DUBOIS' 'COUP D'ETAT'

I was struck by Dr. W. E. B. DuBois' curious characterization of the Southern-initiated Civil War as "a political 'coup d'etat,' which failed in the war of 1861-1865," in his epic, THE SUPPRESSION OF THE AFRICAN SLAVE TRADE (1896), p.154. While the term 'coup d'etat' has often and accurately been applied to the 1898, Wilmington, North Carolina, conflagration where white mobs lynched or shot black local elected officials, homeowners, and businessmen, burned down their structures, killing untold numbers of black people or running others into the swamps for refuge, I had never seen it applied to 1861-1865. However, the more that I mull that curious characterization of 'coup d'etat,' the less anomalous it now seems, particularly in the light of ensuing events like the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, the near-assassination of William Seward, Lincoln 's Secretary of State on the same date and hour; and the ascent of Andrew Johnson to the Presidency, a Tennesseean. One might well wonder whether the 'coup d'etat' in fact failed, given his further cogent observation about the South, which was also true of the North, then, as well as now: "she refused to support vigorously the execution of the laws she had helped to make, and at the same time she acknowledged the theoretical necessity of those laws." Id. P.155