There’s no more emotionally contentious topic today than the heated discussions that can break out among Civil War buffs or descendents (of either side) than the question of “Was the Civil War about slavery?”

And I believe there is the most balanced, well-reasoned, strongly argued, logical, factual, objective examination of this issue that appears in Chapter 11: Myths and Realities of the Confederacy in the book of similar name by noted historian William C. Davis, The Cause Lost: Myths and Realities of the Confederacy (Lawrence: Univ. Press Kansas, 1996).

Davis, of course, is a well-known and well respected scholar of the Confederacy, and a prolific writer. And although he has received many awards and accolades for his work, I believe this one chapter, in a book that may be less well-known than much of his other work, is Davis at his best. He takes the passionate and emotional issue of “What caused the Civil War” and parses it into the real underlying questions and issues.

Among many other matters, Davis draws a sharp distinction that often gets blurred, conflated, or forgotten in discussions about the war. “It is vital to make a distinction between what led the sections to war and why men subsequently fought that war, for these are two entirely different things in myth and reality.” Davis states that the myth – both present-day and that created shortly after the defeat of the Confederacy – says that the South went to war to protect “states’ rights.” The reality is that editors, politicians and the leading citizens of the south claimed only one right that was threatened – the right to hold slaves.  Davis says, after his years of study and as an author who generally is sympathetic to the Confederacy, that “the states rights defense of secession in 1860-1861 did not really appear in force until after 1865 as builders of the Lost Cause myth sought to distance themselves from slavery.” (p. 180)

I would have to agree. Charles Dew’s book, Apostles of Disunion, about southern secession commissioners’ efforts to persuade their sister states to secede, is an outstanding resource on the centrality of slavery to the Southern cause – told in Southern statesmen’s own words. (to be reviewed later in a future post).

But Davis also makes another point quite clear: to say that the issue of slavery – especially the threat to slavery expansion in new territories of the United States – was why the two sections went to war, is not the same as saying “that it is the reason 1 million Southern men subsequently fought. In fact, study reveals that the two [reasons] had absolutely nothing in common. Probably 90 percent of the men who wore the gray had never owned a slave and had no personal interest at all either in slavery or in the shadow issue of states rights. The widespread Northern myth that the Confederates went to the battlefield to perpetuate slavery is just that, a myth. Their letters and diaries, in the tens of thousands, reveal again and again that they fought and died because their Southern homeland was invaded and their natural instinct was to protect home and hearth.” (pp. 182-83).

It is not the same, then, to say that the Texans on the levee at Milliken’s Bend were fighting to sustain slavery. To the contrary, they were intent on defending their homes from a threatened Yankee invasion, though the eastern border of Texas was still hundreds of miles away. What made that potential invasion most ominous, however, was that black men – former slaves – were now being recruited and armed by the North. There was nothing more troubling than the prospect of a race war, and any way they could put down this diabolical scheme of the Yankees to foment slave insurrection required the strongest measures as a deterrent.

Yes, the war was about slavery. No, that’s not why most Confederates fought. We would all do well to remember William C. Davis’s distinctions on the matter – and to look closely at the motivation of men in the ranks. It is said that “Desperate times call for desperate measures,” and certainly the men in both blue and gray must have felt that desperation that morning on the Mississippi riverbank, each fighting for their own notions of home and freedom, honor and duty.