ABSTRACT
Northern victory in the Civil War gave legitimacy to the northern interpretation of American nationalism, and the defeat of the Confederacy discredited those who claimed a separate nationhood for the South. It is far too simplistic to plainly assert that the South was not a nation because it was not successful. When Lincoln moved to suppress the southern insurrection after Fort Sumter the majority of the citizens of Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee and Arkansas rushed to the defence of their fellow southerners. A North Carolinian newspaper editor argued ‘blood is thicker than water’, as his state seceded from the Union.1 The South endured a bloody civil war for four years and hundreds of thousands of southerners died for their ‘nation’. One southern woman lost three sons in battle and yet she was still prepared to allow her fourth and only remaining son to serve the Confederate cause.2 For the historian to ignore this human sacrifice and to abruptly write off southern nationalism as ephemeral and superficial is to minimise the complexity of the past. As Drew Gilpin Faust has reminded us, when considering the idea
of a southern nation, ‘historians have fallen into the trap of using nationalism as a valuative rather than a descriptive concept’.3 We must seek an objective assessment of southern nationalism, one which moves beyond the military and institutional failure of the Confederacy and the uncomfortable pro-slavery connotations that accepting its legitimacy presents. Gary Gallagher has written that it ‘defies modern understanding’, that a society with a majority of non-slave-holding yeomen would fight with such energy for a cause ‘tainted by the institution of slavery. Yet the Confederate people did so.’4 Presented below are an evaluation of claims for a distinctly southern nation both before and during the Civil War and a brief discussion of the impact this had on the South and the US as a whole. It is to be argued that whilst the antebellum South represented a strong sectional identity it
was through the trials of war that this sectionalism grew into a Confederate nationalism. This nationalism, however, remained ultimately incomplete, not only because of the military defeat of the South but also because of its failure to effectively deal with the internal tensions of the region. There are two dominant definitions of nationalism in the modern
world. Ethnic nationalism, the like of which broke up Yugoslavia and the old Soviet Union, sees people define themselves by factors such as biological similarities, language, religion and culture. Civic nationalism, however, is based on a belief in common citizenship and allegiance to the institutions of government from which that citizenship emanates.5 For much of its existence the United States has embraced civic nationalism, although this was constructed around an ethnic core. Indeed, the lack of distinctiveness in terms of eighteenth-century Americans’ culture and language compared with their colonial masters in England is highlighted by Benedict Anderson when he refers to America as a ‘creole state … formed and led by people who shared a common language and common descent with those against whom they fought’.6 The American colonists shared a cultural heritage and language with their mother country and fought to preserve the rights of liberty which had their ideological roots in the European Enlightenment. Yet even during the colonial period some southern leaders spoke of a cultural difference between the North and the South. Certainly there is evidence of a strong myth that the antebellum
South had a significantly different cultural and racial identity from the North. This myth indulged in a romanticism which viewed upperclass southerners as English cavaliers who maintained the ideals of honour and dignity whilst glorifying the southern belle.7 A white ethnic nationalism was crafted from the belief that the southern elite were descended from the Norman conquerors while the northern Yankee traced his lineage back to the conquered Anglo-Saxons. Southern writers like William Simms and Nathaniel Tucker looked back to the revolutionary era as a time when deference, respect and hierarchy reigned. They too associated with the ideal of the southern Cavalier and looked with scorn towards the northern Yankee.8 Southern nationalists, like Review editor, James De Bow, emphasised the cultural distinctiveness of the South but also, somewhat self-consciously, called for the region to grow and develop in competition with the North.9 Indeed this comparison with the North is important as it was northerners who also contributed to the myth of a distinctly separate South. A growing northern identity was shaped in large part by a critique of the South. Representations of that region were not
always critical, however. Charles Willis viewed the southern planter elite as a ‘chivalrous blend of Old world charm and honour’. Many northern travellers conveyed an uncertainty about the materialism of the North and some saw the South as the region that more closely represented true American values.10
