The Southern Historical Society was an American organization founded to preserve archival materials related to the government of the Confederate States of America and to document the history of the American Civil War.[1][2][3] The society was organized on May 1, 1869, in New Orleans, Louisiana.[4][3] The society published 52 volumes of its Southern Historical Society Papers which helped preserve valuable historical resources.
Dabney H. Maury founded the Southern Historical Society on April 15, 1869, in New Orleans.[5] Maury and the eight other founding members donated family papers, books, and artifacts to the society to form its initial collection. Its first publication began in 1876 and continued until 1959. The society was officially organized on May 1, 1869; signatories included Braxton Bragg, J. E. Austin, Dabney H. Maury, B. M. Harrod, Simon Bolivar Buckner, S. H. Buck, A. L. Stuart, George Norton, and C. L. C. Dupuy.[4]
The society's objective was "to collect reliable data of the workings of the late Confederate Government, and the battles, sieges, and exploits of the war."[2] Other targeted Confederate materials for the archive included newspapers, speeches, literary and medical journals, journals, maps, agricultural and manufacturing reports, geological reports, weather reports, sermons, poetry, songs and ballads, mining operation records, and foreign relations.[4] The society also wanted to document the names and details of wounded soldiers, mortality records, and exchanges of prisoners of war.[4] In addition, records of enslaved people and documentation of the impact of emancipation on the Slave states and free states.[4] Once collected, the archival materials were to be classified and preserved, with an outlook for eventual publication.[4] Preservation was to be achieved by securing a fireproof storage building.[4]
The society's president, Benjamin Morgan Palmer, wrote in July 1873:[1]
It is due to the noble men who fell martyrs to the "Lost Cause" that a faithful history of the events of the four years of bloody war be truthfully recorded, and an impartial view of the motives that actuated them be handed down to posterity with the seal of an impartial and unbiased history… The country has been flooded with partisan histories, in many of which the pretended historian has wandered as far from truth as if he had been writing a work of fiction, and in all of these every incident favorable to the Southern character has been suppressed, and the plainest facts so warped that the actors themselves would not recognize them. It is high time steps were taken to record the events of those years as they occurred….[1]
With the assistance of these state vice–presidents, 6,000 copies of the circular were distributed throughout the southern United States.[7] Newspapers and magazines reprinted the circular in both southern and northern states.[6] However, membership was mostly limited to New Orleans, and there were only 44 dues-paying members at the start of the society's second year.[7]
In 1870, its president was B. M. Palmer.[1] When Palmer turned down reelection as president, he was replaced by Braxton Bragg.[6]Dabney H. Maury was vice–president and J. William Jones became the secretary-treasurer.[6] When Jones' health declined, James Strawbridge was elected secretary-treasurer.[6] However, Strawbridge resigned at a meeting on December 12, 1870.[6] The society did not meet again until July 10, 1871, with just ten members present.[6] Palmer presided over the meeting and was reelected president and P. G. T. Beauregard as vice–president.[6]John W. Caldwell was elected secretary-treasurer with an annual salary of $500.[6]
The society held a reorganizational convention on August 14, 1873, at White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia[1] The convention opened with a speech by Jubal Early.[1] Representatives attended from Alabama, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, and Virginia.[6] The society moved its offices and archives from New Orleans to Richmond, Virginia.[8][9]
The meeting of the Southern Historical Society might seem like a harmless affair. Its ostensible object is to make a defense in history of "the Lost Cause." The spirits in this movement are mainly the military chieftains of the rebellion. …As a mere nursery of military vanity, and a desperate effort to write the Confederacy and its leaders into some measure of posthumous fame, it might be permitted to pass with a sneer at its folly. But I am constrained to believe that its real purposes are hidden, and are by no means so innocent as they appear.[10]
Seal
In October 1888, the executive committee adopted a seal for the society, adapted from the great or broad seal of the Confederate States of America by Robert A. Brock; the seal was engraved, pro bono, by Mr. M. S. O'Donnell of Malden, Massachusetts.[6] The circular seal has the motto: "The Southern Historical Society, Organized May 1, 1869; Deo Vindice". Its central device is a man on a horse, with the text "Re–organized Aug.15.1873" surrounded by a wreath of assorted plants.
Historian Richard D. Starnes has noted that the society was uninterested in historical accuracy and objectivity and "dedicated itself to the creation of a Confederate historical memory" and "to preserving the Confederate perspective of the Civil War".[3] He added, "Sometimes, the documents were altered as part of the society's campaign to construct a Southern historical memory and in an effort to protect its own leadership."[3]
Legacy
According to modern historians, the organization's purpose was to promote the Lost Cause in its publications. Historian Alan T. Nolan quotes from the advertisement for subscriptions to the organization's publication, and comments, "Writing whose purpose is to 'vindicate' the 'name and fame' of the South's 'great struggle' plainly proceeds from an advocacy premise".[11] Historian Gaines Foster said it was an "avowedly" historical organization, which "eventually became important in the Confederate tradition" and, through their publications, a group of Virginian pro-Confederacy writers "refought the war,".[12]
The society established itself at Richmond, Virginia, which became the home of the American Civil War Museum. It influenced the Sons of Confederate Veterans and activists in favor of public display of the Confederate battle flag. Historians use the society's journal as a source for Civil War research and an example of how historical memory can be shaped to serve external goals.[3] One modern historian notes, "For historians today, the Southern Papers serve as a storehouse of information concerning the Confederacy. Second, only to the War of the Rebellion records, the Papers represent the largest collection of battle accounts, unit rosters, and other primary material about the southern armies during the Civil War."[3]
The Confederate States of America (CSA), commonly referred to as the Confederate States, the Confederacy, or the South, was an unrecognized breakaway republic in the Southern United States that existed from February 8, 1861, to May 9, 1865. The Confederacy comprised eleven U.S. states that declared secession and warred against the United States during the American Civil War. The states were South Carolina, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Texas, Virginia, Arkansas, Tennessee, and North Carolina.
Jefferson F. Davis was an American politician who served as the first and only president of the Confederate States of America from 1861 to 1865. He represented Mississippi in the United States Senate and the House of Representatives as a member of the Democratic Party before the American Civil War. He was the United States Secretary of War from 1853 to 1857.
Edward Porter Alexander was an American military engineer, railroad executive, planter, and author. He served first as an officer in the United States Army and later, during the American Civil War (1861–1865), in the Confederate Army, rising to the rank of brigadier general.
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The Confederate States Army, also called the Confederate Army or the Southern Army, was the military land force of the Confederate States of America during the American Civil War (1861–1865), fighting against the United States forces to win the independence of the Southern states and uphold and expand the institution of slavery. On February 28, 1861, the Provisional Confederate Congress established a provisional volunteer army and gave control over military operations and authority for mustering state forces and volunteers to the newly chosen Confederate president, Jefferson Davis. Davis was a graduate of the U.S. Military Academy, and colonel of a volunteer regiment during the Mexican–American War. He had also been a United States senator from Mississippi and U.S. Secretary of War under President Franklin Pierce. On March 1, 1861, on behalf of the Confederate government, Davis assumed control of the military situation at Charleston, South Carolina, where South Carolina state militia besieged Fort Sumter in Charleston harbor, held by a small U.S. Army garrison. By March 1861, the Provisional Confederate Congress expanded the provisional forces and established a more permanent Confederate States Army.
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CSS Shenandoah, formerly Sea King and later El Majidi, was an iron-framed, teak-planked, full-rigged sailing ship with auxiliary steam power chiefly known for her actions under Lieutenant Commander James Waddell as part of the Confederate States Navy during the American Civil War.
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The Confederate Secret Service refers to any of a number of official and semi-official secret service organizations and operations conducted by the Confederate States of America during the American Civil War. Some of the organizations were under the direction of the Confederate government, others operated independently with government approval, while still others were either completely independent of the government or operated with only its tacit acknowledgment.
Gilbert Moxley Sorrel was a staff officer and Brigadier General in the Provisional Army of the Confederate States.
Military leadership in the American Civil War was vested in both the political and the military structures of the belligerent powers. The overall military leadership of the United States during the Civil War was ultimately vested in the President of the United States as constitutional commander-in-chief, and in the political heads of the military departments he appointed. Most of the major Union wartime commanders had, however, previous regular army experience. A smaller number of military leaders originated from the United States Volunteers. Some of them derived from nations other than the United States.
Dabney Herndon Maury was an officer in the United States Army, instructor at West Point, author of military training books, and a major general in the Confederate States Army during the American Civil War.
St. John Richardson Liddell was a prominent Louisiana planter who served as a general in the Confederate States Army during the American Civil War. He was an outspoken proponent of Southern emancipation of slaves. Following the war, Liddell had a prominent feud with a former Confederate officer, Charles Jones, who eventually murdered Liddell near his home in 1870.
The Confederate Heartland Offensive, also known as the Kentucky Campaign, was an American Civil War campaign conducted by the Confederate States Army in Tennessee and Kentucky where Generals Braxton Bragg and Edmund Kirby Smith tried to draw neutral Kentucky into the Confederacy by outflanking Union troops under Major General Don Carlos Buell. Though they scored some successes, notably a tactical win at Perryville, they soon retreated, leaving Kentucky primarily under Union control for the rest of the war.
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Jubal Anderson Early was an American lawyer, politician and military officer who served in the Confederate States Army during the Civil War. Trained at the United States Military Academy, Early resigned his United States Army commission after the Second Seminole War and his Virginia military commission after the Mexican–American War, in both cases to practice law and participate in politics. Accepting a Virginia and later Confederate military commission as the American Civil War began, Early fought in the Eastern Theater throughout the conflict. He commanded a division under Generals Stonewall Jackson and Richard S. Ewell, and later commanded a corps.
Giles Buckner Cooke was a Confederate officer in the American Civil War, a school teacher and school principal, and an Episcopal priest. He is best known for his service on the personal staff of Gen. Robert E. Lee during the Siege of Petersburg and the closing months of the active existence of the Army of Northern Virginia. As a commissioned veteran of the defeated Confederate cause, he changed careers and because an educator and ordained minister. When he died in 1937, he was the last survivor of General Lee's military family.
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