farmers and poverty-stricken white families? Just such ambiguity was apparent in the speechHenry Ward Beecher had delivered at Fort Sumter, right before Lincoln’s assassination, in which he blamed the war squarely on southern slaveholders, accusing them of sweeping “common people” into their ranks with lies “against interests as dear to them as their own lives” and implored fellow victors to treat the deceived masses with mercy. Even if they had cast their wartime lot with their powerful neighbors, Beecher believed, the whole of the ignorant rank and file should be welcomed back into the Union. 31
Beecher spoke for most white northerners, who believed not only that the institution of slavery oppressed white people outside the master class, but also that those oppressed whites had always harbored antislavery sentiment. At war’s end, many white Union supporters believed that the majority of white southerners would act on their long-smoldering resentment of aristocratic slaveholders and reveal themselves as natural allies of the Yankees. After the fall of Richmond, Henry Thacher was waiting for “the
people
” to turn their wrath from the Union to their own leaders, once they discovered “the game the Chivalry are playing.” For Union army chaplain Hallock Armstrong, confirmation came from common southern whites themselves, who told him that the Civil War was “a war of the Aristocracy of the South,” prompting Armstrong to project that victory would “knock off the shackles from millions of poor whites.” Passing through Virginia on his way home, Edward Benham and his fellow soldiers were cheered by African Americans, but it was the white natives who startled them, convincing Benham that with the war over, they would now “think for themselves.” From the other side, a soldier in Lee’s army was shocked that the “miserably poor” whites he met in North Carolina expressed delight at the coming of the Yankees. Some of the Union troops, though, voiced skepticism, wondering whether those exulters had given up on the Confederate cause only after the war became too oppressive on the home front. After the fall of Richmond, one Union soldier thought white people were happy to encounter the enemy, “not because they were
Union
from principle, but because they were
Union
by being whipped & tired out by the war.” After surrender, another noticed that the women of destitute white families welcomed Yankees because they were starving yet still defended the Confederate cause. 32
Despite any evidence to the contrary, most of Lincoln’s white mourners only amplified their portraits of innocent poor whites in the defeated Confederacy. Leave the “ignorantly deluded” alone, Alonso Quint pled inhis Easter Sunday sermon, and they would “learn better by and by.” In Springfield, Illinois, when the Reverend Matthew Simpson singled out Confederate leaders, he simultaneously extended forgiveness to the “deluded masses.” A Union soldier in Raleigh warned his compatriots to take care in their treatment of the “unwilling, reluctant, enforced accessories” of the wicked leaders, and a Maryland Unionist brought the slain president into the picture, blaming Lincoln-hating Confederates for “inflaming the minds of humbler individuals.” 33
Where Confederate soldiers fit into this stark division was less clear. Immediately following the assassination, Union troops had fantasized about brutally attacking their already vanquished enemies on the battlefield, and a few explicitly named the rebel rank and file as culpable. Alfred Neafie, for one, pronounced guilty every soldier who remained loyal to the rebellion after Lincoln’s murder. Alonzo Pickard made the same point more violently. “I was always very lenient in my feelings towards all except the leaders,” he wrote from Virginia, but now he wanted everyone exterminated, leader and follower alike. Yet apart from the anger that flared, especially among Union
Beecher spoke for most white northerners, who believed not only that the institution of slavery oppressed white people outside the master class, but also that those oppressed whites had always harbored antislavery sentiment. At war’s end, many white Union supporters believed that the majority of white southerners would act on their long-smoldering resentment of aristocratic slaveholders and reveal themselves as natural allies of the Yankees. After the fall of Richmond, Henry Thacher was waiting for “the
people
” to turn their wrath from the Union to their own leaders, once they discovered “the game the Chivalry are playing.” For Union army chaplain Hallock Armstrong, confirmation came from common southern whites themselves, who told him that the Civil War was “a war of the Aristocracy of the South,” prompting Armstrong to project that victory would “knock off the shackles from millions of poor whites.” Passing through Virginia on his way home, Edward Benham and his fellow soldiers were cheered by African Americans, but it was the white natives who startled them, convincing Benham that with the war over, they would now “think for themselves.” From the other side, a soldier in Lee’s army was shocked that the “miserably poor” whites he met in North Carolina expressed delight at the coming of the Yankees. Some of the Union troops, though, voiced skepticism, wondering whether those exulters had given up on the Confederate cause only after the war became too oppressive on the home front. After the fall of Richmond, one Union soldier thought white people were happy to encounter the enemy, “not because they were
Union
from principle, but because they were
Union
by being whipped & tired out by the war.” After surrender, another noticed that the women of destitute white families welcomed Yankees because they were starving yet still defended the Confederate cause. 32
Despite any evidence to the contrary, most of Lincoln’s white mourners only amplified their portraits of innocent poor whites in the defeated Confederacy. Leave the “ignorantly deluded” alone, Alonso Quint pled inhis Easter Sunday sermon, and they would “learn better by and by.” In Springfield, Illinois, when the Reverend Matthew Simpson singled out Confederate leaders, he simultaneously extended forgiveness to the “deluded masses.” A Union soldier in Raleigh warned his compatriots to take care in their treatment of the “unwilling, reluctant, enforced accessories” of the wicked leaders, and a Maryland Unionist brought the slain president into the picture, blaming Lincoln-hating Confederates for “inflaming the minds of humbler individuals.” 33
Where Confederate soldiers fit into this stark division was less clear. Immediately following the assassination, Union troops had fantasized about brutally attacking their already vanquished enemies on the battlefield, and a few explicitly named the rebel rank and file as culpable. Alfred Neafie, for one, pronounced guilty every soldier who remained loyal to the rebellion after Lincoln’s murder. Alonzo Pickard made the same point more violently. “I was always very lenient in my feelings towards all except the leaders,” he wrote from Virginia, but now he wanted everyone exterminated, leader and follower alike. Yet apart from the anger that flared, especially among Union
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