Looking for tweet about militias and the beginning of the civil war

May 3, 2024 8:23 AM

I ran across a tweet from a self-described anarchist historian that discussed how the early days of the first American civil war were typified by a lot of militias making incursions into other states and all kinds of fluidity that after the fact was constructed into a narrative about both sides coherently choosing sides, that the war had its beginnings long before Fort Sumter. Can anyone help me find that tweet thread, or perhaps point me to some alternative anarchist interpretations of the beginning of the war?

Ultimately I'm interested in militias and the roles they play in the start of civil wars, for what are sadly obvious reasons.. Also I just saw Civil War and then this interpretation of the movie as a warning against LARPing war. That movie kept me up at night.

posted by craniac to Law & Government (6 answers total)

Response by poster: The anarchists really like to talk about the Spanish civil war, of course.
posted by craniac at 8:25 AM on May 3

Response by poster: As is often the case, something clicked in my brain as soon as I posted this and I was able to construct a search that extracted the original essay. I am, however, looking for more research on topic if you've got anything, thanks.
posted by craniac at 8:32 AM on May 3 [3 favorites]

That's a pretty interesting essay. It struck me because I'd recently learned more about the Boston Vigilance Committee from the local NPS while visiting the Boston Harbor Islands (great stuff), and read a family anecdote about my great great grandfather being criminally tried for helping to expel "copperhead" pro-confederates from the small town of Ripley, OH on the Ohio River. There was a threat of violence by his fellow townspeople (many of them, like him, abolitionist transplants from Tennessee and other confederate states), so while he was found guilty, his sentence was immediately suspended. What a combination of rule of law and lawlessness for a greater cause!
posted by ldthomps at 9:10 AM on May 3 [1 favorite]

Claims of the essay to the contrary, the existence of these threads is prominent in any modern history. There will be disagreement on the emphasis they deserve, but if you weren't familiar with it at all you will pick up a lot and see how they are placed in context. For example, I read Blight's Frederick Douglass last year and it's not shy about the ongoing violence long before the Civil War, nor about Douglass' explicit endorsement of Black violent action to end slavery.

Obviously there's a big market for Civil War narratives that not modern (and barely history, if you want to be snarky about it.) The general advice when considering a book is to look for something written by a historian with an academic affiliation, and subject matter that does not claim to cover the whole war.

The notes section of the essay has suggested books; the only one I've read is Black Reconstruction, which is excellent but more focused on policy and political actors than the sort of militia action you're asking about. (As with other claims in the essay, the assertion that it is "ignored" is IMHO iffy: It was hugely and explicitly influential on Foner, the leading mainstream historian of Reconstruction. It isn't widely read because it's frigging long.)
posted by mark k at 12:51 PM on May 3 [1 favorite]

There were a lot of irregular forces during and after the Civil war.

You had Quantrill's Raiders, which devolved into various factions including the James Younger gang.
Mosby's Rangers was another group.
The Cpnfederacy even passed a bill called the Partisan Ranger act to give some legal cover to these groups.
However it was repealed after a few years. Banditry and various atrocities were part of the reason.
posted by yyz at 3:14 PM on May 3 [1 favorite]

Also take a look at https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bleeding_Kansas

Bleeding Kansas, Bloody Kansas, or the Border War was a series of violent civil confrontations in Kansas Territory, and to a lesser extent in western Missouri, between 1854 and 1859. It emerged from a political and ideological debate over the legality of slavery in the proposed state of Kansas.

The conflict was characterized by years of electoral fraud, raids, assaults, and murders carried out in the Kansas Territory and neighboring Missouri by proslavery "border ruffians" and retaliatory raids carried out by antislavery "free-staters". According to Kansapedia of the Kansas Historical Society, 56 political killings were documented during the period,[3] and the total may be as high as 200.[4] It has been called a Tragic Prelude, or an overture, to the American Civil War, which immediately followed it.
posted by AlSweigart at 6:14 AM on May 4 [2 favorites]