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"PROPAGANDA AND PRESS OPINION ON SLAVERY"
Bill Andrews March 8, 1939
United States History [Vanderbilt university]
Propaganda has played an important pole in inciting the animosity of factions of opposing forces in all wars. It played just as important a part in arousing tempers in the South and North prior to and during the Civil afar. This temper in the North was due directly to the propaganda ex-pounded by writers and publishers concerning slavery and social conditions effected therefrom in the South. The temper in the South was due largely to resentment of this propaganda.
The attack on slavery...
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"PROPAGANDA AND PRESS OPINION ON SLAVERY"
Bill Andrews March 8, 1939
United States History [Vanderbilt university]
Propaganda has played an important pole in inciting the animosity of factions of opposing forces in all wars. It played just as important a part in arousing tempers in the South and North prior to and during the Civil afar. This temper in the North was due directly to the propaganda ex-pounded by writers and publishers concerning slavery and social conditions effected therefrom in the South. The temper in the South was due largely to resentment of this propaganda.
The attack on slavery became a war on a section and its way of life. "Slavery was imagined, not investigated. Southern people and Southern life were distorted into forms best suited to purposes of propaganda. Church, political party, and State were drawn in as agents of a crusade declared to be launched in the name of morality and democracy."*
The machinery of attack ranged from local and national organizations, publications of every kind from newspapers to 'best sellers', to traveling preachers and missionary bands and organized legislative lobbies. It appealed mostly to the emotions. It made abolition and morality the same thing and it impressed two ideas on the northern mind, namely,
that the Southerner was "an aristocrat, an enemy of democracy in society and government, and that slave-holders were men
of violent and uncontrolled passions--intemperate, licentious, and brutal." * These northern organizations taught that the South was divided into two classes, slave-holders and poor whites. The slave-holders were said to completely control the section and had as their purpose the rule or ruin of the nation.
In one pamphlet circulated in the North, the writer spoke of the "savage ferocity" of Southern men. He says that their savage nature is the result of their habit of plundering and oppressing the slave. He tells of "perpetual idleness broken only by brutal cock-fights, gander-pullings, and horse races so barbarous in character that 'the blood of the tortured animal drips from the lash and flies at every leap from the stroke of the rowel.' "
Another article declared that thousands of slave women are given up as prey to the fusts of their masters. One writer stated that the South was full of mulattoes; that its best blood flowed in the veins of its slaves.
The final conclusion was stated by Theodore Parker in 1851 when he wrote: "The South, in the main, had a. very different origin from the North. I think few if any persons settled there for religious reasons, or for the sake of the freedom of the State. It was not a moral idea which sent men to Virginia, Georgia, or Carolina. 'Men do not gather grapes of thorns.' The difference in the seed will appear in difference of the crop. In the character of the people of the North and South, it appears at this day….. Here, now, is the great cause of the difference in the material results, represented in towns and villages, by farms and factories, ships and shops; here lies the cause of the differences in the schools and colleges, churches, and in the literature; the cause of difference in men themselves. The South with its despotic idea, dishonors labor, but wishes to compromise between its idleness and its appetite, and so kidnaps men to do the work."
On a July day in 1861 the New York Herald carried the story of Southern atrocities committed on the battle field at Bull Run. It told of a private in the First Connecticut regiment who found a wounded rebel lying in the sun crying for water. He lifted the rebel and carried him to the shade where he gently laid him and gave him water from his canteen. Revived by the water the rebel drew his pistol and shot his benefactor through the heart.
Another instance was related of a troop of rebel cavalry deliberately firing upon a number of wounded men who had been placed together in the shade. "All of which," the article added, "was attributed to the barbarism of slavery, in which, and to which the Southern soldiers have been educated."
For years the Southern men and women lived under such attacks. The answer of the South to such propaganda grew from a "half apologetic defense of slavery to an aggressive assertion of a superiority of all things Southern." Slavery benefited the Negro, it was asserted, and had made twice as many Christians out of heathens as all missionary efforts put together. A Southern minister declared that he was certain that God had confined slavery to the South because its people were better fitted to lift ignorant Africans to civilization. The South declared that the slave was better off than the white factory workers of England or New England; that he was useless to himself and to so¬ciety without supervision and direction, and that nature or the curse of God on Ham had destined him to servitude. It was said by the South that true republican government was possible only where all white citizens were free from drudgery; that without slavery, farmers were destined to peasantry; that slave societies alone escape the ills of labor and race wars, unemployment and old age insecurity. The South had achieved a superior civiliza¬tion.
The men who organized the attack on slavery and those who developed its defense were in most cases too extreme and radical to represent true sentiment of the masses. Conservatives in both the North and the South usually dismissed them as fanatics and assured themselves that they did not represent the true feelings of the people in either section. Nevertheless as the senti¬ment and tension grew and politicians became more and more vehe¬ment, these conservatives became fewer.
The true relationship of master and slave was predominately different from the pictures presented by propaganda machines. There were good masters and bad masters; extremely kind ones and occasionally cruel ones, though the really cruel or hard master was a marked exception. The conduct of the slaves in the war confirm this. It was not true as sometimes claimed, that every slave was loyal to his master, but the fact that the white mas¬ter could go into the army, leaving his often lonely and remote farm or plantation, his wife and children, and frequently even
money and jewels, in the care of the slave for whose liberty his
opponent was fighting, indicates at least that there could have been no widespread hatred of the masters or resentment against them.
Usually the relationship between slave and master was a per¬sonal one and there was none of that impersonalism which made for the discontent and brutality suffered by the New England factory worker. But if the plantation was of unusual size or if the mas¬ter owned several of them in different places, this personal re¬lationship might be lost, and the slaves' lives could be made a hell on earth. However, even when a slave was placed in good sur¬roundings there was always the danger of his being sold. The best families prided themselves on not selling their slaves and on not breaking up slave families, but even the best of such owners might fall into circumstances necessitating the sale of the slaves.
It is interesting to survey some of the leading articles that appeared in the various newspapers of the country prior to and during the rebellion. It is difficult to determine just how many of these articles are propaganda and how many represent the true feelings of the editors and writers. No doubt the fault was not much in the newspapers themselves but rather in the sources of their information.
An interesting article concerning the famous assault by Preston S. Brooke, a member of the House of Representatives from South Caro¬lina, upon Senator Sumner of Massachusetts, appeared in the New York Evening Post, May 23, 1856. The article entitled, "The Outrage On Mr. Sumner" is directed against the Southern Representative and Senator Butler. An excerpt follows: "The friends of slavery at Washington are attempting to silence the members of Congress from the free states by the same modes of discipline which make the slaves units on their plantations. Two ruffians from South Carolina, yesterday made the Senate Chamber the scene of their cow¬ardly brutality. They had armed themselves with heavy canes, and-approaching Mr.Sumner, who was seated in his chair writing, Brooks struck him with his cane a violent blow on the head, which brought him stunned to the floor, and Keith with his weapon kept off the by-standers, while the other Ruffian, Brooks, repeated the blows upon the head of the apparently lifeless victim until his cane was shattered to fragments. Mr. Sumner was conveyed from the Senate Chamber bleeding and senseless, so severely wounded that the phy¬sician attending did not think it prudent to allow friends to have access to him. The excuse for this base assault is that Mr. Sumner had in the course of debate spoken disrespectfully of Mr. Butler, a relative of Preston S. Brooks, one of the authors of the outrage.
No possible indecorum of language on the part of Mr. Sumner could excuse, much less justify an attack like this; but we have carefully examined his speech to see if it contains any matter which could even extenuate such an act of violence, and we find none. He had ridiculed Mr. Butler's devotion to slavery, it is true, but the weapons of ridicule and contempt in debate is by common consent as fair and allowable weapons as argument. We agree fully with Mr. Sumner that Mr. Butler is a monomaniac in the respect of which we speak; we certainly should place no con¬fidence in any representation he might make which concerned the subject of slavery…… The truth is, that the proslavery party, which rules the Senate, looks upon violence as the proper instru¬ment of its designs. Violence reigns in the streets of Washington; violence has now found its way to the Senate Chamber; In short violence is the order of the day; the North is to be pushed to the wall by it, and this plot will succeed if the people of the free States are as apathetic as the slaveholders are insolent."*
It can readily be seen that the author of this article is vehemently opposed to the pro-slavery party, and the article illustrates perfectly the use of the newspaper for political means.
An article appeared in the Springfield Republican October 19, 1859, praising the character of John Brown. "The universal feel¬ing is that John Brown is a hero--a misguided and insane man, but nevertheless inspired with a genuine heroism. He has a large infusion of the stern old Puritan element in him." The text of the article appearing in the Springfield Republican December 3, 1859, the day after the execution of John Brown, follows! "John Brown still lives. The great State of Virginia has hung his venerable body upon the ignominous gallows, and released John Brown himself to join the noble army of martyrs A Christian man hung by Christians for acting upon his convictions of duty--a brave man hung for his chivalrous and self-sacrificing deed of humanity--a philanthropist hung for seeking the liberty of oppressed men.
No outcry about violated law can cover up the essential enormity of a deed like this."
Editorials such as those above did much to influence the populations of both the North and the South. By appealing to the emo¬tions, sense of morality, and by publishing doubtful stories of atrocities the newspapers, along with the teachings of preachers and political speakers, were able to whip the fighting spirit of people on either side to a feverish pitch. This method of in¬fluencing the public opinion of all factions has been employed in. all of the wars since the Civil War and is playing its same role in totalitarian and democratic countries alike.
*Slavery and the Civil War, Southern Review, Autumn, 1938
*This article is thought to be the work of William Cullen Bryant, the editor of the paper at that time.
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