Fleming Chapter II

NONE OF THE Men of the Thirties became exiles in any irrevocable sense until the year 1834. For all of them that became the year of decision, and in every instance the crisis came over the issue of abolitionism. As a rule the decision was but the climax of a succession of lesser defections from the Southern way, but it sometimes came as a sudden and apocalyptic conversion. The basic impulse and inspiration common to all the exiles was religious, and from Charleston to the remote frontier they all came under the powerful influence of one extraordinary missionary of the Great Revival—Theodore Dwight Weld....

Editorial Note

THIS COLLECTION ABIDES by simple editorial practices. We have taken care to leave the words of C. Vann Woodward as close to the original as possible. We have corrected minor spelling errors when it is clear what he intended to say and are likely the result of poor typing. Woodward’s punctuation is often idiosyncratic and we have left the errors in place. We have chosen not to correct matters of style such as his choice to capitalize Northern and Southern or use foreign spelling. Underlined words have been converted to italics. We have left off the accent mark of the surname Grimké given that Woodward’s editor at Louisiana State University Press chided him for this lapse and he was aware of it. Woodward relied heavily on quoted material. Occasionally he made noticeable spelling and punctuation errors, as well as errors in transcription, in his use of quotations from primary and secondary sources. We have corrected these mistakes when we were able to ascertain their accuracy. We cannot guarantee the accuracy of every quotation, however....

The Problem of Failure in American History

C. Vann Woodward’s lecture compares two commemorations of the Civil War fifty years apart, one in 1911 and the other in 1961. The first one reflected sectional reunification predicated on a shared understanding of the tragic nature of war but also a sense that the conflict had solved the problem of sectional animosity. In so doing Woodward notes that whites in the North and South could only accomplish this by excluding meaningful African-American participation. The lecture then outlines the cycles of Reconstruction historiography, and looks at the dual psychological traumas the North and South experienced in the aftermath of Reconstruction. Woodward maintains that after the North emerged victorious from the war it failed to live up to its ideals, leaving wracked guilt, self-criticism, and remorse. The South emerged with a predilection for extortion, indignation, and extreme bellicosity, consistently blaming its own weaknesses on Reconstruction. Woodward suggests that historians should act as therapists, enabling the nation to come to terms with the psychological traumas triggered by the past.

The Conservatism of Northern Radicals

In this lecture Woodward reviews the weaknesses of the current historiography on Reconstruction as well as examines the internal political debates within the Republican Party during Congressional Reconstruction. He highlights three looming issues: what would the process of Reconstruction look like, who should govern the country, and what rights would be extended to the freedpeople. The third issue proved to be the most vexing because the party relied on northern voters who believed in white supremacy. Woodward found little evidence to support the claim that the Republican Party was united in purpose. In fact, he highlights the ways in which the bulk of the party failed to fully commit to the Civil Rights Act (1866) and the Fourteenth Amendment. He admires the vision of Charles Sumner and Thaddeus Stevens but regrets they were ignored by the moderate Republicans.

The Paradox of Loyalty

Woodward begins by examining northerners’ obsession with the question of southern loyalty in the wake of Confederate defeat. But, as he observed, the verdict was unclear in part because no knew what post-Confederate southern loyalty looked like. Some northern journalists who toured the South offered one assessment. U.S. Senator and former Union General Carl Schurz offered a different interpretation. Woodward argues that Presidential Reconstruction made little headway not only because of President Andrew Johnson’s intransigence and leniency toward former Confederates, but also because loyalty to church, tradition, and locality precipitated a crisis amongst white southerners. One could not be both loyal to the nation and loyal to the region. In claiming allegiance to the union, white southerners had to affirm they were both “anti-Confederate” and “anti-Southern.” The penalty for not doing so was social ostracism by the community. Woodward concludes this lecture by acknowledging the defeated South’s inability to convince the North of its loyalty to the Union.

Introduction

This introduction provides a background of C. Vann Woodward and his career, as well as an overview of his lectures on the history of white antebellum southern nonconformists, the immediate consequences of emancipation, and the history of Reconstruction in the years prior to the Compromise of 1877. The Fleming Lectures at Louisiana State University document the alienation of white southerners who challenged the proslavery orthodoxy of their friends and families and ultimately fled to the North seeking a more tolerable climate. The Messenger Lectures at Cornell University and the Storrs Lectures at Yale University Law School highlight Woodward's interpretation of Reconstruction. In addition to these lectures, Woodward spent more than a decade intermittently researching and thinking about writing a history of Reconstruction meant to be the equal of Origins of the New South (1951). This collection reveals Woodward’s intellectual process as he grappled with and ultimately failed to attain his goals.

Did The North Really Mean It?

This lecture details southern interest in northern elections. Woodward argues that white southerners viewed this as the litmus test to judge Northern commitment to racial equality. The bulk of northern states voted against black suffrage thus prompting charges of hypocrisy. After Ulysses S. Grant assumed the office of the presidency in 1869, Republicans began debating whether to pass a constitutional amendment supporting black suffrage. Moderates and conservatives, however, ultimately shaped the Fifteenth Amendment’s wording leading some to conclude that the North’s commitment to racial equality was tepid at best. Northern apathy encouraged white southern defiance which manifested itself in terrorism and violence. Woodward concludes that white northerners never fully committed to Reconstruction, Charles Sumner notwithstanding, and thus cautions scholars and activists not to look to it as inspiration for the modern Civil Rights Movement or what he called the Second Reconstruction.

Radicalism for Southern Conservatives

In this lecture Woodward explores the South’s response to the Military Reconstruction Act (1867). Some southern conservative leaders flirted with the idea of courting African American voters. Though it gained many adherents the plan was short-lived, in large measure because freedpeople asserted their rights to organize, staged demonstrations for integrated schools, and protested racial discrimination on street cars, among other actions. The freedpeople were fully invested in the political process, participating in constitutional conventions, casting votes, and holding office. Woodward then turns to voting patterns in the 1872 election in order to determine the social and economic background of the white southern Republican base. According to Woodward one of the most important things that united white southern Republicans was their animosity toward the former planter class.

The Way of the Exile

In this lecture Woodward examines the consequences of self-exile for two generations of southern dissenters. While in exile, they continued to think and speak of themselves as Southerners. They were preoccupied with Southern problems; they wrote largely for a Southern audience; and they could only realize their vision in the South. Ironically, their books and pamphlets were outlawed and systematically suppressed in the region. As outcasts, the exiles found acceptance only among abolitionist cliques, who were often at war with themselves. Physical separation from their families was the least of their troubles. Ideological alienation proved to be far more painful. In leaving the South, these dissenters forfeited their positions, connections, and relationships. They were never able to reconcile their choice to leave with their lingering loyalty to the region.

The Men of the Fifties

This lecture looks at a second generation of exiles that left the South in the 1850s. Unlike the dissenters of the 1830s, who were influenced by the evangelical impulses of the Second Great Awakening, these exiles were motivated by sectional politics. Heightened tension over the expansion of slavery westward, the constitutionality of personal liberty laws, and the fate of fugitive slaves hardened divisions between the North and the South. Woodward argued in this lecture that abolitionism was no longer primarily a missionary movement to save the souls of slave owners from sin by bringing salvation through repentance. Hatred of the sin of slaveholding was transferred to hatred of the enslavers and their region. The dissenters of the Fifties exemplified this shift. Their outspoken condemnation of institutionalized slavery drew fire from their compatriots, forcing them to leave the region. With the notable exception of Moncure Daniel Conway, these dissenters typically came from more modest means rather than from the southern elite. These exiles included Hinton Rowan Helper, Benjamin Sherwood Hedrick, Daniel Reaves Goodloe, and John Gregg Fee.