The Rhetoric of Insurrection and Fear: The Politics of Slave Management in Confederate Georgia

Abstract

The Rhetoric of Insurrection and Fear: The Politics of Slave Management in Confederate Georgia David T. Gleeson (bio) Just after the first Confederate conscription law passed in April 1862, the governor of Georgia, Joseph E. Brown, wrote to President Jefferson Davis complaining about the usurpation of gubernatorial powers over military enlistment. He noted that “in portions of our State where the slave population is heavy almost the entire white male population capable of bearing arms (except the overseers on plantations) are now in the military service of the Confederacy.” But since overseers “over eighteen and under thirty-five” were now liable to be drafted into the army, it meant that “the peace and safety of helpless women and children must be imperiled for want of protection against bands of idle slaves, who must be left to roam over the country without restraint.” In June 1862, as the Confederate central government began drafting men, Brown told Davis the conscription law now left those “helpless women and children, subject to massacre by negro insurrection.”1 With this rhetoric of massacre common in Confederate discourse, the dominant historiographical view is that fear of servile insurrection grew exponentially during the Civil War and undermined the Confederate war effort. Conscription, for example, “generated profound fears of slave revolt, which combined with a sense of the particular [End Page 237] vulnerability of white women.” President Abraham Lincoln’s Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation in September 1862 increased this “dread” of insurrection, and fear “reached a crescendo” by the end of that year. These fears and the burdens of managing slavery with so many white men in the Confederate army contributed to “a practical pacifism born of exhaustion and despair,” seriously damaging the Confederate cause.2 The Confederacy’s raison d’être, slavery, had quickly become its Achilles’ heel. The Civil War therefore turned into “the largest slave rebellion in modern history: a rebellion that began as flight from plantations and farms,” resulting “in tens of thousands of former slaves taking up arms to help the Union army crush the Confederacy and complete the destruction of slavery.”3 This rebellion began as soon as Lincoln’s election to the presidency: “Almost everywhere . . . slaves’ willingness to fight their masters increased.” Resistance eventually became a “war between slaves and masters on Confederate plantations”; and among Mississippi and Louisiana slave owners, “few doubted that the [Civil War] had become a slave rebellion.”4 The consensus among leading historians of American slavery, then, is that slavery “proved to be [the Confederacy’s] weakest point.”5 As Armstead L. Robinson has succinctly put it, the Confederacy’s self-declared “cornerstone” transformed into its “millstone,” dragging the would-be nation down to defeat.6 The ultimate conclusion drawn is that servile insurrection on the home front, broadly defined, and white fear of it played a major role in destroying the Confederacy. In Confederate Georgia, however, there was no internal war between owners and the enslaved. Rather, the real threat to slavery was the external one of Union armed forces’ incursion, invasion, and occupation. [End Page 238] Nevertheless, as in other parts of the Confederacy, managing slavery in wartime Georgia did move “through the various levels of power and sovereignty,” creating a new politicization among white citizens. The increasing power of the central government and of individual Confederate states, as well as the burdens of service and sacrifice these governments required from civilians, led to an unprecedented increase in letters to government officials and leaders seeking “protection” from the demands of war.7 Reflecting this desire for protection, ordinary white men and women in Georgia flooded Governor Brown with correspondence. Some of their letters, especially in early 1861, dealt with organizing the military affairs of the state, but individual requests for help and support came quickly and only increased as the conflict proceeded. The array of complaints was vast and included everything from the high price of food to Confederate taxes and neighbors using grain for distilling whiskey instead of making flour.8 An examination of all these letters, however, indicates that, despite some initial concerns, real servile insurrection fears were rare. Nevertheless, individuals still used the rhetoric of slave violence to reinforce personal...