January 13, 1861 (Sunday

Defiant

Talk given at Duke University by Stephanie McCurry on her book, Confederate Reckoning:  Power and the Politics in the Civil War South (Harvard University Press, 2010). 

"The founding of the Confederate States of America was a signal event in the history of the Western world.  What the secessionists set out to do was entirely new in the history of nations.  They wanted to build an explicitly pro-slavery and anti-democrat nation-state, dedicated to the proposition that all men were NOT created equal.

No other class of slave holders tried this.  In the age of nationalism, this kind of pro-slavery national independence movement had no peer.  Confederates were all caught up in the turbulent currents of history that roiled the Western hemisphere in the age of emancipation.  White Southerners acted out of confidence; these guys were flush with power and money.  They acted in complete defiance to the spirit of the age.

They believed they could launch this pro-slavery republic and sustain it, even if it came to war.  They were emboldened by the failure of emancipation in the Western world.  The confederacy was simply a gamble, a huge gamble on the future of slavery.  And with secession, white Southerners went all in.  It was a poker game...they put all their chips in."

                                      *************************

Another article depicting slavery as "advocating hell on earth."  There is a shocking anecdote about "breeding" between master/slave relationships.     Charles O'Conor, a pro-slavery New York Democrat, justified slavery as just, right and beneficent--he was taken to task in this article.  ("To advocate Hell upon Earth", Seven Score and Ten, January 12, 1861)