The South's reaction to the outbreak of the American Civil War in 1861 was characterized by a remarkable display of popular support. Across the newly emerged Confederate nation, war enthusiasm skyrocketed and anti-Unionist rhetoric abounded. According to William Baylor of the 5th Regiment at Harper's Ferry, “Great enthusiasm animates all, and should the vicegerent of the arch-fiend dare send his minions to Old Virginia, we will repel them, or leave the memory of brave men for our friends to revere.” A minority of dissenters - people with “union sentiments” - was scorned and sidelined. In perhaps the most potent expression of patriotism, volunteer rates for military service soared. In early August, 1861, a Virginian living in Augusta County reported in his diary a phenomenon Americans throughout the South had been witnessing for the past few months: recruiters “have arranged to furnish their quota of volunteers, and the remainder will return home.”
Historians often cite testimony such as this to argue that the supply of would-be soldiers in the South greatly outweighed demand when war broke out. Indeed, the phenomenon of popular support is undisputed in discussions of the war's opening phase. Historian Frank Owsley's 1925 criticism of the Confederacy's failure to survive the Civil War generalizes upon reports such as these, and refuses to blame the volunteer spirit of young Southerners for the war's outcome. Their enthusiasm in 1861 was, he writes, “almost without a parallel in history,” and would have enabled a more logistically prepared government to mobilize an army of 600,000 within a few months.
Historian David Donald concurs, asserting in his 1959 study of Confederate soldiers that Southern men “rushed to enlist, fearing the fighting would be over before they could get to the front.” Recent studies support this conclusion, such as Irwin Unger's 2006 account of American history, These United States. He indicates that the system of relying upon volunteers for military service in the South worked well for the first year of the war. Though the Confederacy was plagued with problems in 1861, its own citizens' support was not one of them.
The impressive phenomenon of popular support served to sustain the Confederacy as it went to war with the Union, imbuing the fledgling government with the power to resist the North's challenge to its authority over the seceded states. It provided the regiments that successfully resisted the first serious Northern attempt to restore the Union at the First Battle of Bull Run in July of 1861, and continued to augment the ranks of Confederate grey well into the following year. As such, popular support for war in the South was instrumental in shaping the course of the war. Historian Charles Wesley, having just lived through the First World War, commented on the value of mass support to the Confederacy during the Civil War: “Clearly more important than numbers and resources - as weighty as they may be in the final result - are the morale of the people and their attitude toward war. … A nation like an individual is not beaten until its spirit is broken.”
Indeed, popular support for the war was a necessary condition for its continued existence beyond the first few engagements: without the support of its population, the Confederate government would not have had the human resources necessary to maintain a front against the Union. No matter how passionate the Confederacy's politicians were in endorsing war, they relied upon popular support for their very survival.
In this essay, I argue that this phenomenon of mass support, this crucial ingredient in the recipe for war, cannot be understood without explicit reference to the institution of slavery in the South, and I highlight the almost universal desire within the white community to defend this institution. First, I show that slavery was a deeply rooted institution in the antebellum South, so important that it helped to define the region's identity, and so powerful that it made up a large part of the Southern reason for supporting the Civil War in 1861. I argue, further, that post-bellum claims seeking to devalue the importance of slavery in Confederate combat motivation, placing the emphasis instead on the defence of sovereignty and states' rights, are flawed.
Concepts of states' rights were inseparable from the institution of slavery when applied to the Southern case, and when other states' rights came into conflict with slavery, Southern choices overwhelmingly reflected the primacy of slavery over the concept of sovereignty. I also address a class-oriented view which holds that, though rich slaveholding planters may have desired a war for slavery, the poor Southern majority supported the war for other reasons. I suggest that these class distinctions are inaccurate labels when applied to the South, and that all members of white society were generally unified by their material interest in slavery and by their racially motivated conceptions of self. Finally, I contend that arguments designed to de-emphasize the role of slavery in the Confederacy's war motivation are founded upon a popular but inaccurate recollection of the conflict that took hold almost immediately after Appomattox and was nurtured by a nation-wide mood of reconciliation.
