Prophecies

Focusing on Edmund Ruffin, this chapter interprets the prophecies of secessionists. During a national craze for John Brown relics after the Harpers Ferry raid, Edmund Ruffin circulated Brown’s pikes to each southern legislature or governor to promote southern nationalism and secession. This chapter inverts memory studies to interpret how antebellum novels by Ruffin, John B. Jones, and Beverley Tucker forecasted civil war and elevated white supremacy. The prophetic imagination of secessionists like Ruffin empowered masters at the expense of women, yeomen, and slaves. By identifying themselves as conservative prophets rebelling against modern transgressions of timeless laws, southern nationalists adopted a historical consciousness that predicted a looming revolution to restore order and harmony. Their prophecies imagined bloodshed and destruction that exceeded the actual war and echoed earlier revolutions, particularly the American, French, and Haitian.

France’s Grand Design and the Confederacy

The words of Rouher expressed about the French expedition in Mexico as being la Grande pensée du règne (the Grand thought of the Reign) be related not only about Napoléon III’s project cherished for this country. They also expressed the opportunity to raise a dike against the expansionism of the United States that France was afraid since a long time. In this context, in 1861, the weakening of the Union and the birth of CSA sounded as though to serve the French interests in Mexico. In such a case it seemed obvious that to make sure of the success of this intention France had to confirm the division of the United States by recognizing the Confederacy. But this reasoning was going to find some limits in the nature of the Southern nationalism.