Review/Rebuttal thread for William C. Davis.

[buflineks]

This thread will review and allow rebuttal of the book, Look Away! A History of the Confederate States of America. By William C. Davis. (Free press. 2002)

Now in order to do this let's set down some ground rules.

1) you must cite the pg #. That will make it easy for everyone to follow and look up any assertion.

2) If you are going to cite another source please do it conviently (It doesn't have to be MLA format, but that would surely help.

3) We aren't talking about any other book here.

4) realize that sometimes paperback and hardback do not follow the same pg # system. I personally have the Hardback, if something I cite isn't where it is in a paperback, I will make every effort to give further aid in finding something, I would hope you would do the same.

5) No ad hominum attacks against the author. (i.e. He's not a Friend of the South. He may live in the south, but he's a yankee. etc)


Okay.

Let's begin.

My next post will be on Chap 1. (however, I would not find it disdainfull if someone has something right off hand in another chapter they would want to discuss.)

[buflineks]

Too many remembered that only ten years before, when South Carolina's Rhett was dicovered trying to conspire with Mississippi's Governor Jahn A. Quitman to promote secession in both states, each resorted to lying in the resultant furor over someone from one other state interfering in the internal affairs of another, and Quitman abandoned his effers altogether. "We might possibly be supported by the public judgment" Crawford lamented "now, I fear the peope would be disgusted we should be disgraced."[8]

pg 22.


[8] Crawford to Alexander H. Stephens, Arpril 8, 1861, Alexander H. Stephens Papers, LC.

*LC =Library of congress

Rather chilling to know that South Carolina had been working for TEN years to suceed from the union. So I guess it would be safe to say that "the election of Lincoln" wasn't the cause for that.

[buflineks]

The candidate of the Northern wing of the Democratic Party, Stephen A. Doulas, had provide the issue with his doctrine of "popular sovereignty" declaring that the people in a newly formed territory could decide for themselves whether to embrace or excludde slavery prior to forming their constitution and applying for state-hood. Southern pro-slave men argued that the questio could only be settled at the actual time of achieving statehood. The difference was crucial. If settlers- of "squatters," as the condescending Southern elite called them- could prohibit slavery prior to statehood, then slaveowners could not move to the territory and bring their slaves with them, virtually guaranteeing that it would become a future free state. Only if the decision were made at achieving statehood would slave proponents have the opportunity to settle the territory and have the opportunity to settle the territory and have their voice heard in deciding the issue, and perhaps bring another slave state into the Union. At stake was a balance of power in the Senate in Washington, the only place the South could hope to protect itself as Northern population rapidly outstripped that of the South, placing the House of Representatives increasingly in the hands of free state men.

pg 23.

Now this brings up the issue of "States Right". neo-confederates say that it was all about "States Right", and yet, they were fearful of "Free States". They were fearfull of "popular soveignty".

Now is this perception by Davis wrong?

[buflineks]

As the election fall approached, some attempted to reconttitute the old Democratci Party in statel like Georgia, yet even they, men like Henry Clevland in Augusta, feared it to no point. Worse, he expected that in the wake of the election of the Republican nominee Abraham Lincoln, a clas between state militia and United States Troops would be inevitable that winter as seceding states tried to reclaim property at Federal forts and arsenals within their borders [10]

The likelihood of such a clas became even greater with the formation of local defense associations. In October a number of distinguished South Carolinians including former fovernor Jame Adams, Maxcy Gregg, Lnagdon Cheves, and other organzed themselves "with a view to the defense of the rights of the south, " as on put it.


pg 24.

[10]James E. Suanders to his wife, June 5, 1860, James E. Saunders Papers, Confederate States of America Records, CAH, UT.
*CAH, UT = Center for American History, Universtiy of Texas, Austin.


So this is occuring in June. Months before the election. Already, South Carolina is forming "defense associations". Arming themselves for percieved conflict with Federal Troops.
Now doesn't this sort of make you question the whole, "The south was just protecting itself from those damn yankee warmongers" assertion?

Why would they be arming in June, PRIVATE militias? Could it be that because they had finally found an "excuse" after 10 years for suceeding and starting an armed conflict?