The two most frequently asked questions of Blog Post 2 were: “I would like to know more about the groups who sponsored the statue,” and “Why is the statue in its current unsuitable location.” I believe that both of these questions are answered by the documents in the Houston Library Dick Dowling Archive. The archive contains many documents related to the Statue of Dick Dowling including meeting minutes, invitations to events, event programs and a scrapbook of the statues life. Through studding these documents we can find very clear answers to the questions we previously posed about the statue of Dick Dowling. I will address the answers found to the two questions mentioned above in two ways- the meaning in the past and the meaning now.

The first question posed was “Who put up this statue?” Through examination of the documents we find that they groups who erected the statue in 1905 were very diverse. There were Catholic organizations, Irish heritage organizations and Civil War Veteran organizations. We can see from the meeting minutes posted exactly who put money in to the statue and what groups played rolls in shaping the appearance of the statue. From the research we find that the people who erected the statue of Dowling were just Houstonians of every type. Now we must look at why the statue was refurbished and rededicated in 1997. To best understand this we must first look at who pushed and supported the refurbishment of the statue. As we can see from the statue’s rededication program. (SC1268-01-03/06) Many different groups played a roll in the Statue’s re-birth. Once again Irish societies contributes, confederate Veteran’s societies contributed, catholic societies contributed, and Houstonians contributed. The only new group to honor the statue was the Irish town of Tuam, Dowling’s birthplace. We can see Tuam’s support in the letter from the Tuam Commissioner. (SC1268-f1-17)
The second question posed was “Why such a bad Location?” I personally never believed that the location of the Dowling statue was “bad.” The statue has been in a place of importance since its original dedication. The statue rested in front of both city halls as described in the archive. (SC1268-01-03) Also we must look at why the statue was moved. As JCD2 pointed out the statue’s location in Herman Park is not “some obscure corner,” but one of the major entrances to the park. Though this entrance is not the “best” location in the park, I am sure that if we were to look at the number of people passing the statue every day we would find that the placement of the statue is comparable to its former location in front of city hall.

Lastly I would like to raise some of the questions that I had while looking through the archive. The first being why do people appreciate the statue today? Is it for their Irish heritage? For their pride in a hero? Or is it for the local connection of Dowling to Houston. Another question I had was: “What is the sentiment about Confederate heritage today.” I noticed that in many of the articles about the statue, including articles in the Catholic Harold (SC1268-f1-15) and the Houston Chronicle (SC1268-f1-13), the term “The War Against States” was used instead of Civil War. This makes me wonder about what the Civil War, or the War Between the States, means to Houstonians today.

Gary Kornblith’s article examines what might have occurred if the Mexican-American War had not taken place because Henry Clay defeated James K. Polk in the 1844 Presidential Election.  In doing this, he tries to find causation for the Civil War and determine whether it was inevitable because of ingrained cultural and political differences between the North and South (the fundamentalist view) or due to poor political decisions and actions by leaders and politicians (the neo-revisionist view).

First, Kornblith justifies his hypothetical Clay victory by explaining the factors involved in the Election of 1844.  He contends that Clay’s loss did not have to do with his reluctance to annex Texas or go to war with Mexico.  Rather, Clay lost because of an extremely close vote in New York where Polk and the Democratic Party had strong immigrant support.  The result was so close that Kornblith argues it only went to Polk because of chance and could easily have gone the other way.

Next, Kornblith outlines how a Clay Presidency likely would’ve gone using evidence of Clay’s policy views as support.  He posits that Texas annexation would not have occurred under Clay and that the Republic of Texas would’ve existed harmoniously, but separately from the United States.  He also believes that Mexico would’ve eventually recognized the Republic of Texas.  The future of California under the hypothetical Clay Presidency is not as certain, but Kornblith believes that an independent California might have occurred.  Kornblith’s main conclusion, however, is that America’s westward expansion would’ve been halted under Clay.  Instead, Kornblith argues that economic issues like a National Bank would have dominated Clay’s presidency and that those debates would have sparked partisan conflict rather than sectional conflict.  Also, the absence of westward expansion would mean no Wilmot Proviso to bring the slavery issue up again for debate.  Kornblith concludes that Clay would’ve attempted to keep slavery out of national politics and that he would not have supported emancipation or expansion of slavery.

Following a hypothetical Clay Presidency, Kornblith discusses the possible course the country would’ve taken.  He addresses whether or not the Whig Party would’ve collapsed without the issue of slavery driving the development of the Republican Party.  Without the lands gained from the Mexican-American War, there would’ve been no contentious Kansas-Nebraska Act and Kornblith concludes that the Whigs probably would’ve survived until 1857 when the economic crisis would’ve reignited partisan conflict and strengthened them even more.  Under this scenario, slavery would continue to exist in the South and no Civil War would’ve broken out.  Kornblith also believes that abolition of slavery was not inevitable and that without the war, it might have persisted into the 20^th Century.

Kornblith’s ultimate conclusions are that the Mexican-American War was necessary for the Civil War to occur and that the Civil War was necessary for the abolition of slavery.  Southerners forced the issue of slavery by objecting to the Wilmot Proviso out of principle when they might have just let it go since slavery in the existing Southern states wasn’t being challenged.  The decision to force the issue, a political miscalculation, caused the Civil War in Kornblith’s opinion.  This conclusion is more in line with neo-revisionist view that the Civil War was not inevitable, but the result of decisions by politicians.  However, unlike some neo-revisionists who think abolition would’ve occurred peaceably without the Civil War, Kornblith does not view the emancipation of slaves as inevitable.

I find Kornblith’s arguments to be quite persuasive.  His counter-factual scenario seems logical even though no one can say with any certainty how events would’ve happened if Clay had been elected.  Mainly though, I find his arguments persuasive because of what I’ve learned about the rise and fall of American political parties in several of my political science classes.  We discussed the theory and history of party realignments in the United States.  Party realignments (like the rise of the Republican Party) occur when mass numbers of people change their voting habits because of a particular crisis.  Kornblith’s argument that slavery might never have become a full-blown crisis if not for the Mexican-American War is compelling and without that crisis, the realignment towards the Republican Party would’ve been unlikely to occur.

Fundamentalists argue that the differences between the North and South were so ingrained that slavery could not be reconciled without war and I can buy that.  However, I don’t buy that reconciliation of these differences was inevitable.  Without a crisis, support for the Republican Party might never have crystallized and the fundamental differences between the North and South might’ve continued to exist for generations longer.  However, even without the issue of slavery in new federal territories, it’s possible that some other crisis related to slavery might have eventually occurred.  Fundamentalists would probably argue that some sort of slavery-related crisis was inevitable.  I’m unconvinced that either the fundamentalists or the neo-revisionists provide a completely adequate argument.  Kornblith’s article is very convincing, however, that events easily could’ve occurred differently than they did and that the Civil War might have been delayed for a generation or two, at the very least.

What if the Mexican-American war, would the American Civil War have occurred? This is the question posed by Kornblith in his essay “Rethinking the Coming of the Civil War.” Kornblith relies on then confactual reasoning method to determine the outcome of American History if Henry Clay had won New York in the election of 1844.
Kornblith asserts, “Had Clay won the “Manifest Destiny” of the United States would not have included Texas or the other lands seeded to the US as a result of the Mexican-American War.” (80) Kornblith later points out that with Polk’s nomination and election a very strong pro-annexation camp grew within the Democratic Party. Kornblith uses a letter written by Clay to support his argument that had Clay come to office no annexation would have occurred. Clay wrote in this letter “[That the annexation of Texas or war with Mexico] would menace the existence [of the US], if it did not certainly sow the seeds of a dissolution of the Union.” Kornblith writes off the results of the 1844 election as “arbitrary” citing the immigrant-vote turn out in New York as the deciding factor in the entire election.
The second argument Kornblith makes is that Clay’s election would have led to a renewal of the two-party system. (89) Because the issue of annexation should be off the table, Kornblith suggests that political discussions of Clay’s presidency should revolve around tariffs, the establishment of a national bank, and other social issues of the day. Kornblith writes “the conflict over economic issues would have strengthened the second party system and pushed the slavery question into the background of national politics. (90)
Kornblith notes the untenability of the institution of southern slavery, giving Gavin Wright’s work as an example of this. Wright writes, “Political friction between the slave owners and the free white workers…would not have gone uncontested.” (91) Wright follows this up by purposing that “a variant of the South African compromise should have developed” in the American South. (91) Kornblith states on page 92 that “slavery would have persisted… past 1865.” Because “Clay supported the gradual abolition of slavery, [had Clay been elected] he would have neither supported immediate abolition nor would he have acted to further slavery.”(94) Kornblith asserts “Clay’s administration… would have successfully contained sectional differences over justice for fugitive slaves.”(96) Kornblith notes that the sustainability of the second party system was an unsure thing, but that the second party system would have once again been revived in the later half of the 1850s. (100)
I tend to agree with Kornblith’s argument that if Henry Clay had been elected president in the 1844 election the Civil War probably would not have occurred. After reading Kornblith’s argument I believe that the driving force behind the Civil War and the secession of the Southern States was the annexation of Texas and the belief in of Manifest Destiny. I believe that the Issue of slavery was merely the “straw that broke the camel’s back.” While it is not reasonable to believe that all of the events would have conspired just as Kornblith suggested they would, I believe that this model accurately allows us to identify the underlying causes of the Civil War. The theories of the fundamentalists are too simple, the often leave out the most important political and social factors that drove this country to war. Kornblith’s essay accurately takes all factors in to account, and provides the most complete explanation for the question “what caused the Civil War?”

Gary Kornblith’s Rethinking the Coming of the Civil War is an exercise in the counterfactual method; that is, a very refined version of a “what if?” scenario. Kornblith draws on his close knowledge of the period, as well as contemporary writings, to project what would have happened if Henry Clay had won the election of 1844 rather than James K. Polk.

Kornblith’s conclusions are extensive, but the main thrust of his argument is that had Clay been elected, Texas would not have been annexed, thus the Mexican-American War would not have occurred. Without the great expansion of U.S. territory, conflicts between slaveholding and non-slaveholding interests, and thus the South and the North, would have had no impetus to explode into secession and war.

First, to give legitimacy to his argument, Kornblith explains how close the race between Clay and Polk actually was, and that with just a slight difference in the voting of New York, Clay could have become president. He argues Polk did not ride into office on a wave of “war hawk” sentiment sweeping the nation; but rather, a variety of factors, such as patterns of immigrant voting, enabled him to edge into a victory that “seems more arbitrary than inevitable.”

Kornblith then describes his vision of quite a different America under Clay, “one that might have ended in a permanently smaller United States and no civil war—at least no civil war in the early 1860s.” Using Clay’s personal writings to judge his opinions, Kornblith concludes that Clay valued harmony, both between the sections and with foreign powers, over the expansion of American territory. Thus, to avoid conflict with Mexico, he would not have annexed Texas, preferring instead to keep it as a friendly neighbor. Following this train of events, Kornblith hypothesizes that the second party system, rather than falling apart at constitutional arguments incited by the expansion of slavery into vast new territories, would have remained strong under Clay’s presidency and beyond. The future of slavery, and of the antislavery movement, Kornblith is less sure of. He does admit, quoting Gavin Wright, that “the notion that slavery would have faded away peacefully in the late nineteenth century has always been a wishful chapter in historical fiction, not part of a plausible counterfactual history.”

I believe Kornblith’s article is more useful in revealing the follies of historical determinism than in providing a strong argument of its own. While counterfactual reasoning is very interesting, and while his projections of likely events are doubtless well-considered, I have a hard time getting myself to consider the argument seriously. A quick search through the article reveals how many times he uses such words as “probably” and “most likely.” Of course, these are necessary for the type of thought experiment he is performing; however, the fact that he bases his entire argument on something that seems like it should have happened, yet didn’t, undoes the rest of the threads he weaves. For every probable outcome he posits, it is entirely possible that due to some chance, quite another outcome might have occurred. And if one such “probably” is undone, his argument is in danger of being affected by a domino effect.

I certainly found the article an interesting read, and it did get me to consider more critically the idea that a civil war was inevitable. Kornblith imagines a perfectly believable world where large-scale violence did not occur, at least not until much later than actually happened. I entirely believe that such a world could have come into being. Although troubling questions remain, such as how long it would have taken for America to abolish slavery altogether, we cannot project wishful thinking onto the past and assume that a great cataclysm was destined to happen soon, even without the Mexican-American war. However, it is Kornblith’s specific arguments that I call into question. It is hard to believe that Kornblith could figure out Clay’s policies, let alone predict how larger legislative bodies and American society would react. Surely such an office as the presidency must affect anyone elected, and there is no guarantee that under the immense pressure, Clay would have kept to ideals he had professed up until that point. Surely not even Clay himself could have predicted the policies he would have actually enacted had he won the presidency, let alone Kornblith looking on a century and a half later.

In class, we’ve brought up the questions of why non-slaveholders in the South would fight for slavery and why Northern soldiers would fight for emancipation even if they had no particular desire for abolition or racial equality.  Chandra Manning’s book What This Cruel War Was Over provides ample evidence and arguments about these exact questions.

Manning argues that Southerners fought to defend slavery, even if they did not own slaves, because the institution was so deeply ingrained in Southern society that any threat to it was seen as an attack on everything Southerners valued and held dear like family and social order.  According to Manning, the Southern understanding of liberty was the ability to pursue material prosperity and provide for their families (p. 29).  Unlike the North, Southerners were focused on liberty as it applied to their individual families.  With slavery, all Southern whites had the chance to own slaves.  Even though in practice, it was difficult for poor whites to reach the point where they could buy slaves, the possibility reinforced the idea of white equality and liberty in the South (pg. 33).  A threat to slavery was seen as a threat to the ability of Southern whites to achieve economic prosperity for their families.  In addition to the economic repercussions that Southerners feared abolition would cause, they feared the effect it would have on the family unit.  According the Manning, Southern men had a strict view of familial roles.  With slavery, white man had the right and duty to command their household, which included women, children and blacks.  Even if they didn’t actually own slaves, white Southern men had the right to “rule” blacks because they were viewed as inferior to any white man of any economic standing (p. 36).  Stripping white men of the ability to exercise their authority over blacks was seen as a threat to their manhood and their position as head of a family (p. 37).  Basically, Southerners, even if they didn’t own slaves, saw slavery as essential to their way of life, their liberty, and their ability to head a family, so they were willing to fight for it.

Unlike Southerners, Manning argues that Northerners viewed liberty as a more universal ideal that applied to everyone rather than just their individual families (p.40).  The Southern rebellion was viewed as a threat to these ideals because Northerners considered the Union to represent those ideals.  This view, according to Manning, stemmed from the Second Great Awakening and the idea that the United States had a “special mandate to bring about God’s kingdom on earth (p.41).”  Even if Northerners didn’t support emancipation, many were offended by the idea that that the South would turn against the Union and the ideals of self-government and liberty that it represented for the single issue of slavery.  Northerners did not view the issue of slavery as paramount to liberty and way of life as Southerners did.  They viewed the continued existence of a single, united Union as the most important issue at stake.  Therefore, even though Northerners’ views on slavery varied widely, they were willing to fight for the preservation of the country.  Also, as the war continued, many union soldiers came to the conclusion that eliminating slavery was the only way to end the war, no matter what their personal views on slavery had been (p. 49).

A recurring question in Chandra Manning’s What This Cruel War Was Over is “why did the common soldier take up arms and fight in the war?” Manning purposes that the reason common men took up arms was to either defend or abolish the southern institution of slavery. I am not convinced that soldiers took up arms specifically for this reason, but that the were compelled by some inner sense of Patriotism or “Right.”

Manning establishes her argument through the use of many primary sources including letters written by soldiers in both the Union and Confederate armies. Manning writes that the union soldiers were bound by the common belief that slavery was a morally corrupt institution of the South that needed to be abolished. On page 49 Manning writes about how this belief of the Union soldiers was cemented through interactions with slaves and experiencing the atrocities of slavery first hand. It is to be noted that Manning identifies a change in the beliefs of the Union soldiers about how blacks should be treated. In the beginning of the war she states that the Union soldiers fought to preserve the morals of society and to simply free blacks, while near the end of the war the Union soldiers were fighting for something closer to equality for the Slaves.

One argument of Manning’s that I did not totally agree with was one of her reasons why Southern Soldiers fought. I was not convinced by the argument that Southerners fought to preserve their social standing. While I believe that Influential Southerners did support the war for economic reasons and the risk of losing property, I am not convinced that this is why the common Southern soldier fought. I do not feel that any non-slaveholding Southern man felt like he was any less of a man after the slaves were freed. I believe that this explanation is not complete. I believe that Southern men fought because they believed it was their duty to protect their homes and communities.

Manning’s argument that the common man fought the Civil War over Slavery is not enough for me. I believe that a man stands up and fights to defend what he believes is right. While slavery may have contributed, I believe that the reason men on both sides fought was for their communities. Both sides had much to lose in the Civil War, to merely write off why men fought, as over slavery is doing a disservice to the soldiers who fought and died in the Civil war. I can assure you that once the Minie balls began flying the common soldier was thinking of his loved ones back home not the slaves on a rich man’s plantation.

We talked at the end of last class about the maximal explanation vs. the minimal explanation. Manning, like all good American historians, did an extraordinary amount of document sifting to excellent maximal answer to the motivations of soldiers in both armies with regards to slavery. What I found best about Manning’s analysis was not the change-over-time aspect (which was great) but how she provided a much broader view of what slavery meant to the soldiers. For men in both armies, slavery represented the core of the society that needed to be changed or upheld. Thus you didn’t need a personal connection to slavery to fight for it, only a connection to your Northern or Southern society.

Manning puts forth a sweeping statement regarding Confederates’ motives:

“For the men who filled the Confederate ranks, secessions, the Confederacy, and the war were not about state sovereignty…[they] were about securing a government that would do what government was supposed to do: promote white liberty, advance white families’ best interests, and protect slavery.”

After reading the book, I believe that all three of these desires really boil down into one point – to preserve white social interests at the expense of black slaves.  Manning points out that “White equality was fragile in an antebellum South” and that the concept (maybe not practice) of slavery represented the American dream of getting ahead. The most detailed argument that Manning presents is that slavery was central to the Southern man’s concept of society and manhood. She gives examples in which white men rallied against the “fanatical marauders” of the North whose abolition would make “the daughters of honest white yeomen… helpless against the sexual advances of black men. “ (p. 36) Manning’s argument, essentially boils down to the psychological argument that Southern men needed the institution of slavery as an extension of their self-worth.   They were fighting to keep a system in which –even if one did not own slaves – one could feel manly by one’s assumed duty of protecting white women and degrading the black man.   Her argument is too psychological for my taste without comprehensive written proof.

On the flip side, Manning provides strong arguments for why soldiers in the Union fought for abolition despite harboring their own racist prejudices. Without digressing into the debates within the Union Army about abolition or the various swings of soldiers’ opinion towards slavery in response to the fortunes of war,  I found Manning’s strongest argument to be that Union soldiers fought for abolition because of how slavery affected the Southern white population.

“Enlisted Union soldiers came to the conclusion that winning the war would require the destruction of slavery partly because soldiers’ personal observation of the South led many to decide that slavery blighted everything it touched.”

This is a powerful statement that encompasses a lot of the moral judgments Union soldiers laid upon the South. They believed slavery made Southerners lazy and immoral. Slavery, insinuated the soldiers, made respectable white men “indulge their lustful passions by exploiting female slaves, who were in turn robbed of their chastity. Manning also talks about the revolution in the soldiers’ attitudes towards slavery in 1862-63 and the push towards total abolition. Her argument is interesting because she explains that the push towards abolition was in part due to the horrors of slavery seen by soldiers, but also an introspective look. In a roundabout way, Manning argues that soldiers wished to emancipate slaves, not because slaves deserved equal rights (one soldier wrote ‘What is a white who forgets that he stands above the African?’ P 96), but because slavery was a moral stain on their beloved nation, the “city upon a hill” that was to project the best possible ideals to the world.

Chandra Manning’s What This Cruel War was Over furthers the argument that slavery was indeed at the core of the sectional conflict and Civil War; so naturally she presents various arguments to explain why Southerners would fight to uphold the institution whether they owned slaves or not, as well as why Northerners would fight for the explicit abolition of slavery, regardless of their views on racial equality. What’s more, she supports each of her arguments with multiple quotes from the soldiers themselves.

Manning argues that slavery was deeply ingrained into the social order and ideals of the South. She writes that white Southern men had a “gut-level conviction that survival – of themselves, their families, and the social order – depended on slavery’s continued existence” (page 32). She claims that white Southerners had a different view of liberty than their Northern counterparts, viewing liberty as the prerogative of the white man to maintain equality with other white men and better the situation of his family. Slavery was a crucial part of this promise, as its existence guaranteed that no matter how bad things got, a white man could never reach the lowest rung on the social ladder: that of the slave. In addition, however difficult it may be, a white man always had the possibility to eventually own slaves. “Especially for the economically insecure, the hope of slave ownership staked a claim to white equality in a competitive world that offered few guarantees,” Channing writes (page 34). This hope, and the knowledge of their equality with other whites and supposed superiority over blacks, helped satisfy white Southerners and unite them in a society which otherwise was quite stratified.

Union soldiers also had manifold reasons for enlisting, but many of them related directly to slavery. Some soldiers feared that a powerful slave oligarchy of old money was seeking to control the nation, and reacting treasonously when it did not get its way. This was simply unacceptable, as it broke the rules of democracy and therefore cast doubt on if a republican government could survive after all. Regardless of how they felt about black Americans, many Union soldiers believed that slavery was like a poison in the South, damaging the virtue of the region and threatening that of the entire nation. As one of many examples, Channing reports that “a Vermont soldier claimed that the moral ‘stigma’ of slavery brought ‘animosities and wranglings’ down on the nation and threatened its very existence” (page 43). Whether or not these soldiers felt any empathy towards the plight of slaves themselves, they often believed that the only way to ultimately save the Union was to end slavery once and for all, or conflict was sure to spring up again. Channing quotes “a Missouri private [who] agreed that since ‘it was slavery that caused the war,’ it would take ‘the eternal overthrow of slavery’ to win it,” and a Wisconson soldier who assessed that “men of all parties seem unanimous in the belief that to permantly establish the Union, is to first wipe [out] the institution” of slavery (page 45).