On April 12, 1861, the first shots of the Civil War rang out in South Carolina.
Confederate forces, firing on the Union garrison at Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor, helped launch a four-year war that would kill more than 620,000 soldiers.
It’s been nearly 150 years since the war began. But even now, the city of Charleston is still figuring out how to talk about the war and commemorate the anniversary.
I’ve been told by South Carolinians that it’s properly called “the War between the States,” since there was nothing civil about it, chiefly the fact that it was fought between two sovereign nations.
Ian+ at 1.
Correct, it technically wasn’t a civil war, which is a war fought over control of a government. It was a war fought by two federated nations, the United States of America and the Confederate States of America, mainly over the issue of the latter’s secession from the union.
In my family it was simply referred to as “the War.” If further specificity was called for, it was referred to as Ian+ has indicated, as the War between the States. When we were feeling particularly feisty, it was the “War of Northern Aggression.”
Surely, Evan, it’s “the Waaawuuh” . . .
; > )
A couple of comments:
1. The CSA was never a sovereign nation because it failed to establish its sovereignty on the battlefield. Sovereignty cannot be claimed. It must be won.
2. The war continues to divide because neo-confederate apologists refuse to face the truth about the war. It South didn’t secede to establish low tariffs or states rights. It didn’t secede as a pre-emptive strike on FDR and the New Deal. It wasn’t the second coming of the American revolution. The South sought independence to preserve the institution of slavery. All roads lead to that issue. The divergence of interests between North and South all proceeded from the institution of slavery. Southern apologists want something … anything … else to be at the root of the war. Now, it’s true that the North did not fight to free the slaves. The issue of the war was the dissolubility of the Union. That is not the point. Except for the issue of slavery, and the Southern insistence on preserving the same, there never would have been a Civil war in 1861.
carl
Carl,
As I’ve said before, if it weren’t for the Calvinist thing (“aside from that Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play?”) you’d be one of the sharpest bloggers around. You almost always cut right to the chase.
6. Catholic Mom:[blockquote] if it weren’t for the Calvinist thing[/blockquote] Oh, Catholic Mom. Why do you kick at the goads?
carl 😉
Can’t help it. A mind is a terrible thing to waste. But unlike you I believe that you could yet be redeemed if you would but try. 🙂
But back to the Civil War. Jefferson Davis said in 1861 that his home state of Mississippi suceeded because: “she had heard proclaimed the theory that all men are created free and equal, and this [belief] made the basis of an attack upon her social institutions; and the sacred Declaration of Independence has been invoked to maintain the position of the equality of the races.â€
He also said “African slavery, as it exists in the United States, is a moral, a social, and a political blessing” [but] “if slavery be a sin, it is not yours. [i.e., southern slaveholders are not morally responsible for the existence and perpetution of slavery] It does not rest on your action for its origin, on your consent for its existence. It is a common law right to property in the service of man; its origin was Divine decree.”
I think in many ways the German have come more to terms with the truth of their history than many southerners.
Thank you, Carl in #5; and, Catholic Mom, you’re not too far behind him.
Whenever I’ve been sneered at re: the “War of Northern Aggression”, I’ve replied, “Oh, you mean the War of Southern Slavery”?!!
But, prayers for all the souls who lost their lives. May we never go down a road like that again.
Well, as one of those nasty “neo-confederate apologists” (SCV; LOS) Carl decries at post #5, I’m naturally going to take issue with him.
First, I wonder if he’ll be able to demonstrate the truth of the principle that a nation cannot be sovereign if it doesn’t “establish its sovereignty on the battlefield.” Was the United States not a sovereign nation when it declared its independence from Great Britain in 1776? Is Southern Sudan not a sovereign nation? Can’t there be such a thing as a peaceful secession? Sovereign states brought the federal union into existence peacefully. Why couldn’t they secede peacefully? (Jefferson and others, in fact, predicted that America would almost certainly divide into two or perhaps three independent republics, given the land mass and the disparate American peoples. The “union” was nothing sacred, except to men like Lincoln.)
Second, regarding his point on slavery. I will concede that it’s accurate as far as it goes. What it fails to account for (as this argument always does) is that irrespective of the slavery issue, those 11 states had the legal right to secede. It was indeed unfortunate that the secession was bound up with the issue of the extension of slavery into the territories, but that makes no difference to the legal argument. And besides, as historians such as Jeffrey Hummel have shown, there is every reason to believe the South would have eventually jettisoned slavery, probably by around the turn of the century. Was it worth 630,000 lives and a constitutional order trashed to speed that up by a few decades? (Yes, Lincoln and the Radical Republicans DID “trash” the Constitution, something that even many of Lincoln’s court historians will admit.)
Lastly, and a point related to #2: Carl writes, “Except for the issue of slavery, and the Southern insistence on preserving the same, there never would have been a Civil war in 1861.” Well, that and the fact that Lincoln illegally invaded the South. See http://www.lewrockwell.com/ostrowski/ostrowski31.html
And Carl, don’t come back at me with the Ft. Sumter thing. Since you know us “neo-confederate apologists” so well, you know what my reply will be.
Catholic Mom writes: “I think in many ways the German have come more to terms with the truth of their history than many southerners.”
Sigh. As if there’s any comparison. Senator Jim Webb puts it this way: “The greatest disservice on this count has been the attempt by . . . revisionist politicians and academics to defame the entire Confederate Army in a move that can only be termed the Nazification of the Confederacy.†He goes on to say that anyone who tries to argue that Southern conservatism and National Socialism have anything at all in common doesn’t know the first thing about either Southern conservatism or National Socialism.
And when would the CSA (having supposedly jettisoned slavery around the turn of the last century when it became economically less viable) having jettisoned Jim Crow have gotten around to enacting the 15th amendment? Go look at George Wallace standing in the school house door on youtube (“segration today, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever”) and then watch him back down in the face of National Guardsmen ordered in by the U.S. government and tell me how great things would have worked out in the CSA. But hey, if your wife was being raped, your children being torn out of your arms and sold away forever, your back being beaten to a pulp, I’m sure “a couple decades” more would have seemed just the wink of an eye historically speaking.
Likewise, I’m sure the Nazi empire would have eventually reformed itself too.
“And when would the CSA (having supposedly jettisoned slavery around the turn of the last century when it became economically less viable) having jettisoned Jim Crow have gotten around to enacting the 15th amendment?”
Don’t know, Catholic Mom. Some people argue, not without justification if you ask me, that Reconstruction only made race relations worse in the South. Regardless, it’s always illuminating to read Tocqueville’s observation that “race prejudice seems stronger in those states that have abolished slavery than in those where it still exists, and nowhere is it more intolerant than in those states where slavery was never known.” Or to note that the white separatist/white supremacist Abraham Lincoln desired to repatriate freed blacks to Africa on the basis that their physical characteristics, etc. made them unworthy of living together with whites, or the fact that anti-slavery sentiment in certain territories had as much to do with keeping blacks out of the new states as it did keeping the institution of slavery out.
But I guess my main objection to your question is that it simply isn’t relevant to the topic at hand.
P.S. George Wallace repented. Other Southerners have as well.
Wow, there are some really nasty insinuations about Southerners here. I think it’s time to remind some of you that when schools here in Atlanta were clicking along peacefully and happily, it was students in Boston that were throwing rocks at the buses bringing in the black students.
My father’s mother’s father and grandfather were wounded in what we call The War of the Rebellion. I was one of the founding members of the Sons of Union Veterans of the Civil War in North Carolina. The more I read about the War the more able I am to sing with enthusiasm the Battle Hymn of the Republic.
The argument is totally relevent. “The Civil War probably wasn’t even necessary because the South would have jettisoned slavery anyway.”
Right — and when would they have given blacks the vote? And ended Jim Crow. The presence of segregation in the north is irrelevant because that was handled in the same that segregation in the south was — by federal law. The law of the federal government that the south would not have been a part of had the South won.
As to the cost: “Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman’s two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said “the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.â€
RE: “It must be won.”
Yeh — because might makes truth.
RE: “Except for the issue of slavery, and the Southern insistence on preserving the same, there never would have been a Civil war in 1861.”
Right — there would have merely been a Civil war of 1864 or 1870 or 1890, because there was *always* going to be a recognition that one part of the country wished to have an almighty and humongous centralized and controlling collective in violation of the Constitution, and the other side didn’t, in keeping with the Constitution.
As I always say — God has punished the South for its evil institution of slavery — by giving us FDR, and various other consequences of The Collective. We thoroughly deserve that punishment, and will have it for all time now.
I think part of the trouble is that it is very hard to generalize why that war was fought. Slavery was clearly the root disagreement. Slavery is what had poisoned the relationship between North and South for the half century before the war. But I think that by 1861 a lot of people fought simply because of the fact that the relationship was poisoned. There is ample evidence that the vast majority of Confederate soldiers were too poor to own slaves. On the particular issue of slavery I doubt that the average Southern soldier cared that much. They cared very much that their homeland was being “invaded†by Northerners whom they had come to despise. Likewise there’s good evidence that the average Union soldier didn’t care that much for abolition, as evidenced in the increased desertion rate after the Emancipation Proclamation. They did care that Southerners whom they had come to despise had run the political game for decades and now were going to take their chips and go home now that they had lost. There had been Southern tyranny in the form of things like the Fugitive Slave Act and the Dred Scott decision, which essentially denied the right of the Northern states to outlaw slavery (if a slave is not free when he enters a free state – as those two legal precedents stated – what would stop a slaveowner from setting up shop in any state he chose? – The South had thus been trampling on Northern states’ rights in the antebellum period, a fact often lost in Civil War discussions). There was also anger over the extension of slavery into the West. It should also be remembered that Fort Sumter was essentially about the South laying claim to a Federal installation. A New Englander could properly complain that their tax dollars had helped build that fort, so South Carolina had no right to it (Let Southern Tea Party libertarians chew on that one for a minute).
All of which is to say that Caedmon is right, the average Southern soldier cannot be demonized. And Southerners had reason to believe that they were fighting for their freedom. But ultimately the root remained. Ultimately the freedom they fought for was the freedom to deny people of color their humanity. Slavery was every bit as much of a sin as abortion. Sure, a woman should have as much right over her body as she can, but her right does not trump the right of the human life growing in her body to exist. Slavery was a sin, and I for one believe the natural consequence of that sin was that the destruction the war wrought. The cities built by the slave economy lay in ruin. The sons of those who had profited by it lay dead on the fields of Shiloh and Gettysburg. The North that had been complicit in slavery for generations paid in the blood of its sons, on the fields of Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville.
As to constitutionality it is hard to say. There is no mechanism for secession in the Constitution. They did not explicitly have that right per se. Neither was it explicitly denied them. A case can be made either way. Personally I think the country could not tolerate it, as a right to secession would mean any state could withdraw whenever it wished, and dispose of Federal property however it chose – a recipe for endless chaos, border disputes, and complete federal impotence (Yeah, I know, some actually like that last one).
One final comment is this, at the outset everyone (except for a few like William Tecumseh Sherman and Sam Houston) thought it would be easy and short. And so in that regard Caedmon is way off base. They couldn’t have known at the outset that it would be as costly as it was. If Manassas had been an easy Northern victory and Richmond quickly subdued, I don’t think anyone would have much thought of Lincoln’s actions as tyranny.
And bottom line, as Catholic Mom pointed out, the South-would-have-ended-it-anyway revisionism still means that the sin of slavery would have continued for decades. No dice Kemo Sabe.
But, full disclosure, I’m a Westerner, from what was a Free State, who was raised with Yankee sympathies.
10. Caedmon:You made three different points, but I think they make the same point three times. [blockquote] I wonder if he’ll be able to demonstrate the truth of the principle that a nation cannot be sovereign if it doesn’t “establish its sovereignty on the battlefield.â€[/blockquote] The was the actual cause over which the Civil War was fought. You can’t assume the outcome before the outcome is determined.[blockquote] those 11 states had the legal right to secede.[/blockquote] Well, yes, the South certainly thought so, and the North certainly disagreed. To assume the South had a legal right to secede is to assert the Southern cause in the face of Southern defeat. All you are saying is “We were right even if we lost.” That begs the question. The issue was settled in blood because there was no way to settle the issue through politics. There is no state today that assumes it has a right to secede.[blockquote] Well, that and the fact that Lincoln illegally invaded the South.[/blockquote] It was only illegal of the South was right. You can stand atop Jefferson Davis’ defense of the right to secede, but you shouldn’t just ignore the fact he wrote it from prison.
As for Ft Sumter, it was a symbol of Northern Sovereignty and Southern independence. Lincoln refused to leave because he refused to recognize the legitimacy of southern secession. The South wanted Lincoln to leave because it would have been a tacit recognition of Southern Independence. Lincoln planned to re-supply the Ft, and the fire-eaters decided to attack.
Also, I used to be a Civil war re-enactor. My unit was the 24th Iowa Volunteers, but I did on occasion re-enact with a Confederate Unit. I do not accept the equation of CSA with NSDAP. Especially since the attitudes towards slaves in the North were remarkably similar to those in the South. It’s hard for people in the post civil war US to understand that in 1861 allegiance was first to state and then to nation. Modern Americans feel allegiance to the nation first and state a distant second. That was the primary motive for most southern soldiers to fight.
carl
There’s something else: Far too many Americans…..North and South…..called themselves citizens of their states, and not collectively as Americans; their loyalties were to their states and not to their country. For Robert E. Lee, Virginia was his country, and the same was true of others. Fortunately, that has changed.
Carl *is* right about one thing — the war will continue to divide — Southerners like me will always teach their children and grandchildren and nieces and nephews about it. I have five of the latter, and they’re all well-taught. ; > )
But all of them will understand that it’s also God’s just punishment for our sinful actions. It is what it is — to be met with a nice calm acceptance — and plenty of smiles at the Yankees. They can’t help who they are and what they believe.
Accepting the truth about the wrongdoing of the other side and the consequences of both that wrongdoing and our own, we have too much to be thankful for down South to be bitter and angry. Acknowledging the truth and clear hard reality, repentance for the sinful actions on our part, and moving on is what it’s all about amongst well-taught Southerners.
I strongly commend to anyone interested in the Civil War “The Battle Cry of Freedom” by James McPherson — an exhaustive study of the 70 years leading to the Civil War. By the 1850’s the south pretty much had the whip hand over the north and was using it ruthlessly (and sometimes literally, witness southern Congressman Preston Brooks’ brutal caning of Senator Charles Sumner on the floor of the Senate in 1856). It was only when it became clear that the admission of the western states as free states would break the power of the south that they started thinking of suceeding.
RE: “There is no state today that assumes it has a right to secede.”
Well of course there are members of states that know that states have a right to secede.
RE: “It was only illegal of the South was right.”
Right.
RE: “It’s hard for people in the post civil war US to understand that in 1861 allegiance was first to state and then to nation.”
Not at all. I have plenty of friends and acquaintances who easily understand that — and do much more than understand it too.
18. Sarah wrote: [blockquote] Right—there would have merely been a Civil war of 1864 or 1870 or 1890, because there was *always* going to be a recognition that one part of the country wished to have an almighty and humongous centralized and controlling collective in violation of the Constitution, and the other side didn’t, in keeping with the Constitution.[/blockquote]Yes, That’s why the Democratic Party collapsed in 1860 – because of Stephen Douglas and his Unconstitutional New Deal program which Southerners feared would result in massive centralization and collectivization. It couldn’t possibly have been Southern suspicion that Douglas was insufficiently committed to the expansion of slavery into the territories.
Does the reader now understand why I wrote:[blockquote] It didn’t secede as a pre-emptive strike on FDR and the New Deal. It wasn’t the second coming of the American revolution. [/blockquote] And again[blockquote] Southern apologists want something … anything … else to be at the root of the war.[/blockquote] Sarah knows that SC seceded over the institution of slavery. She knows the constitutional issue that was summed up in the phrase ‘Southern rights’ referred to the right to hold slaves in perpetuity without interference. She knows the purpose behind the formation of the CSA was the protection of the peculiar institution. She just can’t admit it. So she asserts without foundation that the war was really a heroic defense of the Constitution. The alternative is that it was a miserable defense of slavery.[blockquote] Carl *is* right about one thing[/blockquote]Well, sure, but I wasn’t trying to make this a thread about Calvinism.
carl
Carl at 20.
Well, we may not be in as much disagreement as I initially thought. Let’s see:
I wrote: I wonder if he’ll be able to demonstrate the truth of the principle that a nation cannot be sovereign if it doesn’t “establish its sovereignty on the battlefield.â€
Carl responded: The was the actual cause over which the Civil War was fought. You can’t assume the outcome before the outcome is determined.
And I reply: Huh?
I wrote: those 11 states had the legal right to secede.
Carl responded: Well, yes, the South certainly thought so, and the North certainly disagreed. To assume the South had a legal right to secede is to assert the Southern cause in the face of Southern defeat. All you are saying is “We were right even if we lost.†That begs the question. The issue was settled in blood because there was no way to settle the issue through politics. There is no state today that assumes it has a right to secede.
And I reply: To the contrary, this is a matter that can be adjudicated by an appeal to constitutional history, certain historical facts (e.g., the express reservation of the right of secession that can be found in the acts of ratification of three states when the Constitution was ratified), and the written statements of various Founding Fathers (e.g., Jefferson) and constitutional scholars from the era. Taken together, one is compelled to recognize that not just Southerners, but Northerners too (read all about the Hartford Convention or what J.Q. Adams had to say on the matter) believed in the right of a state to secede from the union. Sarah is right: you’ve appealed to the basest of all Yankee arguments, might makes right. Tsk.
I wrote: Well, that and the fact that Lincoln illegally invaded the South.
Carl responded: It was only illegal if the South was right. You can stand atop Jefferson Davis’ defense of the right to secede, but you shouldn’t just ignore the fact he wrote it from prison.
And I reply: Well, I don’t just stand atop old Jeff Davis’ argument, as the foregoing indicates. But I’m left wondering why the fact that he wrote it in prison is relevant at all. Is Paul to be discredited because he wrote certain of his epistles from prison?
Carl wrote: As for Ft Sumter, it was a symbol of Northern Sovereignty and Southern independence. Lincoln refused to leave because he refused to recognize the legitimacy of southern secession. The South wanted Lincoln to leave because it would have been a tacit recognition of Southern Independence. Lincoln planned to re-supply the Ft, and the fire-eaters decided to attack.
And I reply: That’s a pretty fair summary. But it leaves out important details, such as the North’s abandoning certain other similar forts in the wake of the secession and the curious facts emanating from inside the White House that suggest Lincoln and Seward were “engineering” such an incident in order to evoke pro-war sentiment in the North and provide a pretext for an invasion. The thing is, Sumter was the property of the lawfully seceded state of South Carolina, and when Lincoln tried to resupply the fort after promising to reliquish the fort, South Carolinian patience came to an end.
Carl wrote: Also, I used to be a Civil war re-enactor. My unit was the 24th Iowa Volunteers, but I did on occasion re-enact with a Confederate Unit. I do not accept the equation of CSA with NSDAP. Especially since the attitudes towards slaves in the North were remarkably similar to those in the South. It’s hard for people in the post civil war US to understand that in 1861 allegiance was first to state and then to nation. Modern Americans feel allegiance to the nation first and state a distant second. That was the primary motive for most southern soldiers to fight.
And I reply: quite true. But states rights and nullification are back in the news these days, with more and more conservatives beginning to see, in the light of what’s causing all this, that while the South was wrong about slavery it may have been right about everything else.
Carl at 25:
[blockquote]Sarah knows that SC seceded over the institution of slavery. She knows the constitutional issue that was summed up in the phrase ‘Southern rights’ referred to the right to hold slaves in perpetuity without interference. She knows the purpose behind the formation of the CSA was the protection of the peculiar institution. She just can’t admit it. So she asserts without foundation that the war was really a heroic defense of the Constitution. The alternative is that it was a miserable defense of slavery.[/quote]
In a reply above I argued that this moral argument of yours is irrelevant to the legal argument. Do you have a response to that?
26. Caedmon[blockquote] Sarah is right: you’ve appealed to the basest of all Yankee arguments, might makes right. Tsk. [/blockquote] What do you suppose happens when two mutually exclusive positions collide, and both sides see the conflict in terms of vital interest? Power resolves the conflict. It doesn’t matter if it is a bill before congress or an issue that leads to war. Checks and balances may mitigate the power of the majority, but the fact remains that political decisions are made based upon relative power. Thus it has always been. Thus it will always be in this world. The only alternative you offer is that the North should have acquiesced to the Southern case. You say it was obviously correct, but many disagreed. That disagreement involved the essential definition of the nation. The North could have acquiesced only by repudiating its own case and denying its own vital interests. That simply wasn’t going to happen. And we should all be grateful they did so. Because they acted to save the Union, we as a nation were spared the balkanization that so afflicted Europe.
carl
Alta Californian at 19.
I agree with most of your comment. Not the following, however:
[blockquote]One final comment is this, at the outset everyone (except for a few like William Tecumseh Sherman and Sam Houston) thought it would be easy and short. And so in that regard Caedmon is way off base. They couldn’t have known at the outset that it would be as costly as it was. If Manassas had been an easy Northern victory and Richmond quickly subdued, I don’t think anyone would have much thought of Lincoln’s actions as tyranny.[/blockquote]
I believe it’s clear they would have. And not only Americans, but observers in Europe such as Pope Pius IX and Lord Acton, who were solidly in the Confederate camp. But to your other point: Surely by early 1862 Lincoln knew the full measure of Southern resolve. That in no small part explains the Emancipation Proclamation. He knew he had initiated a bloodbath, and he had nothing but words of commendation for butchers such as Sherman.
[blockquote]And bottom line, as Catholic Mom pointed out, the South-would-have-ended-it-anyway revisionism still means that the sin of slavery would have continued for decades. No dice Kemo Sabe.[/blockquote]
What kind of convoluted morality is it that says “No dice Kemo Sabe” to slavery existing another three or four decades and that, rather, it was right to extinguish 630,000 lives and to sacrifice the constitutional order to end slavery forthwith? Slavery was peacefully abolished everywhere else in the Christian world and in parts of the thrid world (England in 1833, Brazil in 1888, Ethiopian Empire in 1942). Are you saying that hundreds of thousands of lives should have been extinguished in those countries to end slavery sooner?
Carl at 28.
I haven’t argued that power didn’t “resolve” that conflict. I’ve argued, rather, that conflict or no conflict there is a legal case to be made for the South’s secession, a case I believe to be compelling. Are you indeed arguing that “might makes right”? It sure seems so to me. So, what if Hitler had won?
Yes, the North should have just acquiesed. Its vital interests were no more important than those of the South. To acquiese would have been both the moral and the legal thing to do. (Did you read the Ostrowski piece?) Who knows, there might have been a reunion somewhere down the road.
And what you call “balkanization” I call “republicanism.” And I add that that the TWO northern, Anglo-Euro republics of North America get along quite well. There’s no reason not to believe that three, or even five such countries would get along just as famously.
TomRightmyer at 16:
“The more I read about the War the more able I am to sing with enthusiasm the Battle Hymn of the Republic.”
Assuming you’re a Christian, maybe if you read more about the odd Unitarian spiritualist who wrote that “hymn”, you woundn’t be as enthusiastic.
Interesting historical note: Maryland journalist Francis Key Howard, the grandson of Francis Scott Key (author of the “National Anthem”), was imprisoned with habeas corpus denied along with other pro-Southern Maryland citizens. This was done in 1861 at the order of old Honest Abe himself, little general George B. McClellan, agent of the tyrannical order. From his jail cell in 1862, Howard wrote in a book that would later be entitled [i]Fourteen Months in the American Bastiles[/i]:
[blockquote]When I looked out in the morning, I could not help being struck by an odd and not pleasant coincidence. On that day forty-seven years before my grandfather, Mr. Francis Scott Key, then prisoner on a British ship had witnessed the bombardment of Fort McHenry. When on the following morning the hostile fleet drew off, defeated, he wrote the song so long popular throughout the country, the Star Spangled Banner. As I stood upon the very scene of that conflict, I could not but contrast my position with his, forty-seven years before. The flag which he had then so proudly hailed, I saw waving at the same place over the victims of as vulgar and brutal a despotism as modern times have witnessed. [/blockquote]
30. Caedmon[blockquote] I’ve argued, rather, that conflict or no conflict there is a legal case to be made for the South’s secession, a case I believe to be compelling[/blockquote] And I do not. I consider it treason that should have been suppressed. More important, the North in 1861 considered it treason that had to be suppressed. That’s why the North fought. To suggest that the North should have acquiesced to the South is to suggest that the North should have turned a blind eye to what it considered treason simply because the South disagreed.
That was the essential nature of the conflict. Did the formation of the Union make secession a treasonous act? The Constitution was incapable of answering that question. So the issue was settled the old fashioned way – with blood. The South lost. The legal issue was settled with Southern defeat. That’s why it was important that Davis wrote from prison. His defense was moot. He was defending a cause that had already been defeated.
carl
This really isn’t very difficult. The south developed its own identity, and States’ Rights was part of it,not SRs as a legal position, but SRs as a cultural phenomenon. Each state had its own identity. To be sure slavery was part of the culture, but as a matter of identity, not a large part because the slaves were taken for granted. The North denied the SR’s arguments and demanded unity beneath the common government. The southern states refused what was for them “knuckling under.” Even without slaves, the war was inevitable; it is essential to remember this. In the Ken Burns series, Shelby Foote cites a southern soldier who, when asked, why he was fighting, answered ,”Because you’re here.” This is it, a simple as can be.
The southern states have maintained their pride in their independence, and why not? It’s not a vote for slavery in spite of what Carl says. The independence of the state has enormous specific gravity. Compare ,” I’m a New Englander.” For those of us who still say this – and there aren’t many of us left – the remark carries the same weight. Americans have largely forgotten what it means to have a local identity. To have this is to give is to give one’s life meaning. Larry
34. Larry Morse.
There was no direct threat to the institution of slavery in 1860. The seven deep south states that went out with Lincoln’s election did not secede to protect their individual state identity from northern depredations. The issue in 1860 was the expansion of slavery into the territories. The South needed expansion into the territories in order to maintain the balance of power in the senate, and to keep southern sympathizers on the Supreme Court. Yet the administration of the territories was a federal responsibility, and Lincoln would not allow slaves into the territories. The South knew that free men would settle the territories and write state constitutions that forbade slavery. That was the vital southern interest that led to secession. They saw Lincoln walling in the slave states with the intent of making slavery wither, and that was indeed Lincoln’s plan. The deep southern states could have maintained their individual identities without secession. What they could not do was guarantee the future of slavery in the US without the expansion of slavery into the territories. Remember that Southern evidence of Yankee oppression always involved interference with the preservation & propagation of the “peculiar institution.”
carl
You’re right in a sense. I suppose what I was saying is that when Lincoln began the mobilization of the North he did not know it would cost a half million lives. I think had he known what was going to ensue, it would have given him great pause indeed. But that of necessity is my own personal opinion; you can certainly believe the opposite if you wish as we will never really know. I do think that once blood had been shed, it became a point of pride. “They” killed “our” boys, and we can’t let our boys die in vain, so we must defeat them. I believe it sort of spun out of control after Manassas.
As for the morality, I just don’t see how you can make the argument you are making. You’re own rhetorical saber swings both ways. By your own moral logic, the South should have acquiesced to the North’s demands, since the North’s demand was to limit the spread of slavery, which was and is evil. I also don’t see how you can solely blame the North for the violence when it was South Carolina that fired the first shot, on Fort Sumter (even if that battle did not claim any lives, it certainly could have). The South was just as willing to shed blood as the North was. Southern revisionism always comes down to the same central point, that the extension of federal power was a worse evil than that of slavery. I just don’t see a way around that, and I just don’t see the morality in that.
Not to be wishy washy, but perhaps we can just agree that it was a tragedy on all sides that could have been avoided in any number of ways.
Alta Californian at 36:
“the South should have acquiesced to the North’s demands, since the North’s demand was to limit the spread of slavery, which was and is evil.”
Yes, it was and is evil. Not as evil as some things, like the Holocaust and abortion, which is why those comparisons made in previous posts won’t wash. But evil it was and is. The problem is, it was legal at the time. Constitutionally recognized. Even Lincoln admitted that. And that’s why he needed some other reason to invade the South.
“I also don’t see how you can solely blame the North for the violence when it was South Carolina that fired the first shot, on Fort Sumter (even if that battle did not claim any lives, it certainly could have). ”
I answered that at comment 26.
“Southern revisionism always comes down to the same central point, that the extension of federal power was a worse evil than that of slavery. I just don’t see a way around that, and I just don’t see the morality in that.”
Well, I would argue that the architects of our republic would have seen the morality in it, even though they themselves were at unease over the institution of slavery. In his answer to Lord Acton, Robert E. Lee stated the issue thus (bolded emphasis mine):
[blockquote]I can only say that while I have considered the preservation of the constitutional power of the General Government to be the foundation of our peace and safety at home and abroad, I yet believe that the maintenance of the rights and authority reserved to the states and to the people, not only essential to the adjustment and balance of the general system, but the safeguard to the continuance of a free government. I consider it as the chief source of stability to our political system, [b]whereas the consolidation of the states into one vast republic, sure to be aggressive abroad and despotic at home, will be the certain precursor of that ruin which has overwhelmed all those that have preceded it. I need not refer one so well acquainted as you are with American history, to the State papers of Washington and Jefferson, the representatives of the federal and democratic parties, denouncing consolidation and centralization of power, as tending to the subversion of State Governments, and to despotism.[/b] The New England states, whose citizens are the fiercest opponents of the Southern states, did not always avow the opinions they now advocate. Upon the purchase of Louisiana by Mr. Jefferson, they virtually asserted the right of secession through their prominent men; and in the convention which assembled at Hartford in 1814, they threatened the disruption of the Union unless the war should be discontinued.[/blockquote]
Anyone who doesn’t see Lee’s words as prophetic is simply not paying attention to what has happened and [i]what is happening[/i] here in these United States.
Carl at 33.
“And I do not ( consider the legal case to be made for the South’s secession to be compelling).”
But you have set forth nothing here that commends your view. I, on the other hand, have either set forth or alluded to certain historical facts that show why it’s compelling.
“I consider it treason that should have been suppressed.”
But of course you do. Problem is, you haven’t proven that it was treason. And in fact you can’t, because the data of history are against you.
“More important, the North in 1861 considered it treason that had to be suppressed. That’s why the North fought. To suggest that the North should have acquiesced to the South is to suggest that the North should have turned a blind eye to what it considered treason simply because the South disagreed.”
So much the worse for the North. It was in the wrong.
“That was the essential nature of the conflict. Did the formation of the Union make secession a treasonous act? The Constitution was incapable of answering that question.”
Yes, the Constitution didn’t address that issue, but as I told you previously, constitutional history INDEED addresses the issue. As do certain Founding Fathers and constitutional commentators, who clearly opined that a state has the right to seceed from the union. Here’s John Quincy Adams, for instance:
[blockquote]The indissoluble link of union between the people of the several states of this confederated nation is, after all, not in the right but in the heart. If the day should ever come (may Heaven avert it!) when the affections of the people of these States shall be alienated from each other; when the fraternal spirit shall give way to cold indifference, or collision of interests shall fester into hatred, the bands of political associations will not long hold together parties no longer attracted by the magnetism of conciliated interests and kindly sympathies; and far better will it be for the people of the disunited states to part in friendship from each other, than to be held together by constraint.[/blockquote]
Here Adams more or less echoes what James Madison wrote in Federalist 39 (emphases in bold and asterisks mine):
[blockquote]First. In order to ascertain the real character of the government it may be considered in relation to the foundation on which it is to be established; to the sources from which its ordinary powers are to be drawn; to the operation of those powers; to the extent of them; and to the authority by which future changes in the government are to be introduced.
In examining the first relation, it appears on one hand that the Constitution is to be founded on the assent and ratification of the people of America, given by deputies elected for the special purpose; but on the other, that this assent and ratification is to be given by the people, [b]not as individuals composing one entire nation (Caedmon – as Lincoln and his “school” argued); but as composing the distinct and independent States to which they respectively belong. It is to be the assent and ratification of the several States, derived from the supreme authority in each State, the authority of the people themselves. The act therefore establishing the Constitution, will not be a *national* but a *federal* act. . . .
Each State in ratifying the Constitution, is considered as a sovereign body independent of all others, and *only to be bound by its own voluntary act.* In this relation then the new Constitution will, if established, be a federal and not a national Constitution.[/b][/blockquote]
In 1825, Constitutional commentator (and abolitionist) William Rawle wrote in his famous treatise, [i]A View of the Constitution[/i],
[blockquote]It depends on the State itself to retain or abolish the principles of representation, because it depends on itself whether or not it will continue a member of the Union. To deny this right would be inconsistent with the principle on which all our political systems are founded, which is, that the people have in all cases a right to determine how they will be governed.[/blockquote]
“So the issue was settled the old fashioned way – with blood. The South lost. The legal issue was settled with Southern defeat. That’s why it was important that Davis wrote from prison. His defense was moot. He was defending a cause that had already been defeated.”
In other words, might makes right. As I said before, “Tsk.”
Not only was the philosophical or legal “cause” not defeated, but the issue is coming to the fore again in our day. Have a look at this:
http://lsrebellion.blogspot.com/2011/04/jerry-brown-california-country-facing.html
At 23, Catholic Mom “strongly commends” the book written by lefty Lincon court historian James McPherson, [i]Battle Cry of Freedom[/i]. Sure, read McPherson, but understand his biases. I will recommend the acclaimed book of libertarian historian/economist Jeffrey Hummel, [b]Emancipating Slaves, Enslaving Free Men: A History of the American Civil War[/b]. See the description of the book and reviews at Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Emancipating-Slaves-Enslaving-Free-Men/dp/0812693124
Hummel’s bibliography, which separates all the key material by [i]the ideological slant of the author[/i] (something that must be noted well in McPherson’s case), is priceless. But not nearly as priceless as the argument he sets forth in the book. He’s no “neo-confederate”, I assure you, but his conclusions certainly more or less make the neo-confederate’s day. Must reading, as the blurbs on the back of the book will indicate.
[blockquote]There was no direct threat to the institution of slavery in 1860.[/blockquote]
No, and in hindsight we understand well the moderating force that abolitionist Abraham Lincoln exerted on a radical “Black Republican” party. But, could the South have perceived his election and the Republican’s sweep of the North in the fall of 1860 as anything but a threat to slavery? There were plenty of indirect threats to stir them up and they were ready to jump at shadows by that time.
That said, what could the North have done to prevent the move by southern states to secede? Throw the election to appease the South? Allow them to secede over a feigned Constitutional crisis? The quote by a native of South Carolina about the state being too big to be a lunatic asylum was probably echoed throughout the North about all the Southern states.
Back to the topic of the Civil War as reflected upon today, I don’t think more than a quarter of American citizens have any idea what to do with it. Carl, back in your salad days of reenacting, how many people wanted to know if you were fighting the British or which side you were on when you were in either blue or gray? My wife couldn’t get much from the students at her school yesterday (and she teaches at Lincoln Elementary). I’m sure on thinking it over they’d theorize the war was fought between the cops and the Klan. The war has become not so much an epic of the past, but a way to present the perspectives and grievances of today.
It is now 7:18. Ft. Sumter has been under bombardment for about 3 hours. The guns of the Fort opened fire about 20 minutes ago. The thing is underway.
It is hard to actually put yourself back in the 1860’s. For one thing none of us (probably) can actually really relate to slavery. We just can’t quite put ourselves back in the middle of the 19th Century. We are creatures of our time as they were of theirs. While we can attempt to avoid the trap of chronological snobbery, I don’t think any of us can totally transcend it.
There were many causes of the War. But, I believe, slavery was the indispensable cause. And it was a national problem not a sectional problem, but by the 1860’s it was sectionalized and the North wanted the South to bear the cost of dealing with it. Jefferson Davis once commented that slavery was like holding a wolf by the ears. You wanted to let go, but you didn’t really know how.
I now happen to think that the War was inevitable from the founding of the Country. Had slavery not been recognized the South would never have ratified the Constitution, yet that sewed the seeds of 1861. It is also unfair and highly arrogant for those living in later times to criticize those in the past for not rising above their times. How many of us meet the standards that those living in the 23rd Century will impose on us?
Indeed, Br. Michael, it was inevitable because the south was an agrarian, rural society, and the north was (increasingly) an industrial, urban society. Any agrarian society,now as well as then, must see itself in a defensive position because the industrial society is so invasive, so successful in its invasiveness, and so demanding of dominance. The entire world view of the two is fundamentally different. Slavery was part of THIS agrarian society, but this is NOT the issue, not even the proximate cause of the war because these two world views would have clashed even if there was not a single slave. It became a brutal war because the south’s agrarian power was so substantially increased by the work of the slaves; otherwise, the south wold have been swallowed, little by little, as a snake swallows a mouse. Look where you will, this is always the case. Agrarian societies, diffuse, lightly populated, stable, and poor (dollar wise) have few defenses against the aggressive, power driven industrial culture. The south had no choice but to perish. And now, there are many who see what was lost was more complex than the issue of slavery, and more attractive.
But then, I am a farmer. It is all i can do – all any farmer can do, to survive in a society that wants your land for development, and which will pay enormous sums to acquire it. Who can fight Big Money? Slavery is a grave evil, but I, who have wandered and hitchhiked through the south, and seen the decay of its agrarian ethic and identity and culture, feel a great sadness. What culture would allow Disneyland to put up a horrorshow at Gettysburg? A post industrial world, moved by money and an insatiable appetite for entertainment to give a fantasy structure to lioves without intrinsic meaning.
“The land was ours, before we were the lands….” Well, it’s too late now. Let those be who still fly the Confederate flag to remind them of what it was like to have a real identity. Larry
[blockquote] Southerners like me will always teach their children and grandchildren and nieces and nephews about it. [/blockquote]
But I would make a very strong guess that southerners NOT like you teach their children a very different history indeed. And that is a history of liberation and freedom for which they are very grateful.
McPherson is a “lefty Lincoln court historian” (whatever that means, but it appears to be considered an argument) — well, so much then for anything he has to say. But he fact is that the south held the balance of power politically in the U.S. until the western states began joining as free states. And they used it. By no means were they a little weak “agrarian” section of the country trying to hold onto their quaint sectional customs when steamrollered by the industrial power to the north. At one point they were seriously looking into colonizing Cuba and turn it into one vast slave state to increase their political power.
As far as comparing the south with Germany — the comparison was limited to two points. 1) The concept that “slavery would probably have gone away anyway” [so would the Nazis eventually — the Soviets disappeared too. Anything will go away if you wait long enough.] 2) the fact that more Germans are willing to look their history squarely in the face then white southerners.
As far as predictions of how quick the war would be over — the south famously believed that the yankees were a bunch of cowards whose butts could be swiftly kicked and sent scuttling back north by the greatly superior manhood of the south. They were wrong in that as in many other things.
When Admiral Farragut (from Tennesse) was approached by fellow southerners and encouraged to defect he declined on the basis of the oath of allegiance he had sworn (the violation of which didn’t seem to be a problem for many other southern officers) and his accurate prophecy — “mind what I tell you. You fellows will catch the devil before you get through with this business” [of rebellion].
#43
The oath promises to support and defend the constitution of the United States agains all enemies, foreigh and domestic, and to bear true faith and allegience to the same. The Southern officers who resigned their commissions in the United States Army and went with their states did nothing in violation of it.
I recognize there were different sectional cultures, but to claim the North was not “agrarian” is incorrect, even if you define the term to mean subsistance vs. truck farming. There were plenty of subsistance farmers in the North and West (and border states) who fought for the Union.
Well, as we all know, words can be made to mean anything. If you are a member of the United States military and have sworn to bear true faith and allegience to the constitution of the United States, it is hard to see how you can then write a new constitution of a different political entity, swear allegiance to that, and then fight a war against the United States military without seeing just the tiniest hint of contradiction. But as history shows over and over again, people do what they want and find a justification for it. Farragut and many other southerners saw it as treason plain and simple and weren’t afraid to call a spade a spade. The only reason the southern high command didn’t face a firing squad after the war was that Lincoln wanted to reunite the country (“with malice towards none, with charity for all.”) Some of them lost the right to vote for awhile but most of them even got that back. Some of them went on to found the KKK (General Nathan Bedford Forest, a man whose statue can still be found in some southern towns), devise (very successful) ways to defeat northern-imposed black suffrage, and other ways of perpetuating their charming “agrarian lifestyle.”
#46
I challenge anyone to find a finer, more upright, honorable, Christian gentleman in any age than Robert E. Lee. He didn’t “want to” resign his commission in the United States Army (of which he had been offered overall command by Lincoln) and fight the Union but he, rightly, believed that the federal government was violating “true faith and allegience” to the Constitution in attempting to sudue the South by force, and followed his state out of the Union. He was not alone. There was no “treason” involved.
I meant the last sarcastically of course since, as BlueOntario points out, the entire country was primarily agrarian at that time. It was not primarily the agrarian-ness of a state that determined its attitude towards slavery — it was the usefulness of slaves. Slavery would have died out quickly (or never even got off the ground) if it were confined to true small farmers. It was existence of tobacco and cotton as crops, would could be (and were) grown on vast plantations which could make efficient economic use of hundreds of slaves that made slavery economically viable. And whenever something is worth millions and millions of dollars (billions in todays money) it is not going to go gently into that good night.
My father’s people were West Virginians, and notwithstanding the argument that “back in those days people felt more like citizens of their state than citizens of the U.S.” (nonsense) and the fact that West Virginia had probably the most agrarian culture in the U.S. and that they were then part of Virginia, they knew they had no dog in that fight which is why they didn’t suceed along with their fellow Virginians.
Read what Lee wrote after the war. He considered the entire war to be a huge mistake on the part of the south. (He also waffled considerably before the war on that point.) The canonization of Lee as the patron saint of the “lost cause” is unwarranted and largely a result of not actually reading anything that this very complex man had to say.
Catholic Mom at 43: “McPherson is a ‘lefty Lincoln court historian’ (whatever that means, but it appears to be considered an argument)—well, so much then for anything he has to say.”
It means he’s more of an apologist than an objective historian, and he writes ideologically from the left. And as I implied previously, this doesn’t mean one shouldn’t avoid McPherson, only that he or she might want to balance that reading out with, say, Foote. I’m not the only one to have noted McPherson’s bias.
Catholic Mom at 49: “Read what Lee wrote after the war. He considered the entire war to be a huge mistake on the part of the south.”
Your source, please? A quote?
While some like Farragut, or George Thomas, believed their oath to the Union was sacrosanct, others such as Lee obviously did not. Whether through honest consideration or with fingers crossed we’ll never know. Obviously, those who were loyal to the Union considered those who would serve their states and the Confederacy as traitors, but those “traitors” were following their heart-felt loyalties, too. Just as we cannot demand that a zebra be all black or all white, so these men had to decide based on the creatures they were raised to be and the values of their time. It’s no small thing to give them the benefit of the doubt these 150 years after the fact, but perhaps it’s the better course.
#48
West Virginians. Ah yes, those people who committed treason against their state, Virginia.
Lee considered the war a tragedy, as it most certainly was. As were WWI, WWII, etc. It was certainly a tragedy for the South and for Lee personally, but he didn’t let that stop him from doing his duty.
Slightly off topic, but I enjoyed this conversation on secession reported in Adam Goodheart’s article, How Slavery Really Ended in America in the April 3 New York Times Magazine. The article is about the escape of three Virginia slaves who sought refuge at the Union-held Ft. Monroe in Hampton VA. The Confederate Major Cary goes to the Fort to ask the Union General Butler to return the slaves. Goodheart writes:
[Cary got down to business. “I am informed,†he said, “that three Negroes belonging to Colonel Mallory have escaped within your lines. I am Colonel Mallory’s agent and have charge of his property. What do you mean to do with those Negroes?â€
“I intend to hold them,†Butler said.
“Do you mean, then, to set aside your constitutional obligation to return them?â€
Even the dour Butler must have found it hard to suppress a smile. This was, of course, a question he had expected. And he had prepared what he thought was a fairly clever aswer.
“I mean to take Virginia at her word,†he said. “I am under no constitutional obligations to a foreign country, which Virginia now claims to be.â€
“But you say we cannot secede,†Cary retorted, “and so you cannot consistently detain the Negroes.â€
“But you say you have seceded,†Butler said, “so you cannot consistently claim them. I shall hold these Negroes as contraband of war, since they are engaged in the construction of your battery and are claimed as your property.â€
—–
Cary, frustrated, rode back to the Confederate lines. Butler, for his part, returned to Fort Monroe feeling rather pleased with himself.]
I will find you more specifics, but you can start with this one:
[blockquote] I am rejoiced that Slavery is abolished. I believe it will be greatly for the interest of the South. So fully am I satisfied of this that I would have cheerfully lost all that I have lost by the war, and have suffered all that I have suffered to have this object attained. May 1, 1870 [/blockquote]
Since Jefferson Davis had proclaimed as a founding principle of the confederacy:
[blockquote] We recognize the negro as God and God’s Book and God’s Laws, in nature, tell us to recognize him – our inferior, fitted expressly for servitude…You cannot transform the negro into anything one-tenth as useful or as good as what slavery enables them to be. [/blockquote]
…you can see by this quote alone that Lee — though perhaps emotionally sorry that the south had lost — had already thought through to the intellectual conclusion that good was thereby obtained.
He expressed similar thoughts before the war — that sucession was a bad idea, that slavery was not an objective good for which you could ask men to give their lives, but, indeed, it is true that Lee was one of those who thought of themselves as first a Virginian and second an American, and he eventually took the position of “my country [Virginia] …may she always be right, but right or wrong, my country.” But it is precisely because the southern cause was distasteful to him and he had so much conflict in overcoming his own objections both to fighting for slavery and to rebelling against the U.S. that respected by northerners as well as southerns. Unfortunately the roster of southern leadership has few others to compare to Lee.
Re: West Virginia. The Virginians held a county-by-county referendum to determine seceession. The eastern (plantation) counties voted for it and accordingly seceeded. The western (mountainous) counties voted against it. After the eastern part of Virginia left the Union, the U.S. decided that rather than recognize two imaginary Virginias (one an ally, and one they were at war with) they would recognize the western part as its own state. After the war Virginia formally asked the U.S. government for West Virginia back (against the will of the West Virginians). That was not about to happen. Actions have consequences and when eastern Virginia seceeded they lost western Virginia forever.
Interestingly, the argument put forth by Virginia to the Supreme Court in its efforts to re-obtain West Virginia after the war went like this:
“Since secession is illegal, obviously Virginia did not seceed; therefore Virginia is and was always from the time of its ratification of the Constitution a part of the Union. Therefore no portion of Virginia can be recognized as a new state. ”
Strangely enough this argument did not prevail.
Ironically, if Lee had accepted Lincoln’s offer to command the Union armies, it’s likely that the war would have been over much sooner — quite possibly without the Emancipation Proclamation, certainly without Sherman’s march to the sea and other devestation visited upon the South. The Southern states might well have been able to cling to their peculiar institution for a little while longer — although without being able to expand into the west, rising Abolitionist pressure would likely have forced them to give it up sooner rather than later. But certainly they would have come out of the war better off than they actually did.
I agree with Catholic Mom’s comments about General Lee. I have a copy of his memoirs, or more correctly, his ‘Recollection & Letters of Robert E. Lee,’ published in 2003 by Barnes & Noble Books and written by his son, Captain Robert E. Lee Jr. My edition was published by special arrangement with Konecky & Konecky. I found this to be an interesting book and an in-depth character study of the General. I recommend it to anyone interested in our country’s history.
Another fascinating book — “Lee Considered” by Alan Nolan. (The title is because Nolan thinks that Lee has not been “considered” — i.e., analyzed — at all, just revered.) Nolan argues that Lee, by his military skill, stretched out what was almost certaintly an inevitable defeat [based on differences in military and industrial capacity] into a protracted war, resulting in the maximum damage to the south. He also argues (very controversially but through use of original documents) that Lee knew at least a 1-2 years before the war ended that it could not be won but repeatedly misled Jefferson Davis on that point because admitting/accepting defeat was indeed “1,000 deaths” to Lee. Davis, a politician, would have negotiated on a different basis if he had been informed of the true state of things.
I read the reviews of Nolan’s book when it came out and decided there was no point in indulging a revisionist “analysis” of Lee or any other Confederate. Most of what has been written about the war and its protagonists in the last 40 years is characterized by a craven political correctness.
As to the agricultural societies and their ethos, you have misunderstood entirely. Of course there were farms all over the north; of course the remainder of the agrarian culture was to be found in many places. But ti was failing fast ever since the embargo in the was of 1812, and the cities were growing like weeds – weeds in every sense. The death of the argrarian society is well documented: The demise explains E.A. Robinson, Robert Frost, and much earlier, Sarah Orne Jewett. BY the time EOJ was writing, the death throes were already audible; this is what her stories were about.
This was not at all the case in the south because the ag products and cotton in particular bound the various states together in a common world view. There was a different death for them and this explains Faulkner.
The is such a thing as a a zeitgeist, and this shapes and give meaning to the world one lives in. This is greater than faction and the politics it gives rise to. However much slavery declares a world the constitution cannot endure, it was integrated into the world world because it was part of the agrarian zeitgeist. Had there been no slaves, or had they been employees, the south’s vision of itself would have remained constant because its loyalty was to the soil and to the local, the regional at greatest.
In the north, the people poured into the cities: Look at Boston’s and New York’s population growth between 1815 and 1915. And they had become appalling places to live save for the well-heeled.
And theh had their slaves, only they were called Irish. The Irish, the French Canadian, all the young women in the factories, they were doing for the north what the slaves were doing for the south. I know this culture too well to hesitate to say the factory workers were precious little better off than a southern slave. In both cases, human rapacity controlled thousands and thousands of lives, their very breathing and sleeping. The difference was that the south relied on the land; the north on machinery, so the one inevitably outproduced the other. You wll say, the meanest Irish slavey in a northern kitchen had a pinch of freedom and the southern slave did not. All true. But the slavey could be discarded to live or die in the cities with a callousness no different than the sale of a slave. Remember the flatiron fire in NYC?
At least the southerner had a locus for his identity; he was fighting for HOME. And this is not an issue of slaves. the northerner in the cities had no locus of identity, but the cities grew and grew; and its inheritance is the anomie, rootlessness, the sheer temporariness of American life – a disease we now take for normal it is so endemic.
I grow weary, in short, of the self-righteousness of those who trumpet slavery as the Great White Evil and who align themselves so happily with the Right Side. I understand it, you know, but it ignores the realities of the north. i do not defend slavery; I do require that history speak the truth. Larry
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A few more quotes from General Lee:
December 1960: [blockquote] I am not pleased with the course of the “Cotton States” [the six deep south states who most benefited from slavery.] In addition to their selfish dictatorial bearing, the threats they throw out against the Border States if they will not join them, argue little for that benefit. One of their plans seems to be the renewal of the slave trade. That I am opposed to on every ground. [/blockquote]
Jan. 1861:
[blockquote] God alone can save us from our folly, selfishness, and short-sightedness. The last accounts seem to show that we have barely escaped anarchy to be plunged into civil war. What will be the result I cannot conjecture. I only see that a fearful calamity is upon and us and fear that the country will have to pass through, for its sins, a fiery ordeal. I am unable to realize that our people will destroy a government inaugerated by the blood and wisdom of our patriot fathers that has given us peace and prosperity at home, power and security abroad, and under which we have acquired a colossal strength unequalled in the history of mankind. I wish to live under no other government and there is no sacrifice I am not prepared to make for the preservation of the Union save that of honour [i.e., his necessary allegiance to Virginia.] [/blockquote]
Here’s another one written two days later:
[blockquote] Secession is nothing but revolution. The framers of our constitution never exhausted so much labor, wisdom, and forbearance in its formation and surrounded it with so many guards and securities if it was intended to be broken by every state at will. It was intended for “perpetual union” so expressed in the preamble and for the establishement of a government, not a compact, which can only be dissolved by revolution or the consent of all the people in convention assembled. It is idle to talk of secession…Still a Union that can only be maintained by swords and bayonets and in which strife and civil war are to take the place of brotherly love and kindness has no charm for me. If a disruption takes place, which God forbid, I shall go back in sorrow to my people and share the misery of my native state…I wish for no other flag than the Star Spangled Banner and no other air than Hail Columbia. I still hope that the wisdom and patriotism of the nation will yet save it. [/blockquote]
This was a man to whom the term “conflicted” at least can be applied. A man who argues that there is no legal basis for secession. A man who recognizes the swaggering arrogance of the worst of the slave states. Yet considers that his honor requires him to put love of Virginia above love of the U.S. and who believes that the Union cannot, in any event, be preserved by force of arms. Were all southerners like him, there would never have been a Civil War.
Amen, Larry. There are still some of us Agrarians left. Thankfully, my son and daughter and my sisters have the same sense of place that I do. I’ve proudly served my country in uniform at home and abroad but my land and my county are my first associations, then state and region. The nation is more an abstraction and my fiercest attachment to it is elicited when defending it against criticism from outside and criticism of our record in the world from within.
[blockquote] I grow weary, in short, of the self-righteousness of those who trumpet slavery as the Great White Evil and who align themselves so happily with the Right Side. [/blockquote]
Where do you get “self-righteousness” from? Is anybody defending any of the things you discussed about the north? Was slavery NOT a “great evil? Can you not call something evil without immediately being called “self-righteous” and asked to account for your own sins?Are we down to saying “na na, you were no better than us?” We’re discussing the Civil War and its causes. The triangle fire happened in 1911. I would be delighted to discuss that on another thread. I would be delighted to list/acknowledge 1,000 evils of the north. I’ll particularly focus on the evils done to the Irish if you like. (Or the evils done BY the Irish if that’s any better.) How that negates the fact that slavery was wrong, the south seceeded to preserve slavery, and the south was wrong I’ll leave up to you.
“But I would make a very strong guess that southerners NOT like you teach their children a very different history indeed”.
Yes, they do, and THANK GOD I am happily married to one of those. I like what he teaches our kids.
“And they had their slaves, only they were called Irish. The Irish, the French Canadian, all the young women in the factories, they were doing for the north what the slaves were doing for the south. I know this culture too well to hesitate to say the factory workers were precious little better off than a southern slave. In both cases, human rapacity controlled thousands and thousands of lives, their very breathing and sleeping. The difference was that the south relied on the land; the north on machinery, so the one inevitably outproduced the other. You will say, the meanest Irish slavey in a northern kitchen had a pinch of freedom and the southern slave did not. All true. But the slavey could be discarded to live or die in the cities with a callousness no different than the sale of a slave”.
I won’t completely negate the North’s occasional hypocrisy; I, frankly, wrote about that on another thread. But you’ve got to be kidding me with what’s above–it is true that many immigrants in the Northern cities worked for barely more than peanuts, were treated as expendable by their employers, and dealt with extreme poverty. But, I don’t know any Irish or equivalent who were rounded up in their native country, placed in chains, sailed across an ocean and sold to the highest bidder to break their backs for the wealth of others. And even if they broke their backs for long hours in the restaurants or factories, the small amount of money they earned was theirs and they went home at the end of the day–even if home itself also wasn’t much to speak of.
[blockquote]Where do you get “self-righteousness†from?[/blockquote]
Maybe you should re-read your post number 12. That was pretty vicious as well. Would you like to be reminded of the burning, looting, rapes and murder of civilians perpetrated by the Union Army?
Caedmon, I was addressing your own moral argument that the North should have acquiesced to prevent the effusion of blood. I’m saying you can make a mirror argument for the South vis a vis Fort Sumter (The disposition of other federal positions and Lincoln’s motives are irrelevant – it was Federal property, and Article IV of the Constitution gives authority over Federal property to Congress not to any state seceded or not). I would also point out that the Hartford Convention did not actually result in secession (because most New Englanders would not have approved – and some historians like Samuel Eliot Morrison have argued that the Convention itself was never serious about secession) and that it was regarded particularly in the South as treasonous. Why? Because when their own chips weren’t on the line even the South regarded secession as treason. I’ll also see your John Quincy Adams and raise you the man who defeated him; Andrew Jackson, in spite of favoring states’ rights, threatened to invade South Carolina during the Nullification Crisis. There was simply no agreement in early America about a right to secession, just as there is no agreement now in the country about the constitutionality of the individual health care mandate. I would argue that the latter’s broad interpretation of the Commerce Clause is no broader than the secessionists’ interpretation of the Tenth Amendment. Your assertion of the legality of secession is simply that, an assertion.
Larry, you’re quite right. The North became an industrial monstrosity, with more than its own share of wage slavery and racial segregation. It took a century, and the Progressive Movement (read:19th Century Progressivism – not the punks who try to pass for modern “progressives”) to start to change matters, and is by no means solved today. It took things like labor unions, trust-busters, social welfare activists, and federal regulation to start to sort it out, all things Southern conservatives and their Northern and Western allies are trying to roll back today. But that’s an argument for a different thread. And while you may not like discussing the issue of slavery, it cannot be avoided when considering the cause of the war. The North was by no means virtuous, but neither was the South an innocent victim of “Northern Aggression.”
But on a broader level, it must be a rotten thing to hate your country, as many Southerners seem to. I’ve always found it ironic that the South, the most flag waving, jingoistic, seemingly patriotic folks in this country secretly have a seething hatred for the country they wish their ancestors had been allowed to leave 150 years ago. The same folks who will say this is the freest nation in the world and say “Love it or leave it”, actually, per Caedmon, apparently believe they live under the yolk of tyranny. A section of the country that supports a constitutional amendment against flag burning, secretly burns it in its heart and raises the Stars and Bars.
Another quote from General Lee — this to the U.S. Senate in 1868 replying to the question of whether or not he had asked for command of U.S. forces in 1861.
[blockquote] I never intimated to any one that I desired the command of the United States Army, nor did I ever have a conversation with but one gentleman, Mr. Francis Preston Blair, on the subject, which was at his invitation, and, as I understood, at the instance of President Lincoln. After listening to his remarks, I declined the offer he made me to take command of the army that was to be brought into the field stating, as candidly and courteously as I could, that, though opposed to secession and deprecating war, I could take no part in an invasion of the Southern States. [/blockquote]
Note: — before the war he writes “secession is revolution.” After the war he writes that he was opposed to secession in 1861. Yet he could not take the part of a force arrayed against his own state and region.
Question: What was Robert E. Lee’s view of secession??
[blockquote]But on a broader level, it must be a rotten thing to hate your country, as many Southerners seem to. I’ve always found it ironic that the South, the most flag waving, jingoistic, seemingly patriotic folks in this country secretly have a seething hatred for the country they wish their ancestors had been allowed to leave 150 years ago. The same folks who will say this is the freest nation in the world and say “Love it or leave itâ€, actually, per Caedmon, apparently believe they live under the yolk of tyranny. A section of the country that supports a constitutional amendment against flag burning, secretly burns it in its heart and raises the Stars and Bars.[/blockquote]
I’m from Atlanta and have lived here my entire life. Your statement above is totally ridiculous and very bigoted.
Sorry, but I’m seeing Caedmon and Sarah saying that this country is suffering from tyranny and has been since 1865. And a tidbit from Ken Burns caught me the other day – that Vicksburg, Mississippi did not celebrate Independence Day for 81 years after its fall, and probably only did so amidst World War II patriotism. This is surely not true of all Southerners (hence my “many” Southerners), but from the rhetoric I am seeing on this very thread I don’t see what other conclusion can be had. They hate this country and wish their ancestors had succeeded in leaving it. You may think that uncharitable, I see it as a natural consequence of the rhetoric expressed here.
73, its probably a Southern thing. Probably comes from loosing a war, being invaded and occupied and having your way of life and economy destroyed, while those who were complicit and made money off of that economy prior to the war got rich.
[blockquote]The town of Darian, Gerogia provides one small example:
On June 11, 1863, Federal troops stationed on St. Simons Island looted and then destroyed most of the town, including the homes of the black residents/slaves. (This was not part of Sherman’s March to the Sea, which occurred more than a year later. Confusion has arisen because the St. Simons Island troops were under the command of another General Sherman, stationed in the South Carolina Sea Islands). The destruction of this undefended city, which was of little strategic importance, was carried out by the 54th Massachusetts Volunteers under the command of a reluctant Colonel Robert Gould Shaw (who would later call the raid a “Satanic Action”) and the 2nd South Carolina Volunteers under the command of Colonel James Montgomery. Colonel Montgomery ordered that the town be looted and then burned. Montgomery’s troops broke ranks and looted freely, while Shaw ordered his to take only that which would be useful at camp. The First African Baptist Church (the oldest African-American church in the county) was destroyed along with the rest of the town. It was rebuilt and later some meetings of the Civil rights movement were held there.
After the U.S. Army invaded McIntosh County and destroyed Darien, gunboats were used to blockade the ports. These personnel constantly plundered McIntosh County. The only defense to the plundering that the county had was a group of men too old for military service. On the night of August 3, 1864, the county’s elderly defenders had met at the Ebenezer Church, nine miles north of Darien. Federal troops found out about the meeting from local informants. The troops surrounded the church, opened fire, and captured twenty-three old men. These civilians were marched to a landing near Darien and put on ships and taken to prisons in the North.
Following the Civil War, Darien was rebuilt, with financial aid coming in small part from the family of Colonel Robert Gould Shaw, who had been killed during the War but had written of his shame in participating in the destruction.[5][/blockquote]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darien,_Georgia#Civil_War_and_after
This incident is recorded in the movie “Glory”.
#73
You pretty well describe my feelings except that I would challenge your characterization of my feeling towards the United States as “hate”. I love the United States but bitterly resent the invasion, and devistation visited on the South by the northern states under the Federal Government 150 years ago and I loath the tendency over the last 40 years or so to demonize everthing associated with the South and the Confederacy. Personally, I am proud of those men and women who, like my great-grandparents, defended their homes against a cruel and rapacious invader and bore the trials of war, occupation and poverty with steadfast courage and devotion to their state, their country and their God.
I would note that the South is routinely vilified for the horrors of Andersonville POW camp (created when Grant halted prisoner exchanges). Andersonville had a death rate of about 29%. What is routinely left out is that Elmira, New York, with a death rate of 25%, comes in second. http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2003/07/0701_030701_civilwarprisons.html
#76
And with far less excuse, the north having an abundance of every sort of provision while the administration at Andersonville lacked for everything.
Back in #33 we learned that the North was justified for attacking the South because they were putting down a treasonous movement. A little further back in #28 we also learned that the war spared the US the balkanization which has plagued Europe.
Do these justifications only work for governments or can they be applied to any structure of authority? Surely those Episcopalians who argue that TEC has become heretical, and then wish to leave or “secede”, are equally guilty of treason to their leaders. If only prior bishops of TEC had acted with more lawsuits and depositions perhaps we would be free of the balkanization which so afflicts modern North American Anglicanism.
Thanks for reminding us of the differences between apples and oranges, Slink. Now back to the regularly scheduled program…
Well, I will admit that TEC liberals have not resorted to a literal scorched earth policy (unlike General Sherman did) but surely there must be some sort of standard as to how groups of people ought to interact. All I am saying is that you can’t give a thumbs-up to the Union for resorting to violence against states which were trying to leave it and at the same time give a thumbs-down to churches which want to leave TEC.
I should have said give a thumbs-down to TEC for using underhanded practices against those churches which wish to leave it.
from Bookworm Jr: My following comments are not meant to be cruel or combative– and I hope they are left to stand without undue censorship.
For whatever it is worth, my ancestors fought in Confederate gray and my hometown also was occupied by Union troops. My Southern credentials are valid, down to the DNA of my bones and the diet that shortens my lifespan with every bite. 🙂
As a military veteran, I also know first-hand the idiotic justifications used to cover the sick realities of every war ever sold to the general public. War brings demons of blood and suffering and pain and rape and loss. Period.
“States rights” may have been the technical excuse– not slavery– but that is like saying that an alcoholic dies from liver disease, not from alcohol.
The North certainly had plenty of hypocrisy to spare… with its merchants getting rich off the slave trace, etc… but no Southerner with integrity should minimize the systemic cruelty and corporate blindness to human suffering on which the whole society was built.
The images of a “glorious cause” and ideals of “defending our homes and honor” shrivel under even the most casual light.
I am not unfamiliar with the illusions and delusions maintained by many Southern families and towns and social clubs (and parishes too). The old wounds are still there, and God help the teacher or councilman or rector who dares suggest that the African Americans in town maybe should not have to walk past the Confederate Monument on their way into the County Courthouse to pay a parking ticket.
My ancestors fought bravely in a deeply flawed cause. The fact that many of them were not responsible for its genesis does not rehabilitate the Cause or make it righteous.
Compare the best statistics of the number of black Africans lost in the slavery years (from the ship holds on) to similar holocausts or genocides with which we are all familiar.
There was plenty of guilt to go around. But many in the South still seek to revel in some twisted pride that allows us all to gloss over the sheer magnitude of what our forefathers truly wrought.
Remember that slavery come within 1 vote of being abolished by the Virginia legislature very early on in our history… what if…
Peace to all. Kyrie Eleison.
After the war, Robert E. Lee was asked by a journalist what, looking back, he considered his greatest mistake was. (The journalist expected an answer like “failure to withdraw from Gettysburg when we were ahead”.) Lee replied “taking a military education.”
83, and Lee never walked in step again. He would deliberately alter his pace.
Evan Miller at 75.
Amen. Caedmon, proud descendant of men who served in the 9th Texas Cavalry and several Arkansas infantry units.
Catholic Mom, nothing you’ve quoted in response to my question at 51 leads logically to the conclusion that Lee “considered the entire war to be a huge mistake on the part of the south.” Was he somewhat ambivalent over it all? Clearly yes, before the secession and after the war. But when Lincoln made the decision to illegally invade the South, that’s all it took for Lee to pick up his sword in defense of Virginia. And when, shortly before his death, he observed the depradaction of Reconstruction, he said:
[blockquote]Governor, if I had foreseen the use those people designed to make of their victory, there would have been no surrender at Appomattox Courthouse; no sir, not by me. Had I foreseen these results of subjugation, I would have preferred to die at Appomattox with my brave men, my sword in my right hand.(Letter to Gov .Fletcher S. Stockdale, 1870.) [/blockquote]
Alta Californian at 70.
[blockquote]Caedmon, I was addressing your own moral argument that the North should have acquiesced to prevent the effusion of blood. I’m saying you can make a mirror argument for the South vis a vis Fort Sumter.[/blockquote]
How you see some kind of “mirror argument” there is anyone’s guess.
[blockquote](The disposition of other federal positions and Lincoln’s motives are irrelevant – it was Federal property, and Article IV of the Constitution gives authority over Federal property to Congress not to any state seceded or not).[/blockquote]
No, Article IV of the Constitution was [i]no longer operative[/i] in the states that lawfully seceded. Sumter was South Carolinian property. And Lincoln’s motives are most certainly relevant.
[blockquote]I would also point out that the Hartford Convention did not actually result in secession (because most New Englanders would not have approved – and some historians like Samuel Eliot Morrison have argued that the Convention itself was never serious about secession) and that it was regarded particularly in the South as treasonous. Why? Because when their own chips weren’t on the line even the South regarded secession as treason.[/blockquote]
The foregoing is irrelevant to my point that during said time frame, many people, North and South, believed in the right of a state (or states) to secede.
[blockquote]I’ll also see your John Quincy Adams and raise you the man who defeated him; Andrew Jackson, in spite of favoring states’ rights, threatened to invade South Carolina during the Nullification Crisis. There was simply no agreement in early America about a right to secession, just as there is no agreement now in the country about the constitutionality of the individual health care mandate. I would argue that the latter’s broad interpretation of the Commerce Clause is no broader than the secessionists’ interpretation of the Tenth Amendment. Your assertion of the legality of secession is simply that, an assertion.[/blockquote]
Well, Jackson is certainly no hero to the neo-Confederates, while Jefferson and Calhoun will always remain so. And my assertion is backed not only by the Quincy quote, but other pertinent data (e.g., Rawles’ commentary and the reservation of the right to secede made by three ratifying states.) I will therefore stand by it. And I’ll add that if the Southern secession was illegal, so was the colonial secession from Great Britain.
Alta Californian at 73: “They hate this country and wish their ancestors had succeeded in leaving it.”
Wrong again. I love this country. I hate what has become of the federal [i]union[/i]. See, those precursors of the Confederates, the Antifederalists, were right:
http://mises.org/daily/2335
http://www.amconmag.com/article/2010/jan/01/00051/
Predecessors, I mean, not precursors.
bookworm at 82.
““States rights†may have been the technical excuse—not slavery—but that is like saying that an alcoholic dies from liver disease, not from alcohol.”
Well, there’s nothing wrong with that analogy that a Logic 101 course wouldn’t cure.
At 86, that should be “depredation of Reconstruction. . . .”
Long day.
Caedmon — I think my quotes certainly indicate that Lee thought the war was a mistake both before and after it was fought.
As for your quote — it simply makes no sense. Perhaps a rhetorical flourish on Lee’s part. I do not believe that Lee ever came to the conclusion that a mass gotterdammerung at Appomattox was preferable to surrender. He surrrendered because he had to — because his army had been cut to bits and surrounded and he was down to 13 year old boys fighting. Lee was not such a monster as to believe that he should wipe out a generation (or two) to continue to fight to the death an unwinnable war and I don’t believe he ever entertained that thought, either before Appomattox or afterwards.
Unlike some, I do not canonize Lee. He was a good man and an honorable man but he was not a saint, southern hagiography notwithstanding. On occasion he justified himself after the fact. He sometimes said one thing to one person and something substantially different to another. He was a man who wrote before the war that the Constitutiuon clearly did not allow for secession and who had at best mixed feelings about slavery (and certainly viewed it as a temporary phenomenon that would gradually be phased out) who became the supreme commander of a secessionist army whose political leader, Jefferson Davis, spewed out endless racist rants justifying slavery today, slavery tomorrow, slavery forever. As such, this put Lee in, to put it mildly, a delicate position. When interacting with foreign leaders as a representative of the Confederacy he clearly attempted to hew to the party line. He would have been undercutting his whole cause had he done otherwise. After the war he backtracked considerably.
The whole point of Lee is just this — the neo-confederates write as if the south were propelled into the Civil War as the only honorable defense against the encroachment of the north. But not only were there many many southerners of the time who did not believe this (Admiral Farragut, all of the western counties of Virgnia, etc.) but even the supreme commander of the Confederate army himself felt that secession was only NOT the only possible course, but an illegal and foolish action.
Did he come to believe that the war was justified as a defense of the south? Maybe, but even this is not clear. Cognitive dissonance being what it is, when you have been directly responsible for prosecuting a war in which over 600,000 of your countrymen have died, it is probably going to be difficult to come to the conclusion that you were wrong to do so. But I think the comment about his regret at taking a military education shows that he wishes he simply had never been in a position that he had to make that choice in the first place.
I think the most symbolic story of the war is the famous exchange between Lee and one of Grant’s aides, a full-blooded Seneca Indian, at the time of the surrender. Lee is said to have said “I am glad to see one real American here” [meaning, on this historic occasion it is fitting that someone with a greater historical connection to the land than any of us be here]
The aide replied “We are all Americans.”
#93
That sure sounds like a 20th Century invention to me, and doesn’t sound a bit like General Lee.
“bookworm at 82.
““States rights†may have been the technical excuse—not slavery—but that is like saying that an alcoholic dies from liver disease, not from alcohol.â€
Well, there’s nothing wrong with that analogy that a Logic 101 course wouldn’t cure”.
A nice but clueless try, as nothing you’ve said makes it “right”.
95. I need not make it “right”. I simply call it what it is, a poor analogy.
Yes, Catholic Mom, Lee’s thought was “nuanced.” I don’t deny it. But at the end of the day it was his actions that made clear his stance. And yes, the South was not monolithic on the issues of slavery and secession. But neither was the North.
And you’ll have to pardon us for “canonizing” Lee. It’s just that we “neoconfederates” think that he — and Jackson — were two of the finest American Christian heroes who ever lived.
96, you’re simply calling it a “poor analogy” because you are unable to argue with it.