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OH. YOU LARRY MUNSON
Upon rising Monday morning, I learned
Larry Munson died last night. Sugar looked like
it was falling from the sky. Or were those tears
of joyful celebration of a life that brought
endless hours of entertainment? The great
est compliment given him, perhaps, was that
listening to him describing a game was almost
better than actually watching the action live.
With the advent of iPhones and instant mes
saging there is not as much of a need to listen
to a game. Nowadays, everything is "BB&T, he
goes back to throw," "Cook's Pest Control, he
drops it wide open." Back before every game
was on TV, Larry was my contact, my link to
a game, to reality. Back then, I had to work
every Saturday, one ear listening and the rest
of me working. There will never be another.
The times have changed. If the Dawgs beat
LSU, Bama or Arkansas two weeks from now,
the sugar may once again fall from the sky
(Dome). Yeah, Yeah, Yeah! Oh, you Larry
Munson.
Stuart Libby
Athens
PROMOTING MISCONCEPTIONS?
Regard for at least minimal historic accu
racy compels me, as a general reader of his
tory, to respond to the article in the Nov. 9
issue "Demythologizinq [sic.] the Lost Cause,"
by Donald E. Wilkes, Jr.; the article is also
available in complete form online, but adds
little of substance.
Mr. Wilkes' discussion of "Myth No. 1:
The principal reason the Southern states
seceded was states' rights, not slavery,"
merely replaces one myth with another. Wilkes
fills out half of a precious Flagpole column
with quotations from other, and better, writ
ers, choosing a small selection from South
Carolina's Declaration of Immediate Causes
and Vice-President Stephens' infamous "slavery
is the cornerstone" speech. I will leave for the
time the issue over whether the speech-text
we have is the one Stephens actually delivered
and look at immediate causes of secession.
Wilkes first makes a good case that South
Carolinians were concerned about the Northern
states' violations of Federal decisions sup
porting property in slaves. But it is important
to remember that many other states besides
South Carolina seceded. To get the full picture,
it is instructive to read the full text of the
South Carolina Declaration and the Ordinance
of Secession, then to read the equivalent
documents from all the other states, some of
which are dated later than Lincoln's call-to-
arms against the states.
The bulk of the paragraphs preceding the
quoted part in the South Carolina Declaration
have to do with the right to secede. Other
Deep South states approved ordinances
that say in effect "same as South Carolina."
Texas, for its part, develops a frankly white-
supremacist argument. Arkansas, on the other
hand, seceded to prepare to defend herself
from attack, Missouri because the state had
already been invaded
by Federal troops,
and Maryland had
no chance to decide
at all—her leaders
were too busy being
arrested without
charges by Federal
troops.
Without these contexts, not to mention
the host of Southern political and economic
concerns from the tariff of 1816 on, the writer
gives a casual reader the impression that
South Carolina suddenly decided to up and
leave because some slaves were not being
returned to them. The bottom line is that this
argument, "states' rights vs. slavery," is a false
division. The two go together—the states
exercised their right to secede for a variety of
reasons, including protecting their property in
slaves and everything else they had.
The word choices in "domestic institutions"
and "servile insurrection" were not alto
gether original to South Carolinians. The U.S.
Declaration of Independence charges tnat King
George "has excited domestic insurrections
amongst us," by which token the American
Revolution was likewise "about slavery."
So, one can make a case that Southerners
were concerned about their way of life,
including slavery, but it is impossible to show
that the motive for the Federal invasion had
anything to do with slavery. The motive for
the war at the North end was purely to force
the seceding states to stay in the Union.
Slavery per se was upheld by an array of U.S.
Supreme Court decisions. So, at best the war
was only half "about slavery." Everyone knew
there was already another way available to
end slavery besides waging war; it was called
changing the law.
Mr. Wilkes' text also evinces some editing
problems; "Myth No. 2" and "3" are essentially
the same, amounting to the charge that seces
sionists used '"force," "fraud" and "intimida
tion and violence" at the ballot. Once again,
there is no context—which in this case is
force and fraud in the rest of the U.S. It was
not unusual in the 19th century for political
parties to corral groups of citizens and herd
them to the polls to vote the right way—
preferably more than
once. I do not have
the data in front of
me on the relative
levels of corrup
tion in New York or
Chicago as compared
with Charleston or
New Orleans. My
hunch is that if we put these places next to
each other, the secessionists might stand
condemned for using the same methods as
everybody else.
Also, it seems to me that the Lincoln
administration used considerable "intimidation
ar.d violence" to prevent secession, not to
mention further "force" to support the seces
sion of West Virginia from Virginia.
Wilkes gives us a magic figure for the viola
tion of civil liberties in the Southland—4,108
people arrested by the military of the
Confederacy. Again, the number tells us little
in the total absence of notes on the cir
cumstances of these arrests, nor any figures
from the U.S. in general. The Federal list of
violations could begin with the arrest of the
mayor and city council of Baltimore, an arrest
warrant for the Chief Justice of the Supreme
Court, the shutting down of dissenting news
papers and go on and on from there.
As I said, the online version of this article
adds nothing to the printed parts, and the
remaining "myths" suffer in the same way as
the printed ones—context, context, context.
His response to Myths 5 and 6 (Southern loy
alty) both have to do with Southerners work
ing against the Confederacy or joining the
Federal army. Again, not a word about people
in federally controlled areas deserting or join
ing the Confederacy. Wilkes overturns Myth 7
(the loyalty of the slaves) by pointing to the
African Americans who worked against the
Confederacy and then claiming that "blacks
undermined the Confederacy." Wilkes replaces
one idealized generalization with another. No.
9 claims that the Confederacy used spies and
black ops. Again, there is not a peep from Mr.
Wilkes about the well-known Dahlgren affair,
when Federal agents planned not only to
assassinate President Davis and his Cabinet,
but in the same act release prisoners on the
general public and burn the city of Richmond
to the ground. Far be it from the United States
to settle for mere kidnapping when mass mur
der would be more effective.
I will concede some points on Myth 8
(external vs. internal causes of loss). Wilkes
points out that the South was weakened by
internal divisions. Since the principle behind
secession was state sovereignty, it is not
surprising that the states sometimes did not
cooperate with each other or the Confederate
government as much as they should have.
As Wilkes puts it, "many misconceptions
have grown up around the Civil War," and
not all of them were nurtured south of the
Mason-Dixon line. Wilkes may need some basic
help in composition. His opening paragraph
mentions idealization of the "Lost Cause," but
none of his busted "myths" are clearly tied to
the ideal view of the past. Most are tired old
targets for attack on Southern history. On the
personal note, I am surprised and irritated
that after so many well-developed articles
on local history, from covered bridges to the
Creek Nation, that the Flagpole would allow its
ink to be wasted on such a shallow piece of
polemic. I hope the good newspaper returns
soon to its usual levels of quality analysis.
Geoffrey Adams
Athens
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4 FLAGP0LE.C0M • NOVEMBER 23, 2011
