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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Hedtke, James R., author.
Title: American Civil War : facts and fictions / James R. Hedtke.
Description: Santa Barbara, California : ABC-CLIO, 2018. | Series: Historical facts and fictions | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2018018948 (print) | LCCN 2018022589 (ebook) | ISBN 9781440860744 (eBook) | ISBN 9781440860737 (hardcopy : alk. paper)
Subjects: LCSH: United States—History—Civil War, 1861–1865—Juvenile literature.
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018018948
ISBN: 978-1-4408-6073-7 (print)
978-1-4408-6074-4 (ebook)
22 21 20 19 18 1 2 3 4 5
This book is also available as an eBook.
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To my daughters, Lisa, Kristi, and Lori. Thank you for your boundless love and the immense joy you have brought into my life.
Preface
Even though the American Civil War ended more than 150 years ago, it still fascinates and intrigues the American public. Authors have written more books about the Civil War than any other event or conflict in American history. Bibliographers estimate that writers have produced over 50,000 books and pamphlets about the struggle between the states. On average, one book on the Civil War has been published every day since the end of the conflict in 1865. The Pew Research Center for the People & the Press conducted a survey in 2011 that revealed that 56 percent of Americans thought the Civil War was still relevant to American politics. Another 36 percent of the respondents believed the war was a historically important event. The Civil War still commands the attention of the American people.
In their works, authors have written about almost every conceivable topic and aspect of the Civil War. The purpose of this work is relatively unique. This book will expose and debunk 10 popular misconceptions related to the Civil War. A misconception is a false or mistaken view, opinion, or idea based on incorrect facts or faulty reasoning. Each chapter will examine the misconceptions through the same analytical lens and separate fact from fiction. The chapter will describe the misconception and explain how it arose and became ensconced in the American popular memory. Primary sources and documents will be used to demonstrate the rise and spread of the misconception. The author will then provide the reader with historical facts, primary sources, and documents that will correct the misconception and establish an accurate account about what happened during the war. Each chapter will conclude with a short
bibliography that allows readers to delve deeper into the misconception and search for the historical truth on their own.
The misconceptions examined in this work cover a diverse set of topics, from why the Southern states left the Union to the plot to assassinate Abraham Lincoln. Most of the misconceptions are still widely embraced by Americans and remain controversial topics discussed at venues ranging from Civil War roundtables to the American political arena.
Chapter 1 examines the controversial debate of why Southern states left the Union in 1860–1861. Were lost-cause advocates correct in arguing that states’ rights were the most important cause of secession?
The Civil War commenced in April 1861, when Southern forces bombarded Fort Sumter at Charleston, South Carolina. Chapter 2 critically revisits Edmund Ruffin’s claim to have fired the first shot of the Civil War from a battery on Morris Island on the morning of April 12, 1861.
Did African American regiments fight for the Confederacy? Were all combat soldiers men? These questions serve as the focus for chapters 3 and 4.
Ask any grade-school student who freed the slaves, and he or she will answer, “Abraham Lincoln.” Is this accurate? Chapter 5 provides the answer to this question.
The Gettysburg Address is an iconic American speech that helped to guide and reshape the nation. Did Lincoln really write the speech on the train while traveling to Gettysburg? Chapter 6 tackles this enduring and popular misconception.
Chapter 7 investigates the misconception that General Ulysses S. Grant was a mediocre commander who won battles through the cruel and needless sacrifice of his troops.
Chapter 8 looks at the use and practice of medicine during the Civil War and examines whether it was cruel and barbaric or state of the art for its time.
Did the U.S. government promise “40 acres and a mule” to the freed people during or after the Civil War? Chapter 9 explores the origins and historical facts behind the controversial idea of reparations for slavery.
Was there a grand conspiracy led by Confederate leaders to assassinate Lincoln? Did Union leaders conspire to kill the president? Chapter 10 examines and evaluates the prominent conspiracy theories about Lincoln’s death.
The work concludes with a selected, general bibliography that cites important resources that the reader can use for further research on the American Civil War.
Acknowledgments
There are many people I need to thank for their direct or indirect contributions to this book. I never would have completed this work without their help and encouragement.
My wife, Judy, is my best friend and a steadfast supporter of all my endeavors. Her belief in me is as unwavering as her love. She is the inspiration behind everything I do and write. Though I have done extensive research on the American Civil War, the one true thing I know is our love for each other.
My daughter, Lori Bollinger, took on the arduous of reading my handwriting and turning it into a typed manuscript. She undertook this mission while raising two boys and working fulltime. This work would still be words on yellow legal pads without her help.
Jolyon Girard has been a colleague, friend, and mentor for almost 45 years. He is the individual who introduced me to the editorial staff at ABC-CLIO. He is a loyal friend and an outstanding teacher and writer. His counsel, advice, and editorial assistance have been key ingredients in my success as a scholar.
Cabrini University has been my second home for 45 years. I would like to express my appreciation to my colleagues in the History and Political Science Department: Darryl Mace, Courtney Smith, Nancy Watterson, and Joseph Fitzgerald. Their advice, suggestions, and support have been invaluable to me. It is an honor to be a member of the Cabrini University faculty, a group of individuals who have dedicated their lives to providing their students with an education of the heart.
I especially want to thank the late Dr. David Dunbar. Dr. Dunbar was an exceptional teacher and a noted researcher in the field of molecular biology. His brilliant career came to an abrupt end when he died in a tragic automobile accident in May 2016. David was an avid student of the Civil War and always taught the medical segment of my Civil War course. I wrote the chapter on Civil War medicine in his memory.
Anne Schwelm and her talented staff at Cabrini University’s Holy Spirit Library provided invaluable help in procuring primary and secondary sources used in this book. Cabrini ITR personnel answered all of my technical questions in a timely and courteous manner.
Several authors have informed my knowledge of the Civil War and have served as models for my writing style. I am indebted to Bruce Catton, Shelby Foote, James McPherson, and Gary Gallagher for their iconic works on this pivotal time in American history. Their passion for the subject matter and ability to craft a compelling narrative about it have served as an inspiration to me.
Michael Millman at ABC-CLIO has provided me with excellent direction and advice on this project. Eswari Maruthu, the editorial project manager, did an outstanding job guiding the manuscript through revisions to final publication.
Finally, I would like to thank the brave soldiers who fought in the Civil War to preserve the United States and set enslaved persons free. There would be no book without their noble service and sacrifices.
Introduction
The Civil War remains the pivotal event in American history. This conflict answered the two great questions that had dominated American politics since the Revolutionary War: slavery and secession. In January 1865, Congress passed the 13th Amendment, prohibiting the institution of slavery in the United States and its territories. The question of secession was definitively answered on the great battlefields of this war. The Northern victory established the Union as permanent and indestructible. The Civil War also launched the quest for equality in American society. The struggle for equality is still a prominent theme in the American political arena in the 21st century.
Abraham Lincoln’s election to the presidency in November 1860 served as the spark that lit the fires of Southern secession. The Republican candidate for president embraced his party’s antislavery platform. Lincoln and the Republicans would prohibit slavery in American territories but allow it to remain in the places where it already existed. The hope of the Republicans was to contain slavery to where it already existed and to place the institution on “the road to ultimate extinction.”
Many Southerners saw the Republican antislavery platform as the last step before abolition. They warned their Northern countrymen that they would leave the Union if a Republican was elected president. For Southerners, a Republican victory would mean that the North controlled the federal government and would have the political power to eventually abolish slavery in the states as well as the territories.
The presidential election of 1860 was a sectional contest. Lincoln’s name did not appear on the ballot in 10 Southern states. He received only
1.4 percent of the popular vote and zero electoral votes from the slave states. Southern presidential candidates John Breckenridge (D, KY) and John Bell (Constitutional Union, TN) dominated the slave-state electorate. Lincoln garnered only 39 percent of the national vote but won 180 electoral votes, all from the free states. Lincoln won the majority of the votes in the electoral college and became the 16th president of the United States.
After Lincoln’s election, many Southern state legislatures called conventions to consider secession. Slaveholders feared that the election of a Republican president coupled with Northern control of the federal government would spell doom for the institution of slavery. The South Carolina Convention voted unanimously on December 20, 1860, to enact an ordinance to secede from the Union. Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas followed the lead of South Carolina. By February 1, 1861, seven slaveholding states from the Deep South had left the United States.
In February 1861, the seceded states met in Montgomery, Alabama. The delegates to the convention created a new government, the Confederate States of America. They also elected Jefferson Davis of Mississippi as the first and only president of the C.S.A. The new constitution of the C.S.A provided protection for the institution of slavery.
President Buchanan was a lame-duck president and made no military effort to keep the seceded states in the Union. His relative inaction was a calculated attempt to allow politicians the opportunity to develop compromises to preserve the Union. Buchanan also believed that secession was Lincoln’s problem, and the incoming president should have a clean slate so he could deal with the issue unencumbered by previous commitments. All attempts at compromise failed because Lincoln and the Republicans would not allow slavery into the territories. Lincoln believed that any compromise that allowed slavery in the territories would be a betrayal of Republican campaign promises and make a mockery of the democratic election process.
Lincoln’s inauguration took place on March 4, 1861, under heavy security in Washington, D.C. The Confederacy seized federal forts, installations, and buildings in the seceded states. By March 5, only Fort Sumter in Charleston, South Carolina, and three coastal forts in Florida remained in Union hands. Fort Sumter was the most important of these forts because it controlled the entrance to one of the most important ports in the Confederacy.
The commander of Fort Sumter, Maj. Robert Anderson, informed Lincoln that he could only hold the fort if the government reinforced it
with men, weapons, ammunition, and other supplies. Lincoln was faced with a dilemma. If he evacuated Sumter, he would recognize the legitimacy of the Confederacy, and the Union would be dissolved. If Lincoln sent reinforcements and military supplies to the fort, he would appear as the aggressor and risk a Southern attack that would lead to civil war.
Lincoln followed neither course of action. Instead, he informed Governor Pickins of South Carolina of the U.S. government’s peaceful intention to send only humanitarian provisions to the fort. If the Confederacy fired on unarmed Union ships, that would start a civil war and incite Northern public opinion against the South. If the Confederates allowed the fort to be resupplied, it would be a symbolic Northern victory and perhaps a gesture that the Confederacy wanted to negotiate a settlement with the North.
The Confederates made their decision on the morning of April 12, 1861. At 4:30 a.m., Confederate batteries stationed on James Island opened fire on Fort Sumter. After 33 hours of bombardment by almost 4,000 projectiles, Major Anderson surrendered the battered fort to the Confederates. In an ironic twist of fate, there were no fatalities in the battle that commenced the deadliest war in American history. Two American soldiers, however, died after the battle when a cannon imploded during the ceremony to retire the American colors flying over Fort Sumter.
On April 15, Lincoln called 75,000 state militiamen into federal service for 90 days to suppress the rebellion in the Southern states. Instead of 90 days, the war to restore the Union lasted four years. During the Civil War, almost 2,100,000 men served in the Union army. Nearly 190,000 African Americans fought for the Union. Over 800,000 men fought for the Confederacy. Confederate regulations prohibited black men from serving in the Southern army until March 1865. Despite claims to the contrary, no organized black regiment fought on the battlefield for the C.S.A. Regulations of both armies prohibited females from joining the military. Despite these regulations, almost 400 women fought as combat soldiers during the Civil War. More people died in the Civil War than in any other war in American history. According to the official records, the war claimed 620,000 lives (360,000 Northerners and 260,000 Confederates). Today, demographers believe the number of fatalities in the war was 10 percent to 15 percent higher than official numbers, putting the death toll at over 700,000.
The goals of the Confederacy remained constant during the Civil War. The South sought their independence from the United States in order to preserve their institution of slavery. To accomplish their goals,
the Confederacy employed several strategies. The South fought a defensive war. This strategy allowed the South to equalize the Northern manpower advantage through shorter lines of supply, communication, and troop reinforcement. The Confederacy did take the offensive when they believed they had the military advantage or could deal a severe blow to Union morale. These offensives, such as the Maryland (1862) and Gettysburg (1863) campaigns, generally ended with disastrous results for the South. The South also attempted to lure England and France into the war by withholding cotton from them. This strategy, known as “King Cotton,” was a failure. The British and the French did not diplomatically recognize the Confederacy, and they did not intervene militarily into this war on behalf of the South. The lack of overt European support reduced the South’s chances of defeating the North.
The primary goal of the North was to preserve the Union. When Lincoln and other Northern leaders realized that the Union could not be restored as half free and half slave, the abolition of slavery became another important Union goal.
The Union used multiple strategies to defeat the South and preserve the Union. The North blockaded the South to hurt the Confederate military effort and to cause deprivation on the home front. The Union hoped to split the Confederacy in half by seizing the Mississippi River. The North made a concerted effort to capture the Confederate capital at Richmond. The seizure of the capital would be a severe blow to Confederate morale and would figuratively decapitate Southern political leadership. The North also employed a strategy of hard war. By 1864, Union armies destroyed anything that could be used by the Confederacy to sustain their war effort. Hard war not only hurt Confederate armies in the field but also broke the will to resist on the Southern home front. Sherman’s “March to the Sea” in 1864 is the classic example of the Union application of hard-war strategy.
In 1862, Confederate and Union troops clashed along the Mississippi, Tennessee, and Cumberland Rivers as well as in Virginia. By the summer, Congress and Lincoln abolished slavery in Washington, D.C., and in the territories. In July, Lincoln made up his mind to emancipate enslaved peoples in the Confederacy. Members of his cabinet, however, urged Lincoln to postpone emancipation until it could be supported by a Union victory.
On September 17, Union forces defeated General Robert E. Lee’s army at the battle of Antietam. On September 22, Lincoln issued the preliminary proclamation that the slaves in states still in rebellion on January 1, 1863, would be “forever free.” Lincoln’s proclamation justified emancipation
solely on the grounds of military necessity. The proclamation also deprived the South of an important segment of their workforce, lessened the possibility of European intervention, encouraged blacks to join the Union army, and injected new morale into Northern troops.
The year 1863 proved to be pivotal in the war. On January 1, Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation. This document provided freedom for enslaved persons in the states and areas of states still in the rebellion against the United States. The Union won critical victories at Gettysburg, Vicksburg, and Chattanooga that severely crippled the Confederate war effort. In November, President Lincoln gave an address at Gettysburg that attempted to put the two and a half years of carnage into perspective. His speech, although controversial in its origin, honored the men who died to preserve the Union and put the nation on a new road toward freedom.
In 1864, Lincoln and General Ulysses S. Grant employed a concentration in time strategy to defeat the Confederates. In the spring, Grant issued orders to the five major Union armies to begin coordinated attacks against all Confederate forces. This strategy would deprive Southerners of the ability to reinforce their attacked troops and allow the North to use their manpower advantage to their greatest benefit. Grant took personal command of the Overland Campaign that led to the siege of Petersburg and endangered the Confederate capital at Richmond. General William T. Sherman’s Atlanta Campaign ended with Union forces capturing the city on September 2. Sherman then prepared plans for his famous “March to the Sea.”
The reelection of Lincoln in 1864 sealed the fate of the Confederacy. Lincoln won 55 percent of the popular vote and defeated the Democratic candidate George McClellan 212 to 21 in the electoral college. On the road to victory, Lincoln captured 78 percent of the votes of Union soldiers. The message behind Lincoln’s victory was clear to both the North and South: the Civil War would continue until the Union defeated the Confederacy.
In January 1865, Congress passed the 13th Amendment and ended slavery everywhere in the United States. Union forces continued to attack beleaguered Confederate forces on all fronts. On April 3, Richmond fell to Union troops, and the Confederate government fled from the capital. On April 9, General Lee surrendered his Army of Northern Virginia to General Grant at Appomattox Court House. General Johnston surrendered the remnants of the Army of the Tennessee to General Sherman on April 26. Union cavalry captured Jefferson Davis in Georgia on May 10. General Edmund Kirby Smith surrendered the last Confederate troops
on May 26. The war was definitely over, and the Union had prevailed in the contest.
President Lincoln did not live to witness the final capitulation of Confederate troops. On the night of April 14, Lincoln attended a comedy at Ford’s Theater. During the performance, John Wilkes Booth entered the president’s box and shot Lincoln. Lincoln died the next morning in a boarding house across the street from the theater. Lincoln was the first American president to be killed by an assassin.
There are many myths and misconceptions that have developed about this pivotal event in American history. This work seeks to separate myth from reality and to provide the reader with a factual account of what really happened in the American version of the Iliad.
The Main Reason the Southern States Seceded from the Union Was States’ Rights
what People Think Happened
The antislavery North dominated the election of 1860. Abraham Lincoln, a Republican from Illinois, was elected president of the United States without winning a single electoral college vote from a slave state. The North controlled both the Congress and the presidency and now technically possessed the power to put the institution of slavery on the ultimate road to extinction.
The results of the election of 1860 were not lost on Southern politicians, newspaper editors, and slaveholders. They believed that Northern, antislave control of the central government threatened the existence of their peculiar institution of slavery. Southerners, who favored secession, argued that the best way to protect slavery was to secede from the Union and create a new government dedicated to the protection of that institution. On December 20, 1860, South Carolina was the first state to leave the Union. By March 1861, six more Southern states had seceded from the United States, and these states formed the Confederate States of America. What each of these seceded states shared in common was that they were all from the Deep South, where slavery was the strongest.
After four years of horrific war, the North defeated the South, preserved the Union, and ended slavery. Former Confederates faced a world
of loss, devastation, and humiliation. The North had completely defeated the Confederacy on the battlefield and had ended Southern hopes of establishing a slaveholding republic. In the wake of their loss, Southerners searched for reasons for their defeat, a justification for the war, and a way to reestablish Southern honor. Southerners found answers to their questions and purpose for their sacrifice in a set of beliefs known as the lost cause.
Edward A. Pollard, a Virginia journalist and Confederate sympathizer, was the first person to use the term “lost cause.” It appeared in the title of his work, The Lost Cause: A New Southern History of the War of the Confederate States (1866). He used the term again in another book published in 1868, The Lost Cause Regained. In his writings, Pollard developed the two central themes of the lost cause. First, the Confederates lost the war because of the superior resources and manpower of the North and not because of any deficiency in the fighting prowess, honor, or courage of the Southern soldier. The second theme was that the primary reason Southern states left the Union was to protect states’ rights rather than to protect the institution of slavery. The misconception that the primary reason for Southern secession was states’ rights rather than slavery originated in Pollard’s writings and became a basic tenet of the lost cause paradigm.
Pollard and future lost cause writers wanted to construct their own version of secession that would vindicate the Southern cause and favorably position the defeated Confederacy in history. Pollard understood that slavery was an anachronism out of line with contemporary economics and morality. Any acknowledgment that Southern states seceded from the Union to preserve slavery would eternally place the Confederacy on the wrong side of history. Pollard rewrote history by removing slavery as the primary cause of secession and replacing it with states’ rights. Through the juxtaposition of cause, future students of the war might view Southerners as the champions of constitutional rights and the rightful heirs to the American revolutionary tradition rather than the villains who fought to perpetuate chattel slavery.
How the story Became Popular
While Edward Pollard coined the term “lost cause,” it was later writers who popularized its themes. It was through the writings and lectures of iconic Confederate leaders, such as Jubal Early, Alexander Stephens, and Jefferson Davis, that the themes of the lost cause became embedded in Southern history and identity. Specifically, these three individuals stressed
that states’ rights, not slavery, was the primary reason for secession and for the establishment of the Confederate States of America. These individuals also argued that states had a constitutional right to secede from the Union.
Jubal Early was born in Virginia and graduated from the United States Military Academy. After brief service in the U.S. Army, he resigned his commission and practiced law. He joined the Confederate army in 1861 and served in the Eastern Theater under the command of Robert E. Lee. Early rose to the rank of lieutenant general and became a corps commander. He became a household name in both the North and South after his daring raid on Washington, D.C., in July 1864. After the surrender of the Army of Northern Virginia in April 1865, Early fled to Texas, where he hoped to join Confederate forces fighting the North. President Johnson pardoned Early in 1868, and the former general returned to Virginia to practice law.
Early used his pen to commemorate Confederate resistance to Northern aggression. In his memoirs and his writings for the Southern Historical Society, he championed the themes of the lost cause and cemented them into the Southern memory of the Civil War. In his work, Lieutenant General Jubal Anderson Early C.S.A. Autobiographical Sketch and Narrative of the War between the States, Early argued that “the struggle made by the people of the South was not for the institution of slavery, but for the inestimable right of self-government against the domination of a fanatical faction at the North.” Early concluded that with the Northern victory, “the right to self-govern has been lost.” A Southern military hero’s testimony provided credence to Pollard’s lost cause claim that states’ rights was the primary cause of secession.
Jefferson Davis was the first and only president of the Confederate States of America. He was born in Kentucky and raised in Mississippi. He graduated from the United States Military Academy and served the United States as a soldier, a member of the House of Representatives, a senator, and a secretary of war. As a plantation owner, Davis firmly believed in the importance and value of slavery for the South. In February 1861, the Confederate Congress selected Jefferson Davis as the provisional president of the Confederacy.
On April 29, 1861, Davis delivered his first message to the Congress of the Confederate States of America. In his message, he decried the antislavery activities of the North and expressed displeasure with the Republican Party for “rendering the property in slaves so insecure as to be comparatively worthless.” Davis argued that the potential Republican
policies could annihilate “in effect property worth thousands of millions of dollars.” President Davis reached the conclusion that Northern threats to slavery left slaveholding states with no choice but to secede from the Union.
After the collapse of the Confederacy, the U.S. government captured Davis and imprisoned him in Fort Monroe for two years. A decade later, Davis began writing his version of the events preceding the Civil War and the struggle for Southern independence. In his two-volume work, Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government, Davis reversed his position on the primary cause of secession. He argued in his book that slavery was “far from being the cause of the conflict.” In fact, Davis maintained that Southerners would have eventually ended the institution on their own. Davis repeatedly argued that the Northern denial of Southern states’ rights led to the legal, constitutional secession of the slaveholding states. The success of Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government in the South and the prominence of its author popularized and continued the states’ rights misconception.
Alexander Stephens was born in Georgia and served in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1843 to 1859. He was the only vice president of the Confederate States of America. Stephens was an ardent supporter of slavery. On March 21, 1861, Vice President Stephens delivered an oration at the Athenaeum in Savannah, Georgia. In his address, commonly known as the cornerstone speech, Stephens declared that the immediate cause of secession was the sectional disagreements over the enslavement of Africans. To protect slavery, Southern states seceded from the Union and established a government and a constitution to protect their peculiar institution.
Less than five years after the war ended, Stephens penned his twovolume apology for the Confederacy, A Constitutional View of the Late War between the States. In it, Stephens reversed his position from the cornerstone speech that slavery was the immediate cause of secession. The former vice president concluded that Southern states left the union over the issue of states’ rights and the right to self-government. Stephens argued that the conflict that ignited the Civil War was the collision between the two antagonistic principles of centralism and states’ rights. Stephens claimed that slavery was merely the question that brought this clash to the forefront of American politics. Once again, another prominent Southern politician revised his position on the cause of secession and reinforced the postwar Southern conception that states’ rights was the primary reason slaveholding states left the Union.
The lost cause tenet that states’ rights was the primary cause of the Civil War is still a vibrant topic among Southern revisionists and apologists today. James and Walter Kennedy’s The South Was Right! is in its 14th edition. In this work, originally published in 1991, the Kennedys argue that defense of states’ rights, not slavery, was the reason for secession. They also claim that secession was a justifiable response to Northern aggression against the states’ right to self-government. The same theme appears in Lochlainn Seabrook’s Everything You Were Taught about the Civil War Is Wrong. Ask a Southerner (2010) and John Tiley’s Facts the Historians Leave Out: A Confederate Primer (1951, reprinted in 2015).
In 2010, the Texas Board of Education adopted a revised social studies curriculum that provided new state standards for teaching about the Civil War. The standards placed states’ rights as the primary cause of the Civil War and relegated slavery to a secondary role as a reason for the conflict. In 2015, new Texas textbooks reflected the 2010 standards and downplayed the role of slavery in the Civil War. The state of Texas continues to socialize a new generation of students into the misconceptions of the lost cause.
In 2011, the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press conducted a study to see if the Civil War was still relevant to Americans. One of the questions researchers asked participants was about what they believed was the main cause of the Civil War. Though there was no majority consensus, 40 percent of the respondents said that states’ rights was the primary cause while 39 percent stated it was slavery. Another 9 percent claimed that slavery and states’ rights were equal causes of the conflict. Americans younger than 30 believed that states’ rights was the main cause, while respondents over 65 were the only group that embraced slavery as the primary reason. The Pew Center study demonstrates the depth and breadth of the impact that Confederate revisionists and apologists have had on the historical interpretation of the cause of the Civil War. It also confirms that the misconception of states’ rights as the primary cause of the Civil War endures into the 21st century.
PRImaRY souRCe DoCumenTs
JuBaL eaRLY, AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH AND NARRATIVE OF THE LATE WAR BETWEEN THE STATES (1912)
Lt. Gen. Jubal Anderson Early was a lawyer and a Confederate general. The Virginian fought in the Eastern Theater throughout the Civil War. He was a corps commander in Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia and launched a daring
raid on Washington, D.C., in the summer of 1864. Early escaped to Texas after the war and then traveled to Mexico, Cuba, and Canada. He returned to Virginia after President Johnson pardoned him in 1868. He was an outspoken believer in white supremacy and disliked abolitionists. His memoirs were an unabashed ode to the nobility of the Southern soldier and the valiant causes he fought for: states’ rights and resistance to a tyrannical central government. Early was a regular contributor to the Southern Historical Society. He advanced lost cause themes more than any other Confederate officer. The following is an excerpt from his work Lieutenant General Jubal Anderson
Early C.S.A. Autobiographical Sketch and Narrative of War between the States, in which Early writes about the cause of secession and the war.
During the war, slavery was used as a catch-word to arouse the passions of a fanatical mob, and to some extent the prejudices of the civilized world were excited against us; but the war was not made on our part for slavery. High dignitaries in both church and state in Old England, and puritans in New England, had participated in the profits of a trade by which the ignorant and barbarous natives of Africa were brought from that country and sold into slavery in the American colonies. The generation in the Southern States which defended their country in the late war, found amongst them, in a civilized and Christianized condition, 4,000,000 of the descendants of those degraded Africans. The Creator of the Universe had stamped them, indelibly, with a different color and an inferior physical and mental organization. He had not done this from mere caprice or whim, but for wise purposes. An amalgamation of the races was in contravention of His designs or He would not have made them so different. This immense number of people could not have been transported back to the wilds from which their ancestors were taken, or, if they could have been, it would have resulted in their relapse into barbarism. Reason, common sense, true humanity to the black, as well as the safety of the white race, required that the inferior race should be kept in a state of subordination. The conditions of domestic slavery, as it existed in the South, had not only resulted in a great improvement in the moral and physical condition of the negro race, but had furnished a class of laborers as happy and contented as any in the world, if not more so. Their labor had not only developed the immense resources of the immediate country in which they were located, but was the main source of the great prosperity of the United States, and furnished the means for the employment of millions of the working classes in other countries. Nevertheless, the struggle made by the people of the South was not for the institution of slavery, but
for the inestimable right of self-government, against the domination of a fanatical faction at the North; and slavery was the mere occasion of the development of the antagonism between the two sections. That right of self-government has been lost, and slavery violently abolished.
When the passions and infatuations of the day shall have been dissipated by time, and all the results of the late war shall have passed into irrevocable history, the future chronicler of that history will have a most important duty to perform, and posterity, while poring over its pages, will be lost in wonder at the follies and crimes committed in this generation.
Each generation of men owes the debt to posterity to hand down to it correct history of the more important events that have transpired in its day. The history of every people is the common inheritance of mankind, because of the lessons it teaches.
For the purpose of history, the people of the late Confederate States were a separate people from the people of the North during the four years of conflict which they maintained against them.
No people loving the truth of history can have any object or motive in suppressing or mutilating any fact which may be material to its proper elucidation.
source: Early, Jubal. 1912. Lieutenant Jubal Anderson Early, C.S.A.: Autobiographical Sketch and Narrative of the War between the States. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, ix–x.
JeFFeRson DaVIs, RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT (1881)
Jefferson Davis spent over three years researching and writing his monumental work on the history of the Confederacy. Davis’s book also served as an apology for the cause that he thought justified Southern secession. Davis argued that states’ rights, not slavery, was the primary cause for slaveholding states to leave the Union. The book was published in 1881, and readers had purchased more than 22,000 copies by 1890. In the following excerpt from volume 1 of Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government, Davis discusses the impact of states’ rights on secession and the war that followed.
The attentive reader of the preceding chapters—especially if he has compared their statements with contemporaneous records and other original sources of information—will already have found evidence enough to enable him to discern the falsehood of these representations, and to perceive that, to whatever extent the question of slavery may have served as an occasion, it was far from being the cause of the conflict.
I have not attempted, and shall not permit myself to be drawn into any discussion of the merits or demerits of slavery as an ethical or even as a political question. It would be foreign to my purpose, irrelevant to my subject and would only serve—as it has invariably served in the hands of its agitators—to “darken counsel” and divert attention from the genuine issues involved.
As a mere historical fact, we have seen that African servitude among us—confessedly the mildest and most humane of all institutions to which the name “slavery” has ever been applied—existed in all the original states, and that it was recognized and protected in the fourth article of the Constitution. Subsequently, for climatic, industrial, and economical—not moral or sentimental—reasons, it was abolished in the Northern, while it continued to exist in the Southern states. Men differed in their views as to the abstract question of its right or wrong, but for two generations after the Revolution there was no geographical line of demarcation for such differences. The African slave trade was carried on almost exclusively by New England merchants and Northern ships. Jefferson—a Southern man, the founder of the Democratic Party, and the vindicator of states’ rights—was in theory a consistent enemy to every form of slavery. The Southern states took the lead in prohibiting the slave trade, and, as we have seen, one of them (Georgia) was the first state to incorporate such a prohibition in her organic Constitution. Eleven years after the agitation on the Missouri question, when the subject first took a sectional shape, the abolition of slavery was proposed and earnestly debated in the Virginia legislature, and its advocates were so near the accomplishment of their purpose, that a declaration in its favor was defeated by only a small majority, and that on the ground of expediency. At a still later period, abolitionist lecturers and teachers were mobbed, assaulted, and threatened with tar and feathers in New York, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Connecticut, and other states. One of them (Lovejoy) was actually killed by a mob in Illinois as late as 1837.
These facts prove incontestably that the sectional hostility, which exhibited itself in 1820, on the application of Missouri for admission into the Union, which again broke out on the proposition for the annexation of Texas in 1844, and which reappeared after the Mexican war, never again to be suppressed until its fell results have been fully accomplished, was not the consequence of any difference on the abstract question of slavery. It was the offspring of sectional rivalry and political ambition. It would have manifested itself just as certainly if slavery had existed in all the states, or if there had not been a Negro in America. No such pretension was made in
1803 or 1811, when the Louisiana Purchase, and afterward the admission into the Union of the state of that name, elicited threats of disunion from the representatives of New England. The complaint was not of slavery, but of the “acquisition of more weight at the other extremity” of the Union. It was not slavery that threatened a rupture in 1832, but the unjust and unequal operation of a protective tariff.
It happened, however, on all these occasions, that the line of demarcation of sectional interests coincided exactly or very nearly with that dividing the states in which Negro servitude existed from those in which it had been abolished. It corresponded with the prediction of Mr. Pickering, in 1803, that, in the separation certainly to come, “the white and black population would mark the boundary”—a prediction made without any reference to slavery as a source of dissension.
Of course, the diversity of institutions contributed, in some minor degree, to the conflict of any general statement of a political truth. I am stating general principles—not defining modifications and exceptions with the precision of mathematical proposition or a bill in chancery. The truth remains intact and incontrovertible that the existence of African servitude was in no wise the cause of the conflict, but only an incident. In the later controversies that arose, however, its effect in operating as a lever upon the passions, prejudices, or sympathies of mankind was so potent that it has spread like a thick cloud over the whole horizon of historic truth.
As for the institution of Negro servitude, it was a matter entirely subject to the control of the states. No power was ever given to the general government to interfere with it, but an obligation was imposed to protect it. Its existence and validity were distinctly recognized by the Constitution in at least three places.
source: Davis, Jefferson. 1881. The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government. Vol. 1. New York: D. Appleton, 65–68. aLeXanDeR
A CONSTITUTIONAL VIEW OF THE LATE WAR BETWEEN THE STATES (1868)
Alexander Stephens was the only vice president of the Confederate States of America. After the Civil War, the U.S. government imprisoned Stephens for five months at Fort Warren in Boston. In 1866, the citizens of Georgia elected him to the U.S. Senate, but radical Republicans in the chamber refused to seat him. Stephens then began to write his two-volume work on the Confederacy,
A Constitutional View of the Late War between the States. He concluded Volume 1 by writing that the right of self-government was the major source of the conflict between the North and South and the primary reason for secession and the war itself. The following is an excerpt from Volume 1 of Stephens’s work.
In the prosecution of the design of the writer, it has not been his purpose to treat, at all, of men or their actions, civil or military, further than they relate to, or bear upon, those principles which are involved in the subject under consideration. Principles constitute the subject-matter of his work. Times change, and men often change with them, but principles never! These, like truths, are eternal, unchangeable and immutable!
Most of the diseases with which the human system is afflicted, proceed, as natural and inevitable consequences, from the violation or neglect of some one or more of the vital laws of its organization. All violent fevers and convulsions have their origins in this, though the real cause may be too occult to be ascertained by the most skillful pathologist. So with political organizations, whether simple or complex, single or Federal. No great disorders ever occur in them without some similar real cause.
It is a postulate, with many writers of this day, that the late War was the result of two opposing ideas, or principles, upon the subject of African Slavery. Between these, according to their theory, sprung the “irrepressible conflict,” in principle, which ended in the terrible conflict of arms. Those who assume this postulate, and so theorize upon it, are but superficial observers.
That the war had its origin in opposing principles, which in their action upon the conduct of men, produced the ultimate collision of arms, may be assumed as an unquestionable fact. But the opposing principles which produced these results in physical action were of a very different character from those assumed in the postulate. They lay in the organic Structure of the Government of the States. The conflict in principle arose from different and opposing ideas as to the nature of what is known as the General Government. The contest was between those who held it to be strictly Federal in its character, and those who maintained that it was thoroughly national. It was a strife between the principles of Federation on the one side, and Centralism, or Consolidation, on the other.
Slavery, so called, was but the question on which these antagonistic principles, which had been in conflict, from the beginning, on divers other questions, were finally brought into actual and active collision with each other on the field of battle.
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18. Architecture—(a)— Ecclesiastical.
The history of Scotland from an architectural point of view does not reach very far back into the past. Till the tide of civilisation flowed into Scotland from the south in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, there existed in the country no architecture worthy of the name. When the Normans became the ruling power in Britain, they brought architectural ideas with them and these superseded the crude attempts at church building hitherto made. The Scottish churches built under the influence of Columba were simple and rude, consisting of a small oblong chamber with a single door and a single window. The Norman style, which obliterated these structures, dates from the twelfth century and, being carried along the coast of lowland Scotland, gradually changed the manner of building. It is characterised by simple, massive forms and especially by arches of a semi-circular shape, sometimes enriched by zig-zag, and by the use of nook shafts and cushion capitals. Of this period the remains in Scotland are not numerous, and they are very few in Aberdeenshire. The earliest specimen we can point to is the ancient church of Monymusk, which contains some Norman building incorporated in the modern church erected on the old site. Monymusk is on Donside seven miles up the river from Kintore. It is a place of great antiquity. The Culdees first appear there in the twelfth century, and the Earl of Mar built a convent for them on condition that they should submit to canonical rule. The lower part of the church tower and the chancel arch are of the Norman style. The tower has been entirely rebuilt except the lower doorway, which has a round arch-head with a hood mould enclosing it. These small fragments suggest that they were part of the convent erected by the Earl of Mar very early in the thirteenth century.
The rounded arch gave place in the thirteenth century to the early Gothic, of which the most striking feature is the pointed arch. This is the First Pointed Period. Ornament was more general, the mouldings were richer and more graceful and the foliage of trees was
occasionally copied. The windows were narrow, lofty and pointed, giving an impression of space and lightness. Aberdeenshire is too far north to have developed many examples of this early style, but it has some. The Abbey of Deer is perhaps the most ancient ecclesiastical building, but it is now a complete ruin, all the best parts of it having disappeared within the last fifty years. It was founded in the thirteenth century. Deer had been an ecclesiastical centre long before that time. The story goes that Columba and his pupil Drostan travelled from Iona to Aberdeenshire when Bede was Mormaer (Earl) of Buchan. They were first at Aberdour on the coast, but ultimately journeyed to Deer, where Columba requested the Mormaer to grant him a site for a church. At first the Mormaer refused, but his son fell ill and in consideration of the efficacy of the prayers of the two holy men in bringing the youth back to health, the Mormaer granted them the lands of Deer and this was probably the first place in Aberdeenshire where a regular Christian church was erected. No trace of that church, built in the sixth century, is left.
The Abbey was an entirely different structure and not begun till early in the thirteenth century. It was founded by William Comyn, Earl of Buchan, and was really a Cistercian Abbey, originally occupied by monks sent from Kinloss. From the ruins now within the grounds of Pitfour House, it can be made out that the length of the building (nave and chancel) was 150 feet. A few mouldings and the arches of some windows indicate that it belonged to the first pointed period. The building was of red sandstone probably brought from New Byth, some 12 miles distant. After the Reformation the Abbey fell to decay and its walls became, as in many other cases, a quarry from which other buildings were erected. In 1809 the ruins were enclosed with a wall by the then proprietor, Mr James Ferguson of Pitfour, but since then they have dwindled.
No mention of Deer is possible without reference to the famous Book of Deer—a manuscript volume of the highest value, emanating not from the Abbey but from Columba’s monastery in the same region. The book was brought to light in 1860 by the late Mr Henry Bradshaw, University Librarian at Cambridge. It had lain unrecognised in the Library since 1715. It contains the Gospel of St
John and other portions of scripture in the writing of the ninth century; but of even greater importance is the fact that on its margins it contains memoranda of grants to the monastery, made by Celtic chiefs of Buchan and all written in Gaelic. These jottings are of the highest historical value.
Some traces of the Early Pointed style are found in St Machar Cathedral (the greater part of which, however, is much later). The old church of Auchindoir close to Craig Castle has a good doorway and other features of this period.
From The Book of Deer
From the middle of the fourteenth to the middle of the fifteenth century (1350-1450) is in Scotland the Middle Pointed Period. The windows were made larger, the vaulting and buttresses less heavy. The Cathedral of St Machar belongs in part to this time. The legend goes that St Machar in obedience to the commands of Columba, of whom he was a disciple, journeyed to Scotland and at Old Aberdeen founded a church. This church in the twelfth century became the seat of a bishopric founded by David I. The original church was
superseded probably about 1165, the only relic of this Norman period being part of the abacus of a square pier. All other traces of earlier work have vanished. In the fourteenth century Bishop Alexander Kyninmonth II rebuilt the nave, partly of red sandstone with foliated capitals of great beauty and decorated with naturalistic imitation of leafage, one capital representing curly kail (colewort). The same kind of decoration is seen in Melrose Abbey. Later on the two impressive western towers, which are to-day conspicuous objects in the eastern landscape to all travellers northward-bound from Aberdeen, were added. They form a granite mass of solid and substantial masonry, and, being finished with machicolation, parapetpaths and capehouses, were really like a castle in Early English architecture. Still later on, in the sixteenth century, Bishop Elphinstone, who founded the University of Aberdeen, who built the first Bridge of Dee, and gave a new choir to St Nicholas Church, completed the central tower and placed in it fourteen bells “tuneable and costly.” The sandstone spires over the western towers were added by Bishop Dunbar early in the sixteenth century, in place of the original capehouses. The central tower fell in 1688, crushing the transepts.
St Machar Cathedral, Old Aberdeen
St Machar Cathedral (interior)
In 1560 the government ordered the destruction of the altars, images and other monuments of the old faith, and this cathedral suffered with the rest. It was despoiled of all its costly ornaments and the choir was demolished. The roof was stripped of its lead and the bells were carried off. All that remains to-day is the nave (now the parish church), a south porch, the western towers and fragments of the transept walls, which contain tombs of Bishop Lichtoun, Bishop Dunbar, and others. This is the only granite cathedral in the country, and, though dating from the Middle and late Pointed periods, has reminiscences of the Norman style in its short, massive cylindrical pillars and plain unadorned clerestory windows. Another feature is the great western window divided by six long shafts of stone. The
finely carved pulpit now in the Chapel of King’s College is a relic of the wood-carvings destroyed in 1649. The whole is extremely plain but highly impressive and imposing. Its flat panelled oak ceiling decorated with heraldic shields of various European kings, Pope Leo X, and Scottish ecclesiastics and nobility (48 in all) is worthy of mention. This heraldic ceiling was restored in 1868-71.
King’s College, Aberdeen University
Of later date is King’s College Chapel, at no great distance from the Old Cathedral. It is a long, narrow but handsome building begun in 1500, shortly after the foundation of the University by Bishop Elphinstone. The chapel and its graceful tower are the oldest parts of the College buildings which had originally three towers.
East and West Churches, Aberdeen
The surviving one is a massive structure buttressed nearly to the top and bearing aloft a lantern of crossed rib arches, surmounted by a beautiful imperial crown with finial cross, somewhat resembling St Giles’s in Edinburgh. The difference is that King’s College has four ribs while St Giles’s has eight. The whole is of freestone from Morayshire. The entire building is a mixture of Scottish and French Gothic styles, and retains in the large western window the semicircular arch, a peculiarity of Scottish Gothic throughout all periods. The canopied stalls and the screen of richly carved oak, Gothic in design and most beautifully handled, take a place among the finest
pieces of mediaeval carved work existing in the British Empire. Their beauty and delicacy, according to Hill Burton, surpass all remains of a similar kind in Scotland. The chapel contains the tomb of Bishop Elphinstone. It was once highly ornamented, but meantime is covered with a plain marble slab. Its restoration is in prospect.
St Nicholas Church, Aberdeen (now the East and West Churches) contains in its transepts and groined crypt and in its wood-carving, interesting relics of twelfth, fifteenth and sixteenth century work. The nave was rebuilt in the Renaissance style of the time (1755).
Greyfriars Church, removed a few years ago to make way for the new front of Marischal College, was a pre-Reformation church, built by Alexander Galloway, Rector of Kinkell, early in the sixteenth century. Its chief features were its range of buttresses and a fine seven-light, traceried window.
The Protestant churches that succeeded these ancient buildings were inferior as architecture. It was only in the nineteenth century that taste began to revive and some attempt at grace and embellishment was made. Architects began to study old styles, and this combined with the increasing wealth of the country created a new standard in ecclesiastical requirements. To-day our churches tend to grow in architectural beauty
19. Architecture—(_b_) Castellated.
The earliest fortifications in Scotland were earthen mounds, surrounded with wooden palisades. They were succeeded by stone and lime “keeps” built in imitation of Norman structures. The presence of the Normans in England during the eleventh and twelfth centuries drove the Saxon nobility northwards, and they were followed in turn by other Normans, who obtained possession of great tracts of country. The rectangular keeps of the Normans have in consequence formed the models on which most of the Scottish castles were constructed. In the thirteenth century there were castles at Strathbogie, Fyvie, Inverurie and Kildrummy. These have mostly been rebuilt in recent times and the more ancient parts have disappeared. The general idea in them all was a fortified enclosure usually quadrilateral. The walls of the enclosure were 7 to 9 feet thick and 20 to 30 feet high. The angles had round or square towers, and the walls had parapets and embrasures for defence and a continuous path round the top of the ramparts. The entrance was a wide gate guarded by a portcullis. The comparatively large area within the walls was intended to harbour the population of a district and to give temporary protection to their flocks and possessions in times of danger. Some of the finer examples, such as Kildrummy, closely resemble the splendid military buildings of France in the thirteenth century. One of the towers is usually larger than the others and forms the donjon or place of strength, to which retreat could be made as a last resort, when, during a siege, the enemy had gained a footing within the walls.
Kildrummy Castle
Kildrummy Castle is one of the finest and largest in Scotland, and even in its present ruinous condition gives an impression of grandeur and extent such as no other castle in Aberdeenshire can rival. It was built in the reign of Alexander II by Gilbert de Moravia, Bishop of Caithness. Situated near the river Don, some ten miles inland from Alford, and occupying a strong position on the top of a bank which slopes steeply to a burn on two sides, and protected on the other sides by an artificial fosse, it was a place of great strength. Its plan is an irregular quadrangle, the south front bulging out in the centre
towards the gateway It had six round towers, one at each angle and two at the gate. One of the corner towers—the Snow Tower—55 feet in diameter, was the donjon and contained the draw-well. The castle possessed a large courtyard, a great hall, and a chapel, of which the window of three tall lancets survives. It was built in the thirteenth century, and therefore belongs to the First Pointed Period. The stone used is a sandstone, probably taken from the quarries in the locality, where instead of the prevailing granite of Aberdeenshire a great band of sandstone occurs.
This famous castle passed through various vicissitudes. It was besieged in 1306 by Edward I of England and was gallantly defended, but, in consequence of a great conflagration, Nigel Bruce, King Robert’s brother, who was acting as governor, yielded it to the English, he himself being made prisoner and ultimately executed. Some of the buildings date from this period, when it was rebuilt by the English, but it soon fell into Bruce’s hands again. Twenty years after Bannockburn it was conferred on the Earl of Mar. The rebellion of 1715 was hatched within its walls. Thereafter being forfeited by Mar, it eventually came into the hands of the Gordons of Wardhouse. Recently it was purchased by Colonel Ogston, who has built a modern mansion-house close by and crossed the ravine with a bridge, an exact replica of the historic Bridge of Balgownie near Donmouth.
During the fourteenth century, Scotland, exhausted with the struggle for national independence, was unable to engage in extensive building. Beside, Bruce’s policy was opposed to castle building, as such edifices were liable to be captured by the enemy and a secure footing thereby obtained. His policy was rather to strip the country, and to destroy everything in front of an invading army, with a view to starving it out. The houses of the peasantry were made of wood and could easily be restored when destroyed. The houses of the nobility took the form of square towers on the Norman model and all castles of the fourteenth century were on this simple plan—a square or oblong tower with very thick walls and defended from a parapeted path round the top of the tower. The angles were rounded or projected on corbels in the form of round bartizans. At first these
parapets were open and machicolated. As time went on, the simple keep was extended by adding on a small wing at one corner, which gave the ground plan of the whole building the shape of the letter =L=. The entrance was then placed as a rule at the re-entering angle. Such keeps are usually spoken of as built on the =L= plan. The ground floor was vaulted and used for stores or stables and as accommodation for servants. The only communication between this and the first floor was a hatch. In early castles the principal entrance was often on the floor above the ground floor and was reached by a stair easily removed in time of danger Access from one storey to another was by a corkscrew or newel stair at one corner in the thick wall. Thus constructed a tower could resist siege and fire, and even if taken, could not be easily damaged.
Of this kind of keep Aberdeenshire has many excellent examples, the most perfect, perhaps, being the Tower of Drum. It stands on a ridge overlooking the valley of the Dee. To the ancient keep built probably late in the thirteenth century was added a mansion-house on a different plan in 1619. The estate was granted to William de Irvine by Bruce in recognition of faithful service as secretary and armour-bearer. Previous to that, Drum was a royal forest and a hunting-seat of the king. The keep, which stands as solid and square to-day as it did six hundred years ago, is quadrilateral and the angles are rounded off. The entrance was at the level of the first floor. The main stair is a newel. In the lowest storey the walls are twelve feet thick, pierced with two narrow loops for light. In a recess is the well. On the top of the tower are battlements, the parapet resting on a corbel-table continued right round the building.
Hallforest near Kintore is an example of a fourteenth century keep. It was built by Bruce as a hunting-seat and bestowed on Sir Robert de Keith, the Marischal. It still belongs to the Kintore family but is now a ruin.
The fifteenth century brought a change in castle-building. The accommodation of the keeps was circumscribed and the paucity of rooms made privacy impossible. One way of extending the space was, as we have said, by adding a wing at one corner. Another mode was to utilise the surrounding wall, for the keeps were generally
guarded by a wall, which formed a courtyard or barmekin for stabling and offices. This was often of considerable extent and defended by towers. As the country progressed and manners improved, buildings were extended round the inside of the courtyard walls. In the sixteenth century the change went further and developed into the mansion-house built round a quadrangle. The building was first in the centre of the surrounding wall; ultimately the courtyard was absorbed and became the centre of the castle.
Balquhain Castle in Chapel of Garioch, two miles from Inverurie, was originally a keep like Drum, but being destroyed in 1526, it was rebuilt. Very little of it now remains but its massive, weather-stained walls have a commanding effect. The barmekin is still traceable. Queen Mary is said to have passed the night prior to the Battle of Corrichie at Balquhain. It was burned in 1746 by the Duke of Cumberland.
Many other castles on the same general plan are dotted up and down the county. Some are in ruins, some have been altered and added to on other lines, but the original keep is still a marked feature in most of them. Cairnbulg—recently restored—on the north-east coast has a keep of the fifteenth century with additions of a century later. Gight, now ruinous, but formerly celebrated for its great strength, occupies a fine site on the summit of the Braes of Gight, which rise abruptly from the bed of the Ythan. It also is a fifteenth century edifice built on the =L= plan. It has a historical interest as having once belonged to Lord Byron’s mother, from whom it was purchased by the Earl of Aberdeen. Another of the same kind is Craig Castle in Auchindoir. It was completed in 1518 and is also on the =L= plan. So too is Fedderat in New Deer
The Old House of Gight
In the sixteenth century the troubled reign of Queen Mary was unfavourable to architecture, but towards the end of it the rise of Renaissance art began to exert a decided influence, especially on details and internal furnishings, and in the next century gradually but completely dominated the spirit of the art. Another influence at work was the progress made in artillery. The ordinary castles could not now resist artillery fire, and all attempts at making them impregnable fortresses were abandoned, and the only fortifications retained were such as would make the buildings safe from sudden attack. In consequence, what had before been grim fortresses were now transformed into country mansions, whether on the keep or on the quadrangle plan; and sites were chosen as providing shelter from the elements rather than defence against human foes. The Reformation, too, which secularised the church lands and gave the lion’s share to the nobility, was a notable influence in revolutionising
architecture. The nobility being now more wealthy were enabled either to extend their old mansions or to build new ones. Hence the great development that took place in the quiet reign of James VI. The effect of the Union in 1603, which drew many of the nobility to England, was civilising and educative, and raised their ideas of house accommodation as well as their standard of comfort and domestic amenity.
The change was of course gradual. The old keeps and the castles built round a courtyard were still in evidence, but picturesque turrets corbelled out at every angle of the building, slated, and terminating in fanciful finials, became the rule. The lower walls were kept plain, the ornamentation being lavishly crowded only on the upper parts. The roofs became high-pitched with picturesque chimneys, dormer windows and crow-stepped gables. All these features so characteristic of the mansion-houses of the fourth period (15421700) are well marked in Craigievar, which is one of the best preserved castles of the time. Its ground plan is of the =L= type, but the turrets
Craigievar Castle, Donside
and gables are corbelled out with ornamental mouldings and the upper part of the castle displays that profusion of sky-pointing pinnacles and multifarious parapets which mark the period. The same is seen at Crathes and at Castle Fraser The last is altogether an excellent specimen. It consists of a central oblong building with two towers at the diagonally opposite ends, one square and the other round, and is therefore a development into what has been called the =Z= plan or stepped plan—induced by the general use of firearms in defence. Here, as at Craigievar, gargoyles originally used
to carry off rain water from the roof are brought in as a piece of fanciful decoration, apart from any utilitarian purpose, and project from the walls at places where rain-spouts are irrelevant.
Crathes Castle, Kincardineshire
The castle has a secret chamber or “lug,” in which the master of the house could over-hear the conversation of his guests in the dininghall. Nothing could better illustrate the treachery and cunning which had been bred by the difficulty of the times. Mr Skene, the friend of Sir Walter Scott, minutely investigated this contrivance as it exists at Castle Fraser, and no doubt his account of this ingenious but
dishonourable device for gaining illicit information suggested King James’s “Lug,” so happily described in The Fortunes of Nigel.
Castle Fraser
Castellated buildings of this class are so numerous in Aberdeenshire that it is possible to name only a few One of the finest is Fyvie Castle on the banks of the upper reaches of the Ythan in the very centre of the county. It is not like many others a ruin, but a mansionhouse modernised in many respects, but still retaining all the picturesque features of the olden time. It occupies two sides of a quadrangle, with the principal front towards the south, one side being
