The Calamity of Appomattox

by H.L. Mencken

The American Mercury, September 1930

NO AMERICAN historian, so far as I know, has ever tried to work out the probable consequences if Grant instead of Lee had been on the hot spot at Appomattox. How long would the victorious Confederacy have endured? Could it have surmounted the difficulties inherent in the doctrine of States’ Rights, so often inconvenient and even paralyzing to it during the war? Could it have remedied its plain economic deficiencies, and become a self-sustaining nation? How would it have protected itself against such war heroes as Beauregard and Longstreet, Joe Wheeler and Nathan D. Forrest? And what would have been its relations to the United States, socially, economically, spiritually and politically?

I am inclined, on all these counts, to be optimistic. The chief evils in the Federal victory lay in the fact, from which we still suffer abominably, that it was a victory of what we now call Babbitts over what used to be called gentlemen. I am not arguing here, of course, that the whole Confederate army was composed of gentlemen; on the contrary, it was chiefly made up, like the Federal army, of innocent and unwashed peasants, and not a few of them got into its corps of officers. But the impulse behind it, as everyone knows, was essentially aristocratic, and that aristocratic impulse would have fashioned the Confederacy if the fortunes of war had run the other way. Whatever the defects of the new commonwealth below the Potomac, it would have at least been a commonwealth founded upon a concept of human inequality, and with a superior minority at the helm. It might not have produced any more Washingtons, Madisons, Jeffersons, Calhouns and Randolphs of Roanoke, but it would certainly not have yielded itself to the Heflins, Caraways, Bilbos and Tillmans.

The rise of such bounders was a natural and inevitable consequence of the military disaster. That disaster left the Southern gentry deflated and almost helpless. Thousands of the best young men among them had been killed, and thousands of those who survived came North. They commonly did well in the North, and were good citizens. My own native town of Baltimore was greatly enriched by their immigration, both culturally and materially; if it is less corrupt today than most other large American cities, then the credit belongs largely to Virginians, many of whom arrived with no baggage save good manners and empty bellies. Back home they were sorely missed. First the carpetbaggers ravaged the land, and then it fell into the hands of the native white trash, already so poor that war and Reconstruction could not make them any poorer. When things began to improve they seized whatever was seizable, and their heirs and assigns, now poor no longer, hold it to this day. A raw plutocracy owns and operates the New South, with no challenge save from a proletariat, white and black, that is still three-fourths peasant, and hence too stupid to be dangerous. The aristocracy is almost extinct, at least as a force in government. It may survive in backwaters and on puerile levels, but of the men who run the South today, and represent it at Washington, not 5%, by any Southern standard, are gentlemen.

If the war had gone with the Confederates no such vermin would be in the saddle, nor would there be any sign below the Potomac of their chief contributions to American Kultur–Ku Kluxry, political ecclesiasticism, nigger-baiting, and the more homicidal variety of wowserism. Such things might have arisen in America, but they would not have arisen in the South. The old aristocracy, however degenerate it might have become, would have at least retained sufficient decency to see to that. New Orleans, today, would still be a highly charming and civilized (if perhaps somewhat zymotic) city, with a touch of Paris and another of Port Said. Charleston, which even now sprouts lady authors, would also sprout political philosophers. The University of Virginia would be what Jefferson intended it to be, and no shouting Methodist would haunt its campus. Richmond would be, not the dull suburb of nothing that it is now, but a beautiful and consoling second-rate capital, comparable to Budapest, Brussels, Stockholm or The Hague. And all of us, with the Middle West pumping its revolting silo juices into the East and West alike, would be making frequent leaps over the Potomac, to drink the sound red wine there and breathe the free air.

My guess is that the two Republics would be getting on pretty amicably. Perhaps they’d have come to terms as early as 1898, and fought the Spanish-American War together. In 1917 the confiding North might have gone out to save the world for democracy, but the South, vaccinated against both Wall Street and the Liberal whim-wham, would have kept aloof–and maybe rolled up a couple of billions of profit from the holy crusade. It would probably be far richer today, independent, than it is with the clutch of the Yankee mortgage-shark still on its collar. It would be getting and using his money just the same, but his toll would be less. As things stand, he not only exploits the South economically; he also pollutes and debases it spiritually. It suffers damnably from low wages, but it suffers even more from the Chamber of Commerce metaphysic.

No doubt the Confederates, victorious, would have abolished slavery by the middle of the 80s. They were headed that way before the war, and the more sagacious of them were all in favor of it. But they were in favor of it on sound economic grounds, and not on the brummagem moral grounds which persuaded the North. The difference here is immense. In human history a moral victory is always a disaster, for it debauches and degrades both the victor and the vanquished. The triumph of sin in 1865 would have stimulated and helped to civilize both sides.

Today the way out looks painful and hazardous. Civilization in the United States survives only in the big cities, and many of them–notably Boston and Philadelphia–seem to be sliding down to the cow country level. No doubt this standardization will go on until a few of the more resolute towns, headed by New York, take to open revolt, and try to break out of the Union. Already, indeed, it is talked of. But it will be hard to accomplish, for the tradition that the Union is indissoluble is now firmly established. If it had been broken in 1865, life would be far pleasanter today for every American of any noticeable decency. There are, to be sure, advantages in Union for everyone, but it must be manifest that they are greatest for the worst kinds of people. All the benefit that a New Yorker gets out of Kansas is no more than what he might get out of Saskatchewan, the Argentine pampas, or Siberia. But New York to a Kansan is not only a place where he may get drunk, look at dirty shows and buy bogus antiques; it is also a place where he may enforce his dunghill ideas upon his betters.

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3 Replies to “The Calamity of Appomattox”

  1. Layne D. Prebor

    Originally read in a Freshman English
    class -1965- I remember the style and the tone of Mencken-the documentaries on television had me wondering again about the necessity of the civil war. Was it necessary? what was it about? preservation of the union, slavery, both, neither. Was it avoidable? In this case, hindsight does not trump common sense, If I was Lincoln I would have avoided a conflict of this magnitude any way possible. Where were the statesmen prior to the declaration of war? Did everyone polarize so eaily? The loss of southern aristocracy seems valid. Sometimes I wonder if we didn’t all become a nation of brutes. Thanks to all of those who saved this essay, making it available to me in 2010, Thank you Mencken and all the other essayists over time who declared their positions so we could find our positions.

    Reply
  2. Mark

    You said no doubt WHAT??

    No doubt the South would have ended slavery?

    Are you mental, or just a blazen idiot about anything real regarding the antebellum South.

    Lee said God MIGHT end slaver — in 2000 years. But first God must “discipline” the blacks, as pain and suffering are “necessary for their instruction”.

    Only GOD can end slavery, said Lee. Man must not even question it.

    And it wasn’t Lee alone. Davis said “Slavery is a Divine blessing” and that blacks “are fit only for servitude”. God “delivered the negro unto us.”

    Vice President Stephens said slavery was “the cornerstone of the Confederacy” and that “the great moral truth” of “our new country” is that God Almighty intends to spread slavery through out the world.

    The CSA, Vice President Stephens shouted to cheering crowds in several cities, was “just the first” nation that would “do slavery by the word of God”. This type of slavery — per the word of God, would be spread all over the white world, he said “like the truths of Galileo”.

    Scientifically, religiously, morally, the CSA was going to be the FIRST of many countries to spread slavery.

    Sound like slavery was going to end you idiot?

    Oh wait – you said there was “NO DOUBT”.

    No doubt? You must have stuck your head up your ass and inhaled a ton of shit. Honestly, you are one stupid fuck.

    The best selling book in the South was “Slavery: Ordained of God” by pastor Ross.

    Jefferson Davis quoted from Ross in many of his speeches. Did you know that? Fuck no.

    Not only was slavery ordained by God, but the TORTURE of slaves was ordained by God — slaves even had to obey white master’s sexual demands, according to the bible.

    Did you know that?

    Fuck no you didn’t know that. You dont know shit.

    Furthermore, you fucking idiot, it was a crime to even SPEAK or write against slavery. Did you know that you fucking retard?

    Go read about the “anti incendiary” laws from 1820 on. Men were arrested – and tortured — just for owning the wrong book. Did you know that? Not for writing it, just for OWNING it. Arrested and tortured.

    Learn what the fuck the South was about you retard.

    And the best place to learn that is from SOUTHERN books at the time. Not shit you cock suckers made up later, I mean books AT THE TIME.

    Newspapers — AT THE TIME.

    Sermons — AT THE TIME

    What your leaders said AT THE TIME.

    What your laws said AT THE TIME.

    Go on you stupid fuck. Learn real history.

    No doubt? The only thing there is no doubt about, is that you don’t know shit about real history.

    http://deathofsoutherngod.blogspot.com/

    Reply
  3. Andrew

    Mark, I suppose you miss the irony of your response upholding Mencken’s note of the decline of civilization in America. You also probably haven’t figured out that without the Southern vote Trump would not be your president. You don’t seem to think too far ahead.

    Reply

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