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Authors: Douglas A. Blackmon
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al uvial cot on farmland stretching across the fertile atlands
ranging from South Carolina through the lower reaches of Georgia
and Alabama, and then extending across Mississippi and Louisiana
—antebel um society had been built whol y on true chat el slavery.
Mil ions of slaves came to live there under the ruthless control of a
minority of whites. Here, the moral rationalization of slavery—and
the view of slaves as the essential proof of white men's royal status
—became as fundamental to whites’ perception of America as the
concept of liberty itself. A century later, this was the paradox of the
post-Civil War South—recognition of freed slaves as ful humans
appeared to most white southerners not as an extension of liberty
but as a violation of it, and as a chal enge to the legitimacy of their
definition of what it was to be white.
The destruction of slavery in the Civil War didn't set le this
contradiction. Instead, it made more transparent the fundamental
question of whether blacks and whites could ever cohabit
peaceful y—of whether American whites in any region could
recognize African Americans as humans. Faced with the mandated
equality of whites and blacks, the range of southern perspectives on
race distil ed to narrow potency. Even among those who had been
troubled by—or apathetic toward—slavery before the war, there
was scant sympathy for the concept of ful equality. By
overwhelming majorities, whites adopted an assessment of the
black man paral el to that in the great crescent of cot on country.
The Civil War set led de nitively the question of the South's
continued existence as a part of the United States, but in 1865 there
was no strategy for cleansing the South of the economic and
was no strategy for cleansing the South of the economic and
intel ectual addiction to slavery. The resistance to what should have
been the obvious consequences of losing the Civil War—ful
emancipation of the slaves and shared political control between
blacks and whites—was so virulent and e ective that the tangible
outcome of the military struggle between the North and the South
remained uncertain even twenty- ve years after the issuance of
President Abraham Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation. The role
of the African American in American society would not be clear for
another one hundred years.
In the rst decades of that span, the intensity of southern whites’
need to reestablish hegemony over blacks rivaled the most visceral
patriotism of the wartime Confederacy. White southerners initiated
an extraordinary campaign of de ance and subversion against the
new biracial social order imposed on the South and mandated by
the Thirteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which
abolished slavery. They organized themselves into vigilante gangs
and militias, undermined free elections across the region,
intimidated Union agents, terrorized black leaders, and waged an
extremely e ective propaganda campaign to place blame for the
anarchic behavior of whites upon freed slaves. As the United States
would learn many times in the ensuing 150 years, a military victor's
intention to impose a new moral and political code on a conquered
society was much easier to wish for than to at ain.
Bibb County, home of the Cot inghams, was edged on the south by
that great fertile prairie of plantation country where by the 1850s
slaves accounted for the majority of most local populations. Bibb
whites harbored no equivocation about the proper status of African
Americans in their midst. There had been no agonized sentiment of
doubt in this section of Alabama regarding the morality of
slaveholding. No abolitionist voices arose here. In the 1840s, when
the northern and southern branches of the Methodist Church
divided over the issue of slavery, its Bibb County congregations—
certainly including Cot ingham Chapel—emphatical y went the way
certainly including Cot ingham Chapel—emphatical y
ranging from South Carolina through the lower reaches of Georgia
and Alabama, and then extending across Mississippi and Louisiana
—antebel um society had been built whol y on true chat el slavery.
Mil ions of slaves came to live there under the ruthless control of a
minority of whites. Here, the moral rationalization of slavery—and
the view of slaves as the essential proof of white men's royal status
—became as fundamental to whites’ perception of America as the
concept of liberty itself. A century later, this was the paradox of the
post-Civil War South—recognition of freed slaves as ful humans
appeared to most white southerners not as an extension of liberty
but as a violation of it, and as a chal enge to the legitimacy of their
definition of what it was to be white.
The destruction of slavery in the Civil War didn't set le this
contradiction. Instead, it made more transparent the fundamental
question of whether blacks and whites could ever cohabit
peaceful y—of whether American whites in any region could
recognize African Americans as humans. Faced with the mandated
equality of whites and blacks, the range of southern perspectives on
race distil ed to narrow potency. Even among those who had been
troubled by—or apathetic toward—slavery before the war, there
was scant sympathy for the concept of ful equality. By
overwhelming majorities, whites adopted an assessment of the
black man paral el to that in the great crescent of cot on country.
The Civil War set led de nitively the question of the South's
continued existence as a part of the United States, but in 1865 there
was no strategy for cleansing the South of the economic and
was no strategy for cleansing the South of the economic and
intel ectual addiction to slavery. The resistance to what should have
been the obvious consequences of losing the Civil War—ful
emancipation of the slaves and shared political control between
blacks and whites—was so virulent and e ective that the tangible
outcome of the military struggle between the North and the South
remained uncertain even twenty- ve years after the issuance of
President Abraham Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation. The role
of the African American in American society would not be clear for
another one hundred years.
In the rst decades of that span, the intensity of southern whites’
need to reestablish hegemony over blacks rivaled the most visceral
patriotism of the wartime Confederacy. White southerners initiated
an extraordinary campaign of de ance and subversion against the
new biracial social order imposed on the South and mandated by
the Thirteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which
abolished slavery. They organized themselves into vigilante gangs
and militias, undermined free elections across the region,
intimidated Union agents, terrorized black leaders, and waged an
extremely e ective propaganda campaign to place blame for the
anarchic behavior of whites upon freed slaves. As the United States
would learn many times in the ensuing 150 years, a military victor's
intention to impose a new moral and political code on a conquered
society was much easier to wish for than to at ain.
Bibb County, home of the Cot inghams, was edged on the south by
that great fertile prairie of plantation country where by the 1850s
slaves accounted for the majority of most local populations. Bibb
whites harbored no equivocation about the proper status of African
Americans in their midst. There had been no agonized sentiment of
doubt in this section of Alabama regarding the morality of
slaveholding. No abolitionist voices arose here. In the 1840s, when
the northern and southern branches of the Methodist Church
divided over the issue of slavery, its Bibb County congregations—
certainly including Cot ingham Chapel—emphatical y went the way
certainly including Cot ingham Chapel—emphatical y
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