I once found a great excerpt about how horrified Northern soldiers were by the brutality of the South and how they were more than happy to raze the entire place. I can't find it now.

Does anyone have any books or documents they can recommend?

  • Redbolshevik2 [he/him]
    ·
    2 years ago

    To be clear: I'm well aware the North was and is a bastion of white supremacy, etc. etc.

    The fact that even they were horrified by slavery shows what irredeemable scum the (white) Southerners were.

    • invalidusernamelol [he/him]
      ·
      2 years ago

      There's a collection of articles and letters written by Marx and Engels on the Civil War that's really good at analyzing the conflict called the Civil War in the United States that gets really into the composition of the Union and the latent class character of the war.

      One of the most interesting things it gets into is the resistance that existed within the South against the Slavocracy. Specifically in regions where slavery wasn't the primary mode of production (see Appalachia and the larger urban centers).

      There's also good bits from the worker organizations within the Union and their internationalist views.

      The overall conclusion from Marx and Engels is that the war was absolutely about slavery, but within that greater conflict of abolition, there was another conflict between the workers and the new capitalist class over how the country would be organized after the end of the slave based mode of production.

      At the same time you also get a big look at the resistance of British workers to their government taking the side of the Confederacy to shore up the profits of the textile industries. How the employment crisis in that industry was used by the industrial capitalists within Britain to try and convince the workers to support slavery within America. Something that British workers vocally and directly resisted.

      libcom link

      • Redbolshevik2 [he/him]
        ·
        2 years ago

        I don't think this is exactly what I'm looking for, but sounds fantastic nonetheless.

        • invalidusernamelol [he/him]
          ·
          2 years ago

          It's a very good read, and it highly sourced meaning you can follow those sources to find something closer to what you're looking for.

          These articles and letters were focused on the bigger picture, but there are dozens of speeches and declarations from internationalist working class organizations that are referenced. Many of them containing more personal language about the war and the overall aims of the working class seeking to abolish the institution of slavery as well as the institution of wage labor.

          These organizations tended to provide the largest amounts of troops to the Unionist movement and we're in direct opposition to the Unionist leadership (something that was so poor that Engels was worried they'd just scuttle the war due to negligence and incompetence). In the end it was these groups that secured a victory against slavery.

    • Vncredleader
      ·
      2 years ago

      Keep in mind many had no experience with black people let alone slaves/former slaves. The North was a bastion of white supremacy, but these guys were no longer in the north, the farther they drifted the more radical they became.

      "Although the war has not been waged against slavery, yet the army acts immediately as an emancipating crusade. To proclaim the crusade is unnecessary, and it would even be inexpedient, because it would deprive us of the needful and legitimate support of the friends of the Union who are not opposed to slavery but who prefer Union without slavery to disunion with slavery"

      -secretary of state Seward

      You can find case after case. Benjamin Butler has a famous one, most diaries contain that change, etc. I don't think I can find that excerpt because the sentiment is so widespread

      • Redbolshevik2 [he/him]
        ·
        2 years ago

        Benjamin Butler! Of course. The Dollop episode on him was incredible; I'm sure he's got plenty of quotes.

        • Vncredleader
          ·
          2 years ago

          Honestly not too many

          Though I did find this letter he sent

          Since I wrote my last dispatch the question in regard to slave property is becoming one of very serious magnitude. The inhabitants of Virginia are using their negroes in the batteries, and are preparing to send the women and children South. The escapes from them are very numerous, and a squad has come in this morning to my pickets bringing their women and children. Of course these cannot be dealt with upon the Theory on which I designed to treat the services of able bodied men and women who might come within my lines and of which I gave you a detailed account in my last dispatch. I am in the utmost doubt what to do with this species of property. Up to this time I have had come within my lines men and women with their children–entire families–each family belonging to the same owner. I have therefore determined to employ, as I can do very profitably, the able-bodied persons in the party, issuing proper food for the support of all, and charging against their services the expense of care and sustenance of the non- laborers, keeping a strict and accurate account as well of the services as of the expenditure having the worth of the services and the cost of the expenditure determined by a board of Survey hereafter to be detailed. I know of no other manner in which to dispose of this subject and the questions connected therewith. As a matter of property to the insurgents it will be of very great moment, the number that I now have amounting as I am informed to what in good times would be of the value of sixty thousand dollars. Twelve of these negroes I am informed have escaped from the erection of the batteries on Sewall’s point which this morning fired upon my expedition as it passed by out of range. As a means of offence therefore in the enemy’s hands these negroes when able bodied are of the last importance. Without them the batteries could not have been erected at least for many weeks As a military question it would seem to be a measure of necessity to deprive their masters of their services How can this be done? As a political question and a question of humanity can I receive the services of a Father and a Mother and not take the children _ Of the humanitarian aspect I have no doubt.__ Of the political one I have no right to judge. I therefore submit all this to your better judgement, and as these questions have a political aspect, I have ventured–and I trust I am not wrong in so doing–to duplicate the parts of my dispatch relating to this subject and forward them to the Secretary of War.

          Also my boy David Hunter said this

          "The three States of Georgia, Florida and South Carolina, comprising the military department of the south, having deliberately declared themselves no longer under the protection of the United States of America, and having taken up arms against the said United States, it becomes a military necessity to declare them under martial law. This was accordingly done on the 25th day of April, 1862. Slavery and martial law in a free country are altogether incompatible; the persons in these three States — Georgia, Florida, and South Carolina— heretofore held as slaves, are therefore declared forever free."

          https://www.nps.gov/fopu/learn/historyculture/david-hunter.htm#:~:text=David%20Hunter%20(1802%2D1886),the%20assassination%20of%20Abraham%20Lincoln.

          And when Jefferson Davis himself wrote a letter to him and put a bounty on his head he responded thusly

          “You say you are fighting for liberty. Yes you are fighting for liberty: liberty to keep four millions of your fellow-beings in ignorance and degradation;-liberty to separate parents and children, husband and wife, brother and sister;- liberty to steal the products of their labor, exacted with many a cruel lash and bitter tear…This is the kind of liberty-the liberty to do wrong- which Satan, Chief of the fallen Angels, was contending for when he was cast into Hell.”

          Border-state slaveholder and representative of Kentucky Wicklife wrote demanding a response to his arming of freedmen, Hunter did a fucking mic-drop

          I reply that no regiment of "Fugitive Slaves" has been, or is being organized in this Department. There is, however, a fine regiment of persons whose late masters are "Fugitive Rebels"--men who everywhere fly before the appearance of the National Flag, leaving their servants behind them to shift as best they can for themselves. . . . So far, indeed, are the loyal persons composing this regiment from seeking to avoid the presence of their late owners, that they are now, one and all, working with remarkable industry to place themselves in a position to go in full and effective pursuit of their fugacious and traitorous proprietors. . . . the instructions given to Brig. Gen. T. W. Sherman by the Hon. Simon Cameron, late Secretary of War, and turned over to me by succession for my guidance,--do distinctly authorize me to employ all loyal persons offering their services in defence of the Union and for the suppression of this Rebellion in any manner I might see fit. . . . In conclusion I would say it is my hope,--there appearing no possibility of other reinforcements owing to the exigencies of the Campaign in the Peninsula,--to have organized by the end of next Fall, and to be able to present to the Government, from forty eight to fifty thousand of these hardy and devoted soldiers."

          Like the balls on this man, absolute legend

          There is also Fremont who was made candidate of the Radical Democracy Party, enlisted by Fredrich Douglas, Tubman, and Wendell Philips to run against Lincoln from the left, though they did merge into Lincoln's National Union ticket. Fremont had been removed from his post during the war for passing an edict emancipating slaves in Missouri despite it being in the Union, he put it under martial law and tried to free everyone, or threatened to do so.

          All persons who shall be taken with arms in their hands within these lines shall be tried by court-martial, and, if found guilty, will be shot. The property, real and personal, of all persons in the State of Missouri who shall take up arms against the United States, and who shall be directly proven to have taken active part with their enemies in the field, is declared to be confiscated to the public use; and their slaves, if any they have, are hereby declared free.

          There is also the whole chain of small islets off the coast of the country which escaped slaves fled to and set up camps in, which the navy began supporting even when they couldn't afford to, essentially finding themselves unable to bring themselves to cut them off or leave them defenseless even though they where breaching the stance of the rest of the military. The Contraband Camps

          https://academic.oup.com/kentucky-scholarship-online/book/29210/chapter-abstract/242726497?redirectedFrom=fulltext

          One of my faves Du Pont (yes brother of THOSE Du Ponts) is a good example

          On the eve of the American Civil War, the du Pont family thought the abolition of slavery should come through legislation rather than warfare. This opinion changed in the war’s early months when Commodore Samuel Francis Du Pont (1803-1865), then commanding the U.S. Navy’s South Atlantic Blockading Squadron, saw slavery firsthand in South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida. He wrote home about the terrible living conditions enslaved people endured, heard stories of abuse and torture by masters and overseers, and witnessed evidence of slaveowners executing slaves rather than see them escape or be freed by the U.S. Navy or Army. All of this mortified Samuel Francis Du Pont, writing to his friend William Whetten that “I have seen nothing that has disgusted me more than the wretched physical wants of these people.” His personal views shifted to outright abolitionism as he continued writing home about the horrors of slavery.

          Du Pont got screwed over by Lincoln for not doing the impossible but I wont get into my opinions on naval strategy and the unfair dismissal of the guy

          https://www.google.com/books/edition/Lincoln_and_His_Admirals/cnq4UO9YD5IC?hl=en&gbpv=1&bsq=%20contraband

          • Vncredleader
            ·
            2 years ago

            https://archive.org/details/lincolnhisadmira00symo/page/159/mode/2up?q=contraband+

            John B. Marchand ventured up the Stono River, ten miles south of Charleston. After steaming upriver for half a dozen miles in the Unadilla (the first of the ninety-day gunboats that Welles had author- ized the year before), Marchand was returning toward the open sea when the sound of screams from the riverbank drew the attention of every man on board. Marchand saw "a stampede of slaves on the cotton and corn fields to the south of the river." They were running flat out as if in fear for their lives. "One Negro woman we saw hurrying down to the water's edge with eight little children," Marchand wrote in his jour- nal, "one of them sucking her breast, another she had on her shoulder, two others were holding only her scanty dress, and the other four little ones, at top of speed and almost naked, flocked around and materially impeded her progress." Behind them was a small body of Confederate cavalry "charging at full speed among the flying slaves." Marchand watched in horror as "the cavalry fired their pistols on all sides amongst the Negroes." At once he ordered his gunboats to open fire. With the explosion of the first shell, the rebel horsemen "went scampering in every direction," a sight which Marchand found extremely gratifying. While the cavalry fled, the group of slaves, mostly women and children, some seventy or eighty in number, all crowded down to the bank of the river. Obviously, Marchand could not leave them there, so he dropped anchor and sent boats to bring them on board.

            From them, Marchand learned that the appearance of his gunboats in the river the day before had convinced the local planters to move their slaves to the interior. The master had promised them they could stay in their homes, but when the men had finished their work, the cavalry had suddenly appeared and driven them off the island and onto the mainland. Aware of this, and unwilling to be next, the women and children had left their cabins and hidden in the nearby woods. The cavalrymen found them and chased them to the river. The refugees told Marchand they did not want to go inland to be put back to work on the fields. Clearly, however, they could not stay aboard the warships. To Marchand, the solution was self-evident: "I must colonize them." He landed them at a secure location where they could be protected from rebel cavalry by intervening swamps and by the gunboats, and over the next week several hundred more refugees joined them. Marchand vis- ited his colony regularly, dropping off supplies and checking to see how

            the colonists were doing. Sympathetic as he was to their plight, Mar- chand was not free of the race prejudice that was nearly universal in the nineteenth century. When he stopped to look in on them a week later, he noted in his journal, "They were a happy set of darkies enjoying themselves in doing nothing."

            Similar colonies sprang up all along the Atlantic coast. At Port Royal, Du Pont established a colony on North Edisto Island, where be- tween seven hundred and nine hundred displaced blacks were settled under the navy's protection in the first week of occupation. A month later there were more than fourteen hundred.6 Though the Fugitive Slave Law was still technically in effect, Benjamin Butler had devised a clever legal construction to circumvent it. The year before when a few escaped slaves had shown up at Fort Monroe, Butler had refused to re- turn them to their master because the rebels had used them to work on military entrenchments, drive wagons, and do other jobs that sup- ported the illegal rebellion. Butler explained that this made them, in ef- fect, "contraband of war," just like captured military equipment. Such a construction allowed Butler to refuse to send them back to their mas- ters without overtly challenging the principle of slave property, and soon the escaped slaves were routinely being called "contrabands."*

            At Port Royal, Du Pont established a colony on North Edisto Island, where be- tween seven hundred and nine hundred displaced blacks were settled under the navy's protection in the first week of occupation. A month later there were more than fourteen hundred.6 Though the Fugitive Slave Law was still technically in effect, Benjamin Butler had devised a clever legal construction to circumvent it. The year before when a few escaped slaves had shown up at Fort Monroe, Butler had refused to re- turn them to their master because the rebels had used them to work on military entrenchments, drive wagons, and do other jobs that sup- ported the illegal rebellion. Butler explained that this made them, in ef- fect, "contraband of war," just like captured military equipment. Such a construction allowed Butler to refuse to send them back to their mas- ters without overtly challenging the principle of slave property, and soon the escaped slaves were routinely being called "contrabands."*

            As Du Pont's squadron labored with mixed success to make the blockade impermeable, the constantly expanding contraband colonies along the coast exacerbated the problem of supply. At New Bern and Roanoke Island in North Carolina, as well as at Port Royal and all along the barrier islands of South Carolina and Georgia, thousands of former slaves settled into their makeshift camps. Du Pont had his hands full just managing his large force — grown now to thirty-eight warships — without worrying about how to organize, police, supply, and defend the crowded contraband camps. In order to allow the con- trabands to defend themselves from rebel raids, he authorized the issu- ing of some old flintlock muskets to the men in the camps. This was well ahead of anything being considered in Washington. Major General Ormsby Mitchel, who replaced Hunter in command of the Department of the South in September, suggested settling the contra-bands permanently into cooperative plantations on the offshore is- lands.* To protect them, he suggested "the formation of black regi- ments" that could occupy the coastal forts when white regiments moved inland. He argued that "if the black population should prove it- self able to occupy hold and defend, the territory given into its charge by the Government, then shall we then have indeed reached the solu- tion of the great problem; and the question 'what shall be done with the liberated Slaves?' will have been satisfactorily answered."18 Indeed. But would the country accept such an answer?

            Hopefully all of these excerpts show the mix of sympathy, paternalistic racism, brigandry, and genuine heroism all on display

              • Vncredleader
                ·
                2 years ago

                No problem. Its a subject I really enjoy sharing info on