Southern ambitions War for the Future
Globe of famed “Pathfinder of the Seas – and Southern expansionist – Matthew Fontaine Maury. Photo by Robert Hancock.
War for the Future
Do you think the Civil War was a world war? Many leading Confederates certainly thought so.
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efferson Davis launched his presidency and the new nation on a policy of expansion, which he hoped would be in cooperation with the United States. “The North has wanted Canada and the South wants Cuba,” Davis wrote in March 1861. Before, as sections in one Union, “the expansion of both may have been restrained by the narrow views of each.” Now, as separate entities, they will “be left freely to grow.” He also looked forward to the annexation of parts of Mexico and the rest of the West Indies. As a native of Great Britain, the world’s only mid-19th-century global superpower, I could not help being struck by the Confederacy’s global ambitions when I first encountered them as a University of Virginia doctoral student. How could the Confederacy – the weaker side in the American Civil War, tied to the allegedly anachronistic institution of slavery – believe seriously that it could dominate an evolving new world order? Presumptuous and deluded as those ambitions may seem to us, they were not entirely unrealistic; they also underscore the global importance of
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African-American resistance and Union victory in the American Civil War. The American Civil War Museum’s new exhibit will reconceptualize the Civil War to consider the imperial ambitions of the Southern slaveholders’ republic – which was, after all, the 5th largest economy in the world – and the significance of its defeat. “Southern Ambitions” is the second of the Museum’s temporary exhibits funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to introduce the best new academic scholarship on the Civil War into public history conversations. The project is not limited to just the exhibit; there will be a variety of ways for the public to interact. An “RVA Global Tour” will be a kind of scavenger hunt designed to reveal to locals and visitors alike some surprising historical connections in the city—and catch the attention of people who may not have thought about visiting the Museum. We are also working with local schools and universities to develop project-based learning lesson plans for students on topics such as anti-slavery activism then and now and global supply chain management.
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