THE STORIED RIDE OF THE CRIMSON TIDE: PROLOGUE

The statement by the character Rhett Butler was dead on: “Gentlemen, there’s not a cannon factory in the whole South.  The Yankees are better equipped than we.  They’ve got factories, shipyards, coal mines…and a fleet to bottle up our harbors and starve us to death.  All we’ve got is cotton, and slaves…and arrogance.”

Had wealthy southerners kept paying for Caucasian indentured servants, slavery would have never existed. Indentured servants had varying time limits on how long they worked for someone.  Being white, escape was also easier.  But slaves were “owned” for life, with their black skin, unfortunately, making escape next to impossible.     

The South was primarily agricultural and the North primarily industrial. Had both of these economies only had indentured servants, it would have greatly reduced the possibility of a Civil War.  But even had slavery not been an issue, many historians still believe the South would have eventually, and peacefully, become an independent nation.

But the wealthy plantation slave owners wanted a war.  These “Southern Gentlemen”, skilled with their weapons, “knew” they were far better fighters than the men up North.  Wealthy plantation owners also knew that Southern men, whether they owned slaves or not, would fight to preserve white supremacy and that, personally, Northern men had little reason to fight.   . 

Southerners simply assumed that they could quickly do enough damage to the Union for them to eventually say “Enough of this, we can live without them, let them leave the Union.” which is all the South wanted.  Since most able bodied Southerners joined in the fighting, they believed this war would be over in less than a year. 

The Union advantages stated by Rhett Butler were dismissed.  Arrogance ruled all of their thinking.  While after Gettysburg, most Southerners realized “Victory” was not probable, they continued fighting until Sherman released his troops and told them to live off the land.  This was, in many ways, the beginning of Reconstruction. 

Lincoln saw the defeated Confederacy as the “Bloody and Beaten South” and, as gently as possible, was going to bring them back into the Union.  But others soon had the opportunity of punishing the “Rebellious South.”   The ten years of Reconstruction by the Union’s troops left deep bitter feelings that, unfortunately, are still held by some today. 

Born 70 years after the war was over, I recall those who were two generations older, still holding bitter feelings against “The Yankees.”  Southerners even considered everyone that did not live in the States of the former Confederacy as “Yankees.”  Never mind many of them lived in States that played no part in the Civil War.  They were still “Yankees.” 

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