by William Trollinger
Presentation at the McKinley Birthplace Museum in Niles, Ohio.
Last Sunday, I was at the William McKinley Memorial Museum in Niles, Ohio – McKinley’s birthplace – to speak on “Statues, Flags, and the Ongoing Battle Over the Civil War.” Given McKinley’s role as a Union soldier, it seemed quite the appropriate venue, even if it felt a bit unusual to be giving this talk while flanked by the busts of twelve or so wealthy industrialists (who paid for the privilege of being thusly commemorated in the McKinley Museum, and who even wrote their own citations).
I began by briefly mentioning the use of the Confederate flag by contemporary white supremacists. Then it was on to the Civil War. I started my discussion of the war by noting that – despite what many of us were taught – it really is indisputable that slavery was its primary cause. Along the way, I showed slides of South Carolina’s South Carolina’s and Mississippi’s secession resolutions. Within moments of beginning my talk, a white man sitting near the front interrupted my talk by loudly exclaiming that the war had nothing to do with slavery, and he also accused me of manipulating the secession resolutions by way of use of ellipses to serve my argument. I assured the audience that nothing I left out of the statements changed their central arguments about the necessity of secession on behalf of protecting slavery and told him that he should read the statements for himself (and add Georgia’s interminable secession resolution for good measure). I then went on to Confederate States of America Vice President Alexander Stephens’ infamous March, 1861 “Cornerstone Speech,” in which Stephens asserted that
African slavery was the immediate cause of the late rupture and present revolution . . . The Constitution rested upon the assumption of the equality of races. This was an error . . . Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea; its foundations are laid, its corner stone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery subordination to the superior race is his natural and normal condition.
I was again interrupted by the same (and increasingly angry) man, who announced that Abraham Lincoln said exactly the same thing, and that in fact Lincoln was as passionately proslavery as Stephens. In the politest tone I could muster, I said that was ridiculous.
While there were no more outbursts, he remained upset throughout the entirety of my presentation (arms crossed and shaking his head), and he marched out early in the question-and-answer period.
The ongoing battle over the Civil War, indeed. It is 2019, and yet many white Americans remain determined to hold on to the notion that the Civil War was not about slavery, but, instead, was an avoidable and unfortunate conflict of (white) brother vs. (white) brother. And this determination to see the past in this fashion seems rooted in a very deep desire not to see that racism and racial oppression is a central feature of American history.
But my agitated interlocutor in Niles was very much in the minority. In fact, I have to say that it was a quite receptive audience (which may indeed have contributed to the his departure). And Niles is not an anomaly. The vast majority of folks I have encountered in giving Ohio Humanities presentations on Confederate monuments (and on the Ku Klux Klan) are people who want (as one person in Niles said) to know the “real” American history, warts and all. Of course I know these are self-selected audiences. But in this time of ascendant white supremacy and grotesque racism emanating from the White House, I am grateful for this measure of encouragement.
To doubters I recommend Charles Drew’s book, quote from Benjamin Palmer’s sermon as representative of the southern pulpit, and quote from Jefferson Davis’ autobiography to demonstrate how far he had drifted from his original position.
Thanks for the recommendation, Tim!
Thanks for your blog and description of your presentation. However we do not have a racist in the White House. Your opinion of that is in itself racist & therefore make you no better or qualified. It is only your opinion. Sad to see someone use the backdrop of the McKinley Memorial to call the President of the United States a racist. I will be writing to the museum curator to be sure only facts be presented at such a presentation in the future and not a political platform to slander the president.
I did not call the president a racist. I did say that grotesque racism is emanating from the White House.
But as regards the president, you might feel that referring to Mexican immigrants as rapists and criminals, and referring to African nations as shithole countries, and equating the white supremacists and the opponents of white supremacy at Charlottesville — to give just three examples (and I could provide many more) — does not qualify as “grotesque racism.” But if that’s what you think, if you feel Trump’s statements and his White House and his policies are not evidence of racism, you need to make the case. Or to put it better, you need to make the case that Trump and his policies are actually about caring for people of color and for those at the bottom of the socioeconomic ladder.
On Civil War, Secession and Revisionism,
Thank you for persevering in communicating factually verifiable information to dispel the myriad of myths born of individual opinions!
I understand the following as facts-please correct any mistakes:
1. Seven of the 11 Confederate states seceded BEFORE Lincoln took office.
2. Jefferson Davis was sworn in before Abraham Lincoln.
3. The Secessionist states withdrew from the Union in order to preserve their economic system of slavery. *
4. By disavowing his military oath of loyalty to defend the Union to take up arms in defense of his home state of Virginia, General Robert E. Lee committed treason.
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* Texas Declaration of Secession reads:
“We hold as undeniable truths that the governments of the various States, and of the confederacy itself, were established exclusively by the white race, for themselves and their posterity; that the African race had no agency in their establishment; that they were rightfully held and regarded as an inferior and dependent race, and in that condition only could their existence in this country be rendered beneficial or tolerable.”
“Adopted in Convention on the 2nd day of Feby, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-one and of the independence of Texas the twenty-fifth.”
https://www.battlefields.org/learn/primary-sources/declaration-causes-seceding-states#Texas
The Declaration of Causes of Seceding States:
https://www.civilwar.org/learn/primary-sources/declaration-causes-seceding-states