VA: Gen. Robert E. Lee Statue in Richmond Has Been Taken Down

[Unconditional Surrender Truman]

I'm sure you can find prominent slaveholders who remained loyal to the Union during the war, particularly of course in Kentucky, where the planter class strategically aligned themselves with the Lincoln administration in hopes that if the war did bring about the end of slavery, it wouldn't effect them. HOWEVER, these individuals do not present the "typical Southern unionist." If we look to the places in the slave states where unionism was strongest, we see a strong inverse correlation at the county level between the % of the population who were slaves (i.e. the prevalence of slavery in that county) and unionist sentiment. Viz.,

From these maps, we see the large majority of unionist delegates to state conventions in the winter and spring of 1861 came from counties where slaves accounted for a negligible minority of the population, and therefore where the white male electorate was far less likely to include major slaveowners. The areas where slavery was strongest, with some exceptions, sent delegates who supported the secession ordinances and many of whom in fact had been angling for this outcome for over a decade. So no, secession was emphatically not the pet project of dirt farmers in western North Carolina and eastern Tennessee: it was emphatically supported by the majority of the planter class, and its opponents were mostly very poor whites in the mold of Andrew Johnson who hated blacks, but hated the planters more.

[Progressive Pessimist]

Good. History is back to being written by the winners.

[ProudModerate2]

"This is all my fault."
- Robert E. Lee, between bouts of diarrhea, after losing 23,000 of his troops in a battle he lost

It is said, that at the Battle of Gettysburg, some of Lee's top generals pleaded with him not to initiate the head-on attack, through open ground, towards the Union's center. It was bad tactics/strategy, it would involve an enormous amount of death and casualties, and it would fail (which is exactly what happened).

[RINO Tom]

This one is dumb IMHO, but I suppose the city may do as it pleases.

[Dan the Roman]

I'm sure you can find prominent slaveholders who remained loyal to the Union during the war, particularly of course in Kentucky, where the planter class strategically aligned themselves with the Lincoln administration in hopes that if the war did bring about the end of slavery, it wouldn't effect them. HOWEVER, these individuals do not present the "typical Southern unionist." If we look to the places in the slave states where unionism was strongest, we see a strong inverse correlation at the county level between the % of the population who were slaves (i.e. the prevalence of slavery in that county) and unionist sentiment. Viz.,

From these maps, we see the large majority of unionist delegates to state conventions in the winter and spring of 1861 came from counties where slaves accounted for a negligible minority of the population, and therefore where the white male electorate was far less likely to include major slaveowners. The areas where slavery was strongest, with some exceptions, sent delegates who supported the secession ordinances and many of whom in fact had been angling for this outcome for over a decade. So no, secession was emphatically not the pet project of dirt farmers in western North Carolina and eastern Tennessee: it was emphatically supported by the majority of the planter class, and its opponents were mostly very poor whites in the mold of Andrew Johnson who hated blacks, but hated the planters more.

A distinction needs to be drawn between those who in the 1850s opposed policies which inevitably would result in secession, and how they behaved after.

Fire Eater politics prior to November 1860 were flakish. They could lead to nothing could and much of the genuine elite opposed them.

Once South Carolina left the die was cast. Anyone still backing the Union after Fort Sumter was in effect weakening the leverage of the South either to succeed in secession or to force a settlement. It is ahistoric to treat those who backed the Confederacy once it was an established fact with their behavior before, especially because Johnson was far more radical in the 1850s than Bell. For instance on Kansas-Nebraska where Bell opposed it and Johnson supported it. Arguably the Johnson/Bell dynamic is exactly what I meant. Bell represented a fundamentally conservative constituency which opposed the Kansas-Nebraska act and favored accepting limitations on slavery in order to avoid conflict when populists like Johnson wished to fight abstract principled battles. In 1861, Bell again bowed to "reality" namely that with the Deep South gone the only options were for the Deep South to be crushed which would destroy the position of the Upper South, or for it to succeed. There was no longer much chance to avoid war, and what chance existed lay in the South sticking together.

In effect

1850s - Large slaveowners tended to be far less engaged in the fights over abstract "Southern Rights" because they stood to gain nothing economically in Kansas and to lose enormously if the conflict led to the triumph of "demagogues" in the North(and South). Hence they saw efforts to expand slavery as threats to their own position and the security of their own property.

1858-60 - They opposed the takeover of the Southern Democratic party by ideologies, almost none of whom owned extensive numbers of slaves, who wanted a breakup and floated fantasies such as reopening the slave trade or suggesting Dred Scott required slavery to be expanded nationally. They made up the base of residual Douglas support in the South and Bell support.

1861 - Your map is right but studies show that there is not a very good correlation between 1860 Presidential support and 1861 secession voting in the Deep South after the first few states. Whigs like Alexander Stephens led the fight against secession in Georgia, but once it was clear several states were going out, the former Whigs generally fell into line. The downscale Democrats did not, which is why they made up almost all 1861 Unionists.

But 1861 Unionism, and post 1861 Unionism is a very different phenomenon. At that point it is purely ideological. There is nothing anyone with property can hope to preserve or accomplish through Unionism. The only options that can save them are a Southern Victory or a compromise. Unconditional Unionism makes both less likely. A Northern political or military victory at that point is the end.

In effect large property owners behaved how one would expect them to behave. They sought to avoid abstract political clashes where they stood to gain nothing, and potentially lose much. When a binary situation developed they again eschewed seeking mythical third options and chose to make the best of a bad situation. Even if they believed the South could not win a war, that was immaterial. The war was happening and if the South lost they lost. They needed a Confederate victory, regardless of their reservations.

Furthermore, even if they did not desire a Confederate victory, and instead hoped for a compromise peace, and that probably was the preference as it would undermine their political opponents in both north and south, then being very loud about it was unwise.

 Much as the final Iraq War vote might not be representative of actual reservations and sentiments among the American political elite in 2002, the later secession conventions after the secession of South Carolina, and especially after the direction of travel in other parts of the Deep South was clear, greatly understate pre-November 1860 doubts. Except, of course, in areas where Unionist sentiment was so overwelmingly strong that it was not just safe, but advantageous to express those views.

But 45% Unionist sentiment tended to collapse to sub 10% very rapidly elsewhere as tends to happen in similar situations.

[H.E. VOLODYMYR ZELENKSYY]

Put up a statue of Nat Turner in its place.

[Unconditional Surrender Truman]

[snip]

So lots to unpack here, lol. It is of course correct that prior to the Civil War a large part of the planter class were Whigs and supported the Union because, and not in spite, of their commitment to the continued existence of slavery. Henry Clay in the 1840s and Bell in 1860 emblematic of this type —I have argued this point at length elsewhere on this forum, though of course I don't expect you to be familiar with those posts. In 1860 Bell stood on the platform of "the constitution as it is"—i.e. with slavery—and indeed received considerable support from the planter class. Over the preceding decade he and other conditional unionists had argued, as you correctly note, that the radical policies of the fire-eaters were destabilizing and would only serve to bring on a sectional crisis and empower the abolitionists in the North. This, of course, is what happened. So when it comes to your diagnosis of the Southern Whig party and why so many of them advocated a cautious or "conservative" approach to promoting the interests of slavery, I think we are in agreement.

It is incorrect, however, to state that Bell's position was universally accepted by the planter class or even shared by a majority of the elites —certainly not that these individuals were uniformly opposed to secession. The Whig vote in the Black Belt counties had shrunk in every election after 1840, and while Bell still carried many of those counties that voted for Harrison in 1840, Breckinridge's gains among the planter class versus previous Democratic candidates are noticeable and significant. This reflects the collapse of the Southern Whigs after 1850 as they were increasingly unable to make a credible argument to be an effective advocate for slavery in federal politics. Breckinridge in fact enjoyed considerable support among the planter class, and it was not with reluctance that Davis or Pickens went to cast their votes for him.

Breckinridge's candidacy and the radical politics of the fire eaters had a constituency with the planter class long before the events of December 1860 and January 1861 made conditional unionism no longer tenable. The most famous fire eater among the Southern elite was of course Calhoun, but there were plenty of others: the record of the 1850s shows a strong and growing contingent of planters who did want to break up the Union, or at least acted like they did. I'm not contending that these individuals did not face powerful opposition from the Southern Whigs also, but to state categorically that the "genuine elite" opposed secession up until the point when it became a political inevitability is simply false.

The conditional unionism of Bell and the unconditional unionism of east Tennessee and west Virginia are of course different animals, and I do not believe I said otherwise. The claim was stated that "it was the poorer, slave-less whites [...] who forced a war over slavery", yet this is demonstrably not the case in 1861 when most opposition to secession came from the slaveholding upper class. As this conversation started not with the 1850s, but with the question of who created and supported the Confederate States of America from 1861 to 1865, so that is how I addressed my post. It is abundantly clear that while secession had the support of a clear majority of white men in the slave states, those who voted for secession and those who volunteered for the Confederate Army were far more likely than the average person to own slaves and to have strong social and economic ties to slavery.

After reading and re-reading all this, I'm not entirely sure what your larger point is. If you are saying that the political situation in the South prior to 1860 was more complicated than rich slaveholding secessionist Democrats vs. poor non-slaveholding unionist Whigs and that Southern conditional unionism had deep pro-slavery motivations, then yes, I agree. If you are saying the Confederacy was not clearly created by and for the planter class to protect their economic interests, or that some issue other than slavery was the cause of the war, then I am afraid I must strongly dissent.

[Frodo]

So with the process of reimagining Richmond's Monument Avenue having begun, it seems only fitting for its namesake to remain an avenue of monuments, only this time dedicated to prominent Virginia Unionists, abolitionists, and African Americans instead of traitors.

Here is my list of suggestions to replace the five Confederate statues that have all finally been removed:

General George H. Thomas (replacing General Robert E. Lee's statue)

Elizabeth Van Lew

Mary Richards Bowser

William Harvey Carney

Mary Jackson (hers should be closest to Arthur Ashe's monument)