“A Disease of the Public Mind”

“A Disease of the Public Mind: A New Understanding of Why We Fought the Civil War”, Thomas Fleming

The “the disease of the public mind” that Fleming talks about here is really two interrelated “diseases”. One is the absolute terror of a slave insurrection and race war (and a race war in which ALL white people including women and children would be slaughtered indiscriminately) that existed in the mass of the Southern mind.  Given the Haitian slave rebellion, Nat Turner’s foray into terroristic mass murder and John Brown’s “raid” as examples of “emancipation” this terror was certainly a reasonable one. This terror also certainly tended to turn the Southern mind, even those who had absolutely no stake in slavery, against any form of emancipation.

I give Fleming credit here: He is one of the few (if any) “mainstream” historians who have dared to even try to understand the absolute dread that was felt by most Southerners when the idea of “emancipation” was put forward. The very word brought forth images of white babies being butchered in their cribs and white women having their throats slashed in their sleep (and these types of atrocities certainly occurred in both Haiti in the late 1700’s and early 1800’s  and in Virginia in 1831). Add to this the material and moral support that so many New Englanders had given to the cold blooded murdering terrorist John Brown in1859 and it is not hard to understand why so many Southerners were willing to go to war rather than to live under a government that was to be dominated by such people.

The other half of Fleming’s “disease” (and probably the one most instrumental in bringing on war) was the absolute loathing that many New Englanders (both in New England its self and the upper mid-west) had for anything and anybody Southern (and not just slavery and slaveholders either but ANYBODY Southern).  Their puritan culture had taught them that the New England yankees  were God’s chosen and that anyone who disagreed with their views must be irredeemably depraved and should be eliminated from the earth. Add to this the fact that Southerners had thwarted their absolute control of the Federal government (something that they seemed to believe was their God-given right) and you can see some other roots of their envy* and loathing.

I give Fleming credit here too: “Mainstream” historians usually don’t bring up any faults of yankees (especially the New England variety). They seem to adhere to the old puritan believe in the infallibility of their kind.

Even with all this credit (and some more in the note below), I have one criticism and this not a small one. Fleming has apparently swallowed the “main stream historian’s” myth of Lincoln.  He seems to criticize the likes of Emerson and Thoreau for comparing the terrorist John Brown to Jesus Christ and yet he goes almost as far in praising old abe.  He commits one glaring omission about his hero too. It is demonstrable fact  that he (abe) very carefully and very deliberately provoked the commencement of the war (and honest abe even admitted it himself) .

 Those two  “diseases of the mind” certainly allowed the conditions necessary for the explosion to come to fruition. Nevertheless, it is patently obvious to anyone willing to forget the myth of “honest abe” for a few hours and study what he actually said and did in the four months between the first secessions and the commencement of war that it was abe himself who lit the fuse! I don’t know if Lincoln ever read Machiavelli or not but in his machinations to provoke the war at Sumter he proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that he was a master of Machiavelli’s dark art of political manipulation. 

Fleming however, disingenuously puts the whole blame for Sumter on Jefferson Davis. If you have never studied the sorry episode  of lincoln’s deliberate provocation of the war  here is a good place to start:

http://americancivilwar.com/authors/Joseph_Ryan/Articles/Lincoln-Instigated-War/The-Buried-Fact-Record.html

All in all I would recommend Fleming's book to any student of American history. I'd also strongly advise them to keep a shaker of salt handy for Fleming’s blind spots.

*note: the South in 1860 had been, for a long time and by far and away, the wealthiest section of the nation (on a per capita basis as much as twice as wealthy as the New England States). This is another fact that is ignored and even denied by the “main stream historians” that Fleming has the courage to talk about.