Dr. Hunter McGuire's defense of the Cause
Hunter Holmes McGuire was born on October 11, 1835 in Winchester, Virginia in the Shenandoah Valley.
He suffered a cerebral embolism that left him speechless on March 19, 1900. He died before 10 am on September 19, 1900.
Hunter Holmes McGuire was a surgeon on the staffs of Stonewall Jackson, Richard Ewell, and Jubal Early in the American Civil War, or as Hunter would have insisted on calling it, "The War Between the States".
SCHOOL HISTORIES IN THE SOUTH. The entire South is interested alike in the history of each Southern State. Comrades and Daughters of the Confederacy in some sections are more zealous than in others, while advantages are varied, To Virginia special credit is due in this cause. The Sons of Confederate Veterans inaugurated a rigid investigation, and the Veterans responded promptly and earnestly. So have the Daughters of the Confederacy, of course.
At the recent reunion of Virginia Veterans at Pulaski City Dr. Hunter McGuire read the annual report of the Grand Camp Confederate Veterans, and, while it was to the Virginians, it is quite as appropriate to all Southerners. It so merits the sincere concern of us all that much 6f it is herein published. Dr. McGuire, Chairman of the Committee, read the report to a large assembly, comprising all delegations to the Grand Camp and a multitude of friends. The report was enthusiastically adopted without a dissenting voice:
The work assigned to your History Committee has been done according to our ability. The various histories and geographies authorized to be used in the schools of the State were assigned to the various members for examination. At a called meeting the different reports were read, discussed, and are herewith submitted. They are marked by ability and conscientious work, and should have a place in your transactions. The list is as follows:
Freye's Elements of Geography; Freye's Complete Geography-Col. John J. Williams.
Cooper, Estill & Lemon's "Our Country"-Rev. S. Taylor Martin.
Fiske's History of the United States-Rev. B. A. Tucker and Capt. Carter R. Bishop.
Lee's Primary History of the United States-R. S. B. Smith.
Lee's Brief History of the United States-Capt. M. W. Hazlewood.
Lee's Advanced History of the United States-Dr. R. A.. Brock.
Jones's School History of the United States-Hon. James Mann.
Montgomery's Beginners' American History-T. H. Edwards.
Judson's Young American (civics)-W. H. Hurkamp.
Morris's Advanced History of the United States- Col. John H. Hume.
Myer's General History-M. W. Hazlewood.
In preparing the committee report I have felt at liberty to use any or all of the individual papers. The committee appointed by the general citizens' and soldiers' meeting, held in Richmond, October 17, 1897, made a second report confirming and explaining the report of 1898. That also is herewith submitted. One member of that committee, Mr. John P. McGuire, made a special report on the whole subject which has been incorporated in this paper.
It was supposed some eighteen months ago that the History Committee of the Grand Camp of Virginia, successful in the efforts of that period, had finished its labors and had no further cause for action or reason for existence. We imagined that books, hostile to the truth and dishonoring to the dead and living of the South, had been driven from our State, and that with them would go opinions derived from them and of like effect, and therefore debasing to those who held them.
The actual situation is such that we consider it wise to begin, this report with a brief description of our position at home and of the forces arrayed against us. It should serve to guide and concentrate our own action. It ought to secure the vigorous cooperation of all the Confederate camps in the South.
We were in error in supposing our work done. We are not altogether rid of false teachings, whatever may be said of the purposes of our teachers. Because of newly aroused thought, the opinions alluded to are less prevalent than they were; but they are still heard from young men who, during the last thirty years, have been misled as to the characteristics of our people and the causes of the "war between the sections," from some who, "looking to the future," as they phrase it, foolishly ignore the lessons of the past, and from others who, thinking themselves impoverished by the war and being greedy of gain, have neither thought nor care for anything nobler. There are a few 'older men who think that the abandonment of all the principles and convictions of the past is necessary to prove their loyalty to the present. There are some who dare to tell us that "the old days are gone by and are not to be remembered;" that "it is a weakness to recall them with tender emotions." To these we reply: "Put off the shoes from off your feet, for the place whereon you stand is holy ground." Young or old, these men are few, but they are ours, and their children inherit their errors.
Those not already aware of it will be surprised to learn that there are teachers in the South-high in position but, as we think, very ignorant of our history- who accept the Northern theory that "slavery was the cause of the war," and must accept the dishonoring consequence that its preservation was our sole object in that struggle-the favorite position of the Northern advocate and the last support of his cause. This position they take in spite of the fact that the quarrel between the North and the South began when slavery existed in all the States. That writers or reader's should ignore the proofs of this is surprising. We cite, for instance, Washington's stern order issued to the army before Boston in 1775, promising exemplary punishment to any man who should say or do anything to aggravate what he called "the existing sectional feeling." For that feeling in that day we cannot find cause in slavery, for the good people of New England shared our Southern guiltiness. Nor is it to be explained except as springing from the old jealousy of Puritan and Cavalier, and the resentment of the Virginians against the New Englanders for failing to help them in the Indian war; whence, according to some authorities, the epithet "Yankee" sprang.
At a later day, in 1786, Mr. Jay recommended to Congress that, in exchange for a favorable commercial treaty with Spain, we should yield to her condition that "no American vessel should navigate the Mississippi below the mouth of the Yazoo." New England, caring nothing for the distant Mississippi, supported this narrow and selfish policy; exciting, say contemporary writers, "the fierce indignation of the South, and espe- cially of Virginia, to which State Kentucky then belonged. We quote in substance from Mr. Fiske's "Critical Period of American History." He recites the fact, but sees no connection between the incident and. the sectional war.
So of New England's pursuit of separate interests in 1812, the tariff iniquity of 1828, and the nullification struggle, all of which so intensified the general bad feeling. These are matters of commonest knowledge and the gravest import. They are, nevertheless,. ignored by many Northern writers as causes of war. One prominent writer, Mr. Fiske, very briefly mentions the Hartford convention of 1814. Even our old
enemy, Mr. Barnes, gives the list in a fine-print note. The fact is, these matters do not serve the purpose, as none of them could be depended upon to enlist the sentimental sympathy of the world against the South. Slavery and Southern action thereupon must be, for these historians, the cause of the war. There are people at home who, with these men, ignore all this history and accept and support their view. We are glad that they are few, but they exist; and, therefore, Virginians do not feel as they did when at the touch of hostile spear the shield of the State rang true; when, at the call of .honor, the State of Virginia stepped to the front to stay to the end of the war. For all of us there is cause to fear that our success in suppressing the more flagrant evils has lessened our watchfulness against subtler forms which may prove harder to expel; reason to apprehend that our people of Virginia and other Southern States may sink down into a blind content with a situation which is still full of anger.
If you will look over the lists of books allowed in some of our States, you will be amazed. The artifices and corruption that secured their adoption would furnish a curious subject for a student of human nature.
Here in Virginia our hope is in this Grand Camp, with its allies among the scholars in the State, and in the men upon whom the law has laid the heavy responsibility belonging to our State Board of Education. We are glad to know that these are good men and true; that they have on the whole given the public schools of Virginia by far the best set of books they have ever had. So we are glad to acknowledge the good work they have done for the State, however strongly we may dissent from and protest against some of their conclusions. With respect to the situation abroad, it de- scribes it not unfairly if we say that the reasons for the existence of our History Committee are, in a modified form, the same that in 1861 brought into existence and moved to action the armies of the South.
In the "'sectional war" (not the "civil war," for that title accords with the extreme national conception and admits that we were not separate States) we were called upon to resist an invasion of soldiers, armed and sent into our country by the concurrent purposes of severa1 fairly distinct parties then and now existing in the North. They came seeking our injury and their own profit. A new invasion, with like double purpose, is being prosecuted by the lineal successors of some of these parties. Two of them chiefly concern us and our work. The one came--or sent representatives to the war-bent upon the destruction of our Southern civilization, the eradication of the personal characteristics, opinions, thought, and mode of life which made our men different, antagonistic, and hateful to them. The other preferred war to the loss of material prosperity, which they apprehended in case the South should attain a position beyond the reach of Northern lawmakers and Northern tax collectors. Mr. Lincoln represented the latter, when, in reply to Mr. John Baldwin and Mr. A. H. H. Stuart, who-as representatives of the Virginia Convention then in session-urged him to delay the action that opened the war, he asked, "What is to become of my revenue in New York if there is a ten per cent tariff at Charleston ?" The following incident points to the former: About the year 1850 a distinguished Northern statesman said to a party of Southern Congressmen: 'You gentlemen will have to go home and beat your plowshares into swords and your pruning hooks into 'spears, for the Northern schoolmistresses are training a generation to fight the South."
No longer concerning ourselves with the sentimental Unionists and honest abolitionists-whose work seems to be over-we still struggle against the two parties we have described. These exist in their successors today -their successors who strive to control the opinions of our people, and those who seek to make gain by their association with us.
Cooperating with these and representing motives common to them all is a new form of another party, which has existed since sectionalism had its birth; the party which has always labored to convince the world that the North was altogether right and righteous, and the South wholly and wickedly wrong in the sectional strife. This party is today the most distinctly defined and the most dangerous to us. Its chief representatives are the historians against whose work we are especially engaged. We are enlisted against an invasion organized and vigorously prosecuted by all of these people. They are actuated by all the motives we have described, but they have two well-defined (and, as to us, malignant) purposes. One of them is to convince all men, and especially our Southern children, that we were, as Dr. Curry expresses their view, "a brave and rash people, deluded by bad men, who attempted in an illegal and wicked manner to overthrow the Union." The other purpose-and for this especially they are laboring-is to have it believed that the Southern soldier, however brave, was actuated by no higher motive than the desire to retain the money value of slave property. They rightly believe that the world, once convinced of this, will hold us degraded rather than worthy of honor, and that our children, instead of reverencing their fathers, will be secretly if not openly ashamed.
They seek to carry out their purposes, not now by the aid of armed soldiers, but through the active employment of energies, agencies, and agents who are as the caterpillar and cankerworm for destructiveness and as the locust for multitude. The whole force of journalists, poets, orators, and writers of all classes is employed in their cause, especially the Northern history makers, whose books have been and are now, to some extent, in the hands of Southern children.
The character of the work has been in greater or less degree such as might have been expected. By every variety of effort, from direct denunciation to faint praise, by false statement and more subtle suggestion, by sophistry of reasoning and unexpected inference, by every sin of omission and commission, these writers have labored since the close of the war, as their predecessors had done before it, to conceal or pervert the facts of our history. In the past they have been, to a great extent, successful. Up to the war our people were as unknown as if they had lived on another planet, or known only to be condemned. The world has grown wiser. Therefore these men, hopeless of retaining in the high court of the future the packed juries and prejudiced judges before whom they have heretofore urged their cause against us, gradually despairing of final success in distorting facts as touching either the legal aspect of the case or our military history, still retain the hope, and now bend their energies to the task of convicting us all-leaders and people-of such motives as shall appear to the world and to our children as proof of dishonor, and rob statesman, faithful citizen, and soldier alike of the admiration -now justly accorded.
Hon.. J. L. M. Curry has lately stated that "history as written, if accepted in future years, will consign the South to infamy." He further observes that "the conquerors write the histories of all conquered peoples." Whether or not the records of mankind show this last statement to be true, it is not true that all conquered people have so learned the story of their fathers' deeds; nor can it be shown that the conquerors have habitually sought to force such teachings upon them. Wiser statesman have known, with Macaulay, that "a people not proud of the deeds of a noble ancestry will never do anything worthy to be remembered by posterity." He is a stupid educator who does not know that a boy ashamed of his father will be a base man. Such a direct attempt to change the character of a people has been almost unknown. It is true that traces of the Latin language show us where the Roman legions marched. Norman French was the court language in England after the conquest, and entered our English speech. These results, long resisted by patriotic men, came by natural assimilation. The relentless and remorseless "man of blood and iron" did-as a last measure of utter subjugation-attack the minds of the children of Alsace and Lorraine through the books ordered for the schools. Through dire penalties those orders were enforced; in hopeless despair these provinces submitted. The Prussian is not entirely alone. and doubtless had thought of retributive justice in mind. For the demon Corsican, in his day of sweeping conquest, compelled conquered provinces to submit to French school laws. The most recent history furnishes one more example. Under date of June 28, 1899, we find an order of the United States Provost Marshal General in Manila compelling the attendance of all children between six and twelve at the reopened pub- lic schools and ordaining that "one hour's instruction per day shall be devoted to teaching the English language." We have not yet heard what history of the present war the Filipinos are to study. It is not exactly in point, but it is interesting to note that the schools of France today use histories that teach the children how entirely Frenchmen won the American war of independence. .Doubtless an instance may be found here and there of compulsory study of the history of a conquest by the conquered people. When occurring, it has been the conqueror's final and, to his mind, most radical expedient, applied by and with relentless force, and with deadly intent to change the minds and characters of the new subjects.
It remained for these, our Southern States, with this State of Virginia leading and guiding the others (as we fear the record shows), to present the first instance of voluntary submission to this last resort of the cruelest conquerors. The history of the human race furnishes no like example of men who, by their own action, have so exposed their children; of men, who, unconstrained, have dishonored the graves and memories. of their dead. Our own people have aided and are still aiding, with all the insistence of damned and daily schoolroom iteration, in the work of teaching those malignant falsehoods to Southern children, in the work of so representing a brave people to the world of today and the ages to come. How amazing the folly! How dark the crime!
This folly or crime, for the State of Virginia, is primarily chargeable to the men who, immediately after the war-when our hearts if not our intellects might have been on guard-brought Northern men and Northern histories into our schools and for years employed them to teach us why and how Southern men fought against the North. Certain honest efforts have been made to expel these books and their teachings. Differences of opinion should not, and do not, induce us to impugn the motives of faithful men; but we regret that these efforts have not been entirely successful.
The general views so far expressed have been presented before. The situation 'seemed to us to require their forcible repetition. Now, however, and by the last remarks with respect to the histories, we are brought to the special work expected from your committee of this year, the examination of the books allowed for use by the last ruling of our Board of Education and now in use in the "public" and home of the private schools of the State.
To begin with, and in general as the result of our examination and such scholarly aid as we have been able to secure, we have to report the positive conclusion that no Northern author has yet written a school history in which it is not easy to trace one or more of the purposes we have described and denounced. All that we have seen are for this reason unfit for use in Southern schools. Nor do we hesitate to express the opinion that, standing as these people do to the truth of history, conscious that their section is on trial with respect to the sectional war, and well aware of the growing signs that theirs is to be the lost cause at last -human nature being imperfect-fair history cannot be expected of Northern authors unless they be of the rarest and boldest, worthy to rank with the inspired historians who wrote the simple truth. If they imitate these great writers, they conquer self to an extent impossible for simple mortals, offend their own people, and fail of their market. They cannot do ,the first, fear to do the second; the third their publishers will not allow. Ignorantly or knowingly, seeing with the blinded eyes of prejudice, or intent that others shall not see, they are constrained to falsify the record in fact or in effect; otherwise, they must be silent. They have not been silent. Without enlarging upon the point or using the abundant material to be had from English and American literature, we stop a moment for one or two evidences that these writers have need to plead their cause by such means as they can devise. The chairman of this committee on one occasion being in England heard a number of British officers of high rank, especially engaged in the study of military history, express their opinion-which we rejoice to recognize, and which these Northern men dread as the world's final verdict-that while Washington, Lee, and Jackson were of the great leaders of the world's history, the North had never produced a great commander; that Grant, Sherman, and Sheridan were not to be thought of; that the renegade Virginian, Thomas, was the only Federal who had approached that rank. On another occasion, traveling in New England, he encountered a gentleman who declared himself a student of history, and desired to be told how it happened that in every crisis of the country’s history he found five times as many Southern men as Northern prominently managing affairs. He knew, he said, that the time would come when, utterly wrong and unjust as he thought it, all the romance and glory of this war would gather around Lee and Jackson, and not around Grant and Sheridan and their like. The passing years already prove the soundness of his judgment. Well may they dread to appear at the bar of their own consciences. With respect to their latest "act of war, giving the suffrage to the blacks-a deed unsurpassed for hypocrisy as to purpose, malignant intent, and disastrous effect upon all concerned-these writers know that their best men are uniting to condemn it and will ere long confess that it was indeed conceived in iniquity and born in sin, and is now itself yielding a legion of devils armed to torment the State. Alas that teachers in our Southern States should, through any mistake of judgment or counsel, join the North in teaching that, as far as we are sufferers, we reap the due reward of our deeds!
FISKE'S "HISTORY."
Now, to return and deal with the particular books we were set to examine:
First in order is Mr. John Fiske's "History." This book has been, very carefully examined, noting the changes appearing in the edition of 1899. Rev. Dr. Tucker's and Mr. Carter A. Bishop's reports upon it have already been submitted. The work done by both of these gentlemen is able and conclusive. To read their reports would, of course, overrun our time.
It is evident to all of us that Mr. Fiske is an able man and a student of history. He has seen, more plainly than any other perhaps (what the Northern orators and writers are silently or openly yielding), that every claim of the South, of such sort as naturally rests upon categorical fact is already res adjudicata in our favor at the bar of the world. He knows from the writers around him (Mr. Lodge and others) that our claim to the right of secession cannot be resisted; that right of coercion cannot be maintained; that the superior personal and military character of our leaders is beyond dispute; that, estimating Americans, foreign mercenaries, and the Negroes in their ranks, the average type and quality of their private soldier was far below ours, and their numbers so far superior that the Southern victories set the world wondering. He knows, too, that the records made up along the track of armies and their own statistics of deaths in prison have forever proved our higher civilization in war. So he foresees and dreads the day of doom when, as already prophesied, history is to declare the truth triumphant and his the "Lost Cause." His writings, the others as well as the history, prove his consciousness that there remains to his section only this last resort, to make the world believe that our motives were base, a charge which they hope will be answered with more difficulty, inasmuch as it rests upon unsubstantial and intangible interpretation of facts, and not upon facts themselves.
ELEGANCE OF DICTION.
With elegance of diction and wealth of knowledge sufficient to blind and interest a multitude of readers, he devotes himself to this object. He is an advocate seeking to procure pardon for the wrongdoings of his own section by persuading the world of the guilt of ours; by convincing all who read or study his book (our own children among them) that, in defiance of all reasons to know the wrong of slavery, we argued before the war and fought in it, not from conviction of duty or loyalty to our constitutional rights and those of our children, not even from insulted and outraged manhood, but simply to hold the negro in possession.
We do not assert his insincerity. It may well be that he believed what he said on that point. He is, therefore, the more dangerous as teaching falsehood with all the force that belongs to the conviction of truth.
It will go far to establish our proposition as to Mr. Fiske's inability to see the truth when slavery and the war enter his field of view and the consequent entire unfitness of his "History" for school use, if we briefly examine other noted writings that have come from his hand. It is a maxim laid down by a famous philosopher and writer that children are more influenced by the spirit and the unexpressed opinions of the teacher than they are by the words they chance to hear from his lips. We therefore examine Mr. Fiske. His personality is in his history; the chapter and verse criticism of that book is in the able reports of Capt. Bishop and Rev. Dr. Tucker. We turn to the latter half of the one hundred and ninety-first page of his much- lauded "Old Virginia and Her Neighbors." It contains matter, which will not only prove our criticism just, but furnish us occasion for much astonishment. Speaking of the slave trade and abolition, Mr. Fiske tells us that George Mason in his lifetime 'denounced the "infamous traffic in terms which were to be resented by his grandsons when they fell from the lips of Wendell Phillips." All this we quote literally. A handsome antithesis and well-proportioned sentence, you will observe. The author is not careful to present (we avoid saying that he is careful not to present) the true point of contrast. George Mason denounced as "infamous" the sale of free men into slavery and the horrors of the middle passage, and argued against slavery in Virginia on economic and social grounds. Wendell Phillips denounced the South and Southern slaveholders. Mr. Fiske's readers do not learn from him that this was the offense that we resented, and that with a just indignation which Mr. Mason would have shared to the full had he been alive. The inference that Virginians of the two periods were not of one mind, both as to the slave trade and Yankee interference, is absolutely false, and should not be suggested to Southern children.
UNSAVORY WORDS.
On that same page 191 Virginians are told that that there was once "a short-lived emancipation party" in their State, but that, after the final suppression of the slave trade in 1808 and the consequent increased demand for Virginia-bred slaves, the thought of emancipation vanished from the memory of man." The same offensive suggestion is made in almost the same language, "the breeding of slaves… such a profitable occupation in Virginia" in his "Critical Period," etc., page 73 and again on page 266, where we are told that when the inventions of Arkwright, Cartwright, and Whitney so greatly increased the value of cotton there resulted a great demand for slaves "from Virginia as a breeding ground, and the Abolition party in that State thereupon disappeared, leaving her to join in the odious struggle for introducing slavery into the national domain." In both passages we quote him, perhaps, a little roughly. In his pages all this is handsomely expressed, for Mr. Fiske's style is very fine. It would, however, be difficult to discover anywhere pen pictures so advantageously incomplete-advantageously incomplete because a statement of the facts would not have represented, as do these most slanderous sentences, a mere race of slave breeders easily sacrificing their convictions for the value of slave property, and ready to fight for it when occasion should arise.
UTTERLY UNRELIABLE.
It is impossible to consider these passages without becoming convinced of the utter unreliability of this historian when speaking of slavery, the causes of the war, or the rights asserted by the South. It was to be supposed that in writing Virginia history he would at least consult Virginia documents. He should not assume that all Virginians are equally careless or as ignorant of Virginia history as the record proves him to be or as charity compels us to assume that he is. Eighteen hundred and eight is his date for the disappearance of all thought of emancipation in Virginia. Selecting from a mass of documents, he might have read two of Mr. Jefferson's letters-one to Mr. Coles, another to Mr. Jared Sparks, urging his views and plans for emancipation and deportation to Sierra, Leone, etc.; one dated August 25, 1814, the other February 4, 1824. (See Vol. IV "Jefferson's Correspondence.") But chiefly, and utterly overthrowing all title he may have to credit when writing of these subjects, we have, and he might have had, Mr. Thomas W. White's volume, published in 1832, containing the great Deportation and Emancipation Debate in the Virginia Legislature in January and February of that year; the debate enlisting the strongest speakers of the State and consuming a great part of those two months; a debate pending which, as will be remembered, the Virginia House of Delegates, under date of January 25, 1832, passed its resolution declaring it "expedient to adopt some legislative enactments for the abolition of slavery;" and made in that behalf a most vigorous movement, which was finally defeated by a very small majority-and that only because no man could say where the necessary means to deport the free blacks could be found, and none could suggest any other wise and safe disposition to be made of the slaves when set free. The recent Southampton insurrection had strengthened the hands and added to the number of those who wished to get rid of the negroes altogether. It is to be observed that the Virginia arguments were not of the hypocritical, sentimental variety; nor were they the vehicles of covert hatred for anybody. They expressed the views long held by the leaders of public opinion here as to the best social and economic conditions for Virginia and Virginians. It is further to be said, and that with great emphasis, that the character and conduct of free State populations as exhibited in our subsequent history, and the strongly contrasted character and conduct of our Southern people, bring into the very gravest doubt the wisdom of our fathers in these opinions; which opinions we admit, and (as against Mr. Fiske's statements) claim that they held and acted upon long after his date of 1808.
We return to say that when our fathers tried to find out how to get rid of the blacks it did not occur to them to solve the question as our Northern friends had done, by sales to the South. Nor could we further imitate them in contemplating with indifference such consequences of abolition as now confront us. The fact that all this history of date subsequent to 1808 is omitted in both of the books quoted proves that it is not an accidental result of Mr. Fiske's misleading love for a rounded period. Our teachers should not allow our children to think of this venerable State as a mere negro "breeding ground’ or of her people as won from other thoughts while gloating over the money value of the black.
Mr. Fiske apparently does not know that during these very years the African Colonization Society, laboring to effect these very objects, had among its vice presidents Gen. John Mason, of Virginia, son of George Mason and father of Senator James M. Mason: also Gen. Charles Fenton Mercer, of Virginia, who, about the year 1825, introduced in Congress the resolution declaring the slave trade "piratical warfare," and, at his own expense, visited various European courts seeking to have them reach the same decision. These gentlemen should hardly be denounced as mere slave breeders.
In Mr. Fiske's country he is not very familiar with individual acts of emancipation; nor does he know how many Virginians, long after 1808, manumitted their slaves; among them John Randolph, of Roanoke, whose executor (Bishop Meade) located them in the beautiful region where now stands the town of Xenia, Ohio, giving them good homes, of which the neighboring whites shortly dispossessed them. Many, many such cases marked the time to the "fifties," when, as all men know, the end of emancipation in Virginia came about through the "pious" interference of the Northern abolitionist; in consequence of which a Virginian, manumitting his slaves, in effect gave the weight of his influence to the sentiment represented by. the destroyers of our peace, and so felt that he must at least suspend his purpose, lest he should become an ally of the enemies of the State, This is the exact truth of the situation with respect to that matter. Mr. Fiske's writings teach us the opposite. Our children, taught by him, would neither learn it nor readily believe it. Our conviction is that this half page, though taken from his "Old Virginia," to say nothing of his yet more objectionable "Critical Period," is enough to banish from Southern schools Mr. Fiske’s "History" and everything else that he ever wrote. We quote indifferently from other books than the "History,’ as we are merely engaged in proving Mr. Fiske's unfitness as a guide for Southern readers, even if the North is content to follow him. We therefore turn again to the "Critical Period of American History." -He is speaking of the successive ratifications of the Constitution of 1787. On page 330, speaking of "amendments offered by Massachusetts," he says: "It was not intended that the ratification should be conditional." In pages 336-338 he is telling of the triumph of Madison and Marshall in securing Virginia's ratification by a narrow majority of 89 to 79. He goes on to use these words: "Amendments were offered, after the example of Massachusetts." We appear from his statement to have acted after that example. It is perfectly true that both States, after ratifying the Constitution, did recommend certain notable amendments. Not one word is there to indicate any different action at all. We necessarily suppose that here too "it was not intended that the ratification should be conditional." Would any uninformed or unsuspicious reader imagine that while the Massachusetts act was a simple acceptance, there occurred in the body of the Virginia act of ratification the following emphatic declaration? "We, the delegates of the people of Virginia, do, in the name and behalf of the people of Virginia, declare and make known, that the powers granted under the Constitution, being derived from the people of the United States, may be resumed by them whensoever the same shall be perverted to their injury or oppression, and that every power not granted thereby remains with them and at their will," etc. Mr. Fiske evidently did not think this worth mentioning. The effect of the point of view upon the historic perception is simply wonderful.
IS MISLEADING.
In speaking of the New York ratification, page 344, he says that Hamilton, fighting over the question whether New York could ratify the Constitution conditionally, reinforced himself with the advice of Madison. The question was: "Could a State once adopt the Constitution and then withdraw from the Union if not satisfied?" "Madison's reply," he says, "was prompt and decisive." "Such a thing could never be done. . . . There could be no such thing as a constitutional right of secession." How much of this he intends to give as direct quotation from Madison's lips does not appear. The letter itself our readers will find in "Hamilton's Works," Vol. I., or more conveniently in Henry's "Patrick Henry," Vol. II., page 368, where will also be found some interesting comments thereupon. It (the letter) does not contain Mr. Fiske's exact words, but it cannot be said that he overdraws that individual paper. It loses none of its force in his hands. Our author, however, thus presenting Mr. Madison to his readers, deals unfairly in failing to avail himself of the opportunity to give certain very important counterutterances of that statesman. We think that in fairness to him, and in order that readers might be more truly informed, a few lines might have been added, setting forth the fact that Mr. Madison (with Marshall and Nicholas) procured the passage of the Virginia act that we have quoted, and was himself the reputed author of the "Resolutions of 1798." That being done, Mr. Madison's absolute concurrence with Mr. Fiske as to the whole question might not have been so clear. The quotation actually given would have at least lost much of its force, as an unbiased reader would have thought Mr. Madison singularly at variance with himself, if not with Mr. Fiske. Let teachers at least tell the whole story.
It is enough to say further that Mr. Fiske, writing Virginia history, makes no allusion to the Virginia resolution, joining the Union in language which the concurrent debate (Elliott, Vol II., pp. 625, 626) proves to have been understood as a condition of right to withdraw-not universally, of course (nor, perhaps, by extreme Federalists), but so far as to secure its adoption, and so far, be it said, as forever to debar any other parties to the compact from any question as to the terms upon which we entered the Union. This is Virginia (and United States) history as it is, but not as Mr. Fiske sees it and teaches it to Virginia children. Even the extreme Federalists supported this view by implication, if not in direct terms. Mr. Madison, on one occasion, replying to Mr. Henry's charge that they were constructing a consolidated government, declares that "the parties to the Constitution are not the people (of the United States) as composing one great body.' but the people as composing thirteen sovereignties. Mr. Nicholas uses the words: "The condition is part of the compact." At any rate, the resolution which we have quoted (though not from Mr. Fiske's account) passed the Virginia Legislature and was law until the 9th of April, 1865. '
With respect to New York the untrained reader would necessarily infer that the failure of the condition in that State was complete, while from the same "Elliott's Debates" (Vol. I., pp. 327, 329) we find the language scarcely less emphatic than that of the resolution; to some minds even more emphatic.
We are not ourselves attempting or professing to give that whole story of both sides of the debates which fair history would require. But Mr. Fiske is writing history, or professes to be. Our duty is to inquire whether he has given us such history as should be taught. We believe and claim that the contrast between his pages and the full records show that he has given but one side, and so has presented a picture unfit to be shown to our schools.
OFFENSIVE DOCTRINE.
We return to the most offensive doctrine of the books that we condemn: the charge that the Southern soldier fought for slave property. If this charge be just, let the truth be taught. It is false. The answer to it is on every page of our history, and the books that make it should not be used in our schools.
We all remember how many Virginians of 1861, knowing that the blood thirst of Naseby and Marston Moor was unslaked, yet weary of the blood feud that had antedated the Revolution; tired of sectional strife recurring with every question of general interest; simply weary of quarreling; convinced by the election of Lincoln that the quarrel never would end-went into the war in hope of conquering peace, and before going gave their negroes leave to be free if they chose. The attitude of one or two prominent fighters with respect to slave property will be sufficient for our purpose. "The Campaigns of Stonewall Jackson," by Col. G. F. R. Henderson, of the British Staff College, Chamberley, England, should be read' by every man, woman, and child in the South. It would help the Northern people to a knowledge of the truth. On page 108, Vol. I., of that great book, we find the following extract from a letter of Gen. Robert E. Lee: "In this enlightened age," wrote the future general in chief of the Confederate army, "there are few, I believe, but will acknowledge that slavery as an institution is a moral and political evil. It is useless to expatiate on its disadvantages. I think it is a greater evil to the white than to the colored race, and while my feelings are strongly interested in the latter my sympathies are more deeply engaged for the former. The blacks are immeasurably better off here than in Africa-morally, socially, and physically. 'The painful discipline they are undergoing is necessary for their instruction as a race, and, I hope, will prepare them for better things. How long their subjection may be necessary is known and ordered by a merciful Providence. Their emancipation will sooner result from the mild and melting influence of Christianity than from the storms and contests of fiery controversy. This influence, though slow, is sure. The doctrines and miracles of our Saviour have required nearly two thousand years to convert but a small part of the 'human race, and even among Christian nations what gross errors still exist! While we see the course of the final abolition of slavery is still onward, and we give it the aid of our prayers and all justifiable means in our power, we must leave the progress as well as the result in His hands who sees the end and who chooses to work by slow things, and with whom a thousand years are but as a single day. The abolitionist must know this, and must see that he has neither the right nor the power of operating except by moral means and suasion; if he means well to the slave, he must not create angry feelings in the master. Although he may not approve of the mode by which it pleases Providence to accomplish its purposes, the result will nevertheless be the same; and the reason he gives for interference in what he has no concern holds good for every kind of interference with our neighbors when we disapprove of their conduct." On the same page Col. Henderson quotes from the lips of Mrs. Jackson like opinions held by her husband. There are opinions expressed before the war. Do they indicate that Lee and Jackson fought to preserve slave property? I myself know that at the beginning of the war Gen. Lee, wise and farseeing beyond his fellowmen, was in favor of freeing all the slaves in the South, giving to each owner a bond, to be the first paid by the- Confederacy when its independence should be secured; and that Stonewall Jackson, while believing in the scriptural right to own slaves, thought it would be politic in the white people to free them. He owned two. One was a negro man, whose first owner, being in financial difficulties, was compelled to sell. The negro asked Gen. Jackson to buy him and let him work until he accumulated the money to pay the General back. He was a waiter in a hotel, and in a few years earned the money, gave it to Jackson, and secured his freedom. The other was a negress about to be sold and sent away from Lexington. She asked .Jackson to buy her, which he did, and then offered to let her work as the man had done and secure her freedom. She preferred to stay with the General and his wife as a slave, and was an honest, faithful,. and affectionate servant. Gen. Joseph E. Johnston never owned a slave. How much of the fighting spirit and purpose of the South were in the breasts of Lee, Johnston, and Jackson? Do the facts recited indicate that the desire to retain slave property gave them nerve, for the battle? Does any man living know of a soldier in this State who was fighting for the negro or his value in money? I never heard of one. The Stonewall Brigade of the Army of Northern Virginia was a fighting organization. I knew nearly every man in it, for I belonged to it for a long time, and I know that I am within proper bounds when I assert that there was not one soldier in thirty who owned or ever expected to own a slave. The South fighting for the money value of the negro! What a cheap and wicked falsehood!
MOTIVES OF ACTION.
Finally-and this deserves a separate paragraph- with respect to the motives of action, we should be glad if Mr. Fiske, or any other Northern author, would relieve us of the mental confusion resulting from the contemplation of the facts that Robert E. Lee set free all of his slaves long before the sectional war began, and that U. S. Grant retained his as slaves until they were made free as one of the results of Lincoln's emancipation proclamation. "Few, perhaps, know that Gen. Grant was a slaveholder; but the fact is that he had several in the State of Missouri, and these were freed. like those in the South, by the emancipation proclamation. 'These slaves,' said Mrs. Grant, 'came to him from my father's family, for I lived in the West when I married the General, who was then a lieutenant in the army.' "
Soldiers and gentlemen, we accepted in full faith and honesty the arbitrament of the sword. We are today all that may be honorably meant by the expression "loyal American citizen". But we are also loyal to the memory of our glorious dead and the heroic living of the Confederacy, and we will defend them in our poor way from the false and foul aspersions of Northern historians as long as brain can think or tongue and pen can do their office. We desire that our children shall be animated by the same spirit.
Mr. Fiske furthermore teaches our children that but for the war the South would have reopened the slave trade. He tells, without quotation of authorities, a certain story of slave ships landing their cargoes in the South. Those of us who were men in the later fifties will remember a rumor that about that time a vessel, called "The, Wanderer" and commanded by a Southern man, brought a cargo of Africans into a Southern river. It was also rumored that one or more ships owned and commanded by Northern men were engaged in the same work. The stories mayor may not have been true. Granted the truth, the tact that one or more Yankee slave traders had returned to the sins of their fathers does not prove that 20,000,000 of them were about to do so; nor does the purchase of such cargoes by half a dozen Southern planters prove that 5,000,000 of them had determined thus to strengthen their working forces.
WHAT HE OVERLOOKS.
In his work Mr. Fiske overlooks the fact that the Confederate Government, at the first meeting of its Congress, incorporated into its constitution a clause which forever forbade the reopening of the slave trade. I beg you to consider the following contrast. George III forced the Virginia Governor to veto our Virginia act of I 769 prohibiting the further importation of slaves. Mr. Fiske tells us that "in Jefferson's first draft of the Declaration of Independence this act (of the king) was made the occasion of a fierce denunciation of slavery, but in deference to the prejudices of South Carolina and Georgia the clause was struck out by Congress."
The different impressions made on different authors by the same facts is to be observed. Mr. George Lunt, of Boston ("Origin of the Late War"), understood Mr. Jefferson to show that the omission was very largely due to "the influence of the Northern maritime States." Mr. Jefferson wrote the passage and describes the incident. To us it appears, from his account, that this denunciation was of the king, not less-perhaps more -than of this traffic to which we Virginians were so much opposed. As to the omission of the passage, he gives Mr. Fiske's statement as to South Carolina and Georgia; but adds the following, which Mr. Fiske omits: "Our Northern brethren also, I believe, felt a little tender under these censures; for, though their people had very few slaves, yet they had been pretty considerable carrier’s of them to others." Of course historians cannot say everything-must omit something. We could wish, however, that our author had displayed a less judicious taste in omissions. Be it understood that we ourselves omit many things that we would say but for the fact that we are only seeking to supply some of Mr. Fiske's omissions, and so establish our proposition that our children cannot get true pictures from this artist's brush, and that his book ought not to be in our schools.
UNHOLY CONTRIBUTION.
The "Origin of the Late War," published by theAppletons in 1866, but out of print for lack of Northern popularity, is a book preeminently worthy of reading. Its author, Mr. George Lunt, of Boston, in Mr. Fiske's own State of Masschusetts, tells us that an unholy combination between Massachusetts Freesoilers and Democrats to defeat the Whigs, with no reference to any principle at all, sent Sumner to Congress and materially contributed to the cause of the war partly through the Preston Brooks incident which Mr. Fiske so unfairly describes. "Slavery," this author observes, "was the cause of war, just as property is the cause of robbery." If Mr. Fiske will read the Lincoln and Douglass debates of the time before the war; if he will lay aside preconceived opinion and read the emancipation proclamation itself, he will see that not even for Lincoln himself was slavery the cause of action or its abolition his intent; that emancipation was simply a war measure, not affecting, as you know, the border States that had not seceded; even excluding from its operation certain counties of Virginia; simply intended to disable the "fighting States and more thoroughly to unite the rabid abolitionists of the North in his own ,deadly purpose to overthrow the constitutional rights of the States. Just before the battle of Sharpsburg, from which, as you remember, he dated his abolition proclamation, he very clearly indicated his view of the cause or purpose of the war on his part. "If he could save the Union," he said, "by freeing the slaves, he would do it; if he could save it by freeing one half and keeping the other half in slavery, he would take that plan; if keeping them all in slavery would effect the object, then that would be his course." Further, with respect to the provocation offered to the South that led to the war-so far as slavery was its cause- Mr. Webster, in his speech at Capon Springs in 1851, used these words: "I do not hesitate to say and repeat that if the Northem States refuse to carry into effect that part of the Constitution which respects the restoration of fugitive slaves the South would no longer be bound to keep the compact." Mr. Lunt and Mr. Webster were Massachusetts men, like Mr. Fiske. Mr. Webster was a great constitutional lawyer. Mr. Lincoln was President. Yet we do not learn from Mr. Fiske that any of these heresies or mistaken purposes had currency in Massachusetts or in the Union. He would teach all men that Mr..Lincoln claims immortality as. the apostle of freedom. He.is the coworker with the orator of their absurd Peace Jubilee, who lately proclaimed that the flag of Washington was the flag of. independence; the flag of Lincoln, the flag of liberty.
"Demands of slaveholders," "concessions to slave-holders"-these and the like are the expressions our author uses to paint a picture of an aggressive South and a conciliatory North. Through and through this author's work runs the same evidence of preconception as to the causes of war and predetermined purpose as to the effect his book is to produce, the same consciousness of the necessity laid upon him and his co- laborers, the same proof of his consequent inability to write a true history of the sectional strife, the same proof that his book is unfit to be placed in the hands of Southern children.
A curious observation is to be made. Just where we ourselves would say that slavery was the cause, or at least the occasion of the outbreak of the war, Mr. Fiske does not see the connection. He would have us take even his own statement on that point with a very marked limitation. "Slavery was the cause," but only in so far as the action of the South made it so and by no means in consequence of any act done by the North or by Northern men. That is the doctrine that we must teach our children. Even the John Brown raid,is outside of the group of causes. That was beyond question an overt act of Northern men. Therefore the incident is to be minimized in history and effect. Those of you who remember the situation, and possibly marched to Harper's Ferry on that occasion, will be surprised to note that Mr. Fiske says "he [Brown] intended to make an asylum in the mountains for the negroes, and that the North took little notice of his raid." There is no occasion for answering such a statement. We know that Brown and those who sent him here, aiding him to buy his pikes, etc., purposed war, intended that his fort should be the headquarters of an insurrection of the negroes, and purposed that his pikes should be driven into the breasts of Virginia men and women. All of us remember the platform and pulpit denunciation of our people, the parading, the bell tolling, and other clamorous manifestations of approval and sympathy which went through the North and convinced the people of Virginia that the long-threatened war of the North against the South had at last begun. In this sense, perhaps, it was not of the causes of the war; it was the war. I myself saw the demonstrations of the Northern people on that occasion. Happening to be at that time living in Philadelphia, it was instantly plain to me that I was in an enemy's country. The Southern students around me saw it as plainly as I did. It took but a dozen sentences to open the eyes of the least intelligent. It was only to say ,"Come on, boys! let's go !" and three hundred of us marched over on our own side of the line. The war for us was on, and I know that the State of Virginia knew that was what the North meant. Just how Mr. Fiske enables himself to make the statement quoted we cannot understand. We only see another proof that his point of view distorts the picture in his mind to such an extent that he ought not to be em- ployed as a painter for us or our children.
Much has, been said of Mr. .Fiske's elegant style. We will only obscene that the sugar coating of a pill does not justify our administering poison. The Trojan horse may have been a shapely structure, but in its belly were concealed the enemies of the city. It has been said, perhaps untruly, that the rounded period marks the unreliable historian. There have been notable examples of it. And it is certainly true that an in- convenient fact does sometimes give pain to a writer who is in the habit of testing his sentences by his ear. This is the apparent explanation of some of MF. Fiske's observations as to slave breeding in Virginia.
ONE MORE POIN'T.
One other point remains. The statement has been made, and denied, that this book was adopted on the recommendation of the Citizens' Committee of 1898, indorsed by the Grand Camp Committee of the same year. However the impression as to that recommendation arose or was made on the mind of any member of the Board of Education or anybody else, we are prepared to prove by the text, and by a recent report of the same committee, that they recommended only two books: the Jones and Lee histories.
The second book to be noticed, also erroneously supposed to have been recommended by the committee for 1898, is the Cooper and Estill history, "Our Country." The effective detailed criticism of that work also is handed you in the able report of Rev. S. Taylor Martin. Like the last, this needs only a general criticism as a basis for the resolution we shall offer for your adoption. If you will read the "Introduction," you will see that the author proposes to write such a book as will serve to cultivate a large patriotism and eradicate sectionalism. This is doubtless a worthy motive. But a preconceived purpose in writing is the bane of the historian. The great Scripture models indicate no purpose; they simply tell the naked truth. Reading the so-called history these gentlemen have given us in the light of their own announced intention, we shall find that it has led them again and again so to present incidents antagonistic to their purpose that the real truth is not told. Many paragraphs in support of this statement may readily be selected. We respect their purpose; but it has far misled the authors; so that, to put it briefly, the book is simply not a history of the country.
CAUSE OF STRIFE.
The preconceived purpose to write a book that will cultivate a large patriotism has led these authors so to deal with the elements of strife between the North and South as to make it appear that no guilt or blame attached to either party; that all differences arose naturally and innocently; that the war itself was the logical outcome of circumstances of growth and development for which the parties engaged were not responsible; and that it was not the result of any such hostile feeling on the one side as any principle required the other to return in kind. The “Preface," to which allusion has been especially made, and such paragraphs as 416, 519, etc., for example, sufficiently illustrate our meaning. The book is clearly in error as to some very important matters, as, for instance, in 550; but it is with respect to and in consequence of the effort to carry out the apparently commendable purpose with which it is written that we are compelled to say that it presents a picture utterly inconsistent with the truth. Its principal errors thus concern matters of right and principle, as to which it is of the first and last importance that our children should be rightly informed, and so they absolutely forbid its use in our schools. The book is all the more pernicious because. its authors pose as Southern men. Such may be the truth, but they certainly do not teach the truth of history. This so-called history does not anywhere mention the names of Gens. Ewell, Hill, Cheatham, McLaws, Wheeler, Gordon, and Stephen D. Lee. Nor is there any record of the battles of Ball's Bluff, Gen. Lee's West Virginia campaign, Drewry's Bluff, Chantilly, Shepherdstown, Forrest's battle of Murfreesboro, Salem Church, Ewell's defeat of Milroy at Winchester. The defense of Fort Sumter for three years, the battle of Trevillian's Station, and numerous other heavy engagements are considered unworthy of notice by these Texas authors. The affair of the Merrimac and Monitor is misleading and inaccurate. The story of the campaign of Lee and Grant in 1864 is a model of inaccuracy. In fact, it is difficult to believe that such a compilation could be the work of Southern men.
LEE AND JONES.
Finally, with respect to the Lee and Jones histories. They have been reexamined by members of the committee, and while we still regard them as the best so far published, we are glad to know that new editions of them have been or are to be issued, and we recommend to the authors and publishers such careful improvements in style and arrangement as their great merits deserve. A much improved edition of the first has just come to hand. We regard both of them, however, as insufficient for the higher classes in our schools and colleges.
Accordingly we offer for your adoption the following resolutions:
"Resolved: I. That this committee, after due examination and consideration of the merits of the several histories recently put upon the list by the State Board of Education for use in the public schools of Virginia, earnestly protests against the retention on the list of the history by Prof. John Fiske, of Cambridge, Mass., and of Cooper, Estill & Lemon's 'Our Country,' and urge that the said histories be eliminated from said list.
"2. That we likewise earnestly urge that the histories objected to above be not taught in the private schools of the State, and that we appeal to the parents of the school children of Virginia to aid in securing their exclusion.
"3. That, in our judgment, we cannot now use Northern histories in Southern schools; and in action upon this resolution we invite the cooperation of the other Grand Camps of the South.
"4. That it is recommended to our 'Confederate Camps' to inquire into the-cost and expediency of publishing and circulating throughout the State such a sketch of the errors that have been and are now being promulgated in Virginia as will rouse the young people falsely taught during past years to attempt their own reeducation.
BOOKS TO READ.
"5. And, as a suggestion to the library committees of our various camps, that we recommend the reading of the following books and papers: 'The Origin of the Late War,' by Mr. George Lunt, an attorney of Boston, published in 1866 (Appleton & Co.), a book to be read by our people, even at cost of steps to be taken to secure its republication; Lieut. Col. Henderson's 'Campaigns of Stonewall Jackson,' the new edition, of which, it is hoped, will be easily within our reach; Hon. J. L. M. Curry's 'Southern States and Constitution;' and also some of the very valuable works of Mr. John Ropes, of Boston.
"6. That the Grand Camp of the United Confederate Veterans of Virginia earnestly appeal to all the other camps in the South to demand the elimination of all false histories from public and private schools; that they appoint committees, whose duty it shall be to see that this is done; to urge the Sons of Veterans and Daughters of the Confederacy to cooperate with them in this holy work, and to remember that unless the effort is made the curse that belongs to those who dishonor father and mother will belong to them.
"All of which is respectfully submitted.
HUNTER MCGUIRE, Chairman
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