Former Confederate General John B. Gordon “reached out” to Black voters during the 1868 campaign to assure them that he and other whites had opposed the freedom of Blacks because they had bought and paid for them when they were slaves! Gordon had risen to prominence in the Confederate Army in the second half of the Civil War. He became a leader in the reasserting of white control in the South after Appomattox and was often described as a leader of the Reconstruction Era Ku Klux Klan. In 1868 he was running for Governor of Georgia.
While Gordon’s speech contains extremely racist language and ideas, it also reflects a recognition by white Democrats in the South that unless they could pull off a small portion of African American voters, the Republicans would enjoy a permanent electoral majority in both South Carolina, where Gordon spoke, and in Mississippi. A report on the same speech by the Charleston Daily News, published on Sep 12, 1868, leads me to believe that most of those listening to Gordon were white Democrats. There were African Americans present as well, and their negative reaction to Gordon led to their chastisement by another speaker, Judge Campbell.
The fact that Gordon warns of a race war that might result in the extermination of African Americans in the United States is an indication of the extremism of white conservative thought at the time. I have seen frequent references to the extermination or extinction of African Americans in speeches and articles by white Southerners during the post-war period.
Daily Phoenix
Wednesday, Sep 23, 1868
Columbia, SC
Vol: 4
Page: 2
Skipping to the last paragraph of Gordon’s speech:
The Charleston Daily News recounts Judge Campbell’s rebuke of the African Americans in the audience:
Charleston Daily News
Saturday, Sep 12, 1868
Charleston, SC
Vol: 6
Page: 2
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Great Post! Are you able to provide links to the newspaper articles?
Unfortunately they are behind a paywall.
John b Gordon is far from races , everything he said is truth. You folk are ignorant of truth , he’s not saying it was ok , he was just being truthful.if the tables were turned and the blacks were slave owners guess how we would be treated . You can lie to yourself all you want . If they were born into slave ownership like a lot of the men who fought in civil war were , they would’ve been 100 times worse than white folk, and you know it . He’s not saying it was right , he’s just telling the facts but y’all are to immature to read something like that an plainly see he’s just making a factual statement , not justifying , just stating .would you rather he lie? Every person that has walked this earth has been racist at times therefore making you a racist . You folk are winer, cry baby’s .We are different than them and all races are different from one another . There’s a great barrier between all races, God made it that way because of the sin of men , and yes , blessed is the man that can overcome the barrier but all the races are different and just because a man makes a factual statement doesn’t make him a racist. You really got to toughen up some . All this racist crap is a bunch of crap.
Not sure why you said all you said when “I am a lowbrow racist” would have taken less words. Hell, I am surprised you can see well enough through your pointy hood to even type. Oh, and close your mouth when you breathe. It’s just gross.
Alright, enough of this sort of conduct!
There is space enough for robust debate on this page; there is absolute NO SPACE for what has been posted above!
No one on here has any obligation to ‘like’ anyone else: All have the obligation to abstain from aggressive conduct.
This is beneath all historians, regardless of who they are.
Alright, enough of this sort of conduct!
There is space enough for robust debate on this page; there is absolute NO SPACE for what has been posted above!
No one on here has any obligation to ‘like’ anyone else: All have the obligation to abstain from aggressive conduct.
This is beneath all historians, regardless of who they are.
Can you explain how “If they were born into slave ownership like a lot of the men who fought in civil war were , they would’ve been 100 times worse than white folk, and you know it .” [where your “they” clearly refers to Black folk] is _not_ an expression of racism? You are saying that Black people would have been 100 times worse than white people as slaveowners. Why do you say that? How is that _not_ a racist comment. It certainly is such on its face, whether you intend it or not.
BTW, the kind of racism that existed among white Americans toward Black at the time of the Civil War, including the idea there was an unbreachable barrier between the races, was a relatively new thing, having its origins in the need to reconcile Enlightenment ideas like universal rights such as equality of all men – you might recall that in the American Declaration of Independence – with the benefits of a slavery that had, largely for reasons of convenience, centred on Africans as slaves. Through most of the history before that, people did not see even see ‘races’ as we understand them. People in Africa today, for instance, do not generally see themselves as “Black” but as Nigerian, or Swazi, Sudanese or Ethiopians and outsiders did the same, distinguishing them rather than lumping them in together. It was only when white slave owners saw the need to justify owning human beings as if they were animals in a ‘land of liberty’ that they had to come up with the kind of racial barrier you claim had been made by God. Well, up until a few hundred years ago, to the extent God had aught to do with it, God was perfectly happy that there be no barriers. And people, judging by how freely they intermarried/interbred wherever different peoples came into contact, did not see the barriers you claim are real. I also have to point out that ante-bellum white slave owners (and their sons, brothers, etc) were often quite happy to engage in sex with their Black slaves, as the large portion of America’s Black population who are a mix of white and Black (thanks to that rape of slaves) attests.
However one might characterize your views (and I address only your views), they are based on a false history of race, slavery and America and are contrary to science.
Ok, you’re obviously very passionate about your views.
I can respect that. But I will invite you to have a chat with me about some of the content you expressed.
The idea that ‘race’ as a notion was ‘invented’ during the 1500s to 1600s is not correct. We know for a fact that peoples’ understood the concept well and truly prior to that.
The examples are vast; Ghengis Khan provides one example with his legacy. The English King Henry II, Pope Hadrian II, King John show indisputably that by the mid and late 12th century the English distinctly viewed the Irish as a separate race; the Vikings and Beothuks in Newfoundland very much saw each other as races.
And in the early 1800s in convict New South Wales, Black Caesar, (a Black Caribbean convict who had emigrated to England and was transported to Australia for crimes), and the Gadigal People’s of the Eora Nation Tribe, (such as Pemulwuy), saw themselves as VERY much belonging to distinct races, despite their common skin pigmentation.
The idea of race as a concept being invented with the rise of the slave trade is not correct.
God bless you brother for making a straight honest truth statement yourself , The Lord will be here soon and make all this wicked bunch his footstool , we’ll see who has the last say so ,most folk don’t have a clue what truth is if it’s lookin them straight in the eye , Jesus is Lord to the Glory of God
Fuck you. I will piss on your grave. You bitch
Are you kin to Robert E Lee?
Alright, enough of this sort of conduct!
There is space enough for robust debate on this page; there is absolute NO SPACE for what has been posted above!
No one on here has any obligation to ‘like’ anyone else: All have the obligation to abstain from aggressive conduct.
This is beneath all historians, regardless of who they are.
Rebel General Gordon: the Fox News of 1868.
Having read Gordon’s often charming Reminiscences of the Civil War (I have an original edition), this Yankee considered him one of his favorite Rebel generals. But after the War, he was certainly a stinker.
Alright, enough of this sort of conduct!
There is space enough for robust debate on this page; there is absolute NO SPACE for what has been posted above!
No one on here has any obligation to ‘like’ anyone else: All have the obligation to abstain from aggressive conduct.
This is beneath all historians, regardless of who they are.
What a FANTASTIC source of info!!!
Thank you for posting this. Invaluable!
Please keep the superb scholarship coming.
Thanks. As long as I have readers like Hugh I will keep it up.
Legend!
https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/search/pages/results/?state=&date1=1868&date2=1868&proxtext=%22you+might+have+been+born+free%22&x=10&y=20&dateFilterType=yearRange&rows=20&searchType=basic
Lincoln wanted to pay the slaveowners money for their slaves in return for not seceeding from the north but secession was the aim og the south. It is interesting that only 4.5% of the southern population actually owned a slave.
The reality, from census data, was that something like one in three white southerners was from a slave-owning family. Women and children, even adult children early in their careers, would not have owned slaves, but would have benefited from the labour of the family patriarch’s slaves. In addition, slaves might be rented out to folk who could not (yet!) afford to own their own slaves. Ambitious whites could look to slavery as a means to build their fortune once they’d earned enough to buy one or more. In these ways, many more southern whites benefitted from slavery even though they themselves owned no slaves. All in all, your statistic is so misleading as to the interests of white southerners as to provide no insight into the importance of slavery to white southerners, very much including rebel soldiers.
BTW, James McPherson did a study of soldiers’ letters. Among the rebel soldiers’ letters, a minority mentioned anything to do with slavery. Among those that did mention it, there was not one that said anything negative about slavery. Fits with the conclusion that support in rebel armies for slavery was near universal.
Now, while you make some good points about how the total number of slaves in the South divided by the total number of White people is not the most accurate insight into the aspect of slavery there (I once read that a far more accurate idea of actual slave ownership is yo think of ‘families’ that owned slaves), may I ask you some questions?
Given the rest of your views, tell me about your views of the near-clinched 1862 Confederate Emancipation Treaty between the Confederacy, France and Great Britain.
Genealogy shows that this horrid man is my 5th Great Grandfather, Knowing my grandmother was his daughter created by rape is sickening.
Thanks for sharing. He left much sorrow.