Frederick Buechner writes in The Clown in the Belfry, “How can anybody writing a novel or a story know for sure where it will lead and just how and with what effect it will end or even if it is a story worth telling?”[1]
I had exactly these questions as I researched and decided to write about Iowa Confederates. For me, it all started after I intensively studied the Grinnell Station of the Underground Railroad. Inexplicably, I stumbled over Confederates from Iowa. I wondered whether my research would challenge the conventional wisdom that all Iowans proudly served the Union.
My guiding principle comes from the Hebrew Prophet Isaiah: “Come now, and let us reason together.”[2] And so, I try to understand, but not defend, Iowa Confederates. I do not harbor romantic notions about the Confederacy. Instead, I echo the words of biographer Clare Mulley, author of the outstanding biography, The Women who Flew for Hitler. She describes:
The sense you sometimes have of shaking hands – or joining a conversation – across history. Reading diaries and letters, or even less intimate material, can bring moments of profound empathy and a frequent sense of meeting of minds, but also the sudden shock of finding inexplicable prejudice, or worse …
Decisions and actions were rarely as clear-cut at the time as seventy years’ distance might sometimes suggest, and reaching the many truths of any life, whether factual, moral, or emotional, requires empathy as well as inquiry, criticism as well as care.[3]
Historians, I discovered, have a set of criteria for determining the value of research such as mine. For example, an Iowa historian said that Confederates from Iowa was an interesting topic but, he asked, “Are they historically significant?” The answer, he seemed to imply, was no.
A different historian countered by saying that every hero needs an antagonist. In a way, the dramatic impact of a hero’s fight – his or her blood, sweat, and tears – increases in intensity when there is a strong, worthy opponent.
If we readers (who enjoy good stories) pause to reflect, we know this is true. Historians know it, too.
A Current Item of Contention
Today, just writing about the history of the Confederacy automatically stirs up emotions and perspectives on current debates over Confederate monuments and flags. The historical evidence clearly links the Confederate cause to slavery. (Much of the evidence resides in contemporary proclamations, editorials, and private correspondence.)
Historians can be quite helpful during these times. Their job is to examine past events, movements, and individuals in the context of their own time, identifying contradiction and complexity, wrong-doing and virtue, and even the sheer cussedness that we humans sometimes display. Many historians strive to dispassionately understand and interpret the past to a wider audience.
A Wider Lens
It can also be helpful to consider the widespread pre-Civil War mindset of White Americans, North and South. Take Iowa as an example. Historians agree that before and during the Civil War, belief in White superiority was widespread. People like Rev. Josiah Bushnell Grinnell were an exception. Grinnell was an abolitionist who believed that all people are made in the image of God; that all people are valuable and deserve respect; and that all people deserve equal rights.
The complexity increases when one considers the fact that the Civil War – originally fought to put down rebellion and restore the Union – became a war to end slavery. When President Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation, he thereafter waged the war in spite of the racist attitudes and beliefs of so many Northerners (both soldiers and civilians).
The war, of course, led many Union troops to despise slavery, especially when those troops had brushed shoulders with escaped slaves. The same soldiers saw glimpses of the humanity of African-Americans.
When other Union soldiers observed African Americans risking their lives in battle, these White soldiers had to reckon with the valor, the manhood, and the sacrifice of African-American men.
A Better Future
After Iowa veterans returned home, they and their Republican legislators became a political force that in 1868 amended the state constitution, giving African-American men the right to vote. Iowa was the first state in the nation to do so. President (and former Union general) Ulysses S. Grant applauded, calling Iowa the “Bright, Radical Star.”[4]
History, when told most accurately and at its best, is messy and complex. At times, all of our lives are, too.
Hindsight suggests the value in studying the people who influenced our lives – even as far back as the Civil War. And that is a story worth telling.
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[1] Buechner, Frederick, The Clown in the Belfry: Writings on Faith and Fiction (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1992), 13.
[2] Isaiah 1: 18, King James Version.
[3] Mulley, Clare, The Women who Flew for Hitler: A True Story of Soaring Ambition and Searing Rivalry (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2017), ix.
[4] Dykstra, Robert R., Bright Radical Star: Black Freedom and White Supremacy on the Hawkeye Frontier (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1993), 227-229.
Bernie Cyrus
6 Aug 2020Well once again the issue of slavery is twisted to the cause of war. To some southern states it was a reason for secession, but not most . More important is the issue of war. Neither side mentioned slavery in their Official War Declarations so how can you say the war was about slavery? You really want to know why there was a war? It was the longstanding tariff on Southern goods tha Lincoln himself said he would collect regardless of secession. Furthermore, he had a more personal reason and that was his property in Council Bluffs (which he bought in 1859.) Iowa. Confederates in Iowa? Well, maybe the reason many Iowans knew him better than most. You see before he was elected the planning for federally funded Transcontinental Railroad under the auspices of Sec. of War Jefferson Davis was to be built in the South. Northern Railroad Barons had other plans and Lincoln was their ticket. So they cheated to get him nominated and when he was elected they moved it to the northern route with Thomas Durant ( stole millions) who was Linxolns biggest client who made sure good ole honest Abe’s worthless property became the first Terminal. It was a Railroad War! Slavery was the cover up and freedom of the slaves was an unintended consequence of.
It War A Railroad War! , Preserving The Union Pacific my new book out very soon!
David Connon
6 Aug 2020Hi, Bernie Cyrus. Thank you for reading my blog post. I must say I disagree with much of your premise; it seems clear that slavery was a drumbeat of contention that grew louder and louder until it finally led to secession and war.
Dick Pohorsky
6 Aug 2020Hi Dave – a well written piece. Historians must be dispassionate and follow the facts. Every man, and in some cases woman, had THEIR reason for serving. In history, rarely does white and black exist, rather there are innumerable shades of gray. The strongest point, in my opinion, is that we judge by CONTEMPORARY standards. Humanity evolves.
David Connon
6 Aug 2020Hi, Dick. Thank you for your kind comment and for weighing in. I agree: historians must follow the facts.
historicalnovelsrus
6 Aug 2020As a fellow author on the Civil War, I applaud your piece. There were, of course, many causes of the Civil War. Any serious historian who reads the speeches, letters, and proceedings of Alexander Stephens, Jefferson Davis, and the state conventions concerning secession cannot doubt that protection of slavery was a leading cause. There were the issues of tariffs, state’s rights and the reach of federal government, the legality of sanctuary cities for slaves, and other economic issues. Almost everyone’s consciousness of the slavery issue became progressively more prominent as 1860 approached, and throughout the war. Lincoln’s views evolved over time, though his paramount priority was to preserve the Union, at all costs. In the Lincoln-Douglas debates, when backed into a corner, he admitted he didn’t think black people were the equal of whites. Champions like Frederick Douglass and Alexander Augusta endeavored to change his mind, and by the time of his assassination, his views were different. Elizabeth Keckley chronicles some of that evolution. The uncomfortable truth is that racism was as widespread in the north as in the south, and that the north had financial interests in perpetuating slavery – to the extent that the mayor of NYC wanted to secede. The Illinois black codes, the resentment against the flood of African Americans moving into the big cities of the north, even the much more recent fights over busing in Boston all attest to racism not being a regional problem.
As an author, I constantly encounter people with little knowledge of what actually happened, or even of what slavery was really like. I read and researched over two hundred slave diaries for my book. I caused a stir on my blog when I called attention to a letter from an escaped slave to his former owner, after the war, in response to the Southern woman’s entreaty to him to return. People denounced the post, saying it couldn’t possibly have been written by the African American, since “slaves didn’t know how to read and write”. – Harriet Jacobs and Frederick Douglass notwithstanding (along with thousands of other literate African Americans of the period). People want to ignore the free African Americans living in the South, or the African American slave owner in Carolina who owned over one hundred of his fellow blacks. In response to this ignorance, I started a feature every Wednesday for two years on black history.
My main character in my book was a real person, William Dorsey Crump. I wrote a scholarly article on him for the Texas Historical Society. Crump was originally from Kentucky, a Confederate soldier under John Hunt Morgan, and eventually a founder of Shallowater and Lubbock, Texas. Kentucky was fascinating as a border state, divided in a microcosm of the way the country was divided. Families and neighbors were on opposite sides – and not for all the same reasons. McPherson’s excellent treatise on why men fought in the Civil War should be part of every college US history course. https://www.amazon.com/Cause-Comrades-Why-Fought-Civil/dp/0195124995 Often unknown or discounted is the Confederate Conscription Act, which forced the continued participation of many Confederate soldiers beyond their desire to fight. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confederate_Conscription_Acts_1862%E2%80%931864
It is important to write about both the Union and the Confederate sides, and tell the truth as near as we can divine it from 159 years distant. It has never been more important than now to understand what drove people to the Civil War, which killed nearly twenty percent of adult white males, lest we fall down that slippery slope and find ourselves repeating history, and for some of the same reasons.
David Connon
6 Aug 2020Thank you for your thoughtful comments. James M. McPherson’s For Cause and Comrades: Why Men Fought in the Civil War, has informed my thinking over the years. I agree with your words, “It is important to write about both the Union and the Confederate sides, and tell the truth as near as we can divine it from 159 years distant.”