Jubal Early Explains the Causes of the Civil War During His Reconstruction Exile

Jubal Early, a Virginian, was an important leader in the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia during the Civil War, and a primary constructor of The Lost Cause Myth of the Confederacy. Modern students of the war are very familiar with his lionization of Robert E. Lee and his unremitting attacks on Confederate general James Longstreet, who he blamed for the defeat at Gettysburg. Fewer seem to have read Early’s The Inheritance of the South, written right after the war but published decades later. Inheritance was his defense of the Confederacy and its central institution, slavery.

Early was never a large slave owner, although he seems to have had an enslaved servant. He earned his own living as a West Point-graduated United States Army officer and later as a lawyer. When South Carolina and other Deep South states began the Secession Crisis in late 1860 and early 1861, Early opposed Virginia joining the new Confederacy. It was only when his state of Virginia tried to leave the Union that Early threw in his lot with the Confederacy.

Early had an initially successful career in the Confederate Army, entering as a colonel commanding a Virginia regiment. After Bull Run he was promoted to Brigadier General. He would eventually rise to command of the Army of the Valley and in 1864 he nearly reached Washington, D.C. during the Confederacy’s last invasion of the North. His army’s decline in the last quarter of 1864 and early in 1865 led Lee to remove him from command.

Unlike most Confederate military leaders, Jubal Early went into exile at the end of the Civil War, and he stayed there for years. In 1866 he explained that he was not going to return to the United States because; “If I was to set any foot [in the U.S. I would [be] arrested and consigned to a military prison.” [Found in Civil War Writing: New Perspectives in Iconic Texts essay by Kathryn Shively p. 147] Early was pardoned by President Andrew Johnson in 1869 and the former Confederate veteran returned to Virginia the same year.

By 1873, Early had sufficiently established himself as a leading defender of the Lost Cause narrative of the Civil War that he was elected to head the Southern Historical Society, a group led exclusively at this time by former Confederate military officers and civilian office-holders.

While Early’s writings that are best known today are his memoirs and articles on the war, while he was still in self-imposed exile Early wrote a book published after his death as the Heritage of the South. The book was edited by his niece Ruth Hairston Early and published in 1915, more than two decades after his death and nearly a half-century after it was written. In it, Early explains the cause of the Civil War.

I think it is worthwhile to explore the book both because of its frankness and because of Early’s role in the construction and propagation of the Lost Cause narrative of the Civil War. The link to the book is the Project Guttenberg version, but I used the Kindle format and cite to that version  in my recounting of the text below.

In her introduction to the volume, Ruth H. Early says that the book examines “the causes which led to the political issue of the ’60s.”  [p. 1] She explains that the “manuscript has lain unpublished during the passing of half a century, till passion having cooled and prejudice abated, there is no longer reason for clash from difference of feeling upon the subject.” [p. 1]

The first chapter of Jubal Early’s book on the causes of the Civil War is entitled “The African Slave Trade,” and every chapter thereafter is focused on slavery, the doctrine of White Supremacy, and the abolition of slavery. Early leaves no doubt about slavery and abolition being the cause of the war, and he wastes no time discussing modern Lost Cause issues like “tariffs” or taxation as the causes.

According to Early, Britain was responsible for the introduction of slavery into the American colonies in the 1600s, and it fostered slavery throughout the 17th and 18th centuries in the Western Hemisphere. Early claims that during this period “there was no sentiment in any Christian or unchristian country which regarded the reduction of the negroes of Africa to slavery as opposed to moral right or religious duty, or in any other light than as a blessing to the negroes themselves and a great benefit to their owners.” [p. 7] During the 1600s and early 1700s, Early accuses the British Royal Navy of “sedulously guarding English slave ships through the horrors of the “Middle Passage”.” [p. 30] While he blames Britain for bringing slavery to what became the United States, and he characterizes the “Middle Passage” as a region of horror, he describes slavery itself as benign for both the owner and the enslaved.

Early next turns to the period of the Revolution. American independence, he writes, was actually declared on July 2, 1776 and not on July 4th. Early makes this claim to diminish the importance of the Declaration of Independence. The July 2 vote on separating from the United Kingdom contained no language declaring that “all men are created equal.” The Declaration of Independence was merely a “manifesto” designed to win allies for the new country, and not a declaration of law. Therefore the assertion that all men are created equal had no relevance to the question of slavery. Early says:

“The intention of it was to assert the right of the people, on whose part the declaration was made, to equality under the law with all other British subjects, and to maintain their right to set up a new government for themselves, when the one under which they had been living had been perverted to their oppression. If it was intended to assert the absolute equality of all men, it was false in principle and in fact.” [p. 50]

Therefore, he wrote, criticism of the leaders of the South that “the assertion contained in the Declaration of Independence “That all men are created equal, etc.,” was entirely inconsistent with the continuation of slavery in any of the United States; and that the states which continued it were guilty of a great inconsistency” [p. 48-49] are unfounded because this was no assertion by the United States that slaves were equal, but instead a phrase “uttered under the enthusiasm and excitement of a struggle for the right of self-government,” for the white colonists making the rebellion. [p. 50]

In support of his contention of the supposed absurdity of a universal declaration of equality is Early’s question; “does any one believe, or will any one ever believe, that the native Congo, the Hottentot or the Australian negro, is the equal, mentally, physically and morally, of the Caucasian?” [pp. 50-51]

According to Early, the American Republic developed along economic and social lines that reinforced the continuance of slavery in the new country. He argued that “slaves bore such a proportion to the white population and the whole business of the country was so identified with their labor, that it was impossible to emancipate them, without entailing on both races evils far greater than those supposed to result from the existence of slavery itself. It was a practical question with which the statesmen of the country had to deal as practical men, and all they could do, was to allow the system to remain, as the best for all parties under the circumstances, without reverting to the dangerous experiment of the ideal schemes of a false philanthropy. [pp. 51-52]

Slavery was so important to the Southern states that they made sure that the Federal government take no steps to interfere with it. One example Early offers is the cession of its western territory by North Carolina to form the state of Tennessee. In placing this western land under Federal control, North Carolina stipulated “that no regulation made or to be made by Congress shall tend to the emancipation of slaves.” [p. 54]

Chapter IV of the book, titled “Causes Leading to Secession,” is devoted entirely to the issues of slavery and abolition. Early criticizes the Quakers for starting efforts to petition Congress to abolish the slave trade. So much anger was stirred up in Congress by these petitions that these were returned to the petitioners without going to members of the House and Senate because of their “incendiary and mischievous character.” [p. 64]

In 1834, Britain abolished slavery in her colonies. Early says, in the language of modern reparations arguments, “but she made no restitution of the hundreds of millions she derived from the profits of the inhuman traffic as she now styled it, and which had assisted in building up her marine, manufactures and commerce.” [p. 73]

Early alleges that “emissaries” from Britain came to America in the 1830s to begin the agitation for the Abolition of Slavery. He writes that:

“The preponderance of women in the New England States caused them to be selected as proselytes for the new crusade. There was also a class of men in that section, offshoots of the old persecuting theocracy who furnished recruits to the agitators. There were doubtless many who really believed slavery to be a great sin and wrong, who joined in the crusade from conscientious motives. Knaves there were in plentiful supply, gowned and ungowned, who were ready for anything which would tend to their personal advancement in position or their pecuniary profit. Out of these materials abolition societies were formed and petitions began to pour into Congress for the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia and other places within the Federal jurisdiction, while the mails were filled with incendiary publications calculated to stir up insurrections.” [p. 74]

At the same time, John Quincy Adams introduced anti-slavery sentiment into Congressional debates.  In the Northern states, Early complains, “The law for the recovery of fugitive slaves, always inefficient because of the refusal or failure of the states’ officers to enforce it, had now become a dead letter by the resistance to its execution by mobs and the still more mischievous action of several of the legislatures of the free states.” [p. 75] Apparently the idea of “states’ rights” did not apply to a state refusing to help kidnap Black people within its territory.

Early also had little regard for the First Amendment rights of newspapers to publish what they would. He wrote that among the crimes of the North was; “The circulation of incendiary publications through the mails had been forbidden by Congress, but the Northern press was prolific in the production of gross libels upon the character of the people of the Southern states and misrepresentations of the institution of slavery as it existed there…” [p. 75]

As with many Confederate partisans, Early said that the effort by Northerners to exclude slavery from the territories made it more difficult to end slavery. He never says how it would have ended slavery if its reach had been expanded. He also argued that efforts to confine slavery to the South were  “as injurious to the slaves themselves as to the white population of the states.” As with many other Confederates, Early equates anti-slavery activists with those who a century and a half earlier had resorted to the “hanging, burning and scourging of “heretics and witches.”” [p. 78]

The growth of the Underground Railroad was another Northern crime against the South. Early writes that:

“for many years slaves had been enticed by agents from the North to make their escape and aid had been furnished them while doing so, under a system which obtained the designation of “The underground railroad.” This was not confined to citizens merely but was participated in by state officers who were sworn to support the Constitution of the United States, and instead of compelling their citizens and officers to comply with the Constitution and law, many of the free states passed laws to make it a felony for the owner to arrest his slave or for any one to assist him.” [p. 81-82]

Rhetorical violence soon became deadly violence in Kansas, incited, Jubal Early declares, by Abolitionists on the pulpits of New England:

“The Puritan ministers of New England, successors of the Cotton-Mathers of religious persecution and witches-killing notoriety, abandoned the gospel of peace for dissertations upon the merits of Sharp’s rifles, and under their auspices a considerable number of armed emigrants were sent to Kansas. In consequence of this movement some hot heads from the South imprudently went to Kansas for the purpose of disputing the settlement of that territory with the emissaries of the New England parsons.” [p. 83]

Out of the agitation against slavery in Kansas, a new party was born. The Republicans ran their first candidate in 1856, John C. Fremont. “He was beaten,” Early writes,  “but his vote showed the existence of a formidable sectional party, in all of the free states, based on a solitary idea.” [p. 84] The next step was the plot to capture Harpers Ferry by John Brown. Brown’s mission was “raising a rebellion among the slaves and freeing them.” [p. 85]  Brown’s “plan of operations contemplated a servile insurrection in all of the Southern states with all of the horrors of blood and rapine, and his acts amounted to treason, not only against the state of Virginia, but against the United States; yet there was reason to suspect that some of the leaders of the Republican or free-soil party, were cognizant of his designs if they did not secretly favor them.” [p. 86]

Early offers a Bill of Particulars against the North as it was in 1858:

“the failure of the Northern states to comply with their plighted faith in regard to the restoration of fugitive slaves—to their interference with the institutions of those states, the persistent libels upon the Southern people, the encouragement given to the slaves to revolt by incendiary publications, the attitude of hostility assumed by a great number of the Northern representatives to the South on every occasion in which anything had been proposed or done in regard to slavery, and to the rapid growth of the party now coming into the ascendency on the ground of enmity to the South and her institutions…” [pp. 86-87]

The North, according to Early, moved after Brown’s raid to support “The Republican free-soil or abolition party.” [p. 89] Lincoln’s victory in the 1860 election meant that; “if the party electing him continued in possession of the government for any length of time, there would inevitably follow a subversion of the rights of the states and a consolidation of all power in the Federal government under the control of a sectional majority, not a majority of the whole.” [p. 92] Accordingly, South Carolina seceded and soon other “Cotton States,” as Early called them, did as well and they met to set up the Confederacy.

The next chapter of the book looks at events in what Early calls “The Border Slave States.” [p. 94] These states, including Virginia, North Carolina, Arkansas, and Tennessee, had not joined the first call for secession. In fact, Early was a delegate to Virginia’s secession convention and he voted against leaving the Union. Virginia was resistant to secession until Lincoln issued a call for 75,000 troops after the Confederate attack on Fort Sumter.

While Early clearly believed that the conjoined issues of slavery and abolition were the causes of the secession crisis after the election of Lincoln, he focuses his discussion of the start of actual armed conflict on the decision to fire on Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor in April of 1861. Early makes a personal admission:

“I must confess that, at the time, I deeply deplored and condemned the attack on Fort Sumter, on the score of policy, because I regarded the threat of the Washington Government as designed to provoke a commencement of the conflict by the firing of the first shot, and not intended really to be carried into effect.” [p. 110]

After the war ended with 700,000 dead, Early’s mind was changed and he wrote that; “There can be no question of the right of the Confederate Government to force a surrender of the fort, which had been refused, and that it was fully warranted in pursuing the course it did.”  [p. 110] In fact, he wrote, the Confederacy had not even begun the shooting war, “war had already been resolved upon, and the firing of the first gun on Fort Sumter was not its commencement. The war was begun by the attempt to hold the forts in the Confederate harbors.” [p. 110]

In his final pages, Early says that “The people of the South had never asked the government to protect slavery; they had merely asked that it should be let alone, and left where the Constitution left it.” [p. 110] New slave states had been created from the claimed territory of the existing slave states, he says “the states ceding the territory had expressly stipulated that there should be no interference with slavery.” [p. 119]

The mild defense of slavery described by Early was met, according to his account, with Northern and British;

“libels upon the society of the Southern states and false views of slavery as established there. Such works in both countries were evidently written by persons with prejudiced minds or who knew little practically of slavery as it existed in the South. Such was the intolerance of the public sentiment which had been fostered in both countries upon the subject, that no candid and impartial account of the workings of domestic slavery as it existed in the Southern states would be received with the slightest favor, whilst the exaggerated accounts of cruelty practiced by the slave-owners, and consequent sufferings of the slaves were eagerly accepted as the truth.” [p. 121]

Early particularly denounces Uncle Tom’s Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe which he decries as;

“containing misrepresentations of slavery and slanders upon Southern society. Drawing upon a fertile imagination and pandering to the prejudices of the uninformed, she published the book, which had a great run in Europe as well as America, and was translated into almost all of the continental languages. The incidents contained in the book were either erroneous in point of fact or greatly exaggerated, but the book itself was still more untrue as a picture of Southern society and slavery, and would have been a misrepresentation if every fact contained in it had been true in isolated cases.” [p. 121-122]

He complains that another book by an Englishwoman,  Amelia Matilda Murray, on the benefits of enslavement to Blacks was not given the same attention in the North or England as Uncle Tom’s Cabin.  Enslavement for the slave, Early claims, resulted in “a vast improvement in his condition…” [p. 125] The primary evidence for the goodness of slavery, the former Confederate says, is “the rapid multiplication of the slaves by natural increase.” [p. 126] Slavery, he says, improved the African; “In his native land he has never reached the dignity of a civilized being, and he has never been civilized until transplanted into slavery.” [p. 127]

Blacks are not entitled to honor for their accomplishments after emancipation, the general writes, “Whatever of eminence any individual of the race has attained, is due directly or indirectly to the civilizing influence of the institution of slavery. It was the master of slaves who accomplished the greatest missionary success and the progress of his ward since is due to the training and influence of the past. “[p. 128]

After the war ended, Early writes, Southern whites saw “their country was overrun by a superior military force, their state governments overthrown; military despotisms established over them; and in the effort to reconstruct the Union, the great mass of the people disfranchised, and the right of suffrage given to the freed slaves, because it was alleged that the Southern people were still rebellious, and so wedded to the idea of secession, notwithstanding the bitter experience of the war, that they could not be trusted with the right to vote…”[p. 107-108] Of course, “the Southern people,” as such were never disenfranchised. Some former Confederates who took up arms against the United States were disenfranchised, as were some political leaders of the rebellion. But most were soon able to vote. On the other hand, Black men who had never been able to vote in Southern history, were accorded the legal right to vote for the first time.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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