The Lost Cause Of The North
By: Ephrom Josine
Tags: White Supremacy, Whitewashing, Slavery, Civil War, History

Michele Bachmann has never been one to have a good understanding of history. When she was in Congress, and especially during her 2012 Presidential Campaign, she became known for her many gaffes regarding her understanding of the past of our nation. From telling New Hampshire “You’re the state where the shot was heard around the world at Lexington and Concord,” to talking about President Roosevelt’s “Hoot-Smolly Tariff Act,” to saying John Quincy Adams “would not rest until slavery was extinguished in the country.” Her career, much like the career of all ideologues, is one that views her country in legend as opposed to actual facts.

So why am I talking about another one of her historical gaffes — especially considering she left Congress on 1/3/2015? Because, for once, her gaffe was not her fault, but simply the product of how most Americans view their own history.

Ever since the Civil War ended, the debate on how to teach it in schools has been firmly split into two camps: The side that believes the Union to be unapologetically the good guys and the Confederates to be unapologetically the bad guys and the side that argues that the Confederacy was the “victim” of the “war of Northern Aggression.” The second one is mocked as The “Lost Cause of the South” and was the popular Southern narrative for over a century, with librarians in former Confederate states infamous refusing to put books in their libraries that didn’t conform to this narrative.

Although the “Lost Cause” view was once popular in the South, it has fizzled out in much of the United States in recent years and has relatively few modern advocates. However, the view that the Union never did any wrong — which is based on equally little historical evidence — has only gotten more popular in recent years.

Because of this, it makes sense Bachmann gave the world this gaffe in a recent interview:

“We all know that there was slavery in America’s history, but no other nation did was America did — 600,000 people voluntarily gave their lives to extinguish slavery forever in the United States. No other nation did that. We extinguished it and we went from there to continue to deal with that issue.” ~ Bachmann

I should begin by noting the bizarre idea Bachmann puts forth that it took the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people to abolish slavery is something to be proud of. In most of Europe, slavery was abolished peacefully in the early 19th century. In fact, only two countries — the United States and Haiti — had to go to war in order to abolish slavery.

For that matter, historians estimate between 620,000 and 750,000 Americans died during the Civil War, so Bachmann’s figure is slightly questionable. However, up until 2012, the accepted number of deaths was 618,222 — so we’ll give Bachmann a pass on this piece of small misinformation.

Of that 618,222 figure, it was also believed that 258,000 of them — or roughly 42% of deaths — were Confederate soldiers. Confederate soldiers were specifically fighting to preserve slavery, so Bachmann’s history is now just plain wrong.

However, just because the Confederates were fighting to keep slavery, that does not mean the Union was fighting to end it. In fact, five Union states — Delaware, Maryland, West Virginia, Kentucky, and Missouri — contained a total of 451,021 slaves. These states also had 28,000 total combat deaths — or 11% of total deaths the Union suffered.

The New York Draft Riots of 1863. Photo Credit: Wikicommons

For that matter, Bachmann calling these deaths “voluntary” is also wrong. In 1863, Congress passed the Enrollment Act, which was the first draft in American history. This move was controversial, and led to the infamous New York Draft riots that started on 7/11/1863 and ended on 7/16/1863. These riots also quickly became racial, with reports of white Americans (and even Irish Immigrants) beating up black Americans for no other reason than their race.

Why did these men riot? One major reason was that many of them supported slavery and did not want to fight a war that could lead to abolishing it.