Confederate Apologists and the Straw Man

Jefferson Davis defended slavery because it “elevated [African slaves] from brutal savages into docile, intelligent, and civilized agricultural laborers” and he explained the Southern States decision to secede from the Union to insure the continuation of “the labor of African slaves”... “under the supervision of a superior race” which was “indispensable” to the “wants of civilized man.”


Recent letter writers to the Albany (Georgia) Herald, unable to dispute the facts in my commentary on the Confederacy- yes, there really were 462,198 slaves in Georgia out of a population of just over one million in the 1860 census; and over four million total in the Southern States- have resorted to debating a “straw man.” In rhetoric, a “straw man” argument means that the debater, unable to defeat the argument actually made by his opponent, will construct a man out of straw, an argument never made by the opponent, pretend that his opponent made that argument, then attempt to defeat it.

I never argued that slavery would have existed through 2007 if the Civil War had not occurred. I never argued that slave ship owners and captains were solely spawned by the Southern States. I never argued that many Southerners did not own slaves. My dispute is with those who, remarkably enough, want Southerners to study and celebrate the Confederacy and honor those who waged war against the United States, but do so without ever mentioning slavery and all that it entailed. Yes, there were slave ship captains and owners from the north. But here is the key difference: in the Northern States, you will look in vain for statues raised to honor them, holidays scheduled to celebrate them, or apologists who argue that they were noble men acting in a noble cause. The Northern slave ship owners and captains were despicable human beings, profiting from the misery and deaths of slaves. They deserve no honor, no statues, no holidays celebrating the “bicentennial” of their birth. They should be remembered as scoundrels and cowards, and their history should be studied in the same way we would study the dregs of humanity.

Calvin E. Johnson’s guest editorial about “American Hero” Jefferson Davis--“the unfaltering upholder of constitutional liberty” (as opposed to the kind of liberty where human beings were no longer bought, sold, owned, whipped, and raped by their masters?)--in hundreds of words, never once mentioned the words “slave” or “slavery.” Mr. Johnson edifies us with the information that Jefferson Davis’s “family” adopted “an abused black child” in 1864. Fine and good. Mr. Johnson did not mention that Jefferson Davis defended the institution of slavery and expressly stated that it was the basis for the Civil War in his speech in Montgomery, Alabama, on April 29, 1861. Here is a portion of his speech:

“Gentlemen of the Congress: It is my pleasing duty to announce to you that the Constitution framed for the establishment of a permanent Government for the Confederate States has been ratified by conventions in each of those States to which it was referred...

In the meantime, under the mild and genial climate of the Southern States and the increasing care and attention for the well-being and comfort of the laboring class, dictated alike by interest and humanity, the African slaves had augmented in number from about 600,000, at the date of the adoption of the constitutional compact, to upward of 4,000,000. In moral and social condition they had been elevated from brutal savages into docile, intelligent, and civilized agricultural laborers, and supplied not only with bodily comforts but with careful religious instruction. Under the supervision of a superior race their labor had been so directed as not only to allow a gradual and marked amelioration of their own condition, but to convert hundreds of thousands of square miles of wilderness into cultivated lands covered with a prosperous people; towns and cities had sprung into existence, and had rapidly increased in wealth and population under the social system of the South; the white population of the Southern slaveholding States had augmented form about 1,250,000 at the date of the adoption of the Constitution to more than 8,500,000 in 1860; and the productions of the South in cotton, rice, sugar, and tobacco, for the full development and continuance of which the labor of African slaves was and is indispensable, had swollen to an amount which formed nearly three-fourths of the exports of the whole United States and had become absolutely necessary to the wants of civilized man. With interests of such overwhelming magnitude imperiled, the people of the Southern States were driven by the conduct of the North to the adoption of some course of action to avert the danger with which they were openly menaced.”

There you have it. Jefferson Davis defended slavery because it “elevated [African slaves] from brutal savages into docile, intelligent, and civilized agricultural laborers” and he explained the Southern States' decision to secede from the Union to insure the continuation of “the labor of African slaves”... “under the supervision of a superior race” which was “indispensable” to the “wants of civilized man.” Whoever chooses to honor Jefferson Davis and fondly remember the Confederacy needs to address those words and explain why that was a cause worth celebrating.