
There were only about 16,000 Norrmans in the Conquest. They
intermarried preferentially with the native elite, but by the time of the
settlement of North America, any genetic contribution would have been
greatly diluted.
The Anglo-Saxon contribution to the British gene pool is something like
10-15%, judging by Y chromosome markers (R1a haplotype). Their
political and cultural success was out of proportion to their genetic
legacy, if one takes account of the language in which I'm writing this
note. At least one branch of the Adams family is of haplotype R1b,
originating from an earlier Celtic group.
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/12/01/the-cultural-roots-of-disunion/[12/30/2010 5:34:12 PM]
The Cultural Roots of Disunion - NYTimes.com
My sources include some popular articles of the past few years, and I
welcome expert correction. My main point is that one should be highly
skeptical of theories of racial purity, let alone superiority.
Recommend
5.
Joseph G.
Anthony
Lexington, KY
December 2nd,
2010
8:15 am
M. Foster
Somerset, UK
December 2nd,
2010
8:15 am
Nancy
Leesburg, VA
December 2nd,
2010
8:16 am
Recommended by 63 Readers
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An interesting point about a myth that was repeated often during my
childhood in the South. However, it doesn't account for the competent
fighting done by the Southern army up until Lincoln hired some better
generals. All of those victories were not won by dashing men on
horseback, though that is part of the myth as well. The bulk of the
infantry must have felt some motivation or they would not have fought
with such determination.
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7.
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Mark Twain hated Sir Walter Scott, blamed him and his cavalier myth for
the South's ruin. Twain's hyperbole aside, he had a point. But of course, a
people's choice of myth is very telling. As you point out, the North had its
own myths, but those myths as a whole--- centering around the idea of a
free people choosing its own destiny---were basically healthy for the
North, even though it, the myth, was sometimes designed to rub the
South's collected disjointed noses in it. That it was sometimes also false,
as Southerners indicating the oppressed industrial workers pointed out,
was largely irrelevant. "I know who I am and who I choose to be" Don
Quixote says. Free independent yeomen or decadent archaic aristocrats
dependent upon the labor of others? Who I choose to be or perhaps how
I see myself becomes its own reality as Don Quixote discovered.
Sometimes the myth is fairly benign. New Yorkers truly feel superior to
Jerseyites as I, having close ties to both places, can confidently assert.
Yet no civil war emerged. But slavery, the attack upon it and the defense
of it, were such integral parts of choice of identity, of the demand of
myth, that it almost demanded a fight to the finish. A house divided
against itself cannot stand: only one over-weaning founding myth can
survive. I am glad, for all our sakes, that the free-yeoman one prevailed.
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6.
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Thank you for a fascinating article re the Southern "Cavaliers." Not being
of Southern extraction, I never heard this myth. I know a small number
of Roundheads emigrated to New England, but I don't recall reading that
Cavaliers fled to the South when Cromwell and Parliament rose to power.
I believe most of them fled to the Continent or went underground. Or,
switched sides. The only place that would have been congenial to the
Cavaliers would have been Virginia. I will have to check this out.
The NYT is to be commended for this series on the Civil War. It's
outstanding.
Recommend
8.
Jim
Phoenix
December 2nd,
2010
9:54 am
midenglander
East Midlands,
UK.
December 2nd,
2010
9:55 am
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This essay is remarkably Puritan in its own rite. The North was
profoundly changed by German and Irish immigration from 1830 to
1860, giving the North the industrial and economic might to sweep away
slavery. Where are the immigrants and the profound change they worked
on America? Up until their arrival Puritan New England had grown
prosperous participating in the slave trade and slave economy in a
symbotic relationship with the South. Not that it makes any sense to call
the leading Republican contenders in in 1859, Seward and Lincoln,
Puritans.
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9.
Recommended by 33 Readers
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For some uknown reason I have always been fascinated by this war,
almost to the point of obsession. Certainly by 1861 America was already
populated by various European peoples besides those of British origin.
However, I have always thought that the war of 1861-65 was
predominantly an Anglo-Saxon conflict and caused by deep rooted ways
of thinking that had originated in Britain.
Northerners do appear to have inherited the, Protestant work ethic of the
Puritan settlers whilst the Southern gentry very much echoed the views
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/12/01/the-cultural-roots-of-disunion/[12/30/2010 5:34:12 PM]
The Cultural Roots of Disunion - NYTimes.com
and stance of the British land owning class. I think that many of the
issues that caused the Civil War in England were there in the hearts of
British Americans both North and South.
It should be remembered that as America was being established a
viscious war was fought in the mother country, where neighbour fought
neighbour and brother fought brother. The issues were whether a landed
aristocracy, headed by an autocratic King, who believed he ruled by
divine right, should hold sway over a Parliament that represented a wider
constituency. There was also the complication of religious views, ie. the
Protestant ethic against a Catholic leaning, ruling class.
Strong but conflicting ideas of morality, piety, freedom, rights and
Godliness were ar work in both Civil Wars. The seeds of democracy and
the rights of all citizens were sown by the victory of Parliament over the
King, germinated and grown on in the War of Independence and
harvested in the War between the North and the South. Winnowing out
the chaff is still going on, both sides of the Atlantic.
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10.
11.
Recommended by 38 Readers
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SJohnson
Delaware
December 2nd,
2010
10:02 am
"Seeds of Albion" by David Hackett Fischer is the full account of the
origin of American sectionalism in the British isles.
Nancy
Corinth, KY
December 2nd,
2010
10:02 am
Well, let's not forget that during the constitutional convention, it was the
New England states (after all, they profited from cotton culture AND ran
the Molasses/slaves/armaments triangle) who blocked Virginia's effort to
ban the slave trade.
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Union or no, the South was a colony, and treated as such whether by
economic manipulation or cultural propaganda.
Nancy
Shady Grove Farm
Corinth, KY
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12.
13.
and you don't see the difference between valuing work in the north, while
the south admire prancing men on horseback?
Mark
Hartford
December 2nd,
2010
10:13 am
So in short the North was wrong to fault slavery. Hmm. So were we also
wrong to fault the Taliban for blowing up those giant cliff buddha's?
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syndicat
Westchester
County, NY
December 2nd,
2010
10:14 am
Robert Fischer
Dahlonega,
Georgia
December 2nd,
2010
10:14 am
Recommended by 19 Readers
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And did you really have to finish by referring to the cause of slavery as a
"struggle for independence"?
Recommended by 12 Readers
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Louis Philippe was in a unique position to make that comment about
"unappeasable jealousies.”
He escaped the French Revolution, lived in America for 4 years, returned
to France, became King, quit in 1848, escaped while disguised as "Mr.
Smith."
Recommend
15.
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B.WIlliiams
Iowa
December 2nd,
2010
10:02 am
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14.
Recommended by 16 Readers
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A wonderful insightful piece as to the origins of the Civil War. As a
transplanted Hawkeye ( a former classmate of Jim Cobb as well) and a
long time resident of the South , I continue to be amused and
disappointed how much bias toward "Yankees" is paid lip service by my
Southern colleagues and friends. The War did galvanize this bias and
myth of Southern exclusivity that continues to this day.
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/12/01/the-cultural-roots-of-disunion/[12/30/2010 5:34:12 PM]
The Cultural Roots of Disunion - NYTimes.com
Robert Fischer
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16.
Nick
Philadelphia
December 2nd,
2010
10:14 am
Recommended by 20 Readers
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The cavalier versus plebeian image is just a romanticized version of the
real conflict, between a resource based, practically feudal system and a
production-based capitalistic one.
In the South the source of wealth was property enshrined in privilege so
there was little chance of upward mobility while in the mercantile North
even outsiders could advance based on competence and creativity.
An independent South or a South-dominated USA would have become
yet another banana republic, an easy prey to the might of England and
other European industrialized powers.
Recommend
17.
Sam
Charlottesville
December 2nd,
2010
10:14 am
Steve Myers
Cincinnati, OH
December 2nd,
2010
10:14 am
Ben Dronsick
Delaplane, VA
December 2nd,
2010
10:15 am
cottonmouth
Bangkok
December 2nd,
2010
10:15 am
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Recommended by 32 Readers
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Very interesting. A fourth generation native New Yorker, I was raised and
educated in Virginia and can attest strongly to the relentless zeitgeist of
animosity between "North" and "South." But really, this world never
lacked for animosity. Regardless of how the struggle manifests (red vs.
blue, Cavalier vs. Yankee), can't this be pure and simple ethnocentrism?
In other words: pride.
Recommend
20.
Recommended by 11 Readers
Consider this difference: who were the Hawthornes, Melvilles, Emily
Dickinsons, Joseph henry, Josh Gibbses, etc. of the South? Where were
the scientists, engineers? Consider that Sherman's Michigan engineers
built bridges to cross the swamps. Cultures based on slavery are both
immoral & inefficient. (True of the ancient Greeks also.)
Recommend
19.
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Great article. UVA is still perpetuating myth of Cavalier through its
mascot. Institutionally, it has struggled to let go of the undercurrent of
ressentiment against Northern culture that comes along with this
"counter-myth".
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18.
Recommended by 31 Readers
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As many say the proof is in the pudding.
The "North", just as many of it's liberal colleagues in Europe, struggles to
even reproduce at a rate that will insure it's own survival. Truly an
indication of liberalism's own uncertainty as a valid resident of the
planet.
Meanwhile, those "lesser" bred Southerners continue to propagate. As a
measure of existence, liberalism comes with one great warning label "We don't believe in why we exist".
Recommend
21.
ed
New York
December 2nd,
2010
10:15 am
Recommended by 4 Readers
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"Indeed, a rather clueless proposal to feature the figure of a 'cavalier' on
the official seal of the Confederacy was derailed by concerns that it would
remind the slaveless two-thirds of the South’s free population that they
were fighting for an institution they could not enter."
The last part of that sentence reminds me of those conservative yeomen
of our day who consistently and adamantly vote against their own
interests. As John Stuart Mill declared, "Conservatives are not
necessarily stupid, but most stupid people are conservatives."
Recommend
22.
Iolanthe
Athens, GA
December 2nd,
2010
Recommended by 41 Readers
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Whatever "cultural" or heritage differences divided the North and the
South, it was SLAVERY that divided the sections and led to the Civil
War. Lincoln, while no abolitionist, was committed to preventing the
expansion of slavery into the territories. The slave South knew that
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/12/01/the-cultural-roots-of-disunion/[12/30/2010 5:34:12 PM]
The Cultural Roots of Disunion - NYTimes.com
10:15 am
eventually free states would ultimately outnumber slave states and that
would lead to abolition. The best exposition of how culture and the
question of slavery clashed in the antebellum era leading up to the Civil
War that I have read is "The Caning of Charles Sumner: Honor, Idealism
and the Origins of the Civil War" by Williamjames Hoffer.
Recommend
23.
Jack
Chicago
December 2nd,
2010
10:16 am
Mike Cagle
Bloomington
Indiana
December 2nd,
2010
10:16 am
Jenn
Montchauvet
December 2nd,
2010
10:16 am
Recommended by 41 Readers
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No question that the culture of the North, based on doing your own
work, was morally and culturally superior to that of the South, based on
enslaving others and making them do your work for you. It's not as
though one side wasn't in the right, and the other wrong. Sadly, the South
won the cultural "war" in the 150 years following. Now NASCAR,
religious fundamentalism, anti-intellectualism and redneckism have
infected the entire nation. Perhaps it would have been better to just let
the less-civilized South go.
Recommend
25.
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I imagine the people posting from northern states who write that not
much has changed--North and South in the last 150 years--do not spend
much time in the South or with those from it. Urbane, charming,
educated and hospitable,southerners have only shown me warmth and
kindness in my travels to places like Tennessee, Georgia, Kentucky and
South Carolina. I have many friends, white and black, from this part of
our country and I can say, in my experience at least, that nonsense like
throwing secession balls is a marginal distraction for the majority who
call the South their home. To write in 2010 that the North should have
freed the slaves and then forced the South from the Union is ignorant
and obtuse.
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24.
Recommended by 15 Readers
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If the south secedes, can we give it Fox news, the republican party, along
with Sarah Palin, Glen Beck, and Rush Limbourgh, the war in Iraq and
Afghanistan, and the NRA? There doesn't have to be a war. I'll gladly give
up the south if we can get rid of the dead weights sinking America into
the depths of a third world country.
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