| Item Description and Credits
GLC03921.21, John S. Mosby to Sam Chapman,
04 June 1907.
For more information or to obtain copies, contact Ana Ramirez-Luhrs
at reference@gilderlehrman.com
or call (212) 787-6616 ext. 209.
Introduction
The South Was My Country
How can a soldier be proud of the country he defends while at the same
time opposed to the cause he is fighting for? John S. Mosby, the renowned
Confederate partisan leader, dealt with this moral dilemma years after
his war ended. Mosby despised slavery, and believed the South had seceded
to protect this peculiar institution. Yet he fought to defend the practice
as he felt his patriotic duty to his nation outweighed all other factors.
After the war, Mosby befriended General Grant and joined the Republican
Party, but held firm to his belief that, “I am not ashamed of
having fought on the side of slavery – a soldier fights for his
country – right or wrong – he is not responsible for the
political merits of the course he fights in …The South was my
country.” Mosby remained proud of having fought for the Confederacy,
even though he disliked an essential part of what the war had stood
for.
Mosby’s attitude was not shared by many of his peers. In the
wake of Reconstruction a growing number of Southerners began to argue
that protecting slavery had not been the real cause of the war, and
some even claimed that slavery was in fact a just institution –
a notion that persists even today. These ideas spread and grew into
the “Lost Cause” movement, a romantic vision of the South
which would eventually gain vast exposure from the popularity of films
including “Birth of a Nation” and “Gone with the Wind.”
In this letter (GLC03921.21) Mosby attacks men who supported this mindset
with all the fury of a great warrior. Was Mosby correct in faulting
these men for their views, when they believed they were only trying
to protect the Confederacy he defended so bravely? Was he a hypocrite
to condemn slavery while taking pride in fighting in its defense? Mosby
expressed a complex and fascinating set of beliefs about the Civil War,
at a time when its history was just beginning to be written.
Dan Wolf, Manuscript Cataloger
Gilder Lehrman Collection
Transcript
June 4th 1907
Dear Sam:
I suppose you are now back in Staunton. I wrote you about my disgust
at reading the Reunion speeches: It has since been increased by reading
Christians report. I am certainly glad I wasn’t there. According
to Christian the Virginia people were the abolitionists & the
Northern people were pro-slavery. He says slavery was “a patriarchal”
institution – So were polygamy & circumcision. Ask Hugh
is he has been circumcised. Christian quotes what the Old Virginians
– said against slavery. True; but why didn’t he quote
what the modern Virginians said [struck: about] [inserted:
in] favor of it – Mason, Hunter, Wise &c. Why didn’t
[struck: t] he state that a Virginia Senator (Mason) was
the author of the Fugitive Slave law – & why didn’t
he quote The Virginia Code (1860) [strikeout] that made it
a crime to speak against slavery, or to teach a negro to read the
Lord’s prayer. Now while I think as badly of slavery as Horace
Greeley did I am not ashamed that my family were slaveholders. It
was our inheritance – Neither am I ashamed that my ancestors
were pirates & cattle thieves. People must be judged by the standard
of their own age. If it was right to own slaves as property
it was right to fight for it. The South went to war on account of
slavery. South Carolina went to war – as she said in her [2]
Secession proclamation – because slavery wd. not be secure under
Lincoln. South Carolina ought to know what was the cause for her seceding.
The truth is the modern Virginians departed from the teachings of
the Father’s. John C. Calhoun's last speech had a bitter attack
on Mr Jefferson for his amendment to the Ordinance of `87 prohibiting
slavery in the Northwest Territory. [struck: Jo.] Calhoun
was in a dying condition – was too weak to read it – So
James M. Mason, a Virginia Senator, read it in the Senate about two
weeks before Calhoun's death – Mch. 1850. Mason & Hunter
not only voted against The admission of California (1850) as
a free state but offered a protest against [inserted:
it] wh. the Senate refused to record on its Journal Nor in the Convention
wh. Gen. Taylor had called to from a Constitution for California,
there were 52 Northern & 50 Southern men – but it was unanimous
against slavery -- But the Virginia Senator, with Ron Tucker &
Co. were opposed to giving [inserted: local] self-government
to California. Ask Sam Yost to give Christian a skinning. I am not
strikeout ashamed of having fought on the side of slavery
– a soldier fights for his country – right or wrong –
he is not responsible for the political merits of the course he fights
in. Yours Truly
The South was my country. Jno: S. Mosby
[written across the top of page 1]
In Feby. 1860 Jeff Davis offered [inserted: a] bill in the
Senate wh. passed, making all the territories slave territory. (see
Davis’ book. ) He was opposed to letting the people decide whether
or not they w[struck: ould] [inserted: d have] slavery
– Wm. A. Smith, President of Randolph Macon quit his duties
as a teacher & in 1857-8-9-60 traveled all over Virginia preaching
slavery & proving it was right by the bible.
[envelope]
Captain Sam Chapman Staunton
Virginia
[verso]
Senator Jas. M. Mason was the author of the Fugitive Slave Law of
1850; but the Ordinance 1787 for the government of the Northwestern
Territory, contained in its amended form, as p assed, the fugitive
slave provision.
See Benton's Thirty Years, p 133.
Notes: Written on Department of Justice stationery. Christian is
George Christian (see GLC 3293).
Suggested Reading
Ashdown, Paul and Caudill, Edward, The Mosby
Myth : a Confederate Hero in Life and Legend. Wilmington, Delaware:
Scholarly Resources, 2002.
Ramage, James A., Gray Ghost : the life of Col. John Singleton
Mosby. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1999.
Tate, J.O., The Memoirs of Colonel John S. Mosby. Nashville:
J.S. Sanders & Co., c1995.
Foner, Eric and Brown, Joshua, Forever Free: The Story of Emancipation
and Reconstruction. New York: Knopf, 2005.
Davis, William C. The Cause Lost: Myths and Realities of the
Confederacy. Lawrence, Kansas: University Press of Kansas, 1996.
Foster, Gaines M. Ghosts of the Confederacy: Defeat, the Lost
Cause and the Emergence of the New South, 1865-1913. New York:
Oxford University Press, 1988.
Gallagher, Gary W., and Glatthaar, Joseph T., editors. Leaders
of the Lost Cause: New Perspectives on the Confederate High Command.
Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania: Stackpole Books, 2004.
Gallagher, Gary W. and Nolan, Alan T. The Myth of the Lost Cause
and Civil War History. Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University
Press, 2000.
Gallagher, Gary W., Jubal A. Early, the Lost Cause, and Civil
War History: A Persistent Legacy. Milwaukee, Wisconsin: Marquette
University Press, 1995.
Moore, Winfred, Jr., Sinisi, Kyle S., and White, David H. Jr., editors.
Warm Ashes: Issues in Southern History at the Dawn of the Twenty-First
Century. Columbia, South Carolina: University of South Carolina
Press, 2003.
Pollard, Edward A., The Lost Cause: A New Southern History of
the War of the Confederates. New York: 1866.
Rearden, Carol, Pickett's Charge in History and Memory.
Chapel Hill, North Carolina: University of North Carolina Press, 1997.
Wilson, Charles Reagan, Baptized in Blood: The Religion of the
Lost Cause, 1865-1920. Athens, Georiga: University of Georgia
Press, 1980.
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