4. Contests of intellectual authority

‘Contests of intellectual authority’ examines the clash of ideas and ideologies that shaped America in the years leading up to the Civil War through the end of the nineteenth century. It opens with two historical events of 1859 that altered the course of American thought: John Brown’s raid on Harpers Ferry and the publication of Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species. The moral challenges raised by race-based slavery and evolutionary theory shaped American notions of freedom, divine providence, and human responsibility. While the Civil War ultimately resolved a political and legal dispute, it did not resolve larger intellectual, religious, and moral ones. These contests of moral authority and the range of human responses to human problems are on full display in late nineteenth-century American life.

The Maryland CampaignCarnage and Emancipation

The September 1862 Maryland Campaign resulted in three highly significant events: the largest surrender of Union soldiers in the war, at Harpers Ferry on September 15; the bloodiest single day of the war, on September 17 at Antietam; and the Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation, issued by President Abraham Lincoln on September 22. Logistics played a prominent role in the conduct of the campaign, limiting the speed of the Union advance across Maryland and causing massive straggling in the Confederate Army from logistical failures. The ferocity of the Battle of Antietam and its massive carnage shocked soldiers of previous campaigns, and the operations of the two armies and resulting fighting dislocated civilians and caused significant damage to property. Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation changed the war from one to preserve the Union to also include the destruction of slavery. Despite the carnage of the campaign, it strengthened rather than diminished the determination of both North and South to continue the war.

“To Call on All the Blacks”

Chapter 3 closely examines the experiences of the Shenandoah Valley’s African Americans during the Civil War’s first year. Initially, enslaved people believed that Union general Robert Patterson’s army, which entered the northern Shenandoah Valley in the late spring of 1861, might liberate them. However, as this chapter shows, the Valley’s enslaved learned that Patterson enforced Union policy at the conflict’s outset, which precluded Union soldiers from aiding enslaved people flee enslavers. Despite Patterson seizing freedom seekers and either returning them to enslavers or locking them up in the jail in Martinsburg, those who desired freedom remained undaunted. Freedom seekers hoped that offering something of value to Patterson, either labor or services as spies, might soften Patterson’s position, but it did not. Additionally, this chapter examines the efforts of some soldiers in Patterson’s army to defy his orders and aid freedom seekers. Finally, this chapter highlights the reaction of the Valley’s enslaved population to passage of the First Confiscation Act and the stories of enslaved people who fled to Harpers Ferry in late 1861 and early 1862, seeking refuge with Patterson’s replacement in the Shenandoah Valley, General Nathaniel P. Banks.

The Invention of Terrorism in Nineteenth Century Europe, Russia, and the United States

This chapter examines the emergence of terrorism. It argues that five men invented terrorist tactics in a transnational learning process between 1858 and 1866 in Europe, the United States, and Russia. After a systematic reflection on terrorism’s sociopolitical logic and its preconditions, the chapter analyzes Felice Orsini’s attempt to assassinate Napoleon III and the media reactions. This case is interpreted as the beginning of the invention of terrorism. News of Orsini’s deed traveled to America and had inspired John Brown, who changed his tactics from guerilla war to terrorism when he planned his raid on Harpers Ferry. Oskar Wilhelm Becker, John Wilkes Booth, and Dmitrii Vladimirovich Karakozov were the three most significant imitators of both Orsini’s and Brown’s deeds. They finalized the tactic by universalizing it politically and developing the claim of responsibility (Bekennerschreiben). With these developments the terrorist tactic as we know it today was fully developed.

Heroes and Cowards

This chapter explores how ideas about honor and shame shaped how Civil War era Americans understood surrender. Robert Anderson was celebrated as a hero for his honorable surrender at Fort Sumter. By contrast, Union surrenders at San Antonio, San Augustin Springs, and Harpers Ferry, and Confederate surrenders at Fort Donelson and Fort Jackson, were seen as dishonorable.