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Bitter Fruits Of Bondage: The Demise Of Slavery And The Collapse Of The Confederacy, 1861-1865 (Carter G Woodson Institute Series in Black Studies)
written by Armstead L. Robinson
Studio : University of Virginia Press
by University of Virginia Press
Publisher : University of Virginia Press
Released : 2004-12
Availability : Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Number of Items : 1
EAN : 9780813923093
Avg. Customer Rating: (based on 5 reviews)
List Price : $35.00
Our Price : $27.99
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Product Description |
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Bitter Fruits of Bondage is the late Armstead L. Robinson's magnum opus, a controversial history that explodes orthodoxies on both sides of the historical debate over why the South lost the Civil War. Recent studies, while conceding the importance of social factors in the unraveling of the Confederacy, still conclude that the South was defeated as a result of its losses on the battlefield, which in turn resulted largely from the superiority of Northern military manpower and industrial resources. Robinson contends that these factors were not decisive, that the process of social change initiated during the birth of Confederate nationalism undermined the social and cultural foundations of the southern way of life built on slavery, igniting class conflict that ultimately sapped white southerners of the will to go on. In particular, simmering tensions between nonslaveholders and smallholding yeoman farmers on the one hand and wealthy slaveholding planters on the other undermined Confederate solidarity on both the homefront and the battlefield. Through their desire to be free, slaves fanned the flames of discord. Confederate leaders were unable to reconcile political ideology with military realities, and, as a result, they lost control over the important Mississippi River Valley during the first two years of the war. The major Confederate defeats in 1863 at Vicksburg and Missionary Ridge were directly attributable to growing disenchantment based on class conflict over slavery. Because the antebellum way of life proved unable to adapt successfully to the rigors of war, the South had to fight its struggle for nationhood against mounting odds. By synthesizing the results of unparalleled archival research, Robinson tells the story of how the war and slavery were intertwined, and how internal social conflict undermined the Confederacy in the end. |
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A Dedicated Historian's Final Testament |
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The late Armstead Robinson was a gifted, committed scholar. Writing apparently did not come easily to him; his mountain of data, painstaking methods and final illness delayed this book's appearance til after his passing. This long-awaited posthumous revision of his PhD thesis took years to complete, but is worth the wait. A wealth of detail supports his findings on the scope of resistance and internal dissent in the Confederacy. While it is not the last word on this subject, it advances debate in numerous ways. African American participants in the Southern cause mostly contributed under duress, had close social ties to white neighbors or were wealthy slaveowners themselves. This important issue deserves fuller treatment. Black rebels were an interesting phenomenon, but the tiny percentages of willing volunteers made them statistically insignificant, and most of the book focuses on Southern whites anyway. Neo-Confederate reviewers dishonor the memory of a dedicated historian who cannot defend his work against distortions. 25 years ago L. Litwack's "Been In The Storm So Long" revealed slaves' hatred of the Confederacy and welcome of freedom. W. Jordan, "Tumult & Silence at Second Creek" tells how Mississippi planters brutally crushed a major wartime slave conspiracy. W. Freehling, "The South Vs. the South" is a concise survey of divisions in the Confederacy. |
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Review from New Orleans Times-Picayune, February 20, 2005 |
In 1861, the Washington Artillery left New Orleans to join the Confederacy in Richmond. This elite company, whose ranks included members of some of the Crescent City's most prominent slaveholding families, did not travel alongside other Louisiana volunteers. Instead, they rode to Richmond aboard a special train that "carried a chest of gold donated by doting relatives." In Virginia, they dined separately from poor enlisted men on delicacies prepared by Edouard, a cook borrowed from a fine New Orleans restaurant. "Ah! He was magnifique," unit member William Miller Owen remembered. "His dishes were superb, the object of adoration of all the visitors who did not enjoy the luxury of French cuisine in their own camps."
In "Bitter Fruits of Bondage," Armstead Robinson notes that the members of the Washington Artillery were not alone. Other slaveholders claimed similar privileges. Some also dined in separate mess tents where their slaves prepared meals with ingredients paid for by the mess tents' "members". Many brought personal servants who attended to laundry and other chores. And slaveholders were far more likely to made officers than non-slaveholders. But rather than being "the object of adoration" of those who did not enjoy such perks, the slaveholders' privileges caused dissension. In an army where poor yeoman farmers did most of the fighting, Robinson asserts, the slaveholders' inegalitarian behavior fatefully undermined the army's esprit de corps.
By 1862, according to Robinson, animosity between slaveholders and yeoman increased exponentially. The Confederate congress instituted a draft that exempted overseers on plantations with twenty or more slaves from service. The draft law also allowed wealthy men to buy their way out of the war by paying for a substitute to fight in their stead. Confederate leaders justified these measures by citing the need to maintain order and discipline on plantations. Some planters and overseers, they claimed, needed to man the homefront or chaos would ensue. But many non-slaveholders remained unconvinced. They began to view the conflict as a "rich man's war and a poor man's fight." These yeoman joined up initially, Robinson argues, to defend their homes and because they feared the results of emancipation. But as the war ground on and wealthy planters appeared not to be carrying their share of the burden, many poor farmers began to feel that they had been duped into fighting a slaveholders' war. As class fissures grew, Robinson maintains, support for the Confederacy waned.
"Bitter Fruits of Bondage" is Robinson's magnum opus, a book he had been researching and writing for over twenty years. A legendary figure in the field of African-American Studies, Robinson died unexpectedly in 1995. His widow Mildred brought the unfinished 1,200 page manuscript to the University of Virginia Press. Enlisting the editorial acumen of Barbara Fields, Eugene Genovese, and other leading scholars, the press has now shepherded the project to completion. The result is a compelling book that is sure to spark contentious debates because Robinson rejects the popular notion that the South lost the Civil War only because it lacked the manpower and industrial might of the North. He notes that the colonists in the American Revolution and the Vietnamese who fought the French and the United States in the 20th century persevered despite even greater odds. Instead, he attributes the comparatively swift collapse of the Confederacy to the debilitating effects of slavery and class conflict.
Although Confederate Vice-President Alexander Stephens called slavery "the cornerstone of the Confederacy," Robinson argues that the "peculiar institution" undermined the Confederate war effort from the outset. After Fort Sumter, slaveowners feared that their slaves might view the war as an opportunity to revolt. Rumors of plots and insurrections swirled in Louisiana's Tensas Parish, Mississippi's Jefferson County, and throughout the South. To prevent uprisings, dissident state Governors like Georgia's Joseph Brown refused to turn over weapons seized from federal arsenals to the Confederate government in Richmond and, instead, armed their state militias and slave patrols. As a result, over 200,000 Confederate volunteers had no weapons in the war's early stages. If armed, those men might have allowed Confederate generals to follow the rout at First Bull Run with an invasion of Washington that may have brought the war to an immediate close.
The selfish behavior of individual slaveowners also undermined the war effort. Planters proved reluctant to lend their slaves to the Confederate army. Robinson attributes key defeats in the West, including the fall of Forts Donelson and Henry, to poorly-constructed fortifications that could have been strengthened by slave labor. Reports also circulated that many planters continued to use their land and slaves to grow profitable cash crops like cotton even as food shortages caused women to riot in Richmond and Confederate soldiers to starve. While planters reaped profits, many yeoman found "that they were expected to fight to save slavery and to replace with their own bodies slaveholders and overseers who avoided military service."
As non-slaveholders' disgruntlement grew, Robinson argues, many simply quit fighting. In 1863, Jefferson Davis warned the Confederate Congress that one-third of the army had deserted. Louisiana Governor Henry Allen reported a "terrible state of affairs" noting that there were over 8,000 deserters in the city of Alexandria alone. By September 1864, almost three-fourths of Confederate soldiers were absent without leave. Today, Alabama is called the "Heart of Dixie." But during the Civil War, northern Alabama was roiling with anti-war dissent and was home to secret organizations like the Order of the Heroes of America who met Confederate draft officials with violence. Resistance also flourished in East Texas, East Tennessee, northern Louisiana, Arkansas, and the upcountry of Georgia, the Carolinas, and Mississippi. Many southern yeomen even fought for the Union. An estimated 104,000 white southerners eventually served in the Union Army.
Black southerners also helped bring down the Confederacy. Slaves provided crucial intelligence to Union scouts and spies, sabotaged the work on plantations, and freed themselves by running to northern lines when the federal army drew near. Over 170,000 former slaves donned Union blue and fought against their former masters.
Confederate leaders Robert E. Lee and Jefferson Davis acknowledged the significant contributions African-American soldiers made to the northern war effort. In the desperate, final weeks of the conflict, Robinson notes, the Confederates abandoned their doomed nation's founding principles and made a surreal effort to recruit their own black regiments.
Because "Bitter Fruits of Bondage" was so long in the making, many readers will already be familiar with some of Robinson's central arguments. The important role the slaves played by fleeing to Union lines, for example, is by now an oft-told tale. But there is also much here that is as fresh today as the day it was written. Robinson's forceful prose, meticulous research, and command of the subject, make this an important book. He provides powerful evidence to refute those who argue that all white southerners, slaveholder and non-slaveholder alike, supported the Confederate cause until its last moments. Because of slavery and its discontents, Robinson contends, the Confederacy began to unravel even before the first battle was fought.
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Bitterly disappointing work |
Mr. Robinson's long awaited Bitter Fruits of Bondage, proves to be a bitter pill to swallow. I expected far more than suppositions , guesswork, and mere personal opinion. It truly was a major disapointment. Fortunately the book was loaned to me and I am not out any hard earned money. I give it one star.
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Opinions rather than research |
Robinson contends that the superiority of Northern military manpower and industrial resources were not decisive in the defeat of the South, but that discord between slaves, poor whites, and the planter class was instrumental in its downfall. Pure rubbish, since Southerners of every color went eagerly off to War and fought to the bitter end while the slaves supported the troops in the field by working back home. Even though slave revolts could have brought the South to its knees, none occurred, much to the chagrin of Lincoln who hoped for such when he issued the Emancipation Proclamation. Don't waste your money.
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Extremely disappointing Civil War work |
This long-awaited work proves disappointing to Civil War historians and buffs alike. Robinson contends that the Confederacy lost the war as much through demoralization at home due to the pending demise of slavery rather than the defeat on the battlefield, a supposition which easily collapses under the weight of historical fact. Less than ten percent of the men who fought for the South ever owned a slave, and neither did the vast majority of white southerners. Slavery was not the sole cause of the war and hardly a reason for people who did not own them, and thus were unaffected by either its existence or its demise, to fight in its defense. Taken against the fact that the Confederate government in its last year was willing to free slaves in return for fighting - which would have dismantled slavery, this allegation simply has no basis in reality.
Virginia was the first state to ban the African slave trade and in 1859 the Virginia Legislature very narrowly defeated an amendment that would have ended the "peculiar institution" in that state. When added to the fact that thousands of non-whites (including my grandfather and his Cherokee nation), including free and slave blacks also fought for the Confederacy, Robinson's allegations are unfounded in real history. This book adds nothing to the student's understanding of the war and is based on supposition rather than historical fact.
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