Looking Ahead
On the night of January the 27th of 1900, in the passenger car of a train that had left Richmond, bound for Atlanta, sat a very un-remarkable looking man who had spent most of his trip, so far, looking over his private papers and jotting down notes in the margins. He was accustomed to wearing a small bowler hat with a plain gray suit but, very rarely did he keep either the hat, coat, and even the bow tie on for any longer than necessary. He was far more comfortable, particularly when he was working, in just his vest with an open collar. Most of the pictures that we have of the man show this to be true.
We know that the train had just passed through Durham, North Carolina when he began making a few very specific notations about his thoughts on both his personal future and that of his country. We know this because he wrote a journal entry about having counted the number of uniforms on the station platform at his last stop. It was not so significant since every station in the Confederate States was full of traveling soldiers but, at this particular time, this particular man noted something else.
Why this occurred to Woodrow Wilson, at this time, is ultimately anyone’s guess but, it might have had something to do with the recent newspaper accounts of Kitchener’s victory in Africa. The battle at Lake Poelela (being called the Battle of African Lake in the Confederate papers of the time) had bumped most other stories from the front pages. It was significant at a time when people were growing weary of war news and if one single battle made headlines then it sent a signal that it must be important.
The battle was important but, not for the reasons people might have suspected. Woodrow Wilson was one of the few men who seemed to have grasped the real lesson to be learned and it disturbed him. He realized that what he saw on that platform in Durham was probably repeating itself, many times over, throughout the Confederacy.
Wilson was the most unlikely of sorts. His father was both a medical doctor and an ordained minister. Before the American 61, the elder Wilson was both a staunch supporter of States Rights and Slavery. He was politically active and even wrote widely published sermons that established both the merits of his views, as well as the Biblical justification for them. Even by 1900, when most people had long forgotten the elder Wilson, the logic spelled out in his pulpit punditry were still accepted as simple truths by much of his nations populace.
One would think that a man such as Woodrow Wilson, given his background, would have been quite comfortable in the more conservative Home Party but, Wilson was a new breed of man that was beginning to make it’s presence known in the Confederate States. He remembered the first war with the United States but, he was only a child when it ended. He actually wrote of having seen his father treat casualties in Virginia but, it seems to have not made much of a lasting impression. Maybe that was because Wilson was looking ahead and not behind him. His observations in Durham seem to bare this out.
Like many who came from families of means, in the Confederacy, Wilson had been educated in England. He came home and finished his education by attending law school. He had been a barred attorney for many years with a host of both wealthy, and some famous, clients. One of these was the former President of the CSA, James Longstreet. Wilson’s father was personal friends with the uncle of the former President and through this connection, Longstreet had introduced the younger Wilson to the world of politics.
This is how we met Wilson the first time, when he was involved with the Confederate negotiating team, at the Langley Accords, just before the out break of war. Wilson had worked in various capacities for the administration of President Wheeler for several years by this point but, now, Wilson was returning home because the man did harbor political ambitions of his own. Despite this, up till now, he had never held a single public office and this was mainly due to his choice of political affiliations.
It seems to be clear from his writings that Wilson was very much a political idealist. If he had not been then he would have surely joined the Home Party and ran for office long before now. Wilson did not because he more identified with the ideals embodied in the DCP and the DCP was not very strong in his home state of Georgia. Very few DCP candidates ever got elected in Georgia and the Home Party was so well entrenched that the Governer’s race was considered decided in the primary elections instead of the general vote. Wilson believed this was about to change.
It would seem that Wilson was alone in his assessment of the political winds. He recorded that even President Wheeler had doubted his estimation of the political landscape. Wheeler himself was originally form Georgia but, had ascended to the Presidency as a citizen of Alabama. Like many DCP executives, Wheeler had captured a cross section of the national voters by being a progressive from an area that was seen as very conservative. He appealed to both sets of voters and it was a strategy that the DCP had used more than once. Still, Wheeler recognized that the Home Party political machine was too well entrenched in Georgia for him to ever win there.
Wheeler also saw something else. He told Wilson that many people who were disgruntled with the war were holding the DCP responsible for it even if, traditionally, they represented the dove faction in the Confederacy. Even Wilson had to agree with this very pragmatic point of view but, Wilson saw the situation as being far more radical than his president and this is very telling. Many in Richmond, both DCP and HP alike, were not considering how much the war was changing the very nature of their society. They simply could not see it but, men like Wilson were quietly chatting with each other and the reality was slowly coming into focus.
Mozambique had driven the point home to many of these men and, while it seems that this was not the deciding factor for Wilson to quit the administration and return to Atlanta, it was most definitely on his mind. Wilson had read more than just the Confederate papers. Having been educated in England, he was accustomed to reading many newspapers from London. The Confederate papers had down played the role of their black sailors but, praised the fighting prowess of their marines. Most mentions of the Confederate Navy either talked of only the ships involved or, of their commander. This was typical of Confederate papers of the time.
Of course, Wilson noted, that the British papers mostly talked of Kitchener and the English soldiers involved. There was only passing mention of other Imperial troops, that were present in force, and even the Australians got very little mention. One correspondent, who was also a British serving officer, had written extensively about far more than even the battle itself. While his dispatch’s were not printed in totality, Wilson had a friend in London who would eventually send the bulk of those accounts to him. Wilson had already noted the name from the original articles in the paper. This fellow was none other than Winston Churchill.
It seems that Wilson had already realized what Chruchill would later confirm for him. Wilson was reading what the papers were not printing and, he seemed to have fully understood that, sooner or later, the entirety of what happened in Mozambique would be known. Eventually most of those men would return home and they would tell the tales to their families, most of whom would not even know how to put such things in context. How they would see these events would be through the prism of their own lives. How well or poorly their own lives were going would, ultimately, be the deciding factor on what they thought of the poor wretched souls who were being abused in Africa. More importantly, it would reflect on whether or not they believed that they were being abused at home.
This thought weighed heavily on Wilson and he had good reason for this, even if most of his contemporary’s had yet to see it. There was always an underlying fear, in the Confederacy, that a revolt by their black residents was just right around the corner. What most whites did not seem to realize was that this very real concern was a symptom of some truly fundamental problems. Most people simply saw it as a normal state of affairs and, many, were too embarrassed to even discuss the matter in open conversation.
Wilson realized that in a democracy, such as the CSA, a public discourse on any serious problem was not only required but, essential to the survival of that democracy. Up till now, the simple truth of the matter was that no one would dare mention this situation and, as a result, most of the laws regarding the millions of black residents of the Confederacy passed thru congress without any debate at all. Those residency laws were both numerous and complicated, even to a lawyer such as Wilson. When you added in the individual state laws then what you had was a complicated mess that were nearly unenforceable in their written form. That meant, the day to day realties, of how those laws worked, were left largely to local custom and this varied widely from city to city and state to state.
The Residency system had a built in enforcement component and one that was never ignored by any government in the confederacy, whether it be local, state, or national. In the past, most of the problems occurred when one governmental entity did not agree with another. On the whole, the system had been largely benevolent though. There were abuses but, they were normally rare and generally not tolerated when they were discovered. Wilson did realize, and even wrote about, the fact that no matter what you could say about any other part of the Confederate Government, how it handled the country’s black residents was usually very efficient, despite the legislative mess, and there was zero tolerance for corruption or mistakes. There was good reason for this and it all boiled down to one simple emotion, fear.
Wilson most certainly pondered other aspects of the Confederacy’s “peculiar institution.” Slavery had been enshrined in the nations very constitution but, it was also a lame duck issue at this point. Slavery still legally existed in several states but, largely in name only. The DCP, mainly under Longstreet, had done it’s best to kick slavery to death under the table. They did this mostly through the tax system, something that Wilson hardily approved of. It was hoped that this would be the end of the problem, once and for all. It was now very clear to Wilson that it was only the start and not the end.
It is important to note that this was not a problem confined within the borders of the Confederate States. The world was filled with people who were denied the rights that only a hand full could take for granted. Ironically, it was a problem that was simple to fix but, the Victorian world was simply not ready to embrace the solution. Wilson is a good case in point. He was most definitely a progressive for his era but, he was still a man of his times. Even he could not bring himself to believe the words of his own forefathers, that being, “all men are created equal.” It was an alien concept in the 19th century and it was not confined to the ruling classes. It is easy to find overwhelming evidence that the inherit belief in the superiority of one’s own group, over all others, was dominant even in those who found themselves on the lowest rungs of the social order. If this were not the case then racial relations in South Africa might have been far less complicated than they actually were.
For progressives like Wilson, the fear was not so much in finding their former slaves as equal citizens but, finding those former slaves supplanting the powers that be. This was not an irrational fear and it was shared by many, even before the war. Society had been changing at a rapid pace prior to hostilities but, it had been managed to some degree. Wilson now feared that the war had unleashed forces that no one even realized existed, and they were beyond the control of any individual or even group of men. Up till now, the social issues of the pre war era had been either forgotten or put on hold due to the war. Even avowed socialists had rushed to the banners of the patriots when the hostilities first began. Wilson realized this was quickly changing.
What he saw at the train station had only cemented his concerns. All of the men in uniform were white and everyone else was black. That meant the white men were leaving for the front lines, possibly never to return, and the blacks porters and station hands would be staying behind and doing the jobs that kept the country running. When the war was over, maybe even before, what effect would this have on the social order? The Confederate States had come to exist for the very purpose of maintaining that social order and Wilson saw no way that it would survive. He knew that it was no longer a matter of if. The change was only a matter of how and when. He feared that any control of it had now been lost.
Only time would tell.
TO BE CONTINUED
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Of course, you're correct in that one doesn't become President unless one can play ball with others that might hold different views than you. I personally read into this entry that Wilson might end up with a different perspective on racism in the Confederacy, possibly a more sympathetic one really. Of course, that's just my interpretation as a reader so YMMV.
Well that does kind of hit at some of the things I'm trying to bring up with this. First of all, racism (which is something that I use the literal definition of being the inherit belief in the superiority of one group over another by virtue of ethnicity) was not something limited to the Southeastern United States. It was universal and for that matter not just in the Victorian Era. It's been a pretty standard human attitude for as far back as I have ever looked. The reason why it sticks out in places like the southeast US and South Africa, etc, is because these area's institutionalized it in a very visible way. It certainly wasn't contained to those areas either but, that's beside the point here, the point is that it wasn't a matter personal opinion, it was business and that business is dictated by circumstances. That's really the point of alternate history, to ask those questions so we better understand the real world we live in. Our present attitudes on race relations are largely dictated by the actions that people took in the 20th century but what if things had not turned out like they did? You have to remember that both the real people and the characters in the story lack those experiences that we all have.
The scope of what I'm writing here isn't really about race relations in particular. That subject is a part of it but, only one factor of many that was driving the world, not just the southeast (ie CSA), at the end of the 19th century. I think the single biggest thing that I liked about this idea was how much irony it had. In order for the CSA to even exist it would have had to aligned itself with larger powers and there was really only one clear choice for that, Britain. So that the average citizen could live the insular kind of life that the CSA was meant to protect, their leadership would have had to become exposed to a much wider world in a situation that would effectively have made them a part of the British Empire. The very act of protecting their insular attitudes would have been the mechanism that destroyed it. You have to compare that to what really happened and I don't think most people understand it.
In the real world the region was, at that time, effectively a country occupied by a foreign power and the policies that developed happened because of that. The rest of the US let the southeast get away with things like Jim Crow laws because it was an easy and expedient means not to refight a war that no one wanted too and, in particular, about an issue that the rest of the country agreed with them. Because the US won, they could effectively end any foreign influence in the hemisphere and that made it a regional issue only. If the CSA existed that would not have been the case. The issue would have been there no matter what but, the circumstances and influences would have become global, made so by the strategic situation. This would have changed people like Wilson and even what side of the fence they sat on. I doubt it would have changed any personal opinions because the horrors of the Holocaust had not happened yet. That's what really did racism in (at least in the west because for the rest of the world it is still business as usual). Funny to think that our attitudes changed not because of men like Martin King and Ghandi, but because of a guy like Hitler.