Today at the Grove Hill Baptist Church in Alabama, in a formal ceremony the flag of the 24th Alabama Infantry (Co. E. Dickinson Guards) is presented to the company. Confederate flag presentation ceremonies held in churches, Baptist and otherwise, are not unusual, as many white southern Christians are patriotic Confederates, while belief in the Confederacy as God’s chosen nation is widespread.
Westward, Union General John C. Fremont’s order to emancipate all slaves in Missouri (soon amended by President Abraham Lincoln, in accordance with his previous order of emancipation only for southern slaves used by Confederates in the war effort) has galvanized southern forces in that state, although not quite to the extent that today’s Richmond Daily Dispatch reports:
Already great evil has been done by the proclamation of General Fremont in Missouri. We have the testimony of Rev. Mr. Olmstead, pastor of the Baptist Church at Booneville, in a letter in a Chicago Republican journal, that “the whole country in Northwestern Missouri is up and flocking by hundreds to Price’s camp, their arms being of every description; that the whole force of the rebels marching from various points against the Union army will amount from 100,000 to 150,000 men;” and his opinion is that the only hope is to fall back, concentrate, entrench, and act on the defensive! Such are the first fruits in Missouri of the false step of Fremont towards making the war one of emancipation, instead of a war to restore the status quo ante bellum–the same condition as existed before hostilities broke out. The Abolitionists and radical Republicans do not want the Union restored unless negro slavery is cut out of it by the sword; they do not want the Union restored unless the essential principles of the Constitution are abolished — principles without which the Union never could have been formed. A Union without the Constitution is a new question, which neither the President nor Congress nor Generals have any right to solve. That remains for the decision of the people in convention assembled, and any attempt to decide it in any other way would be an act of usurpation and rebellion, equalling in criminality the course of the Southern rebels.
The article thus summarizes the sectional arguments from a southern perspective: the South is fighting to preserve slavery in states where already established and as allowed by the U.S. Constitution, while the North (represented by Lincoln’s Republican Party and abetted by abolitionists), as many southern leaders have consistently maintained, is fighting for the eradication of slavery.
Indeed, the Civil War raises constitutional questions and tensions. The U.S. Constitution had been ratified by southern states only because it left slavery intact. On the other hand, the Constitution fell far short of granting equality to all, the ideal that led to the founding of America. Now, African slavery and the competing ideal of human equality propel North and South toward ever-bloodier clashes.
Sources: 24th Alabama Infantry flag presentation and illustration (link); Richmond Daily Dispatch, October 14 (link)
