Choosing sides

When discussing the American Civil War, the one question that inevitably gets asked is, "What side would you choose?"
I was asked a similar question recently by a spectator at a Civil War reenactment. The young woman was writing a graduate paper for her master's degree and she was interviewing reenactors to get some of her information.
I was dressed in my Confederate chaplain's uniform when she approached me and began asking questions. Near the end of the interview, she asked, "Why did you choose the Confederate side? Is it because they were the underdog?"
I considered my answer for a long moment.
Frankly, it is a question I have pondered and asked of myself many times before while studying the Civil War, and the most honest answer I could come up with was just plain, old "I don't know."
I explained to the woman that my decision to portray a Southern soldier had much to do with my ancestry. Much of my kin from that time period resided in Texas, Virginia, Kentucky and North Carolina.
I also have gained an appreciation over the years for the points of view of and the causes fought for by the common, average Southerner of the time.
For the majority of Confederate soldiers, the war was not about defending or preserving the vile and debauched institution that is slavery; although that was a collective purpose of the Confederate government and its army.
For a few wealthy aristocrats and plantation owners, the war certainly was about keeping what belonged to them, including and especially their slaves. But not for the common foot soldier, who more often than not was a simple, poor farmer afraid of losing his land--often the only thing of value he had, not to mention his family's livelihood--either to an army of invading Yankees or a mob horde of free-roaming slaves on the rampage.
Sure, there were propagandists in the South spreading lies, rumors and exaggerations about the average Yankee, as well as fear about inevitable slave uprisings, but the same could be said about the North, and the influence of the abolitionist movement on popular opinion.
A noteworthy example is the cover-up of John Brown's Kansas raid in the spring of 1856. Many antislavery societies covered up the truth about the Pottowatomie Massacre that occurred May 24-25, 1856. Violent abolitionist John Brown went on an overnight murderous spree through Franklin County, Kansas, killing in cold blood five unarmed pro-Southern settlers in supposed retribution for a pro-slavery sack of the abolitionist community of Lawrence, Kansas, just days earlier. But abolitionist propaganda back east reported that Brown had acted in self-defense, and that his killing of the pro-slavery men was, therefore, a just, righteous and defensible act. This was nowhere near the truth, of course, but it is an example of the kind of propaganda that Northerners were subjected to by antislavery hardliners.
Long before the firing of Fort Sumter, the secession of South Carolina, the election of Abraham Lincoln, and even Harper's Ferry, there was a prevailing Northern opinion of Southerners that they typically resembled slave master Simon Legree from "Uncle Tom's Cabin."
To the educated and uneducated alike in the North, the wealthy plantation owner personified the South; and as far as many Northerners were concerned, the South was filled with them.
The truth is that only about three or four percent of the white population in the South at the time owned even a single slave. And less than five percent of those who did own slaves owned more than one.
So, of all the tens of thousands of African slaves residing in the Antebellum South, a mere fraction of the white population owned them. The rest of the South was made up predominantly of poor white farmers, who unfortunately bought into the propaganda of secessionist firebrands that the North was meaning to come down and lead a slave revolt, and then seize the land. They believed their small tracts of dirt were threatened to be bought out from under them or taken over by force by zealous, money-grubbing Yankees. They also feared a large, angry slave uprising that threatened their lives, as well as a vast, blue army marching through the South, across their fields, and burning everything in sight; all in an effort to subjugate the South and force it to do the North's will.
Thusly, why so many poor white farmers turned out in droves to serve their state militias and the Confederate Army.
And the fact is, a great many Northern soldiers turned out in service to their state militias, too. Service to one's state at the time was a greater calling than service to one's country. Most people never ventured beyond the county of their birth, so their communities were literally filled with family and friends. The state in which they lived meant more to them than just political borders and boundaries; a state represented a person's home, one which contained everything important to that person.
So, a large part of my decision to join the Confederate ranks had to do with understanding the point of view of my Southern ancestors.
I'm also sympathetic to the states' rights argument, because the period banner really referred to individual rights more than state government rights. This is evidenced by the language of the Tenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, which says, "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people." The people, in other words, were commensurate with the states.
Former U.S. Senator and statesman John C. Calhoun of South Carolina insisted that the federal government recognize southerners' rights to private property, which is guaranteed in both the Fourth and Fifth Amendments to the Constitution. He and others rallying around the states' rights banner insisted that federal efforts to ban slavery in the new territories west of the Mississippi River were unconstitutional, because they were deliberate attempts to prevent southern slaveowners from expanding and settling in the new west with their property. Such federal restrictions, then, violated the constitutional rights of southern slaveholders and, ultimately, discriminated against the South, in general.
But, where things went sour for the South, in my opinion, was basing a states' rights argument on protecting the morally depraved institution of slavery.
And that is where I part ways with the South, too.
I can confidently serve as a Confederate, knowing that I fight for my home, my piece of ground, my loved ones, pride in my state, and for my Constitutional property rights, because that is what most Confederate soldiers fought for.
They weren't fighting individually to preserve slavery. In fact, most commoners were either indifferent to the institution or else resented it.
Having said all of this, I cannot say with certainty that I would have fought for the South had I lived back in the time of the Civil War.
In all likelihood, I would have; but I also have ancestors who traveled with the Lincolns from Kentucky to Illinois. And some of them wore blue.
I think if I had been alive during the 1850s or 60s and living in Illinois, I would have most assuredly sided with the Union. Why? Mostly because my state was part of the Union, and my family lived there.
I would have been fighting for much the same reasons that the common, average Southerner was fighting for; just on opposite sides of the Mason-Dixon Line.
When I think about the question of "which side," I honestly have to give two different answers. The first, what side would I choose now, with 20/20 hindsight? And the second, what side would I have chosen had I lived back then?
Well, I've already answered the latter, which would have depended on where I was born and raised at the time.
As far as the former, my honest answer is both.
Had slavery been the reason why individual Southerners chose to take up arms against other American brethren, then I could not in good conscience side with the Confederacy today. I am an abolitionist at heart; but not necessarily a Yankee.
Knowing what I do about the Civil War, I am as proud to call myself a Confederate as I am to call myself a Unionist.