THE SOUTHERN
SIDE OF THE CIVIL WAR:
FACTS YOUR
HISTORY TEACHER MAY NOT HAVE MENTIONED
ABOUT THE
WAR BETWEEN THE STATES
Fourth
Edition
Michael T.
Griffith
2007
@All Rights
Reserved
Soon after I began to study the Civil War,
I realized that much of what I had been taught about it in school was either
wrong or incomplete. It has been said that history is written by the victors.
This is especially true when it comes to the Civil War. The Southern viewpoint
is rarely presented fairly in our public schools and textbooks today. I believe it is important that we as
Americans know the whole truth about the Civil War. The purpose of this article
is to present the Southern side of the story.
The following basic facts are undisputed:
The seven states of the
The version of the Civil War that’s taught in nearly all textbooks goes something like this: “The only reason the South wanted to leave the
We will consider twelve issues relating to
the Civil War: Why Did the South Secede?
Did the South Have the Right to Secede?
What Caused the War? Who Started
the War? The Emancipation Proclamation.
Republicans, the North, and Racism. Was
the War Fought Over Slavery? What
Happened at
Why Did the South Secede?
Before we examine why the South seceded,
perhaps we should first consider why a majority of Northern leaders opposed
secession to the point of using force against the South. In other words, why did Lincoln and most other
Republican leaders refuse to allow the South to go in peace? Did they oppose secession because of
slavery? No, they did not. In fact, most people aren’t aware that, even as president,
Most Republicans who opposed secession
said they opposed it because they believed it was unconstitutional. In their view, no state had the right to
leave the
There is considerable evidence that many
Republican leaders opposed secession and eventually supported waging war on the
South in large part because of economic considerations. Numerous Republicans, including
Without the strong support from the Wall
Street class and the merchants and men of commerce, especially in
Most of the merchants were not for
provoking war, and many admitted that the government had no right to coerce a
state to remain in the
By the end of March, the whole Northern
world had changed, with the businessmen and newspapers leading the way. Whenever the historian reads Northern
newspapers and articles that favor secession, or just tolerate it as a
constitutional right, it is important to look at the date on the article. For by late March the business circles saw
clearly that slavery was a nonissue for them—the tariff was the issue. . . .
In early March, even before
On 18 March 1861, the Philadelphia
Press demanded war: “Blockade Southern Ports,” said the
Press. If not, “a series of custom houses will be required on the vast inland
border from the Atlantic to
The economic editor of the New York
Times changed his tune in late March.
For months he had written that secession would not injure Northern
commerce and prosperity. . . . But on
22-23 March 1861, he reversed himself with a vengeance: “At once shut down every
Southern port, destroy its commerce and
bring utter ruin on the Confederate States”. . . .
Perhaps the most intriguing development
occurred in late March when the two tariffs stood side by side. Over a hundred leading commercial importers
in
At the very end of March, at the very
time
Rather than lower the high federal tariff
and embrace free trade, most Republican leaders decided they could not allow
the South to go in peace. It seems
apparent that economic concerns played a major role, if not the decisive role, in
their decision to violently oppose secession.
Now that we’ve considered why Republican leaders opposed secession, let’s discuss why the South
seceded.
Nearly all textbooks give the impression that the South withdrew from
the
But secession,
As mentioned previously, even as
president,
Most Southern leaders who advocated
secession in order to protect slavery did so because they feared that
Republican leaders would try to abolish slavery by unconstitutional means and
that Southern slaveholders would not receive any compensation for their
slaves. Southern spokesmen felt this
would be unfair, since Northern slaveholders had been able to receive various
forms of compensation for their slaves when most Northern states had abolished
slavery several decades earlier. They
knew that emancipation without compensation would do great damage to the
Southern economy.
Critics note that many Southern statesmen
voiced the view that slavery was a “positive good.” Yet, even the “positive good” advocates acknowledged that slavery had its evils and
abuses. In fact, most Southerners rejected
the arguments of the extreme defenders of slavery (John Garraty, The
American Nation, Volume 1: A History of the United States to 1877, Third
Edition, New York: Harper & Row, Publishers, 1975, p. 363). There were plenty of Southerners who were
willing to see slavery abolished in a fair, gradual manner, as had been done in
most Northern states. After all, 69-75 percent
of Southern families did not own slaves.
However, few Southerners believed the Republicans were interested in a
fair, gradual emancipation program. The
more extreme Republicans, who were known as “Radical Republicans,” certainly weren’t
interested in such a program.
Few people today understand why the South
distrusted the Republican Party. Not
only was the Republican Party a new party, it was also the first purely
regional (or sectional) party in the country’s history. Republican leaders frequently
gave inflammatory anti-Southern speeches, some of which included egregious falsehoods
and even threats (Susan-Mary Grant, North
Over South: Northern Nationalism and American Identity in the Antebellum Era,
Southerners were alarmed when dozens of
Republican congressmen endorsed an advertisement for Hinton Helper’s book The Impending Crisis of the South, which spoke
approvingly of a potential slave revolt that would kill untold numbers of
Southern citizens in a “barbarous massacre.” The
Republican Party even distributed an abridged edition of the book as a campaign
document, and Republican editors added captions like “The Stupid Masses of the
South” and “Revolution . . .
Violently If We Must.”
Southerners also noticed that the
Republicans broke the long-established tradition of having a sectionally
balanced presidential ticket. For
decades, the major political parties had almost always nominated tickets that
consisted of one candidate from the North and one from the South. If nothing else, the major parties had always
nominated tickets that appealed to more than just one part of the country. Each of the three other parties in the 1860
election nominated sectionally diverse tickets, but not the Republican
Party. Another reason that Southerners
were worried about the Republicans was that the party’s leaders made it clear
they would push for several policies that
the South believed were harmful and unconstitutional, such as a high
protectionist tariff that favored Northern commerce, federal spending on “internal improvements,”
and a significant expansion of the size
and power of the federal government.
Many Southerners feared that Republican leaders were determined to
subjugate and exploit the South by any means.
With these facts in mind, perhaps it’s not
hard to understand why the election of
One factor that led many Southern citizens
to support secession was the fear that some abolitionists were determined to
carry out armed attempts to incite slave insurrections in the Southern
states. This fear became widespread when
a violent Northern abolitionist named John Brown led an armed raid on the
arsenal at Harper’s Ferry,
A solid majority of Northern citizens
condemned Brown’s
actions, but a vocal minority did not. When Brown was put on trial after his
capture, some predominantly Republican towns in the North held public meetings
to glorify him and to defend his conduct.
When Brown was executed, numerous abolitionist churches across the North
rang their bells and held memorial ceremonies in Brown’s honor. Most
Americans, in all parts of the country, disapproved of what Brown had
done. However, Southerners
understandably were alarmed by the support that was expressed for Brown by a
vocal and influential minority in the North.
They were also disturbed by the fact that virtually nothing was done to
Brown’s
Northern backers. As a result of Brown’s raid, many Southerners began to fear that Northern abolitionists were going
to carry out more armed attempts to incite slave insurrections in the
South. Brown’s attack caused a good
number of Southern citizens who had
previously opposed secession to change their minds.
As stated above, slavery was not the only
factor that led to secession. If one
reads the Declarations of Causes of Secession and the Ordinances of Secession
that were issued by the first seven states of the Confederacy, one finds that
there were several reasons these states wanted to be independent, and that some
of the reasons had nothing to do with slavery.
For example, the Georgia and Texas Declarations of Causes of Secession
included economic complaints, in addition to concerns relating to slavery. The
They [the Northern states] have
impoverished the slave-holding States by unequal and partial legislation,
thereby enriching themselves by draining our substance.
The
The material prosperity of the North was
greatly dependent on the Federal Government; that of the South not at all. In
the first years of the Republic the navigating, commercial, and manufacturing
interests of the North began to seek profit and aggrandizement at the expense
of the agricultural interests. Even the owners of fishing smacks sought and
obtained bounties for pursuing their own business (which yet continue), and
$500,000 [about $8.5 million in today’s dollars] is
now paid them annually out of the Treasury. The navigating interests begged for
protection against foreign shipbuilders and against competition in the coasting
trade. Congress granted both requests, and by prohibitory acts gave an absolute
monopoly of this business to each of their interests, which they enjoy without
diminution to this day. Not content with these great and unjust advantages,
they have sought to throw the legitimate burden of their business as much as
possible upon the public; they have succeeded in throwing the cost of
light-houses, buoys, and the maintenance of their seamen upon the Treasury, and
the Government now pays above $2,000,000 annually [about $34 million today] for
the support of these objects. These interests, in connection with the
commercial and manufacturing classes, have also succeeded, by means of
subventions to mail steamers and the reduction in postage, in relieving their
business from the payment of about $7,000,000 annually [about $119 million
today], throwing it upon the public Treasury under the name of postal
deficiency. The manufacturing interests entered into the same struggle early,
and have clamored steadily for Government bounties and special favors.
Eleven years earlier, Senator John Calhoun
of
Had this destruction [of the balance
between the Northern and Southern states] been the operation of time without
the interference of government, the South would have had no reason to complain;
but such was not the fact. It was caused by the legislation of this government,
which was appointed as the common agent of all and charged with the protection
of the interests and security of all.
The legislation by which it has been
effected may be classed under three heads: The first is that series of acts by
which the South has been excluded from the common territory belonging to all
the States as members of the federal Union--which have had the effect of
extending vastly the portion allotted to the Northern section, and restricting
within narrow limits the portion left the South. The next consists in adopting
a system of revenue and disbursements by which an undue proportion of the burden
of taxation has been imposed upon the South, and an undue proportion of its
proceeds appropriated to the North. And the last is a system of political
measures by which the original character of the government has been radically
changed. . . .
I have not included the territory
recently acquired by the treaty with
The next is the system of revenue and
disbursements which has been adopted by the government. It is well known that
the government has derived its revenue mainly from duties on imports. I shall
not undertake to show that such duties must necessarily fall mainly on the
exporting States, and that the South, as the great exporting portion of the
Union, has in reality paid vastly more than her due proportion of the revenue;
because I deem it unnecessary, as the subject has on so many occasions been
fully discussed. Nor shall I, for the same reason, undertake to show that a far
greater portion of the revenue has been disbursed in the North, than its due
share; and that the joint effect of these causes has been to transfer a vast
amount from South to North, which, under an equal system of revenue and
disbursements, would not have been lost to her. If to this be added that many
of the duties were imposed, not for revenue but for protection--that is,
intended to put money, not in the Treasury, but directly into the pocket of the
manufacturers--some conception may be formed of the immense amount which in the
long course of sixty years has been transferred from South to North. (Calhoun,
speech to the U.S. Senate on the Henry Clay compromise measures, March 4, 1850)
The South’s long-standing opposition to the federal tariff was a factor that led to
secession. The South’s concern over the tariff
was nothing new.
The South had valid complaints about the
tariff.
The high tariff in the North compelled
the Southern states to pay tribute to the North, either in taxes to fatten
Republican coffers or in the inflated prices that had to be paid for Northern
goods. Besides being unfair, this
violated the uniformity command of the Constitution by having the South pay an
undue proportion of the national revenue, which was expended more in the North
than in the South. . . . (When In the
Course of Human Events, p. 26)
Economist Frank Taussig, one of the foremost
authorities on the tariff, acknowledged that the tariff fell “with particular weight” on the South:
The Southern members, who were almost to
a man supporters of
Steven Weisman, in his study of the role
that taxation has played in American history, notes that Northern economic
exploitation of the South, particularly in the form of the tariff, was a major
concern to Southerners:
The tariff would effectively raise prices
on clothing, farm equipment and many other everyday necessities. Farmers in the South . . . squeezed by these
high prices and struggling to sell their own farm products abroad, protested
the high tariff. . . .
These were some of the factors that
thrust
The new [Confederate] president,
Jefferson Davis, had been a hero of the Mexican War, a former Secretary of War
to President Franklin Pierce, and a respected champion of the South as senator
from
There was a great deal of evidence to
support
From the perspective of the South, the
North’s
economy rested on a kind of state
capitalism of trade barriers, government-sponsored railroads, coddling of
trusts, suppression of labor and public investment in canals, roads and other
infrastructures. Southern slave owners
sought . . . to secure free trade, overseas markets and cheaper imports. Southern resentment of the tariff system
propelled the Democratic Party to define itself as the main challenger to the
primacy of the industrialist and capitalist overlords of the system. (The Great Tax Wars: Lincoln to
Wilson--The Fierce Battles Over Money and Power that Transformed the Nation,
New York: Simon & Schuster, 2002, pp. 21-22, 52)
Weisman notes that even when
As
Weisman also points out that the
Confederate Constitution’s prohibition against protective
tariffs and government favoritism toward particular businesses was based on the
South’s
desire to avoid the Union practice of
favoring certain industries. Under the
Confederate Constitution, says Weisman,
State legislatures were given the right
to overrule . . . [officials of the national Confederate government] on certain
issues, and taxes and tariffs “designed to promote or foster
any branch of industry” were barred, as were public expenditures to benefit a particular section of the populace. These clauses were a residue of the South’s desire to avoid the
Union practice of showering largesse on
certain industries. (The Great Tax Wars, p. 65)
Jeffrey R. Hummel, a professor of
economics and history, notes the negative impact of the tariff on the Southern
states and concedes that Southern complaints about the tariff were justified:
Despite a steady decline in import
duties, tariffs fell disproportionately on Southerners, reducing their income
from cotton production by at least 10 percent just before the Civil War. . . .
At least with respect to the tariff’s adverse impact,
Southerners were not only absolutely
correct but displayed a sophisticated understanding of economics. . . . The tariff was inefficient; it not only
redistributed wealth from farmers and planters to manufacturers and laborers
but overall made the country poorer. (Emancipating Slaves, Enslaving Free
Men: A History of the American Civil War, Chicago: Open Court, 1996, pp.
39-40, 73)
Economists Mark Thornton and Robert
Ekelund explain why the tariff was such an important issue to the South:
The South was basically an agrarian
economy. This input-producing region’s major crops were
tobacco, rice, and cotton, with much of
the latter intended for export or for the textile mills of the North. Southerners had to earn their revenue to buy
finished goods from the North and from abroad through the export of raw
materials. Since tariffs on finished
goods, such as textiles and luxuries, and on capital goods, such as machinery,
raised the prices paid by Southerners, they believed correctly that the “terms of trade” were set against them by high protectionist
tariffs.
Thus, from the earliest days of the nation, the tariff issue was
paramount to Southerners. (Tariffs, Blockades, and Inflation: The Economics
of the Civil War, Wilmington, Delaware: Scholarly Resources Inc., 2004, p.
16)
Civil War scholar Webb Garrison, a former
associate dean of
Long before Charlestonians began taking
over forts, the U.S. Customs Service and the tariff system had angered the
South. Tariffs on imported goods served
to protect the industrialized North and boosted the cost of manufactured goods
in the agricultural South.
Such sectional differences had surfaced
while the
When the seceded states merged to form
the Confederate States of
Historians William and Bruce Catton
summarized the economic case that Southern leaders put forth in favor of
secession:
On the economic front, long-standing Southern
grievances against Northern financial and commercial exploitation, Northern
high-tariff policies, Northern monopoly of the coastwise trade, and similar
items, were contrasted to the bright future that awaited an independent South,
secure and prosperous on a foundation of cotton, free trade, and an
inexhaustible European market with no Northern middlemen to siphon off the
profits. (Two Roads to Sumter: Abraham Lincoln, Jefferson Davis, and the
March to Civil War, Edison, New Jersey: Castle Books, 2004, reprint of
original edition, p. 251)
A major point of contention between the
North and the South was the issue of the size and power of the federal
government as defined by the Constitution.
As mentioned earlier, Republican leaders supported a loose reading of
the Constitution and wanted to expand the size and scope of the federal
government, even if that meant giving the government powers that were not
authorized by the Constitution. Among
other things, they advocated government subsidies for certain big businesses,
federal control of the banking system, a high protectionist tariff, and massive
public works projects (called “internal improvements”). Most Southern statesmen opposed these
policies and instead favored a strict reading of the Constitution. They believed the federal government should
perform only those functions that were expressly delegated to it by the
Constitution. From the earliest days of
the republic, Southern and Northern leaders frequently battled over this
issue. A recent study that abundantly
documents this fact is John Ferling’s book Adams
vs.
Four of the eleven Southern states did not
join in the first wave of secession and did not secede over slavery. Those four states—Arkansas, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Virginia—only seceded months later
when Lincoln made it clear he was going
to launch an invasion. In fact, those
states initially voted against secession by fairly sizable
majorities. However, they believed the
Virtually no history textbooks mention the
fact that each Confederate state retained the right to abolish slavery within
its borders, and that the Confederate Constitution permitted the admission of
All states reserved the right to abolish
slavery in their domains, and new states could be admitted without slavery if
two-thirds of the existing states agreed—the idea being that the tier of
Before we move on to the issue of the
right of secession, it should be noted that Southern fears about Republican
policies were soon proven valid. When
the Republicans gained control of the federal government, they started
Tariffs were the centerpiece of
Republican policy. They . . .
implemented the Morrill Tariff Bill in 1862, which raised the level of the tax
on imports from roughly 20 percent to 50 percent, where it remained for the rest
of the century. . . .
Banking, particularly in the South, was
harmed as a result of the war. The
imperfect system of free banking and state-chartered banking was replaced with
a system of national banks. As Robert
Sharkey noted, “the
seeds of decay had been planted. The National Banking System, with its yet
unsuspected exploitative potentialities, had been established.” As a result,
big business had better access to the money market, and small business was
virtually shut out. Sharkey lamented, “Is it any wonder that the true advocates of free non-corporate
enterprise such as Henry Carey screamed so unrestrainedly at what they called
the ‘money
monopolists’ of
The defeat of the Confederacy was an
ideological downfall for the cause of anti-Federalist, Jeffersonian, and
Jacksonian traditions of small, limited government. . . . (Tariffs,
Blockades, and Inflation, pp. 87, 89, 98-99)
Ekelund comments on the Republicans’ big-government policies in an article he wrote for
the Ludwig Von Mises Institute’s website:
The Republican
Party that emerged in the 1850s was an amalgamation of historical influences,
third parties, and interest groups. One group that entered the Republican Party
was the Free Soil Party, whose primary platform was free land and subsidies for
farmers. In contrast, most Democrats favored selling off the public lands to
finance government expenditures, keep tariff rates low, and prevent deficit
spending. . . .
The ambitious economic agenda of the
Republican Party had its roots in the economic platforms of Federalist icon
Alexander Hamilton and Whig leader Henry Clay. They advocated protective
tariffs for industry, a national bank, and plenty of public works and patronage.
The flurry of new laws, regulations, and bureaucracies created by Lincoln and
the Republican Party during the early 1860s foreshadowed Franklin Roosevelt's
"New Deal" for the volume, scope and questionable constitutionality
of its legislative output.
In fact, the term "New Deal"
was actually coined in March of 1865 by a newspaper editor in
Protectionism was a high priority of the early
Republican Party. They quickly enacted the Morrill Tariff, which raised tariff
rates to extremely high levels, and their extreme protectionism continued
throughout the era of Republican dominance.
There is really little debate that these
Republicans were the primary proponents of protectionism, particularly in the
areas of steel and textiles. . . .
In the area of deficit spending and the
national debt, the early Republicans . . . produced large deficits and national
debt. Pre-Civil War Democrats had worked effectively to eliminate the national
debt and to close the national banks. (“The Awful Truth About Republicans,” Ludwig Von Mises Institute, March 25, 2004, http://www.mises.org/story/1476)
Ekelund goes on to discuss some of the
harmful results of the Republicans’ banking and monetary policies:
In their early
years they [the Republicans] nationalized money and banking, a policy that
helped big-city banks at the expense of the common citizen, particularly in the
South and West. As Robert Sharkey noted:
“As the National Banking System took shape after
the war, it was apparent that human ingenuity would have had difficulty
contriving a more perfect engine for class and sectional exploitation:
Creditors finally obtaining the upper hand as opposed to debtors, and the
developed East holding the whip over the undeveloped West and South. This
tipping of the class and sectional balance of power was, in my opinion, the
momentous change over the twenty-three-year period, 1850-1873.” ["Commercial
Banking," in Economic Change in the
Civil War Era: Proceedings of a Conference on American Economic Institutional
Change, 1850-1873, and the Impact of the Civil War, Greenville, Delaware: Eleutherian
Mills-Hagley Foundation, 1965, p. 27, original emphasis.]
Looking at the
consequences of this legislation, leading monetary economists concluded:
“The provision of the Acts of 1863 and 1865 that
established the national banking system were designed to remedy two perceived
defects of the antebellum state banking system. . . . Unfortunately, the
remedies did not work as intended by the architects of the national banking
system. Instead, the system was characterized by monetary and cyclical
instability, four banking panics, frequent stock market crashes, and other
financial disturbances." [Michael D. Bordo, Peter Rappoport, and Anna J.
Schwartz, "Money versus Credit Rationing: Evidence for the National
Banking Era, 1880-1914," in Strategic Factors in Nineteenth Century
American Economic Growth, edited by Claudia Goldin and Hugh Rockoff,
Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992, pp. 189-223.] (Ekelund, “The
Awful Truth
About Republicans”)
Did the South Have the Right to Secede?
I believe the evidence is clear that the
South had the right to secede. None
other than Ulysses S. Grant, the commanding general of the Union army for much
of the Civil War and later a president of the United States, admitted he
believed that if any of the original thirteen states had wanted to secede in
the early days of the Union, it was unlikely the other states would have
challenged that state’s “right” to do so. Grant also conceded that he believed the
founding fathers would have sanctioned the right of secession rather than see a
war “between brothers.” Said Grant,
If there had been a desire on the part of
any single State to withdraw from the compact at any time while the number of
States was limited to the original thirteen, I do not suppose there would have
been any to contest the right, no matter how much the determination might have
been regretted. . . .
If they [the founding fathers] had
foreseen it, the probabilities are they would have sanctioned the right of a
State or States to withdraw rather than that there should be war between
brothers. (The Personal Memoirs Of Ulysses S. Grant, Old Saybrook,
Connecticut: Konecky & Konecky, 1992, reprint of original edition, pp.
130-131)
Senator Henry Cabot Lodge of
When the Constitution was adopted by the
votes of States at Philadelphia, and accepted by the votes of States in popular
conventions, it is safe to say there was no man in this country, from
Washington and Hamilton on the one side to George Clinton and George Mason on
the other, who regarded our system of Government, when first adopted, as
anything but an experiment entered upon by the States, and from which each and
every State had the right to peaceably withdraw, a right which was very likely
to be exercised. (Henry Cabot Lodge, Daniel Webster, Boston,
Massachusetts: Houghton, Mifflin, and Company, 1899, p. 176)
Union general Thomas Ewing acknowledged
that the founding fathers did not address the issue of secession in the
Constitution--he believed the war settled the question:
The North . . .
recognizes the fact that the proximate cause of the war was the constitutional
question of the right of secession -- a question which, until it was settled by
the war, had neither a right side nor a wrong side to it. Our forefathers in framing the Constitution
purposely left the question unsettled; to have settled it distinctly in the
Constitution would have been to prevent the formation of the
British historian Goldwin Smith argued that
the history of the
Few who have
looked into the history can doubt that the Union originally was, and was generally
taken by the parties to it to be, a compact; dissoluble, perhaps most of them
would have said, at pleasure, dissoluble certainly on breach of the articles of
There is nothing in the Constitution that
prohibits a state from peacefully and democratically separating from the
The powers
not delegated to the
The Constitution does not give the federal
government the power to force a state to remain in the
This view is strengthened by the fact that
several of the states specified in their constitution or in their ratification
ordinance that they should retain all rights and powers that were not expressly
granted to the federal government by the U.S. Constitution. For example,
We, the
delegates of the people of the state of
That the
powers of government may be reassumed by the people whensoever it shall become
necessary to their happiness. That the rights of the states respectively to
nominate and appoint all state officers, and every other power, jurisdiction,
and right, which is not by the said Constitution clearly delegated to the
Congress of the United States, or to the departments of government thereof,
remain to the people of the several states, or their respective state
governments, to whom they may have granted the same; and that those clauses in
the Constitution which declare that Congress shall not have or exercise certain
powers, do not imply that Congress is entitled to any powers not given by the
said Constitution; but such clauses are to be construed as exceptions to
certain specified powers, or as inserted merely for greater caution. . . . The
. . . all
powers not expressly delegated by the aforesaid Constitution are reserved to
the several states, to be by them exercised. (
The people of this commonwealth have the sole
and exclusive right of governing themselves as a free, sovereign, and
independent State, and do, and forever hereafter shall, exercise and enjoy
every power, jurisdiction, and right which is not, or may not hereafter be, by
them expressly delegated to the United States of America in Congress assembled.
(Constitution of the
We, the
delegates of the people of the state of
That the
powers of government may be reassumed by the people whensoever it shall become
necessary to their happiness; that every power, jurisdiction, and right, which
is not by the said Constitution clearly delegated to the Congress of the United
States, or the departments of the government thereof, remains to the people of
the several states, or to their respective state governments, to whom they may
have granted the same; and that those clauses in the said Constitution, which
declare that Congress shall not have or exercise certain powers, do not imply
that Congress is entitled to any powers not given by the said Constitution; but
such clauses are to be construed either as exceptions to certain specified
powers, or as inserted merely for greater caution. (
In
Convention of the people of the state of
This
Convention doth also declare, that no section or paragraph of the said
Constitution warrants a construction that the states do not retain every power
not expressly relinquished by them, and vested in the general government of the
We the
Delegates of the people of Virginia . . . declare and make known that the
powers granted under the Constitution, being derived from the people of the
United States may be resumed by them whensoever the same shall be perverted to
their injury or oppression, and that every power not granted thereby remains
with them and at their will: that therefore no right of any denomination, can
be cancelled, abridged, restrained or modified, by the Congress, by the Senate
or House of Representatives acting in any capacity, by the President or any
department or officer of the United States, except in those instances in which
power is given by the Constitution for those purposes. . . .
That each
state in the union shall respectively retain every power, jurisdiction and
right, which is not by this constitution delegated to the Congress of the
United States, or to the departments of the Foederal Government. (
If the founding fathers had intended
ratification to be irrevocable, surely they would have said so at least once in
the Constitution. If they had intended
the federal government to have the power to use force to compel a state to
remain in the
Critics of the Confederacy maintain that
certain clauses in the Constitution prohibit secession, even though not one of
those clauses mentions the subject. They
point out, for example, that the Constitution prohibits states from entering
into treaties with foreign powers. They
place particular emphasis on the Supremacy Clause, which reads as follows:
This Constitution, and the Laws of the
United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made,
or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the
supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby,
any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the contrary
notwithstanding. (Article 6, Paragraph 2)
However, it goes without saying that this
clause and the clauses regarding state relations with foreign governments only
apply to states that are in the
Imagine the following scenario: Suppose
you joined an association. The association’s constitution said that when you became a member,
you agreed to be bound by the association’s constitution and by all association rules that did not
violate that constitution. But, the
constitution did not say you could never leave the association. Nor did it say your membership was
irrevocable or permanent. Nor did it say
you needed the permission of other members before you could leave. It didn’t even say the association itself was permanent. After belonging to the association for a
time, you decided you no longer wanted to be a member. You were willing to pay your share of the
association’s debt and
wanted to maintain good relations with it.
How would you feel if the association attempted to force you to remain a
member against your will, with the argument, "Sorry, you can't leave the
association because then you'll no longer be bound by our constitution and
rules"? Most people would view that argument as specious and unfair,
if not dictatorial.
If the
Lincoln and previous nationalists, such as
Joseph Story, John Marshall, and Daniel Webster, argued that the Constitution
was ratified by “We the people” acting as “one people,” i.e., by the people acting as a whole, and that therefore no state or
group of states could leave the Union.
But the Constitution was not ratified in this manner. In the original understanding of the
sovereignty of the people, the people were sovereign only as citizens of their
respective states, not as a whole. This
original understanding of the people’s
sovereignty can be seen in the fact that the Constitution was ratified by the
people in their capacity as citizens of their respective states. It was not ratified by the people acting as “one people.” The
ratification decision of one state’s citizens was not binding on the citizens of other states. The citizens of each state were free to
accept or reject the Constitution, regardless of the decision of the citizens
in other states. Founding father James
Madison, often called “the father of the Constitution,” repeatedly explained that the people were sovereign, not as one
mass, but as citizens of the various states:
. . . this assent and ratification is to
be given by the people, not as individuals composing one entire nation, but as
composing the distinct and independent States to which they respectively
belong. (Federalist Paper Number 39)
In arguing for
Give me leave
to say something of the nature of the government. . . .
Who are the
parties to it? The people--not the people as composing one great body,
but the people as composing thirteen sovereignties.
Were it, as the
gentleman asserts, a consolidated government, the assent of a majority of the
people would be sufficient for its establishment: and as a majority have
adopted it already, the remaining States would be bound by the act of the
majority, even if they unanimously reprobated it. (Speech to the Convention of
In his old age,
It is fortunate when disputed theories,
can be decided by undisputed facts. And here the undisputed fact is, that the
Constitution was made by the people, but as embodied into the several States,
who were parties to it; and therefore made by the States in their highest
authoritative capacity. (Letter from James Madison to Daniel Webster, March 15,
1833)
In his highly acclaimed book on the
formation of the federal Union, E Pluribus Unum: The Formation of the
In an ultimate sense, the Constitution
confirmed the proposition that original power resided in the people—not, however, in the
people as a whole, but in them in their
capacity as people of the several states.
In 1787 the people were so divided because, having created or acquiesced
in the creation of state governments, they were bound by prior contracts. They could create more local or more general
governments, but only by agreeing, in their capacity as people of the several
states, to relocate power previously lodged with the state governments. All powers not thus relocated, and not
reserved by the people in explicit state constitutional limitations, remained
in the state governments. In short,
national or local governments, being the creatures of the states, could
exercise only those powers explicitly or implicitly given them by the states;
each state government could exercise all powers unless it was forbidden from
doing so by the people of the state. But
in the Constitution the states went a step further, and expressly denied to
themselves the exercise of certain powers, such as those of interfering with
the obligations of private contracts, passing ex post facto laws, and refusing
to honor the laws of other states. This
is the essence of the American federal system. . . .
There was . . . one cardinal difference
between
In other words, “the people” were not, in
any part of the multilevel government, allowed to act as the whole people.
Instead, for purposes of expressing their will they were separated from
themselves both in space and in time.
This was accomplished by separating the people, both in space and in
time, from those they elected. . . .
The division of every voter into many
artificial parts of himself was one of three aspects of the genius of the
American constitutional system. (E Pluribus Unum: The Formation of the
American Republic 1776-1790, Second Edition, Indianapolis, Indiana: Liberty
Press, 1979, pp. 312, 314, 315)
This original understanding of the people’s sovereignty can also be seen in the system that the
founding fathers established for the election of the president, namely, the
Electoral College. “We the people” elect the president as citizens of our respective states, but
not as one people. We vote in our
respective states, and the candidate who wins in our state receives our state’s Electoral College votes. Thus,
a president can be elected without a majority of the nationwide popular vote as
long as he has won in enough states to give him a majority in the Electoral
College. The last thing the framers
wanted was pure majority rule. They
understood that a purely majority-rule system often results in a tyranny of the
majority.
Since the citizens of each state were the
ultimate sovereign in deciding whether or not their state would join the Union,
the citizens of each state should have been the ultimate sovereign in deciding
whether or not their state would remain in the
As part of his denial of the right of
secession,
Our States have neither more nor less
power than that reserved to them in the Union by the Constitution, no one of
them ever having been a State out of the
There is so much error and sophistry
packed into these statements that it’s hard to know where to begin. It’s difficult to imagine
what founding documents
It’s also hard to imagine how
In framing his argument that the states
were never sovereign “out of the Union,”
The powers delegated by the proposed
Constitution to the federal government are few and defined. Those which are to
remain in the State governments are numerous and indefinite. (Federalist Paper
Number 45)
In the same treatise,
The State
government will have the advantage of the Federal government, whether we
compare them in respect to the immediate dependence of the one on the other; to
the weight of personal influence which each side will possess; to the powers
respectively vested in them. . . . (Federalist Paper Number 45)
Speaking of
When
The first question [how a state could
secede without approval from the other states] is answered at once by recurring
to the absolute necessity of the case; to the great principle of
self-preservation; to the transcendent law of nature and of nature's God, which
declares that the safety and happiness of society are the objects at which all
political institutions aim, and to which all such institutions must be
sacrificed. (Federalist Paper Number 43)
This is important because the Articles of
Confederation expressly stated that the union they were creating was “perpetual” and that
that union could only be altered by the approval of all the states. Now, if the natural right of
self-preservation allowed a state to peacefully leave the "perpetual"
union of the Articles of Confederation without the consent of the other states,
then logic demands that this natural right would also permit a state to
peacefully leave the federal
It’s true that
Applying a like view of the subject to
the case of the U. S. it results, that the compact being among individuals as
embodied into States, no State can at pleasure release itself therefrom, and
set up for itself. The compact can only be dissolved by the consent of the
other parties, or by usurpations or abuses of power justly having that
effect." (Letter from James Madison to Nicholas P. Trist, February 15,
1830, emphasis added)
Notice that
The constitution of the
When the Constitution was being debated in
the states,
On the other hand, should an
unwarrantable measure of the federal government be unpopular in particular
States, which would seldom fail to be the case, or even a warrantable measure
be so, which may sometimes be the case, the means of opposition to it are powerful
and at hand. The disquietude of the people; their repugnance and, perhaps, refusal
to co-operate with the officers of the Union; the frowns of the executive
magistracy of the State; the embarrassments created by legislative devices,
which would often be added on such occasions, would oppose, in any State,
difficulties not to be despised; would form, in a large State, very serious
impediments; and where the sentiments of several adjoining States happened to
be in unison, would present obstructions which the federal government would
hardly be willing to encounter.
But ambitious encroachments of the
federal government, on the authority of the State governments, would not excite
the opposition of a single State, or of a few States only. They would be signals
of general alarm. Every government would espouse the common cause. A
correspondence would be opened. Plans of resistance would be concerted.
One spirit would animate and conduct the whole. The same combinations, in
short, would result from an apprehension of the federal, as was produced by the
dread of a foreign, yoke [i.e., the colonists’ fear of British oppression]; and unless the
projected innovations should be
voluntarily renounced, the same appeal to a trial of force would be made in
the one case as was made in the other.
But what degree of madness could ever drive the federal government to
such an extremity? In the contest with
In April 1830,
The great early American constitutional
scholar William Rawle said a state had the right to secede. Rawle was a contemporary of founding fathers
Thomas Jefferson and James Madison and was appointed by George Washington as
the first U.S. Attorney for
It depends on the state itself to retain
or abolish the principle of representation, because it depends on itself
whether it will continue a member of the
This right must be considered as an
ingredient in the original composition of the general government, which, though
not expressed, was mutually understood. . . . (A View of the Constitution of
the United States, 2nd Edition, 1829, Vol. 4, p. 571)
Another early American legal giant, George
Tucker, also said a state had the right to secede. Like Rawle, Tucker was a contemporary of
Thomas Jefferson and James Madison and corresponded with the former. Tucker came to be known as the “American Blackstone.” Tucker
was a professor of law at the
The federal government, then, appears to
be the organ through which the united republics communicate with foreign
nations and with each other. Their
submission to its operation is voluntary: its councils, its engagements, its
authority are theirs, modified, and united.
Its sovereignty is an emanation from theirs, not a flame by which they
have been consumed, nor a vortex in which they are swallowed up. Each is still a perfect state, still
sovereign, still independent, and still capable, should the situation require,
to resume the exercise of its functions as such in the most unlimited extent.
(Tucker, editor, Blackstone’s Commentaries: With Notes of Reference to the Constitution and Laws
of the Federal Government of the United States, Volume 1, Philadelphia: William Birch and Abraham
Small, 1803, Appendix: Note D, Section 3:IV)
The
George Washington’s Secretary of State, Timothy Pickering of
The Federalists
are dissatisfied, because they see the public morals debased by the corrupt and
corrupting system of our rulers. Men are tempted to become apostates, not to
Federalism merely, but to virtue and to religion and to good government. . .
. the principles of our revolution
point to the remedy--a separation.
That this can be accomplished, and without spilling one drop of blood, I
have little doubt. . . . The people of
the East cannot reconcile their habits, views, and interests with those of the
South and West. The latter are beginning to rule with a rod of iron. . . .
A Northern
confederacy would unite congenial characters, and present a fairer prospect of
public happiness; while the Southern States, having a similarity of habits,
might be left "to manage their own affairs in their own way." If a
separation were to take place, our mutual wants would render a friendly and
commercial intercourse inevitable. . . .
(Letter from Timothy Pickering to George Cabot, January 29, 1804,
emphasis added)
Thomas Jefferson, the author of the
Declaration of Independence and the third president of the United States, said
in a letter to William Crawford in 1816 that if a state wanted to leave the
Union, he would not hesitate to say “Let us separate,” even if he didn’t agree with the reasons the state wanted to leave (Letter
from Thomas Jefferson to William Crawford, June 20, 1816). Critics point out that in one case
Concurring in
the doctrines that the separate States have a right to interpose in cases of
palpable infraction of the constitution by the government of the United States,
and that the alien and sedition acts presented a case of such infraction, Mr.
Jefferson considered them as absolutely null and void, and thought the State
legislatures competent, not only to declare, but to make them so, to resist
their execution within their respective borders by physical force, and to
secede from the Union, rather than to submit to them, if attempted to be
carried into execution by force. (Southern Historical Society Papers,
Volume 1, 1876, p. 10)
The founding
fathers specifically rejected the idea that the federal government could use
force against a state to compel obedience.
The only two situations in which the framers permitted the general
government to use force against a state, or even in a state, were (1) if
the state were invaded or (2) if the state's legislature or governor requested
federal assistance to deal with domestic violence. Constitutional scholar
and former law professor John Remington Graham discusses this point:
It is an historical
fact that, on two occasions during their deliberations, the framers in the
Philadelphia Convention voted to deny Congress the power of calling forth
military forces of the Union to compel obedience of a state, and on two further
occasions they voted to deny Congress the power of sending the Federal army or
navy into the territory of any state, except as allowed under Article IV,
Section 4 of the United States Constitution--to repel a foreign invasion or at
the request of its legislature or governor to deal with domestic violence. (A
Constitutional History of Secession, Gretna,
Louisiana: Pelican Publishing Company, 2002, p. 287)
In commenting on
Article IV, Section 4, George Tucker noted that it was a protection against the
federal government using the pretext of providing “protection”
as an excuse for
unjustified intervention:
It may not he
amiss further to observe, that every pretext for intermeddling with the
domestic concerns of any state, under color of protecting it against domestic
violence is taken away, by that part of the provision which renders an
application from the legislative, or executive authority of the state
endangered, necessary to be made to the federal government, before it's
interference can be at all proper. (Tucker, editor, Blackstone’s Commentaries: With Notes
of Reference to the Constitution and Laws of the Federal Government of the
United States, Volume 1, Appendix: Note D, Section 17:6)
As mentioned earlier, President James Buchanan,
in his last annual message to Congress, warned that the federal government had
no constitutional right to use force to keep a state in the Union nor to compel
a seceded state to rejoin the
The question fairly stated is: Has the
Constitution delegated to Congress the power to coerce a state into submission
which is attempting to withdraw or has actually withdrawn from the confederacy?
[Note: It was common to refer to the
It appears from the proceedings of that
body that on the 31st of May, 1787, the clause “authorizing an exertion of the force of the whole against a delinquent state” came up for consideration. Mr. Madison opposed it in a brief but
powerful speech, from which I shall extract but a single sentence. He observed:
“The
use of force against a state would look
more like a declaration of war than an infliction of punishment, and would
probably be considered by the party attacked as a dissolution of all previous
compacts by which it might be bound.”
Upon his motion the clause was
unanimously postponed and was never, I believe, again presented. Soon afterward,
on the 8th of June, 1787, when incidentally adverting to the subject, he said: “Any government for the
United States formed on the supposed
practicability of using force against the unconstitutional proceedings of the
states would prove as visionary and fallacious as the government of Congress,” evidently meaning the then existing Congress of the
old Confederation.
Without descending to particulars, it may
be safely asserted that the power to make war against a state is at variance
with the whole spirit and intent of the Constitution. . . .
The fact is that our
President Buchanan was
correct. On May 31, 1787, during the
debates on the Constitution, the founding fathers considered a clause
"authorizing an exertion of the force of the whole against a delinquent
state.” The clause was not approved. Madison himself spoke against it. Here is the relevant extract from the Journal
of the Federal Convention:
The last clause of the
sixth Resolution, authorizing an exertion of the force of the whole against a
delinquent State, came next into consideration.
Mr.
A few days later, on June 8,
In order to believe that the framers
intended the federal government to have the right to compel a state to remain
in the Union, one would have to ignore the fact that the framers rejected the
idea of allowing the federal government to use force against a state. One would also have to believe that the
founders gave the federal government a right that they didn’t believe the British government possessed. George Washington and many other Patriots
believed the British were “unjust invaders” for attempting
to force the colonies to remain under British control against their will, and
they resented being called “rebels” and “traitors” for wanting
independence (see, for example,
The general [British general Thomas
Gage], further emulating his ministerial masters, by a proclamation bearing
date on the 12th day of June, after venting the grossest falsehoods and
calumnies against the good people of these colonies, proceeds to “declare them all, either
by name or description, to be rebels and traitors, to supersede the course of the common law, and instead
thereof to publish and order the use and exercise of the law martial."
("A Declaration by the Representatives of the United Colonies of
North-America, Now Met in Congress at Philadelphia, Setting Forth the Causes
and Necessity of Their Taking Up Arms," July 6, 1775)
Continental Army
surgeon James Thacher didn't like the label of "rebels" either--he
complained of being “stigmatized” as “rebels” by the enemy:
The great
majority of the people are happily united in the resolution to oppose, to the
uttermost, the wicked attempts of the English cabinet. This class of people have assumed the
appellation of Whigs; but by our enemies are stigmatized by the name of Rebels.
(Journal of James Thacher, 1775)
Our Patriot forefathers
also had a lot to say about the colonies’ natural right to self-government and
independence. Samuel Adams talked about
natural rights and the fact that every natural right not expressly surrendered
remains with the people:
All men have a right to remain in a state
of nature as long as they please; and in case of intolerable oppression, civil
or religious, to leave the society they belong to, and enter into another.
When men enter
into society, it is by voluntary consent; and they have a right to demand and
insist upon the performance of such conditions and previous limitations as form
an equitable original compact.
Every natural
right not expressly given up, or, from the nature of a social compact,
necessarily ceded, remains."
All positive
and civil laws should conform, as far as possible, to the law of natural reason
and equity." ("The Rights of the Colonists," November 1772)
In fact,
If men, through fear, fraud, or mistake,
should in terms renounce or give up any essential natural right, the eternal
law of reason and the grand end of society would absolutely vacate such renunciation."
(“The Rights
of the Colonists”)
Thomas
Paine:
Every thing
that is right or natural pleads for separation. . . . A government of our own is our natural
right. (Common Sense,
Richard Henry
Lee:
Resolved, That these United
Colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent States, that they
are absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political
connection between them and the State of Great Britain is, and ought to be,
totally dissolved. (Resolution of
Richard Henry Lee, Journals of the Continental Congress, June 7, 1776)
The Sons of
Liberty of Connecticut adopted a resolution that said the people had the right
to reassume the authority they had delegated:
Resolved. 1st.
That every form of government rightfully founded, originates from the
consent of the people.
2d. That the
boundaries set by the people in all constitutions are the only limits within
which any officer can lawfully exercise authority.
3d. That
whenever those bounds are exceeded, the people have a right to reassume the
exercise of that authority which by nature they had before they delegated it to
individuals. (Connecticut Resolutions on the Stamp Act, December 10, 1765,
emphasis added)
There was a time when even Massachusetts
Federalists said that nullification and secession were not treason but were
actions that a state had the right to take if it believed it needed to do
so. Historian James Banner points out
the following:
The Federalist theory of interposition, so widely held after 1808, was
rooted in the premise that the nation was a collection of “several independent confederated republics,” a “league” of equal and
sovereign states which had surrendered
only a portion of their authority to the central government under the
Constitution. In constitutional
arguments sharply reminiscent of the Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions, which
they had only a few years earlier rejected, Federalists declared that the Constitution
was variously a “treaty,” “contract,” or “association.” Each state
was a free republic “united by a solemn compact under
a federal government of limited powers.” These sovereign republics, and not the
people, had been represented at
Federalists concluded from these
propositions that since the states had negotiated the Constitution, the states
alone could determine when a national law violated the compact, when its
obligations under the Constitution ceased, and when to denounce it. From this it irresistibly followed that if a
state nullified a law, interposed its authority between the people and the
national administration, or in the extremity seceded, it would not commit
treason. The state would merely assume
to itself its full sovereign powers as a republic, a remedy “prescribed by the law of
nations." (To the Hartford
Convention: The Federalists and the Origin of Party Politics in Massachusetts, 1789-1815, New York: Alfred Knopf, 1970, p. 118)
In discussing the
arguments in the rising calls for secession made by Massachusetts Federalists
as their opposition to the War of 1812 mounted, Banner paraphrases and quotes
those arguments:
Because, it was
said, the Constitution was “a treaty of alliance and confederation”
and the government an association of states, then it followed “that
whenever its provisions are violated, or its original principles departed from by a majority of the
states or of their people, it is no longer an effective instrument, but that
any state is at liberty by the spirit of that contract to withdraw itself from
the union." (To the Hartford Convention, p. 301)
The principle of peaceful separation was
as American as apple pie. But
My residence is in the North, but I have
never seen the day, and I never shall, when I will refuse justice as readily to
the South as to the North. . . .
Sir, if there is, as I contend, the right
of secession, then, whenever a State exercises that right, this Government has
no laws in that State to execute, nor has it any property in any such state
that can be protected by the power of this Government. In attempting, however, to substitute the
smooth phrases “executing
the laws” and “protecting public
property” for
coercion, for civil war, we have an important concession: that is, that this Government dare not go before
the people with a plain avowal of its real purposes and of their
consequences. No, sir; the policy is to
inveigle the people of the North into civil war, by masking the designs in
smooth and ambiguous terms. (Congressional Globe, Second Session,
Thirty-Sixth Congress, p. 1347, in Jefferson Davis, The Rise and Fall of the
Confederate Government, pp. 216-217)
In addition, the South had no desire to overthrow
the federal government. The South
seceded in a peaceful, democratic manner, with the support of the overwhelming
majority of Southern citizens. The
Southern states used the same process to secede that the original thirteen
states used to ratify the U.S. Constitution, i.e., by voting in special
conventions comprised of delegates who were elected by the people. The one exception was
Furthermore, most Southerners believed
secession would be peaceful. In fact, it’s revealing that the
early correspondence of the first Confederate
Secretary of War, Leroy Walker, "clearly indicates he did not expect
war" (Rembert Patrick, Jefferson Davis and His Cabinet, Louisiana
State University Press, 1944, p. 106).
As late as March 21, 1861, Confederate vice president Alexander Stephens
believed it was more likely that war would be avoided:
The prospect of war is, at least, not so
threatening as it has been. The idea of coercion, shadowed forth in President
Lincoln's inaugural, seems not to be followed up thus far so vigorously as was
expected.
On the basis of the natural right of
self-government alone, as expressed in the Declaration of Independence, the
South had the right to leave the
The driving, core principle behind the
American Revolution was that the colonies had the natural right to be
independent if they so desired. The
founding fathers said over and over again that the colonies had a natural,
God-given right to release themselves from British authority. They resented the fact that the British
refused to recognize this right and that the British forced them to fight for
their independence. Senator Jefferson
Davis of
Now, sir, we are confusing language very
much. Men speak of revolution; and when
they say revolution they mean blood. Our
fathers meant nothing of the sort. When
they spoke of revolution they meant an unalienable right. When they declared as an unalienable right
the power of the people to abrogate and modify their form of government
whenever it did not answer the ends for which it was established, they did not
mean that they were to sustain that by brute force. They meant that it was a right; and force
could only be invoked when that right was wrongfully denied.
If the Declaration of Independence be
true (and who here gainsays it?), every community may dissolve its connection
with any other community previously made, and have no other obligation than
that which results from the breach of an alliance between States. Is it to be supposed; could any man . . .
come to the conclusion that the men who fought the battles of the Revolution .
. . in order that they might possess those unalienable rights which they had
declared—terminated
their great efforts by transmitting posterity to a condition in which they could only gain those rights by
force? If so, the blood of the
Revolution was shed in vain. . . . (Speech in the U.S. Senate, January 10,
1861, in The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government, Volume 1, pp.
531-532)
John O’Sullivan, the editor of the influential United States Magazine and the
man who coined the famous phrase “Manifest Destiny” because he believed God wanted
Northern abolitionist Lysander Spooner,
though a harsh critic of slavery, disputed the Republican claim that secession
was treason, and he argued that the North’s use of force to keep the South in the
The question of
treason is distinct from that of slavery; and is the same that it would have
been, if
The principle, on which the war was waged by the North, was simply this: That
men may rightfully be compelled to submit to, and support, a government that
they do not want; and that resistance, on their part, makes them traitors and
criminals.
No principle, that is possible to be named, can be more self-evidently false
than this; or more self-evidently fatal to all political freedom. Yet it
triumphed in the field, and is now assumed to be established. If it really be
established, the number of slaves, instead of having been diminished by the
war, has been greatly increased; for a man, thus subjected to a government that
he does not want, is a slave. And there is no difference, in principle--but
only in degree--between political and chattel slavery. . . .
The North has thus virtually said to the world: It was all very well to prate
of consent, so long as the objects to be accomplished were to liberate
ourselves from our connection with England, and also to coax a scattered and
jealous people into a great national union; but now that those purposes have
been accomplished, and the power of the North has become consolidated, it is
sufficient for us --- as for all governments--simply to say: Our power is our
right.
In proportion to her wealth and population, the North has probably expended
more money and blood to maintain her power over an unwilling people, than any
other government ever did. And in her estimation, it is apparently the chief
glory of her success, and an adequate compensation for all her own losses, and
an ample justification for all her devastation and carnage of the South, that
all pretence of any necessity for consent to the perpetuity or power of government,
is (as she thinks) forever expunged from the minds of the people. In short, the
North exults beyond measure in the proof she has given, that a government,
professedly resting on consent, will expend more life and treasure in crushing
dissent, than any government, openly founded on force, has ever done.
And she claims that she has done all this
in behalf of liberty! In behalf of free government! In behalf of the principle
that government should rest on consent! (No Treason, Boston, 1867, Number 1,
Introductory and Chapter I)
What Caused the War?
The Civil War was fought because
The Confederacy did not want war. One of the first things Jefferson Davis did
after assuming office as president of the Confederacy was to send a peace
delegation to
“Why,” one may
ask, “did Confederates sometimes refer
to themselves as ‘rebels’?” Actually, many Confederates resented that
term (see, for example, Jefferson Davis, The Rise and Fall of the
Confederate Government, Volume 1, pp. 282-284). Those Confederates who described themselves
as “rebels”
did so in sarcastic defiance and only in the sense that they were “rebelling” against being invaded and subjugated.
It should be pointed out that many
Northern citizens opposed the war and believed the South should be allowed to
leave in peace. Dozens of Northern
newspapers expressed the view that the Southern states had the right to
peacefully leave the
Who Started the War?
The standard textbook answer to this
question is that the South obviously started the war because it “fired the first shot” by attacking
In his inaugural speech, given weeks
before the attack on
Jefferson Davis argued that the attack on
The attempt to represent us as the aggressors
in the conflict which ensued is as unfounded as the complaint made by the wolf
against the lamb in the familiar fable.
He who makes the assault is not necessarily he that strikes the first
blow or fires the first gun. To have
awaited further strengthening of their position by land and naval forces, with
hostile purpose now declared, for the sake of having them “fire the first gun” would
have been as unwise as it would be to
hesitate to strike down the arm of the assailant, who levels a deadly weapon at
one’s breast,
until he has actually fired. After the assault was made by the hostile
descent of the fleet, the reduction of
If Lincoln had desired peace, he knew all
he had to do was evacuate Fort Sumter, as his own Secretary of State had been
promising would be done for weeks. When
the Confederacy was told the fort was
going to be evacuated, Confederate forces stopped building up the defenses
around the harbor and celebrated. Across
the harbor, Major Anderson was grateful the fort would be evacuated and that
therefore North and South would separate peacefully:
Confidently, he [Seward] told Supreme
Court Justice John Campbell that
But, sadly,
As the pressure for aggression mounted,
Some Northern leaders who wanted peace
urged that
Before the Confederacy was established,
You say that the fort was garrisoned for
our protection, and is held for the same purposes for which it has ever been
held since its construction. Are you not
aware, that to hold, in the territory of a foreign power, a fortress against her
will, avowedly for the purpose of protecting her citizens, is perhaps the
highest insult which one government can offer to another? But
Republicans protested loudly over the fact
that several Southern states seized numerous federal installations before
Admittedly, the pre-secession seizures,
though few in number, were unwise and legally problematic. However, let’s keep in mind that these seizures posed no threat to the federal government,
that they were bloodless, and that the Confederacy offered to pay compensation
for all federal installations in the South.
The seizures certainly didn’t provide any credible justification for a federal
invasion, and they were hardly what one
could call “aggression”
in any meaningful sense of the
word. Additionally, it needs to be
emphasized that the Republicans would have been just as determined to invade
the South even if no federal installations had been seized. After all, some Republicans began voicing
dire threats against the seceded states before any federal installations were
seized. The seizures merely provided
Republicans with another excuse to refuse to allow the South to go in peace.
The Emancipation Proclamation
Everyone can agree that slavery needed to
be abolished. However, the Emancipation
Proclamation, signed on January 1, 1863, left over 400,000 slaves in
bondage. Let’s take a moment to
consider the purpose, nature, and
legality of the Emancipation Proclamation.
The proclamation was a war measure, as the
document itself states. The Radical
Republicans hoped the proclamation would produce a slave revolt in the South,
even if this resulted in the deaths of thousands of women and children on
plantations and farms. (Perhaps it’s an indication of how most slaves were treated that no
such revolt ever occurred, even though many plantations and farms were being
run by women and children at the time, since most of the men were engaged in
the war effort.)
When it was issued, the proclamation did
not free a single slave in any of the four Union slave states nor in any of the
regions of the South that were then under federal control. The proclamation excluded the slaves in those
areas. The proclamation only applied to
slaves in the Confederate states, where
The Emancipation Proclamation asserted
freedom for slaves in those areas that were not under control of the federal
government and left slavery untouched in areas where federal control was
effective. It seemed a halting measure
of dubious effect and shaky legality, and the Confederates denounced it as a
call for a slave revolt. (In Blum and Catton, Edmund Morgan, Arthur
Schlesinger, Kenneth Stampp, and C. Vann Woodward, editors, The National
Experience: A History of the United States, Second Edition, New York:
Harcourt, Brace, & World, 1968, p. 360)
African-American scholar Lerone Bennett
presents evidence that Lincoln only issued the proclamation under intense
pressure from the Radical Republicans, who were threatening to cut off funds to
the army if emancipation wasn’t made a war objective, and that Lincoln only began to seriously consider the Radicals’ demands after Union
forces suffered several defeats
(Bennett, Forced Into Glory: Abraham Lincoln’s White Dream, Chicago: Johnson Publishing Company, 2000, pp.
23-24, 415-420, 498-504; see also Klingaman, Abraham Lincoln and the Road to
Emancipation, pp. 139, 148-149, 200-202).
Bennett also shows that
The proclamation provided no compensation
for slaveholders, even though Lincoln himself had said this should be done, and
even though most slaveholders treated their slaves humanely (as even many
abolitionists had once been willing to admit).
Few Northern abolitionists had ever supported compensated
emancipation. The Radical Republicans
certainly weren’t about to support such a plan. They didn’t seem to care that several Northern states had reaped fantastic profits from the
slave trade. Nor did they seem to care
that when most Northern states had abolished slavery they had done so gradually
and in a manner that enabled Northern slaveholders to recover the cost of their
slaves.
If the Southern states were still actually
in the Union, as
Of course, the Southern states had in fact
left the
It should be pointed out that American
leaders reacted angrily when the British tried to incite a slave revolt in the
American colonies during the Revolutionary War.
This was a serious threat, since slaves were held in each of the thirteen
colonies at the time. The British offered
freedom to American slaves who would fight in the British army, and they
encouraged slaves to sabotage the colonial war effort. Not surprisingly, tens of thousands of slaves
flocked to British army encampments.
Fortunately, however, not enough slaves fought for the British to turn
the tide against the Patriots. At the
end of the war, at least 15,000 former slaves accompanied British troops as
they evacuated
If the Emancipation Proclamation had
covered all slaves, if it had included compensation for slaveholders, and if it
had contained guarantees against a slave revolt, it would have been on solid
moral ground. It still would have been
unconstitutional, but it would have been consistent, fair, and moral. However, the proclamation contained none of
these things. It was intended as a war
measure. It left Northern slaves in
bondage. Its real purpose was to advance
the effort to subjugate the South, even if that meant causing the deaths of
thousands of Southern women and children in a slave revolt. The Radicals and other Republicans were using
Southern slaves as pawns in their effort to conquer the South.
Many Southern heritage defenders argue
that the Emancipation Proclamation “did not free a single slave.” In one
respect, this is true. At the time it
was issued, the proclamation didn’t free any slaves, since it only applied to
Confederate territory. However, as the war continued, thousands of
slaves did in fact achieve freedom because of the proclamation. Prior to the issuance of the proclamation,
numerous Union commanders refused to help or harbor runaway slaves. This refusal largely vanished after the
proclamation took effect.
Republicans, the North, and Racism
(NOTE: In this section it will be
necessary to quote some offensive words and statements from the Civil War
era. I apologize to those readers who
are offended by them.)
The same Republican-controlled Congress
that eventually made forceful emancipation a secondary goal of the war and that
imposed oppressive Reconstruction rule on the South after the war, also
sanctioned the federal government’s terrible mistreatment of the American Indians.
Historian C. Vann Woodward put it this way:
The same Congress that devised Radical Reconstruction
. . . approved strict segregation and inequality for the Indian of the West.
(In Blum and Catton et al, editors, The National Experience, p. 416)
With the Republicans firmly in control of
the federal government, the Union army began a series of brutal campaigns
against the American Indians a few months after the Confederate commanding
general, Robert E. Lee, surrendered at
Indian war broke out in
Hardly had peace been restored to the
Southwest in the fall of 1865 when Indian war broke out in the Northwest. The bloody Sioux War of 1865-67 was brought
on by many forces, but it was triggered by the demands of minors who had
invaded the Sioux country. . . .
The Chivington and Fetterman massacres,
together with scores of minor battles and endless shooting scrapes, prompted
the federal government to review its Indian policy in 1867. . . .
The new policy meant that the Indians
were to abandon their way of life, submit to segregation in small
out-of-the-way reservations on land spurned by the white man, and accept
government tutelage in learning “to walk the white man’s road.” The Black
Hills section of the
But many Indians refused to renounce
their way of life and enter meekly into the reservations. When they took the warpath in the summer of
1868, General Sherman unleashed his troopers and launched a decade of
remorseless war against them. “I will urge General
Sheridan to push his measures for the
utter destruction and subjugation of all who are outside [the reservations] in
a hostile attitude,”
By the end of 1874 all seemed calm. Then in 1875, when government authorities
permitted tens of thousands of gold-prospectors to crowd into the
I agree with Thomas DiLorenzo’s point that the Republicans’ treatment of the Indians raises questions about
their professed concern for social justice:
Before being elected president, and while
still commander of the U.S. Army,
Ulysses S. Grant gave General Sherman the assignment, in July of 1865,
of conducting a campaign of ethnic genocide against the Plains Indians to make
way for the government-subsidized railroads.
“We
are not going to let a few thieving,
ragged Indians check and stop the progress of the railroads,”
The eradication of the Plains Indians was
yet another subsidy to the railroad industry, albeit an indirect one. Rather than paying for rights of way across
Indian lands, as James J. Hill’s nonsubsidized Great Northern
Railroad did, the government-subsidized Union Pacific and Central Pacific
Railroads got the government to either kill or place on reservations every last
Indian by 1890.
Sherman and Sheridan purposely planned
their raids during the winter months when they knew entire families would be
together. They killed all the animals as
well as the people, ensuring that any survivors would not survive for very long.
. . .
The fact that the war against the Plains
Indians began just three months after Lee’s surrender
calls into question yet again the notion that racial injustices in the South
were the primary motivation for Northerners’ willingness to wage such a long and destructive war.
No political party purporting to be sensitive to racial injustice could
possibly have even contemplated doing to the Indians what the
Both the Southern Confederates and the
Indians stood in the way of the Whig/Republican dream of a North American
economic empire, complete with a subsidized transcontinental railroad, a
nationalized banking system, and protectionist tariffs. Consequently, both groups were conquered and
subjugated by the most violent means. (The Real Lincoln: A New Look at
Abraham Lincoln, His Agenda, and an Unnecessary War, Paperback Edition, New
York: Three Rivers Press, 2003, pp. 220-223)
Another example of Republican hypocrisy
was the Republican Party’s platform for the 1868 presidential election. Ulysses S.
Grant ran for president on this platform, and won handily. The platform stated that the Southern states
should be forced to allow blacks to vote but that the Northern states should be
allowed to decide this issue for themselves.
The Republicans took this position even though every Northern state that
had voted on amendments for black voting rights in the preceding three years
had soundly defeated those
amendments. Republican leaders knew that
racism was so widespread in the North that they would lose the election if they
advocated forcing the Northern states to allow blacks to vote. Many Republicans themselves weren’t enthusiastic about voting rights for Northern blacks
anyway.
If the Republicans’ primary concern had been to ensure that blacks were allowed to vote, they
would have insisted on black voting rights in all regions of the country. If they had done so, at least their position
would have been consistent and morally defensible. But they didn’t do
this. Furthermore, subsequent events
suggest that the Republicans enforced black voting rights in the South
primarily to expand their political power into that region. Once they achieved that power they
shamelessly plundered Southern taxpayers of all races. When the Republicans felt they no longer
needed to maintain their power in the South, most of them seemed to lose
interest in voting rights for African Americans.
Many Republican leaders, including some of
the Radicals, held racist views.
Thaddeus Stevens, the leader of the Radicals in the House, not only
opposed racial integration but believed blacks were less intelligent than
whites. In the words of friendly
biographer Fawn Brodie, Stevens “insisted that he had never held to the doctrine of Negro equality” (Fawn Brodie, Thaddeus Stevens: Scourge of the South, New
York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1959, p. 193; Hummel, Emancipating Slaves,
Enslaving Free Men, p. 300).
Incidentally, Stevens also believed the Constitution was “a worthless bit of old parchment” (Brodie, Thaddeus Stevens, p. 292).
Another powerful Radical in the House, George Julian, lectured his
fellow Republicans about their racism, saying, “The real trouble is that we hate the negro.
It is not his ignorance that offends us, but his color. . . .” (Kenneth Stampp, The Era of Reconstruction,
1865-1877, Vintage Books Edition, New York: Vintage Books, 1965, p.
102). Benjamin Wade, a leading Radical
in the Senate, was overheard “railing about too many 'nigger'
cooks in the capital” and complaining that he had eaten so many meals “cooked by Niggers” that he could “smell and taste the Nigger all
over” (Klingaman, Abraham Lincoln and
the Road to Emancipation, p. 53). In
the 1860 election campaign, numerous Republican leaders championed their party
as the true “White
Man’s Party” that would keep the western
territories safe for white labor (McPherson, Ordeal By Fire: The Civil War
and Reconstruction, New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1982, p. 123).
The North has nothing to do with the
Negroes. I have no more concern for them
than I have for the Hottentots. . . . They are not of our race. (In Klingaman, Abraham
Lincoln and the Road to Emancipation, p. 295)
Lincoln himself held racist views. As a politician in
I will say, then, that I am not nor ever
have been in favor of bringing about in any way, the social and political
equality of the white and black races; that I am not nor ever have been in
favor of making voters of the free negroes, or jurors, or qualifying them to
hold office, or having them to marry white people. I will say in addition, that
there is a physical difference between the white and black races, which, I
suppose, will forever forbid the two races living together upon terms of social
and political equality, and inasmuch as they cannot so live, that while they do
remain together, there must be the position of superior and inferior, that I as
much as any other man am in favor of the superior position being assigned to
the white man. (Abraham Lincoln: Speeches and Writings 1832-1858, New
York: The Library of America, 1989, edited by Don Fehrenbacher, p. 751)
To be fair, it should be noted that
To understand something of the nature of that
problem we must look at the position of the American Negro in the 1860s. . .
. Throughout the nation there were
488,000 free Negroes. . . . Most free
Negroes—258,000—lived
in the South. . . .
“Free people
of color” were welcome in few places. In the North
they were almost universally segregated, excluded from public life, and their
children barred from white public schools.
In those areas where separate Negro schools were provided they were
inadequately financed and instruction was poor. . . .
The situation of the black American when
the war ended was ambiguous. . . .
Northerners as a whole, willing to concede freedom, were hostile to
equality. Many of them dreaded an incursion
of black folk after the war—especially among lower paid
workers who feared Negro competition and some not so poorly paid who resented
possible Negro entry into their crafts.
The use of Negroes as strikebreakers during the war and their employment
in areas where whites were out of work resulted in agitation and riots and intensified
anti-Negro feeling.
Such sentiment, however, was by no means
confined to workingmen. Between 1865 and
1867 voters in
Historian James McPherson:
The
African-American scholars John Franklin
and Alfred Moss:
There can be no doubt that many blacks
were sorely mistreated in the North and West. Observers like Fanny Kemble and
Frederick L. Olmsted mentioned incidents in their writings. Kemble said of Northern
blacks, “They
are not slaves indeed, but they are
pariahs, debarred from every fellowship save with their own despised race. . .
. All hands are extended to thrust them out, all fingers point at their dusky
skin, all tongues . . . have learned to turn the very name of their race into
an insult and a reproach.”
Olmsted seems to have believed the
Historian Michael F. Holt:
Many Northern whites also wanted to keep
slaves out of the West in order to keep blacks out. The North was a pervasively racist society
where free blacks suffered social,
economic, and political discrimination; some midwestern states, indeed, legally
banned the entry of blacks within their borders. Bigots, they sought to bar African-American
slaves from the West. [David] Wilmot
himself proudly and repeatedly called his measure [to bar slavery from new
western territories] the “White Man’s Proviso.” (The Fate of Their Country: Politicians, Slavery
Extension, and the Coming of the Civil War, New York: Hill and Wang, 2004, p. 27)
Historian David R. Roediger:
Historians have noticed the rise in
racism in the urban North before the Civil War—a racism expressed in attacks on
vestigial Black civil rights, in physical attacks on Blacks by white crowds, in
the growth of racist invective, in color bars in employment and in the huge
popularity of minstrel shows. . . .
We have seen the extent to which
triumphant republicanism proved compatible with the casting of Blacks as “anticitizens” to be excluded
from civic affairs. For example, anyone the color of Crispus
Attacks, the martyr of
. . . the most common role for Black
Philadelphians in antebellum Christmas maskings was as victims of blackfaced
mobs [i.e., mobs of white people who had blackened their faces or wearing black
masks]. . . . In 1834, blacked-up Philadelphians
attacked Blacks in a major race riot not connected to Christmas maskings. In 1840, Blacks celebrating the Christmas
season as part of the street processions were set upon by attackers in
blackface. . . . But even when not
celebrating on the streets, Blacks could not avoid attacks from those dressed
as Jim Crow or Aunt Sally. Christmas
racial clashes, initiated by blackface mobs, took place regularly between 1837
and 1848, with the last erupting into full-scale riot. Some of the violence involved white and Black
gangs, but on other occasions, blacked-up mobs attacked African-Americans who
were in church. . . .
The movement of “contraband” exslaves into
Historian Joanne Pope Melish:
The emancipation of slaves in New
England, beginning around 1780, was a gradual process, whether by post nati
statute, as in Rhode Island and Connecticut, or by effect, as in Massachusetts
and New Hampshire, where ambiguous judicial decisions and constitutional
interpretations discouraged slaveholding without clearly outlawing it. . .
. The emancipation process took place
during the post-Revolutionary period of social and economic uncertainty that
interrogated the stability of social identity and the meaning of citizenship
for whites as well as people of color [blacks]. . . .
Even more problematic was the promise
implicit in antislavery rhetoric that abolition, by ending “the problem”—the sin of
slavery and the troublesome presence of
slaves—would
result in the eventual absence of people of color themselves. In other
words, whites anticipated that free people of color would, by some undefined
moment (always imminent), have disappeared.
New England whites employed an array of
strategies to effect the removal promised by antislavery rhetoric and to efface
[erase] people of color and their history in
[Ralph Waldo] Emerson’s perceptive if
simplistic observation about abolitionists of the 1850s applies as well to eighteenth-century antislavery
activists: “The
abolitionist wishes to abolish slavery,
but because he wishes to abolish the black man.” Many whites had imagined that gradual
emancipation would ultimately restore
The hardening ideology of “race”—innate, permanent
difference, located within the body as
part of each person’s essential nature—effectively contained and managed people of color, as had the old institution of slavery. . .
.
As sectional controversy intensified, the
mystique of a historically free, white
But the issue of the extension of slavery
racialized the question of the nature of the model society, and “what New England is now”
comprised not only judgments about the
superiority of small-town commerce and free labor over large-scale,
slave-dependent agriculture in the present but also assumptions about the
development of New England in the past as a region that was historically “white” as well as “free.” In this
context, efforts to remove free people of color from
The moral authority asserted by the idea
of a free, white New England also served to rationalize the ambitions of many
New Englanders and, ultimately, northerners—both
intellectuals and entrepreneurs—to dominate the South commercially and culturally. . . .
As Emerson said in support of the confiscation of southerners’ property at the end of
the war, “You at once open the whole South to the
enterprise and genius of new men of all
nations, and extend New England from
When radical abolitionists—advocating immediate,
uncompensated emancipation—began to gain
adherents in the mid-1830s, they vilified the colonizationist argument, but
their own position rested on quite similar assumptions about the superiority of
Yankee blood and culture. The
observation of Theodore Parker, leading Boston preacher and committed
abolitionist, that “the Anglo-Saxon people . . . is the best specimen of mankind which has ever attained great power in the world”—although made later, in 1857—is quite typical of the thinking prevalent among
New England abolitionists.
The few abolitionists who acknowledged
The growing enmity on the part of whites
was clearly reflected in their public language; the use of the word “nigger” in particular
seemed to operate as a kind of coagulate of the resentments that had been growing in white communities in tandem
with the size and visibility of the population of free people of color. People of color themselves understood clearly
how the term served to enact the embodiment of innate, permanent
inferiority. Hosea Easton described the
process in his 1837 Treatise on the Intellectual Character, and Civil and
Political Condition of the Colored People of the
“Negro
or nigger, is . . . employed to impose
contempt upon them as an inferior race, and also to express their deformity of
person. Nigger lips, nigger shins,
nigger heels, are phrases universally common among the juvenile class of society,
and full well understood by them. . . .
Children in infancy receive oral instruction from the nurse. The first lessons given are, . . . go to sleep, if you don’t the old nigger will
carry you off; don’t you cry—Hark; the old
nigger’s
coming—how ugly you are, you are worse than a little nigger. . . . to inspire their half-grown misses and masters to
improvement, they are told that if they do this or that, . . . they will be
poor or ignorant as a nigger, or that they will be black as a nigger; or have
no more credit than a nigger.”
In an explicit reference to the
scurrilous, lampooning broadsides then circulating widely in the streets of
A New England identity remained somewhat
appealing because for over half a century the idea of
But the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850
stripped away even the legal convention of “freedom” and overshadowed the few formal advances, laying bare the reality of
northern “racial”
thinking and practices. Martin Delany spoke for a growing number of
distinctly disenchanted northern people of color in 1852 when he stated baldly
that the “free”
states were nothing of the kind. . . .
[
What Harriet Wilson published in 1859 was
a remarkably clear-eyed assessment of the racialized structure of New England
life which had developed in the more than half a century following the first
steps toward emancipation of
The engagement of New England in the
Civil War can be read, as Lewis Simpson suggests, as a nationalist and
culturally imperialist enterprise fueled at least in substantial part by the “racial” essentialism on
the one hand and the mythology of “freedom” on the other
which
Ultimately, of course, the Civil War
ended American slavery finally and completely, but northern people of color
were not thereby released from racial thinking and practices whose origins were
lost in a largely suppressed history of northern slavery and gradual
emancipation. . . .
Long after the war ended, the presence of
people of color in
Historian Merton Dillon:
The ending of slavery in the North had
not been accompanied by change in the racial attitudes that for so long had
supported it. If anything, prejudice
increased as the numbers of free Blacks grew and as the insecurities resulting
from rapid economic and social change were felt throughout white society. Prejudice was not expressed in verbal slurs
and social slights alone. Far more
serious was the fact that custom barred most Blacks from economic and
educational opportunity. Although
striking examples can be cited of Blacks who overcame all such obstacles, the
majority were shut out by prejudice from sharing in the profits and advantages
of the growing American economy. . . .
Most Northerners still preferred that
Blacks remain in the South and not attempt to settle in Northern white
communities. In 1845—after more than a decade
of intense abolitionist agitation—an Illinois state legislative committee asserted that “by nature, education, and association, it is believed that the negro is
inferior to the white man, physically, morally, and intellectually: whether
this be true to the fullest extent matters not, when we take into consideration
the fact that such is the opinion of the vast majority of our citizens.” (The Abolitionists: The Growth of a Dissenting
Minority, New York: W. W. Norton
& Company, 1974, pp. 20-21, 74)
William Klingaman:
In the first half of the nineteenth
century, state legislatures in
City officials [in Washington. D.C.]
restricted Negro immigrants to the malaria-ridden lowlands known as “
In early March [1862], Congress took up a
bill to abolish slavery in the
Residents of
Passage of the Confiscation Act did not
resolve the debate over emancipation in Congress. The bill itself freed no slaves. . . . At the same time, however, prejudice against
Negroes was rising among white northerners.
Some whites blamed Negroes for causing the war. . . . Other whites, particularly Irish immigrants
living in Northern cities, feared that freed slaves might migrate north and
compete with them as a source of cheap labor.
“There is but
one thing, sir, that we want here,” announced an Ohioan to a visiting journalist, “and
that is to get rid of the niggers.” A lecturer for the American Anti-Slavery
Society reported that denunciations of Negroes “were never more common in my hearing. Many
Republicans unite with Democrats in cursing the ‘niggers,’ and in declaring that the slaves,
if possibly emancipated by the war, must
be removed from the country”. . . .
When several state governments found it
necessary to institute conscription in the summer of 1862, anti-Negro riots
broke out among . . . communities in
Midwestern opponents of the proclamation
[the Emancipation Proclamation] raised the specter of several million free
Negroes fleeing
In the summer of 1863,
Late in the afternoon, a mob set fire to
the Colored Orphan Asylum at
Racial prejudice grew stronger in the
riot’s
aftermath. Fearful of renewed trouble, employers refused
to hire Negroes; New Yorkers who befriended Negroes found themselves threatened
by white laborers. Eventually one-third
of the city’s
black population left to seek better
opportunities elsewhere. (Klingaman, Abraham Lincoln and the Road to
Emancipation, p. 54, 91, 117-118, 132, 164-165, 246-247, 262-264)
When it came to the issue of using blacks
as soldiers in the Union army, most Northern whites either opposed the measure
or favored it primarily because they wanted to save the lives of as many white
soldiers as possible. Klingaman:
“Certainly we hope we may never have to confess to the world that
the
Vice President Hamlin probably reflected
northerners’
opinion . . . when he told a rally in
Several Northern states rejected the
Fifteenth Amendment, which was designed to guarantee voting rights for African
Americans and for other minorities. The
amendment was submitted to the states for ratification in February 1869. The Northern states of
To judge from some books on the Civil War,
one would never guess that slavery started in the North and that it existed
there for decades. In fact, slavery
survived in two Northern states until the middle of the Civil War. Slavery continued in two other Northern
states until the Thirteenth Amendment abolished slavery several months after
the war. One rarely reads about the
conditions of Northern slavery. One
excellent study on the subject is James and Lois Horton’s fascinating book In Hope Of
* Northern whites violently overreacted to
rumors of slave conspiracies, and reacted even more harshly to actual slave
revolts. In some cases, numerous slaves
were tortured and then killed, and parts of their bodies were put on display as
a warning to other slaves.
* Northern masters generally opposed
allowing their slaves to learn to read and write, for fear this would make them
harder to control and even dangerous.
Slave revolts intensified Northern opposition to slave literacy.
* Northern governments enacted and enforced
fugitive slave laws, i.e., they forced the return of runaway slaves. One Northern government even signed a
fugitive slave treaty with local Indians in order to prevent slaves from
running away to live among those Indians.
* Northern masters tended to discourage
slave marriages and apparently weren’t overly concerned about keeping slave families intact.
(This is in contrast to Southern masters, who encouraged slave marriages
and who usually strove to keep slave families intact. Even James McPherson admits that 66-80
percent of slave marriages were not broken up. Data from the
* After most Northern states abolished
slavery, ex-slaves actually found themselves shut out from nearly all skilled
labor jobs in the North, whereas in the South free blacks and slaves alike had more
access to such jobs.
* When most Northern states abolished
slavery, racial prejudice against Northern blacks actually became worse,
for a number of reasons, such as perceived labor competition and the fact that
the social contact that had been required by the reality of slavery was no
longer necessary.
* Northern society was dominated by a
wealthy elite. (Interestingly, the
Hortons observe that throughout
* Northern governments passed numerous “black laws” that discriminated against blacks. Some of these laws prohibited interracial
marriage and imposed stiff penalties for violators.
* Runaway slaves were a constant
problem. Northern newspapers routinely
carried notices of masters looking for runaways.
* Some Northern governments passed laws to
encourage the African slave trade. (In
fact, several Northern states made huge fortunes from the slave trade.)
* In most cases, Northern emancipation was
gradual and included generous clauses that allowed Northern masters to recoup
most or all of the cost of their slaves.
* In Northern areas where slavery was more
economically viable, there was stronger opposition to emancipation. This opposition was overcome by the very
gradual nature of the emancipation programs and by the fact that they allowed
slaveholders to largely recover the cost of their slaves, if not make a small
profit.
The Hortons also document some interesting
facts about the British and American approaches to slaves and slavery during
the Revolutionary War. Students of the
Civil War will see some interesting parallels between the Civil War and the
Revolutionary War with regard to these issues.
For example:
* Shortly after the Continental Army was
formed, slaves and free blacks were barred from serving in it. Lord Dunmore, on the other hand, offered
freedom to slaves who would serve the British cause.
* Most blacks in the American army were
used in menial labor positions, not as combat troops.
* Although the commanding general of the
Continental Army issued an order allowing for the enlistment of free blacks in
December 1775, colonial governments and the Continental Congress were slow to
approve this change.
* Some
* The Americans considered it insulting
for the British to use their own slaves against them. Lord Dunmore made note that the use of black
soldiers was sure to anger and distress the American “rebels.” The Hortons
add, “For
many Americans such behavior [the
British use of American slaves as soldiers] confirmed their belief that
* As many as 100,000 slaves ran away from
their masters during the Revolutionary War and flocked to British lines. Thousands of them fought for the British.
* At least 15,000 ex-slaves evacuated with
the British army.
* British abolitionist politicians noted
the inconsistency in the American position of “yelping” for liberty while upholding slavery.
Samuel Johnson said, “How is it that we hear the
loudest yelps for liberty among the drivers of negroes?” Another
British critic said, “If there be an object truly ridiculous in nature, it is an American patriot, signing resolutions of
independency with the one hand, and with the other brandishing a whip over his
frightened slaves.”
Was the War Fought Over Slavery?
The war was fought over Southern
independence, not over slavery.
If there be those who would not save the
My paramount objective is to save the
If I could save the
In July 1861, after the First Battle of
Manassas (Bull Run) had been fought, the U.S. Congress passed a resolution, by
an overwhelming majority, that declared the war was not being fought to disturb
slavery, nor to subjugate the South, but only to “maintain the
The war itself really had nothing directly
to do with slavery. It’s true that disputes over slavery were the most important
factors behind the first wave of secession, but secession and the war were two
separate events. Additionally, four of
the Southern states did not secede over slavery. Secession was a peaceful, democratic process. The seceded states posed no threat to the
federal government, and they had no intention of trying to overthrow the
federal government. The Confederate
states wanted to live in peace with the North and offered to pay their share of
the national debt and to pay compensation for all federal forts in the
South. If
Some will make the argument that had it
not been for slavery there would have been no war and that therefore slavery
caused the war or that the war was fought over slavery. This is not a logical argument. It’s probably true that there would have been no war if there had been no slavery. However, even this is not certain. After all,
We must distinguish between factors and
causes. Slavery was one of several
factors that led to the war, but the cause of the conflict was the Republicans’ refusal to allow the South to leave in peace. The role that slavery played as a factor that
led to the war was similar to the role that oil played as a factor that led to
the first Gulf War in 1991. If there had
been no Kuwaiti oil fields,
If the Southern states had not seceded,
there would have been no war--and slavery would have continued. If the Southern states had surrendered when
The reaction of the Northern abolitionists
to the proposal of fellow abolitionist Moncure Conway is further proof the war
was not fought over slavery. Nearly all
the abolitionists supported the Radicals.
The cries of protest on this side of the
As one reads the speeches and letters of
Confederate leaders during the war, it becomes apparent that they certainly
didn't believe their main reason for fighting was to preserve slavery. For example, beginning in late 1862, James
Phelan, Joseph Bradford, and Reuben Davis wrote to Jefferson Davis to express
concern that some opponents were claiming the war "was for the defense of
the institution of slavery" (Cooper, Jefferson Davis, American, pp.
479-480, 765). They called those who were making this claim
"demagogues." Cooper notes
that when two Northerners visited Jefferson Davis during the war,
Jefferson Davis said repeatedly that the
South was fighting for the same “sacred right of self-government” that the revolutionary fathers had fought for. In his first
message to Congress [the Confederate Congress] after the fall of
To most Southerners, independence was more
important than was the continuation of slavery.
This is not surprising, since less than 10 percent of Southern citizens
actually held title to slaves, and since 69-75 percent of Southern families
were not slaveholders (John Niven, The Coming of the Civil War: 1837-1861,
Arlington Heights, Illinois: Harlan Davidson, Inc., 1990, p. 34; Divine et al,
editors, America Past and Present, p. 389; see also the 1860
Census). Early in the war, James Alcorn,
a powerful planter-politician from
Jefferson Davis summarily rejected
General Lee added his prestige to the
proposal: “We
must decide whether slavery shall be
extinguished by our enemies and the slaves used against us, or use them
ourselves at the risk of the effects which may be produced upon our social
institutions,”
he warned. “My own
opinion is that we should employ them without delay. . . . The best means of securing the efficiency and
fidelity of this auxiliary force would be to accompany the measure with a
well-digested plan of gradual and general emancipation.” In March of
1865, the Confederate Congress narrowly authorized the recruitment of 300,000
slaves, while the Davis Administration promised full emancipation to the
British and French governments in exchange for diplomatic recognition. (Emancipating
Slaves, Enslaving Free Men, pp. 280-281)
A Confederate soldier who was captured
early in the war expressed the South’s reason for fighting in simple yet eloquent terms. He
wore a ragged homemade uniform, and like most other Southerners he didn’t own any slaves. When Union
soldiers asked him why he was fighting for the Confederacy, he replied, “I’m fighting because you’re down here” (McPherson, The Battle Cry
of Freedom, p. 311, emphasis added).
To judge from their own letters, most
Union soldiers didn’t believe the war was being
fought over slavery and didn’t really care about the fate of
the slaves. As McPherson observes, Bell
Wiley studied the attitudes of Union soldiers on emancipation and concluded
that barely one in ten “had any real interest in emancipation per se” (For Cause and Comrades: Why Men Fought in the Civil
War, New York: Oxford University
Press, 1997, p. 117). Based on his own
analysis of a representative sampling of the letters of federal troops,
McPherson concludes that probably less than one in ten Union soldiers fought
solely for the abolition of slavery; such soldiers, he says, were “rare indeed” (For Cause and Comrades, p. 117). He
adds that for the first half of the war, only thirty percent of the men in blue
viewed the abolition of slavery as a necessary part of the primary goal of
preserving the
The attitudes of a good many soldiers on
the matter were more pragmatic than altruistic.
They understood that every slave laborer who emancipated himself by
coming into Union lines weakened the Confederate war effort. It also strengthened the Union army. “I don’t care a damn for the darkies,” wrote an
The second factor that converted many
soldiers to emancipation was a growing conviction that it really did hurt the
enemy and help their own side. “I have always until
lately been opposed to Abraham Lincoln’s proclamation,” wrote a private in the 18th
Pennsylvania Cavalry, a distiller by trade, in May 1863, “but I have lately been convinced that it was just the thing that was
needed to weaken the strength of the rebels. . . .” (For Cause
and Comrades, pp. 119, 125)
What Happened at
The question that really should be asked
is, Why did thousands of Confederate prisoners die of starvation, disease, and
exposure in Northern prison camps when the Union army could have easily given
them adequate food, housing, and medical care?
Yes, thousands of Union prisoners died of
starvation, disease, and exposure at the Confederate prison camp at
One of the most balanced treatments of the
issue of
The Andersonville prison, until the
soldiers built huts for themselves, was but a stockaded enclosure of sixteen
and a half acres in southwestern
The sickening story of
Even McPherson agrees that Confederate
authorities did not deliberately mistreat Union prisoners:
Few if any historians would now contend
that the Confederacy deliberately mistreated prisoners. Rather, they would concur with contemporary
opinions—held
by some northerners as well as southerners—that a deficiency of resources and the deterioration of the southern economy
were mainly responsible for the sufferings of Union prisoners. The South could not feet its own soldiers and
civilians; how could it feed enemy prisoners? (The Battle Cry of Freedom,
p. 800)
At least some Union generals knew that the
Confederates didn’t even have enough food and medicine for their own soldiers. It’s revealing that General Dan Sickles told
Apart from the objections which exist to
the policy of retaliation, it is at least doubtful whether it would inure to
the benefit of our men, for the reason that the enemy are reported to be
without the means to supply clothing, medicines and other medical supplies even
to their own troops. (Official Records,
Series 2, Volume 7, p. 575)
Union soldier Edward Boate was a prisoner
at
You rulers who make the charge that the
rebels intentionally killed off our men, when I can honestly swear they were
doing everything in their power to sustain us, do not lay this flattering
unction to your souls. You abandoned your brave men in the hour of their cruelest
need. They fought for the
Much could be said about the thousands of
Confederate prisoners who died in Union prison camps and about the horrible
conditions in many of those camps. The
The worst Union prison was in
In January 1865,
Rebel prisoners in
our hands are to be subjected to a treatment finding its parallels only in the
conduct of savage tribes and resulting in the death of multitudes by the slow
but designed process of starvation and by mortal diseases occasioned by
insufficient and unhealthy food and wanton exposure of their persons to the
inclemency of the weather. (Congressional
Globe, 38th Congress, 2nd session, January 24, 1865, p. 381)
Senate Resolution 97 was approved by the
U.S. Senate on January 31, 1865. This
meant that the abuse of Confederate prisoners was endorsed by the U.S.
Senate. The mistreatment of Confederate
prisoners had already been going on well before Senate Resolution 97 was
passed, but the resolution’s passage gave the mistreatment the Senate’s stamp of approval. Fortunately,
the resolution was almost immediately made irrelevant when prisoner exchanges
were finally resumed a short time later.
Still, it’s sickening that the U.S. Senate officially endorsed the cruel
treatment of Confederate prisoners.
The tragedy at Andersonville never would
have happened if the
I suspect the real reason Lincoln and
Grant refused to continue prisoner exchanges was that they wanted to deprive
the Confederate army of manpower, even though they knew the Confederacy was in
no position to properly care for the thousands of Union prisoners in its prison
camps. In fact, in August 1864 Grant
said exchanging prisoners would help the Confederacy more than the
I find it somewhat hard to believe that
men like Lincoln and Grant refused to resume prisoner exchanges because of the
Confederate policy on black Union prisoners.
Still more unmistakable evidence of
Ignoring this testimony and pleas from
major leaders, including some Union officers, a military court sentenced
Sergeant Walker to death. Although
Grant’s concern for humanity was nowhere to be seen when he bombed the civilian population of
It’s true that when the Confederacy offered to include black prisoners in the exchanges, Lincoln
and Grant accepted the offer. But this
didn’t occur
until late January 1865, when it seemed
clear the
After the war, Lincoln’s assistant Secretary of War, Charles Dana, blamed Grant for the breakdown
in prisoner exchanges, saying "the evidence proves that it was not the
Confederates who insisted on keeping our prisoners in distress, want and
disease, but the commander of our armies" (in Lynn Tyler, A Confederate
Catechism, Dahlonega, Georgia: Crown Rights Book Company, 2000, reprint, p.
36, quoting from "Treatment of Prisoners During the War Between the
States," Southern Historical Papers, Vol. 1, pp. 112-327). Dana told the New York Sun that “the fact is
unquestionable that while the
Confederates desired to exchange prisoners, to send our men home, and to get
back their own men, General Grant steadily and strenuously resisted such an
exchange”
(Mildred Rutherford, Truths of
History, Dahlonega, Georgia: Crown Rights Book Company, reprint of original
1920 edition, p. 21).
Why did the Confederacy initially decline
to include black Union prisoners in prisoner exchanges? Confederate leaders considered the Union army’s use of former Southern
slaves as a federally sanctioned slave
revolt. The Confederacy was willing to
exchange black Union prisoners who had been legally free when they enlisted,
but they did not believe they should have to return prisoners who were runaway
or captured slaves. From the Confederate
viewpoint, since those slaves had either run away or had been stolen, they had
no right to be soldiers in the federal forces that were invading the
South. I can certainly sympathize with
those runaway slaves who joined the Union army in the hope of securing freedom
for themselves and for their fellow slaves.
But I can also understand why the Confederates felt the way they did on
the matter.
Critics point out that when Union forces
began using slaves as soldiers, Confederate leaders announced that those
soldiers and their white officers would be prosecuted for slave insurrection
and executed. These critics never
mention that the Confederates’ reaction to the use of slave soldiers against them was essentially identical to the American
Patriots’
reaction to the British use of runaway
slaves as soldiers during the Revolutionary War. American Patriot leaders, including George
Washington, were alarmed and resentful when they learned that the British were
offering freedom to American slaves who would fight in the British army. In fact, the colonial legislature of
At the start of the Civil War, the Union
general in command of the Army of the Potomac, with no objection from
To most Southern citizens, the
No such right is acknowledged as a law of
war by writers who admit any limitation. (In Robert Durden, The Black and
the Gray: The Confederate Debate on Emancipation, Louisiana Paperback
Edition, Baton Rouge: LSU Press, 2000, reprint of 1972 edition, p. 27)
Indeed,
One of the reasons that
Whereas George the Third, King of
Great-Britain, in violation of the Principles of the British Constitution; and
of the Laws of Justice and Humanity, hath by an Accumulation of Oppressions
unparalleled in History . . . hath excited the Savages of the country to carry
on a war against us; as also the Negroes to imbrue their Hands in the blood of
their masters, in a manner unpracticed by civilized nations. (“Provincial Conference of
Committees of Committees of the
Another fact that critics rarely mention
is that Confederate forces rarely carried out the execution threat (Garraty, The
American Nation, Volume 1: A History of the United States to 1877, p. 418;
Randall and Donald, The Civil War and Reconstruction, pp. 393-395). Indeed, a credible case can be made that the
number of Southern slaves killed by Union
troops was considerably larger than the number of black Union soldiers executed
by Confederate troops. And, just to
provide some historical perspective, it should be kept in mind that the number
of slaves who died on Northern slave ships during the the American involvement
in the overseas slave trade was greater than the total number of slaves who
died in combat during the Civil War.
Did the South Control the Federal
Government Until 1860?
The claim is frequently made that the
South controlled the federal government until the 1860 election, and that
therefore the South showed a lack of tolerance and fairness when it seceded in
response to Lincoln’s victory. However, anyone who is familiar with American
history knows that the South did not control the federal government until
1860. Many Northern politicians and
writers trumpeted this myth for political and propaganda purposes. A major component of this myth was that the
alleged “Slave
Power” in the South was behind the South’s supposed domination of
the federal government. Some Northern leaders even claimed there was
a “Slave
Power conspiracy” to impose slavery on the entire country. When the war
ended, Radical Republicans issued dire warnings about the need to crush this
supposed Slave Power in order to justify their subjugation and looting of the
defeated South.
For one thing, wealthy Southern plantation
owners, i.e., the men who allegedly comprised the supposed Slave Power, did not
dictate Southern politics. Moreover,
they were by no means uniform in their political beliefs. In fact, many affluent planters were Whigs
(Frank Owsley, Plain Folk of the Old South, LSU Press Edition, LSU
Press, 1982, pp. 141-142; Arthur Schlesinger, The Age of Jackson, Boston:
Little, Brown and Company, 1945, p. 453; McPherson, The Battle Cry of
Freedom, p. 242). And, as mentioned
earlier, some of the wealthiest slaveholders opposed secession. In
Nor is it to be inferred that a
plantation “aristocracy”
somehow controlled the political
destinies of the region, for the current of democracy had eroded the powers of
the gentry until “whatever influence the planters exercised over the political action of the common people was of a personal and local nature” [quoting Owsley, Plain Folk of the Old South, p. 139]. (The
Civil War and Reconstruction, pp. 40-41)
Even in the very conservative Deep South
state of
White manhood suffrage had existed since
1832, and the sovereign voters required wooing and intermingling from their
prospective officeholders. . . .
This was emphatically not a political
world in which rich planters controlled candidates and elections while sipping
sherry and juleps in elegant drawing rooms.
Energetic campaigning antedated
Historian Francis Butler Simkins called
attention to the democratic reforms that the South began to adopt in the early
1800s:
Facts prove that the states of the Old
South, through a series of progressive reforms, conformed to the contemporary
definition of democracy as “an equal division of political
rights, not of property.”
They cast aside the Colonial heritage of suffrage restrictions, property
qualifications for officeholding, and unequal apportionment of legislative
representation.
These restrictions, however, were not
more comprehensive than those prevailing in
If the South truly “controlled” the federal government until 1860, one can only wonder why the
federal tariff was never as low as the South wanted it to be, why Congress gave
the Northern states a legal monopoly in the lucrative shipbuilding business and
why this monopoly was never repealed, why it took ten years for Texas to be
admitted as a state, why Cuba was never annexed, how the Missouri Compromise
became law in 1820, how the Tariff of Abominations passed Congress in 1828, how
the Force Bill passed Congress in 1833, how the tariff act of 1842 passed
Congress, how the John Calhoun resolutions of 1847-1848 were all defeated, how
the Wilmot Proviso passed the House of Representatives twice, how the Compromise
of 1850 was enacted, why Kansas wasn’t admitted
as a slave state, why the Missouri Compromise line wasn’t extended to the west
coast, and how the draconian Morrill Tariff passed the House in 1860.
Some critics claim that Southern congressmen supported the 1828 Tariff
of Abominations, but in point of fact most Southern congressmen voted against
it (see Taussig, The Tariff History of the United States, pp. 61-62).
It’s true that there were periods when the South had more influence on federal policy than did
the North, but there were also periods when this was not the case. At no time did the South control the federal
government in terms of doing whatever it wanted. Cooper notes that “after mid-1854 no chance
remained for a congressional majority on any initiative marked as a southern measure” (Jefferson
Davis, American, p. 284). The South
was usually able to block or modify unwanted bills in the Senate, but not
always, and the South was frequently unable to defeat unwanted bills in the
House. As early as 1819 “the North had built up a decisive majority in the House of Representatives” (Divine et al, editors, America Past and Present, p. 281). Historian John Niven notes that the South
continued to lose ground in the House from 1830 to 1840:
The House of Representatives, whose
membership was based on the census returns for each state, reflected this
growing disparity [between the populations of the North and the South]. Even counting three-fifths of the slave population
(as the federal Constitution provided), free states increased their majority
from twenty-three seats in 1830 to twenty-nine seats in 1840. The disparity expressed in total seats was
149 representatives from the
As for the presidency, Presidents John
Adams, John Quincy Adams, Martin Van Buren, William Harrison, Franklin Pierce,
and James Buchanan were all Northern politicians. And who were the Southern presidents? They were George Washington, Thomas Jefferson,
James Madison, James Monroe, Andrew Jackson, John Tyler, James K. Polk, and
Zachary Taylor. So the South by no means
enjoyed exclusive control of the White House prior to the war. Furthermore, the “Southern” presidents
didn’t automatically take the South’s side on all issues, just as the “Northern” presidents didn’t
automatically take the North’s side on
all issues. For example, President
Taylor sided with Northern politicians on crucial aspects of the Compromise of
1850 and also supported the Wilmot
Proviso, even though he himself was a slaveholder.
When the South did exercise considerable
influence on federal policy, it used that influence toward efforts to reduce
taxes, to limit the growth of the federal government, to curb or eliminate harmful
protectionist trade policies, to impose fiscal responsibility on federal
spending, to abolish the corrupt United States Bank, to preserve our free
banking system, to prohibit the use of tax dollars for wasteful corporate
welfare schemes, to expand the land area of the United States by acquiring new
territory, to preserve the sovereignty of the states, and to enforce a strict
interpretation of the Constitution.
Under Southern leadership,
I’m not saying that Southern politicians did no wrong. For
example, the Southern-inspired 1836-1844 gag rule in the House of Representatives
preventing debate on petitions to abolish slavery in the
All Americans should be grateful that most
Northern politicians did not get their way during crucial times in the decades
leading up to the Civil War. If the
Northern Federalists, followed by the Northern Whigs, had been in control of
the government during certain key periods before the war,
If the Northern Federalists had been in
power in the early 1800s, the
In addition, if the Federalist-dominated
New England states had had their way, the War of 1812 with
New Englanders refused to cooperate with
the war effort. . . . New Englanders
carried on a lucrative, though illegal, commerce with the enemy. When the U.S. Treasury appealed for loans to
finance the war, wealthy northern merchants failed to respond. (Divine et al,
editors, America Past and Present, p. 254)
Historian Kenneth Stampp:
New England Federalists throughout the
war regarded the . . . politicians in
Federalist governors contested federal
calls on the state militias. . . .
Federalists discouraged voluntary enlistments. . . . Federalists resisted tax measures and
boycotted government loans. . . .
Meanwhile, New Englanders defiantly continued to trade with
Historian Forrest McDonald:
New Englanders protested loudly and
refused to cooperate in the prosecution of the war. With congressional authorization, Madison
issued a call for 100,000 militiamen, but those in New England refused to hear
the call, and the governor of Massachusetts intervened to prevent their being
forced into service. . . . Similarly,
bankers in the region refused to subscribe to loans to the
But the Yankees went beyond resistance
into activities that were literally treasonable, even by the Constitution’s restricted definition
of that crime. Through well-established connections in
What was more important in dividing
Americans in their attitudes toward the war was a British blockade, imposed
partially by the end of 1812 and made total by the middle of 1813—except for
When the Northern Federalists gained
control of the federal government in 1796, they tried to use their newly found
power to silence political opponents. In
1798 they passed the infamous Sedition Act, which made it illegal to “falsely” criticize a federal official:
The Federalists did not rely solely on
the army to crush political dissent.
During the summer of 1798, the party’s
majority in Congress passed a group of bills known collectively as the Alien
and Sedition Acts. This legislation
authorized the use of federal courts and the powers of the presidency to
silence [political opponents]. . . . The
acts were born of fear and vindictiveness, and in their efforts to punish the
followers of Jefferson, the Federalists created the nation’s first major crisis over civil liberties. . . .
The Sedition Law struck at the heart of
free political exchange. It defined
criticism of the
Historian Edmund Morgan wrote that the
Sedition Act “was
one of the most repressive measures ever directed against political activity in the United States” (in Blum and Catton et
al, editors, The National Experience,
p. 162). Legal scholar John Remington
Graham observes that the Sedition Act “broadly
criminalized libel against public officers of the
As if freedom of the press had not become
part of constitutional heritage in the
Historian John Garraty:
Finally, there was the Sedition Act. Its first section, making it a crime “to impede the operation
of any law” or attempt to instigate a
riot or insurrection, was reasonable enough; but the act also made it illegal
to publish, or even to utter, any “false,
scandalous and malicious” criticism of high government
officials.
Although based on English precedents . .
. this proviso rested, as James Madison said, on “the
exploded doctrine” that government officials “are the masters and not the servants of the people.” To criticize
a king is to try to undermine the respect of his subjects. . . . To criticize an elected official in a
republic is to express dissatisfaction with the way one’s agent is performing his assigned task, certainly no threat to the state
itself. The fundamental difference
between these two modes of thought escaped the Federalists of 1798.
This, of course, is mere theory. Far worse was the Federalists’ practice under the
Sedition Act. As the election of 1800 approached, they made
a systematic attempt to silence the leading . . . [opposition] newspapers of
the country. Twenty-five persons were
prosecuted and ten convicted, all in patently unfair trials. In typical cases, editor Thomas Cooper was
sentenced to six months in jailed and fined $400 [a substantial amount of money
at the time], editor Charles Hall got three months and a $200 fine, editor
James Callender got nine months and a $200 fine. (John Garraty, The American
Nation, Volume 1: A History of the United States to 1877, p. 155)
Founding fathers Thomas Jefferson and
James Madison rightly viewed the Sedition Act as a dangerous step toward a
police state. In response to this threat
to free speech and liberty, Jefferson authored the Kentucky Resolutions, while
In the summer of 1798 a Federalist
Congress passed, and President Adams signed, a series of acts designed to
strengthen the government’s hand and to silence domestic
critics. . . . The most controversial
measure was the Sedition Act. . . . For
a period of two years it was declared unlawful for anyone to “write, print, utter, or publish” anything “false, scandalous and malicious”
against those in federal office. It was further declared seditious to bring
Congress or the president “into contempt or disrepute” or to
“excite
against them . . . the hatred of the good people of the
Dominated by Federalist legislators, all
of the Northern states denounced the
In a 1799 letter to
Historian Frank Owsley pointed out that
Under the Sedition Act men had been
prosecuted for criticizing the President or members of Congress or judges and
had been sent to prison in violation of the Constitutional guarantee of freedom
of speech. Opinion had been suppressed,
meetings broken up, arbitrary arrests made, men held without trial, in fact,
the whole body of personal liberties had been brushed aside by the Federalist
or centralizing party. . . . Jefferson
and Madison, supported by the state-rights apostle of Virginia, John Taylor of
Caroline, and . . . John Randolph, proclaimed that the federal government had
thus shown itself to be an unsafe protector of liberty. So
When Northern Federalists sought to block
the admission of
Six years later the territorial
legislature of
In a letter to William Pinckney,
The
The battle over
The Missouri Compromise, passed in 1820,
limited the extension of slavery to a small section of the territories of the
In 1856 the Supreme Court, led by Chief
Justice Roger Taney, ruled in the Dred Scott decision that Congress did
not have the right to ban slavery in the territories and that therefore the
Missouri Compromise was unconstitutional.
However, the Republicans made it clear that if they gained control of
Congress, they would attempt to ban slavery in all the territories, even
though the Supreme Court had just ruled that Congress had no right to ban
slavery in any territory. Most Southern
leaders viewed the Republican position as unfair and lawless. Under Republican territorial policy, founding
fathers like George Washington and James Madison, both of whom were
slaveholders, would have been barred from settling in the territories unless
they came there without their slaves.
The Southern position was that each
territory had the right to abolish or legalize slavery when it applied for
statehood, but that until then slaveholders should have equal access to the
territories. Southern leaders argued
that since the territories were supposed to be the common possession of all
citizens, it was unfair to ban slaveholders from them, especially since
slaveholders had played an important role in winning the Mexican War, which
resulted in the acquisition of the territories granted in the Mexican Cession.
Most Southern leaders viewed equal access
to the territories as a matter of honor and principle, as well as a matter of
law. They knew that relatively few
slaveholders had relocated into those territories where slavery was legal. They also knew that very few slaveholders had
moved into the territories even after the Supreme Court ruled in 1857 that
Congress could not prohibit slavery in any of the territories. However, Southern statesmen felt it was wrong
in principle to treat slaveholders as second-class citizens by denying them
equal access to the territories. They
knew that Northern wage slavery wasn’t banned from the territories. They knew
that Northern factory owners who cruelly abused their workers enjoyed full
access to the territories and were free to bring their inhumane sweatshops with
them. They knew that most slaveholders
treated their slaves better than many Northern factory owners treated their
workers. So most Southern leaders felt
it was unfair and insulting to deny slaveholders equal access to the
territories.
There were two major Southern positions on
what should be done to provide slaveholders full access to the
territories. One position, advocated by
Senator Albert Brown, was that federal legislation should mandate the
protection of slavery in each territory until the territory became a
state. The other position, advanced by
men like Jefferson Davis, James Orr, and Alexander Stephens, was that the
people of each territory should be able to decide whether or not to allow
slaveholders to travel or settle among them with their slaves (Cooper, Jefferson
Davis, American, pp. 327-329). The
Republicans, on the other hand, argued that under no circumstances should any
new territory be allowed to permit slavery, even though the territory could
choose to abolish slavery when it became a state.
It’s often overlooked that the main dispute over slavery between Northern and Southern leaders
involved the extension of slavery into the territories, not the continuation of
slavery where it already existed. Most
Republicans were not opposed to the continuation of slavery in those states where
it was already established. Indeed, as
mentioned earlier, the majority of the men in
If the Republicans had been willing to compromise
to a relatively small degree on the extension of slavery, the Deep South states
may very well have rejoined the Union soon after they seceded (in fact, they
may not have seceded at all if the Republicans had not insisted on banning
slavery in all the territories). Shortly
after
That Crittenden's scheme had wide and
enthusiastic public support there could be no question. John A. Dix, Edward
Everett, and Robert Winthrop no sooner saw it than they wrote approbatory
[approving] letters. Martin Van Buren declared that the amendments [proposed in
Crittenden's plan] would certainly be ratified by three-fourths of the States.
The Senator received hundreds of assurances from all over the North and the
Early in January, Crittenden rose in the
Senate to make the remarkable proposal that his compromise should be submitted
to the people of the entire nation for their solemn judgment, as expressed by a
popular vote. . . . The proposal inspired widespread enthusiasm. . . . Because
of Republican obstruction, interposing delay after delay, it never came to a
vote in the Senate. . . . (The Emergence of Lincoln, pp. 392-393,
401-402)
Historian David Potter says the following
about the defeat of the Crittenden Compromise:
What do we mean, specifically, by saying
that the Republican party rejected compromise? Certain facts are reasonably
familiar in this connection, and may be briefly recalled. In December, 1860, at
the time when a number of secession conventions had been called in the Southern
states but before any ordinances of secession had been adopted, various
political leaders brought forward proposals to give assurances to the
Southerners. The most prominent of these was the plan by Senator John J.
Crittenden of
It’s important to understand that most Republicans wanted to ban slavery from the
territories primarily because they wanted to reserve the territories for white
workers. When they were Whigs or Free
Soilers in 1846-1849, most Republican politicians, including Lincoln, supported
the Wilmot Proviso, which at one point would have banned free blacks
from moving into the territories, in addition to banning slavery there (Divine
et al, editors, America Past and Present, p. 413). Also, as mentioned previously, in the 1860
election campaign many Republican candidates championed their party as the true
“White Man’s
Party” that would reserve the territories
for white labor. Wilmot himself proudly
called his proposal the “White Man’s Proviso” (Holt, The
Fate of Their Country, p. 27).
Now irrespective of the moral aspect of
this question as to whether there is a right or wrong in enslaving a negro, I
am still in favor of our new Territories being in such a condition that white
men may find a home—may find some spot where they can
better their condition—where they can settle upon new soil and better their condition in life.
I am in favor of this not merely
(I must say it here as I have elsewhere) for our own people who are born
amongst us, but as an outlet for free white people everywhere, the world over.
. . . (Abraham Lincoln: Speeches and Writings 1832-1858, New York: The
Library of America, 1989, edited by Don Fehrenbacher, p. 807)
Textbooks and virtually all history books
summarily dismiss the Supreme Court’s position on the Missouri Compromise in the 1857 Dred Scott ruling. However, the court’s position on this issue
is by no means untenable. Critics of the decision note that the
congress of the Articles of Confederation passed the Northwest Ordinance, which
banned slavery in what was then the Northwest Territory (and permitted it in
the territorial lands south of the
On an aside note, Chief Justice Taney’s reputation has been unfairly brutalized over the Dred
Scott decision. Taney’s position on the Missouri Compromise was and is credible and
defensible, and if he had stopped there he would have been on solid
ground. But, tragically and mistakenly,
Taney also ruled in Dred Scott that the Constitution barred blacks from
federal citizenship, and that the sublime statement in the Declaration of
Independence that “all men are created equal” did not apply to blacks.
Civil rights advocates were justifiably outraged by these arguments.
However, before we judge Taney too
harshly, a few things should be said in his defense. Although he argued that the Constitution did
not permit blacks to be federal citizens, he added that they could receive
state citizenship. He made it clear that
the court’s
ruling did not prevent states
from conferring full citizenship on slaves, and that the court’s decision only involved federal citizenship. As for Taney’s mistaken
belief that blacks were not included in the phrase “all men are created
equal,” even many Northerners shared this view at the time, including Senator Stephen Douglas of
Taney hinted that he realized that the
denial of federal citizenship to slaves was unjust but that he felt bound by
the Constitution to reach the decision that he reached. He pointed out that it was not the place of
judges to rule on the basis of justice or injustice in deciding the legality of
laws, but on the basis of the text of the Constitution and the original intent
of its authors. Said Taney,
It is not the province of the court to
decide upon the justice or injustice, the policy or impolicy, of these laws.
The decision of that question belonged to the political or law-making power; to
those who formed the sovereignty and framed the constitution. The duty of the
court is, to interpret the instrument they have framed, with the best lights we
can obtain on the subject, and to administer it as we find it, according to its
true intent and meaning when it was adopted.
And:
The change in public opinion and feeling
in relation to the African race, which has taken place since the adoption of
the Constitution, cannot change its construction and meaning, and it must be
construed and administered now according to its true meaning and intention when
it was formed and adopted.
It should also be pointed out that Taney
had no love for slavery. In fact, Taney
disliked slavery and had long since freed his own slaves. Very few textbooks mention these facts. To his credit, McPherson mentions them in his
book The Battle Cry of Freedom.
McPherson also notes that Taney was “committed to liberating American enterprise from the shackles of special privilege,” that as President
Jackson’s Secretary of the Treasury he
helped destroy the Second Bank of the
Events in
Actually, the violence in “Bleeding Kansas” was not
appreciably more severe than was common
in newly opened frontier communities, and a lot of it involved land claims and
other disputes having no bearing upon slavery.
But newspapers in the Northeast carried sensational stories almost daily
and portrayed the actions as representing unmitigated proslavery aggression. (States’ Rights and the Union, p. 171)
Historian Thomas Woods:
It was fairly clear that slavery would
not take root in
A recent study concluded that of the 157
violent deaths that occurred during
Any response to the charge that the South
controlled the federal government before the war wouldn’t be complete without an examination of the Brooks-Sumner incident. The incident is often cited as an example of
the South’s
alleged intolerance and barbarism even
in the halls of Congress. On May 22,
1856, Representative Preston Brooks of South Carolina walked onto the floor of
the Senate carrying a cane. Brooks was
looking for Senator Charles Sumner of
Shortly after the attack, Northern
congressmen tried to expel Brooks from the House, but they failed to achieve
the two-thirds majority required for expulsion.
Northern politicians were outraged that Southern representatives wouldn’t vote to expel Brooks. Not all
Southern congressmen necessarily condoned Brooks’s assault, but most of them believed that Sumner had behaved in a rudely
provocative manner and that therefore Brooks’s conduct did not warrant expulsion. I can’t condone Brooks’s
behavior. By any reasonable measurement, his use of
force was unacceptable. I suspect I
would have voted to expel him from the House, or at least to censure him (he
was in fact censured). However, I agree
with Lloyd Paul Stryker that the attack “was provoked if any ever was” (Andrew Johnson, p. 51). Senator Douglas of
The way in which events in
Many Southerners believed that Brooks’s act was unwise because
it played into the hands of the
abolitionists, although there were few who felt that it was not justified. His Southern colleagues prevented his
expulsion from Congress by refusing the necessary two-thirds majority, and when
he resigned voluntarily he was re-elected with only six votes cast against
him. Enthusiastic friends presented him
with suitably inscribed canes and wrote exultant editorials. Brooks did not like these vulgar
manifestations of approval. He was a
courtly gentleman far removed from the ruffian depicted in the abolitionist
propaganda. To him the chastisement of
Sumner was an unpleasant duty under a code of honor which required that the
slanderer of a helpless kinsman should not go unpunished. (A History of the
South, p. 200)
Historian Lyon G. Tyler, son of President
John Tyler, pointed out that when one Northern congressman attacked another
Northern congressman in an earlier incident similar to the Brooks-Sumner
affair, neither offender was expelled and both were reelected:
The remarkable point is that
The Reconstruction Era
Time only allows me to provide a limited
sketch of the “Reconstruction”
program that the Republicans imposed on the South after the war. I don’t deny that some good things were accomplished during
Reconstruction. Nor do I deny that
Reconstruction, as bad as it was, could have been worse. However, most textbooks only talk about the
good aspects of Reconstruction, while they ignore or minimize the negative
aspects. The unjust, illegal aspects of
Reconstruction merit discussion.
Reconstruction began in 1865 and
officially ended in 1877. The Radicals
took substantial control of Reconstruction in 1867. Reconstruction was bad enough from the
outset, but it became much worse under Radical influence. The Radicals illegally placed the South under
military rule. They divided the South
into five military districts, each governed by a Union army general. They nullified the recent Southern elections
and refused to allow Southern congressmen to take their seats in Congress, even
though these men had been elected in elections that were just as valid as any
election that had been held in the North.
Not content with their political subjugation of the South, the Radicals
and other Republicans allowed the Southern states to be looted and exploited
for years by Northern business interests and by corrupt Reconstruction
governments. The Radicals did these things over the strenuous objections of
The Radicals also shamelessly contradicted
During the worst period of Reconstruction,
Southerners who voiced objections to Republican policy could be jailed, and
even executed, without indictment or trial.
Southern newspapers that criticized Reconstruction ran the real risk of
being shut down, and some newspapers were closed down for this reason. Federal troops were stationed all over the
South, and in some cases their conduct was disgraceful and abusive. Many Republican operatives and other
Northerners who came to the South poisoned race relations by inciting former
slaves to hate and persecute Southern whites.
The Republicans made it illegal for males who had served in the
Confederate army or in the Confederate government to vote or hold public
office. Ex-Confederates could only vote
if they were willing to lie by taking the “ironclad oath.” The oath
disqualified any man who had served in the Confederacy or who had even “aided” the Confederacy. Of course,
this excluded a large majority of Southern men.
To their credit, some Southern black leaders opposed denying former
Confederates the right to vote, but their efforts were unsuccessful. New Southern legislatures and governors were
chosen in elections in which most former Confederates were barred from voting. These corrupt Reconstruction state
governments imposed oppressive taxes on their citizens and also stole or wasted
a staggering amount of taxpayer money.
Historian Albert B. Moore noted the vindictive, unjust nature of
Reconstruction:
The war set the stage for a complete
reconstruction of the South. Furious
hatred, politics, economic considerations, and a curious conviction that God
had joined a righteous North to use it as an instrument for the purging of the
wicked South gave a keen edge to the old reconstruction urge. The victories of bullets and bayonets were
followed by the equally victorious attack of tongues and press. Ministers mounted their pulpits on Easter
Sunday, the day following President Lincoln’s
tragic death, and assured their sad auditors that God’s will had been done, that the President had been removed because his
heart was too merciful to punish the South as God required. An eminent
Many unfriendly writers invaded the
South, found what they wanted, and wrote books, articles, and editorials that
strengthened the conviction that the South must be torn to pieces and made
anew. Books, journals, and newspapers
stimulated the impulse to be vigilant and stern, to repress and purge. . . .
The repudiation of its debts impoverished
the South and destroyed its financial relationships. While the South lost its debts, it had to pay
its full share of the northern debts which amounted to about four-fifths of the
total northern war expenses. The money
for this debt was spent in the North for its upbuilding. It paid also its share of the $20,000,000
returned by the Federal treasury to the northern states for direct taxes
collected from them during the war, and of extravagant pensions to Union
soldiers. Professor James L. Sellers
estimates that the Sound paid in these ways an indemnity of at least a billion
dollars to the North. . . .
It would be safe to say that the people
of the North never understood how the South suffered during the Radical
regime. The Radicals who controlled most
of the organs of public opinion were in no attitude of mind to listen to
southern complaints, and most people were too busy with the pursuit of alluring
business opportunities that unfolded before them to think much of what was
going on down South. . . .
The South staggered out of the
Reconstruction, which ended officially in 1877, embittered, impoverished,
encumbered with debt, and discredited by Radical propaganda. . . . The tax load had been devastating. The lands of thousands upon thousands had
been sold for taxes. Huge state and
local debts, much of which was fraudulent, had been piled up. So many bonds, legal and illegal, had been
sold that public credit was destroyed. (In Gerald Grob and George Billias,
editors, Interpretations of American History, Volume 2, New York: The
Free Press, 1967, pp. 33-35, 37-38, original emphasis)
Hummel notes the heavy tax burden that was
imposed on the South after the war:
. . . the war-ravaged South suffered
under some of the heaviest state and local taxation in proportion to wealth in
Economist Thomas DiLorenzo discusses some
of the ways in which Republicans and Northern business interests exploited the
South during Reconstruction:
What did the Republican Party do with its
monopolistic political power? First, it
plundered Southern taxpayers by greatly expanding state and local governmental
budgets. Little of this governmental
expansion benefited the general public; the main beneficiaries were the
thousands of “carpetbaggers”
(and a few “scalawags”) who populated the newly bloated governmental bureaucracies and who benefited from
government contracts. . . .
The biggest item on the agenda of the
Republicans was government subsidies to the corporations that bankrolled the
Republican Party. The Confederate Constitution
outlawed such corporate welfare, but with the defeat of the Confederate armies
there was no longer any opposition to it.
From 1866 to 1872 the eleven southern
states amassed nearly $132 million in state debt for railroad subsidies
alone. In countless instances bonds were
issued but were backed by no property of any value. In many states bonds were sold before work
began on railroads, and “dishonest promoters sold these bonds for what they could get and never built the roads.” [Quoting E. M. Coulter, The South during Reconstruction, LSU Press,
p. 150]. . . .
The federal government established a “Land Commission” that was
ostensibly set up to buy property and
turn it into homesteads for ex-slaves.
Instead, most of the land was handed out to those with good connections
to the Republican Party. . . . Many
recipients of land grants were paid “front men” for mining and timber companies.
Many of the Republican Party operatives
who dominated Southern legislatures during Reconstruction literally sold their
votes for cash on a daily basis: The going rate was just under $300 per vote. .
. . The expansion of government provided
myriad opportunities for bribery, and Republican Party opportunists took great
advantage of them. . . .
The historian E. Merton Coulter
catalogued myriad ways in which Republican Party operatives figured out how to
loot Southern taxpayers:
* By 1870 the cost of printing alone to
the government of
* The
* Before the war a session of the
* Taxes on property were increased by intolerable amounts so that
the governmental agents could then confiscate the property for “unpaid taxes”. . . . By 1872
property taxes in the South were, on average, about four times what they were
in 1860. In
The tax collectors stole much of this
money. More than half a million dollars
in taxes collected in 1872 were never turned in to the
Although the South was economically
destitute, a punitive five cents per pound federal tax was placed on cotton,
making it difficult, if not impossible, for many cotton growers to stay in
business. A military order stated that
anyone who had sold cotton to the Confederate government must give up his
cotton to the
In order to keep this corrupt system
running, the Republican-controlled governments subsidized pro-Republican newspapers
to the tune of tens of thousands of dollars annually and, in some cases,
granted them legal monopolies in the newspaper business in particular
towns. In effect, the Republicans were
extending
Steven Weisman discusses some of the ways
that the Republicans punished and exploited the South during Reconstruction:
The election in the fall of 1866 cemented
the control of Congress by radical Republicans, emboldening them not only in
their punitive approach to the South but also in their drive for high tariffs
and muscular government on behalf of business.
Among the harshest of the Reconstruction Era steps directed at the South
was the invalidation of the entire Confederate debt. Congress also ruled out any possibility of
slaveholders being compensated for the loss of their slaves. Beyond the total destruction of vast swathes
of Confederate farmlands and cities, these steps wiped out billions of dollars
of assets held by the South’s aristocracy. By contrast, in the North, everything
possible was done to redeem the
As noted, Northern business interests took
full advantage of the South’s subjugation during Reconstruction. African-American scholars
Franklin and Moss note that “Northern financiers and industrialists took advantage of the opportunity to impose their economic control on the
South, and much of it endured for generations” (From
Slavery to Freedom: A History of African Americans, p. 264).
Kenneth Davis concedes that Southern railroad companies were
"burdened for decades by unfair rates and restrictive tariffs set by
Northerners, who controlled the vast majority of railways and the legislatures
that set rates" (Don't Know Much About the Civil War, pp. 425-426).
“But,” some
will ask, “wasn’t slavery abolished under Reconstruction?” Yes, slavery
was abolished during the Johnson phase of Reconstruction when the Thirteenth
Amendment was ratified on December 18, 1865.
We can all agree that slavery was wrong and that it needed to be
abolished. But it was abolished in a way
that was unfair and that caused enormous damage to the Southern economy. Under the Thirteenth Amendment, Southern
slaveholders received no compensation for their slaves. The abolition of slavery without compensation
cost the South about two billion dollars in capital, and it reduced real estate
values by at least that amount. In terms
of modern monetary value, this represented a total loss of over sixty billion
dollars.
Southern slaveholders should have been
able to recover the cost of their slaves, just as Northern slaveholders had
been able to do decades earlier. Most
Southern slaveholders treated their slaves humanely. Many of these men believed they had a
Christian duty to properly and respectfully care for their slaves. One doesn’t have to condone human bondage to acknowledge that in most cases Southern slavery was
administered humanely. This isn’t the place for an
extended discussion on Southern slavery,
but the following facts should be noted:
* When the Works Progress Administration
interviewed thousands of ex-slaves in the 1930s, most of those who commented on
how they were treated said their masters were good men.
* Southern slaves had a life expectancy
that was comparable to urban populations and higher than in some
European nations. In fact, slaves had a
longer life expectancy than did Northern factory workers.
* The diet and housing of slaves were
comparable to, if not usually better than, the diet and housing of Northern
factory workers. According to the 1860
Census, there were 5.2 persons per house among slave households on large
plantations, whereas there were 5.3 persons per house among free
households. In the vast majority of
cases, a slave family lived in a house, not in a dormitory with other families.
* In many cases slaves received a greater
share of the product of their labor than did many Northern factory workers.
* Most slaves marriages were not
broken up. McPherson, a pro-Northern
historian, acknowledges that 66-80 percent of slave marriages remained
intact. An interesting statistic is that
nearly 40 percent of the marriages performed in Southern Episcopal churches
between 1800 and 1860 were slave marriages.
On average, only one out of every twenty-two slaveholders sold a slave
in a year, and about one-third of those cases occurred in the sale of estates
of masters who had died. The records
from the
* Most slave overseers were black.
* The suicide rate among slaves was much lower
than the suicide rate among whites.
* Hundreds of thousands of slaves, if not
millions, were converted to Christianity under slavery.
* Even in the 1850s some slaves were able
to buy their freedom, partly because they were permitted to earn money.
For documentation of the above facts, see
Robert Fogel and Stanley Engerman, Time on the Cross: The Economics of
American Negro Slavery, Norton Edition with Afterword, New York: W. W.
Norton & Company, 1989, pp. 38-157; McPherson, Ordeal By Fire, pp.
34-36; Walter Kennedy, Myths of American Slavery, Gretna, Louisiana: Pelican
Publishing, 2003, pp. 101-139; John J. Dwyer, editor, The War Between the
States: America’s Uncivil War, Denton,
Texas: Bluebonnett Press, 2005, pp. 67-86;
Eugene D. Genovese, Roll, Jordan, Roll: The World the Slaves Made, Vintage
Books Edition, New York: Vintage Books, 1974, pp. 325-565.
Granted, no matter how humanely slavery
was administered, it was still wrong.
The point is that most Southern slaveholders did not deserve to lose
their slaves without compensation, and that this unfair policy did great damage
to the South’s
economy.
Textbooks note the fact that Radical
Reconstruction included civil rights reforms that enabled former slaves to
vote. However, they almost never mention
information that sheds important light on those reforms. If the Republicans had enacted and
implemented these reforms in a legal, ethical manner, and if their motives for
doing so had been noble, they would deserve nothing but praise. But such was not the case. Most Republican leaders supported the
imposition of these reforms because they wanted to control and exploit the
Southern states, not because they really cared about the fate of the
ex-slaves. Republican operatives
manipulated, and sometimes even coerced, ex-slaves to vote Republican so the
Republican Party could take over Southern state governments. Many Republican operatives who came to the
South during Reconstruction did all they could to poison race relations between
ex-slaves and Southern whites. Once the
Republicans took control of Southern state governments, they proceeded to
engage in large-scale corruption and oppression, which harmed blacks and whites
alike. A respected moderate Southern
leader in
Great resources were expended on
registering the adult male ex-slaves to vote, while a law denying the franchise
to anyone involved in the late “rebellion”
disenfranchised [took away the right to vote from] most Southern white men. So rigorous were the restrictions placed on
white Southern males that anyone who even organized contributions of food and
clothing for family and friends in the Confederate army was disenfranchised, as
were all those who purchased bonds from the Confederate government. Even if one did not participate in the war
effort, voter registration required one to publicly proclaim that one’s sympathies were with
the Federal armies during the war. . . .
The federally funded “Union Leagues” were run
by Republican Party operatives and administered voter registration of the ex-slaves.
This, too, was a dramatic change in the nation’s political life, for tax dollars taken from taxpayers of all political
parties were being used to register only Republican voters. The ex-slaves were promised many things,
including the property of white Southerners, if they registered and voted
Republican and, at times, were threatened or intimidated if they dared to
register Democrat. All of this was
funded with federal tax dollars. . . .
For years, these men, along with government bureaucrats associated with
the “Freedmen’s
Bureau,” promised blacks that if they
voted Republican they would be given the property of the white population (and,
of course, they never were).
Missionaries and many other people
assisted the ex-slaves in integrating into society, but the primary concern of
the Party of Lincoln was to get them registered to vote Republican, not to
educate them, feed them, or help them find employment. The result was that by 1868 ten of the
fourteen southern
If Northerners in general and the
Republican Party in particular wanted blacks to be given the vote because of
their concern for social equality, then one has to wonder why voters in Ohio,
Michigan, Minnesota, and Kansas refused to extend the right to vote to blacks
in 1867 and 1868. . . . (The Real Lincoln, pp. 208-210, original
emphasis)
Congressman Lawrence Patton McDonald
discussed some of the illegal measures and negative consequences of the
Radicals’
reconstruction program:
After a brief period of vacillation,
Andrew Johnson, who succeeded
The Radical Republicans succeeded in
getting their reconstruction programs enacted into law; and then, to make their
principal features permanently binding, they proposed the Fourteenth Amendment. Two-thirds of both chambers of Congress did
not vote for the resolution proposing the Fourteenth Amendment, as must be done
under the Constitution for legal passage of such a resolution. The Radical Republican majority resolved that
the resolution did pass, and submitted it to the states for ratification. Three-fourths of the states did not ratify
the proposed amendment, as required by the Constitution; but the Radical
Republican majority in Congress had the Secretary of State proclaim it ratified
anyway—on
July 20, 1868. By then, the Radical Republicans controlled
not only Congress but also the executive branch. They had the judicial branch thoroughly
intimidated, and their cohorts controlled many state governments in the North.
. . .
Two hundred years of slavery created
relationships that would have been slow to change for the better under the best
of circumstances. Negroes were freed
under the worst of circumstances—suddenly, by a storm of violence. And they were
started, unprepared, on the long road toward the responsibilities as well as
the blessings of freedom, amidst a volcano of hatreds which the violence had
caused. Conceivably, the road would have
been smoother and the trip faster, if the freed blacks could have lived amidst
the whites who were hailed as their liberators [i.e., Northern whites], with no
outsiders around to agitate mutual hatreds, resentments, and fears. Unfortunately, it was the other way around.
The military power that destroyed white
supremacy in the South established black supremacy. Under the protection of this invading
military force, white outsiders manipulated and used southern Negroes, but did
not educate them, or even permit them to learn much about the burdens and responsibilities
that freedom itself imposes. When
northern military rule was withdrawn in 1877, and white supremacy was again
established in the South, southern blacks and whites were in even worse
condition (socially and economically) to establish a harmonious society than
they would have been in if left alone at the end of the Civil War. (Lawrence
Patton McDonald, We Hold These Truths: A Reverent Review of the U.S.
Constitution, Seal Beach, California: ’76 Press, 1976, pp. 55-56, 92)
Civil rights could and should have been
advanced through legal, ethical means.
Yes, this would have taken longer, but it would have preserved the
constitutional republic that our founding fathers gave us, and all Americans
would have been better off in the long run.
Instead, in the name of imposing civil rights on the South, the
Republicans subverted the rule of law, permitted Republican operatives to
engage in astonishing corruption, looted the South for years, poisoned race
relations, illegally and unethically amended the Constitution, further
destroyed the balance of power between the states and the federal government,
and empowered the federal government to perform functions that the founding
fathers did not want it to perform. The Radicals claimed that drastic measures
against the South, including the imposition of military rule, were necessary
because of Southern black codes and because of alleged lawlessness in the
region. Historian William Dunning of
As a justification for military rule, it
was declared . . . that “no legal state governments or
adequate protection for life or property” existed in the “rebel states” enumerated.
Thus the organizations which Lincoln and Johnson had with so much care
nurtured into vigorous life were formally pronounced by Congress destitute of
legality as state governments and “subject to
the paramount authority of the
The reasoning by which the policy of
Congress was justified in the North was regarded in the South as founded on
falsehood and malice. So far as the “black codes” were
concerned, it was pointed out that they
could not be alleged as evidences of a tendency to restore slavery or introduce
peonage, since the offensive acts had in many of the states been repealed by
the legislatures themselves, and in all had been duly superseded by the civil
rights act. (Reconstruction, Political and Economic 1865-1877, Harper
Torchbook Edition, New York: Harper & Row, Publishers, 1962, pp. 93-94,
110)
Thomas E. Woods says the following about
the black codes:
These codes curtailed black liberty in
various degrees and the Radicals described them as a continuation of
slavery. But the codes were essentially
based on Northern vagrancy laws and other restrictive legislation that was
still on the books when the Reconstruction Acts were drawn up. Historian Ralph Selph Henry contends that “there was hardly a feature
of the apprenticeship and vagrancy acts
of
In the northeast, as well as in
Two modern scholars, H. A. Scott Trask
and Carey Roberts, contend that the black codes have been misunderstood in
their intent and exaggerated in their impact:
“Most
granted, or recognized, important legal
rights for the freedmen, such as the right to hold property, to marry, to make
contracts, to sue, and to testify in court.
Many mandated penalties for vagrancy, but the intention there was not to
bind them to the land in a state of perpetual serfdom, as was charged by the
Northern Radicals, but to end what had become an intolerable situation—the wandering across the
South of large numbers of freedmen who
were without food, money, jobs, or homes.
Such a situation was leading to crime, fear, and violence.”
The sense of moral righteousness that
dominated fashionable Northern opinion often blinded Northerners to their own
problems. The Chicago Tribune
protested the black codes of
Historian John Blum, though critical of
certain aspects of the black codes, says the provisions against vagrancy were
required by conditions at the time:
The moderates as well as the Radicals
objected . . . to the “black codes” that the former
Confederate states adopted. These codes
represented the initial Southern effort to regulate the economic and social
lives of the freed slaves. Many of the
Negroes, without experience with freedom, drifted aimlessly about the country,
expecting charity and avoiding work, sometimes stealing or carousing. The “black codes” were designed to discourage vagrancy and to minimize race friction. (In Blum and
Catton et al, editors, The National Experience, p. 377)
Historian John Garraty concludes that when
viewed in historical perspective, even the most restrictive of the black codes
were a marked improvement over slavery:
. . . the so-called Black Codes enacted
by Southern governments to control former slaves alarmed the North. These varied in severity from state to
state. When seen in historical
perspective, even the strictest codes represented a considerable improvement
over slavery. Most permitted blacks to
sue and to testify in court, at least in cases involving members of their own
race. Blacks were allowed to own certain
kinds of property; marriages were made legal; other rights were guaranteed. (The
American Nation, Volume 2: A History of the United States Since 1865,
Eighth Edition, New York: HarperCollins, 1995, p. 434)
I would like to conclude this discussion
on Reconstruction by quoting a substantial portion of President Johnson’s veto of the first Radical Reconstruction Act. Before doing so, I should point out that the
Radicals tried to remove Johnson from office because he opposed their
Reconstruction program, even though he had staunchly supported the war and had
opposed secession. When
I have examined the bill "to provide
for the more efficient government of the rebel States" with the care and
the anxiety which its transcendent importance is calculated to awaken. I am
unable to give it my assent for reasons so grave that I hope a statement of
them may have some influence on the minds of the patriotic and enlightened men
with whom the decision must ultimately rest.
The bill places all the people of the ten States therein named under the
absolute domination of military rulers. . . .
The bill . . . would seem to show upon
its face that the establishment of peace and good order is not its real object.
The fifth section declares that the preceding sections shall cease to operate
in any State where certain events shall have happened. . . . All these conditions must be fulfilled before
the people of any of these States can be relieved from the bondage of military
domination; but when they are fulfilled, then immediately the pains and
penalties of the bill are to cease, no matter whether there be peace and order
or not, and without any reference to the security of life or property. The
excuse given for the bill in the preamble is admitted by the bill itself not to
be real. The military rule which it establishes is plainly to be used, not for
any purpose of order or for the prevention of crime, but solely as a means of
coercing the people into the adoption of principles and measures to which it is
known that they are opposed, and upon which they have an undeniable right to
exercise their own judgment.
I submit to Congress whether this measure
is not in its whole character, scope, and object without precedent and without
authority, in palpable conflict with the plainest provisions of the
Constitution, and utterly destructive to those great principles of liberty and
humanity for which our ancestors on both sides of the Atlantic have shed so
much blood and expended so much treasure.
The ten States named in the bill are
divided into five districts. For each district an officer of the Army, not below
the rank of a brigadier-general, is to be appointed to rule over the people;
and he is to be supported with an efficient military force to enable him to
perform his duties and enforce his authority. Those duties and that authority,
as defined by the third section of the bill, are "to protect all persons
in their rights of person and property, to suppress insurrection, disorder, and
violence, and to punish or cause to be punished all disturbers of the public
peace or criminals."
The power thus given to the commanding
officer over all the people of each district is that of an absolute monarch.
His mere will is to take the place of all law. The law of the States is now the
only rule applicable to the subjects placed under his control, and that is
completely displaced by the clause which declares all interference of State
authority to be null and void. He alone is permitted to determine what are
rights of person or property, and he may protect them in such way as in his
discretion may seem proper. It places at his free disposal all the lands and
goods in his district, and he may distribute them without let or hindrance to
whom he pleases. Being bound by no State law, and there being no other law to
regulate the subject, he may make a criminal code of his own; and he can make
it as bloody as any recorded in history, or he can reserve the privilege of
acting upon the impulse of his private passions in each case that arises. He is
bound by no rules of evidence; there is, indeed, no provision by which he is
authorized or required to take any evidence at all. Everything is a crime which
he chooses to call so, and all persons are condemned whom he pronounces to be
guilty. He is not bound to keep and record or make any report of his
proceedings. He may arrest his victims wherever he finds them, without warrant,
accusation, or proof of probable cause. If he gives them a trial before he
inflicts the punishment, he gives it of his grace and mercy, not because he is
commanded so to do. It is plain that the
authority here given to the military officer amounts to absolute despotism. But
to make it still more unendurable, the bill provides that it may be delegated
to as many subordinates as he chooses to appoint, for it declares that he shall
"punish or cause to be punished."
Such a power has not been wielded by any
monarch in
I come now to a question which is, if
possible still more important. Have we the power to establish and carry into
execution a measure like this? I answer, Certainly not, if we derive our
authority from the Constitution and if we are bound by the limitations which it
imposes. This proposition is perfectly
clear, that no branch of the Federal Government--executive, legislative, or
judicial--can have any just powers except those which it derives through and
exercises under the organic law of the
I need not say to the representatives of
the American people that their Constitution forbids the exercise of judicial
power in any way but one--that is, by the ordained and established courts. It
is equally well known that in all criminal cases a trial by jury is made
indispensable by the express words of that instrument. . . .
An act of Congress is proposed which, if
carried out, would deny a trial by the lawful courts and juries to 9,000,000
American citizens and to their posterity for an indefinite period. It seems to
be scarcely possible that anyone should seriously believe this consistent with
a Constitution which declares in simple, plain, and unambiguous language that
all persons shall have that right and that no person shall ever in any case be
deprived of it. The Constitution also forbids the arrest of the citizen without
judicial warrant, founded on probable cause. This bill authorizes an arrest
without warrant, at the pleasure of a military commander. The Constitution
declares that "no person shall be held to answer for a capital or
otherwise infamous crime unless on presentment by a grand jury". . . .
The United States are bound to guarantee
to each State a republican form of government. Can it be pretended that this
obligation is not palpably broken if we carry out a measure like this, which
wipes away every vestige of republican government in ten States and puts the
life, property, liberty, and honor of all the people in each of them under the
domination of a single person clothed with unlimited authority?. . .
It is a part of our public history which
can never be forgotten that both houses of Congress, in July 1861, declared in
the form of a solemn resolution that the war was and should be carried on for
no purpose of subjugation. . . . This
resolution was adopted and sent forth to the world unanimously by the Senate
and with only two dissenting voices in the House. It was accepted by the
friends of the
The True Nature of the War
In reality, the Civil War was not a civil
war. In a civil war, two or more
factions fight for control of the national government. But the South was not trying to overthrow the
national government, nor was it trying to achieve exclusive control of the
government. The South merely wanted to
leave the federal government in peace and was willing to pay its share of the
national debt and to pay compensation for federal installations in the Southern
states. The Confederacy tried to
establish peaceful relations with the federal government, but
The Civil War was a war of aggression
against the South. Republican leaders
and their wealthy Northern backers used the force of the federal government to
destroy Southern independence. Some of
these men despised the South. Radical
Republicans saw in secession an excuse to subjugate and exploit the Southern
states. Northern business leaders who
favored protectionism feared that their financial empires would be threatened
if the Confederate states were able to trade directly with other nations with
the much lower Confederate tariff. The
Republicans weren’t about to lower the tariff, since they were committed to drastically raising it (which they did soon after
the South seceded). Rather than fairly
compete with the low Confederate tariff by lowering the federal tariff, the
Republicans and many Northern moneymen opted to destroy the Confederacy by
force. As discussed earlier, Charles
Adams demonstrates that after the Confederacy announced its low tariff,
influential Northern business interests began to strongly oppose peaceful
separation, and
Northern industrial and financial leaders
wished to destroy the influence of the agrarian South in
Weisman, after opining that “the great economic changes and tensions of the era” were a major cause of
the war, takes note of the relevant
conclusions of historians Charles and Mary Beard in their widely acclaimed book
The Rise of American Civilization:
In their seminal work The Rise of
American Civilization, Charles and Mary Beard argued that the Civil War
constituted a second American Revolution, with the manufacturing base of the North
solidifying control over the rest of the country, crushing the South militarily
and wielding the economic power to take control of the West. For the Beards, the regressive tariff system
was the core of this system of control, because tariffs helped to build up
industry at the cost of those in the farm sector, placing the burden of
government on the consuming masses rather than the capitalist and owner
classes. (The Great Tax Wars, pp. 102-103)
Even Lerone Bennett, an African-American
scholar who is strongly critical of the Confederacy, agrees that the Northern
industrialists supported the war for monetary gain, had no interest in
emancipation, and used blacks as pawns:
There was finally—and conclusively—the game
plan of the Northern industrialists, who
were fighting not for Black freedom or, to tell the truth, White freedom, but
for the freedom to exploit and develop the American market. Everything indeed suggests that Ralph J.
Bunche was correct when he said that the freeing of the slaves was “only an incident in the violent clash of interests between
the industrial North and the agricultural South—a
conflict that was resolved in favor of the industrial North. In this struggle the Negro was an innocent
pawn.” (Forced Into Glory, pp. 547-548)
Lysander Spooner, though an ardent
abolitionist, harbored no illusions about why the Republicans invaded the
South. Spooner was so radical in his
opposition to slavery that he participated in a plan to free John Brown, the violent
abolitionist who murdered proslavery settlers in Kansas and who tried to incite
slave revolts throughout the South with his raid on Harper’s Ferry, Virginia.
Yet, in spite of his passionate opposition to slavery, Spooner was
sharply critical of the Republicans. He opposed their use of force
against the South. He blamed the war on
the Republicans and called the war evil.
He also opposed Radical Reconstruction.
He argued that Northern industrialists and merchants supported the war
and Radical Reconstruction in order to maintain the North’s
economic dominance:
And it was to enforce this price in the
future --- that is, to monopolize the Southern markets, to maintain their
industrial and commercial control over the South --- that these Northern
manufacturers and merchants lent some of the profits of their former monopolies
for the war, in order to secure to themselves the same, or greater, monopolies
in the future. These --- and not any love of liberty or justice --- were the
motives on which the money for the war was lent by the North. In short, the
North said to the slave-holders: If you will not pay us our price (give us
control of your markets) for our assistance against your slaves, we will secure
the same price (keep control of your markets) by helping your slaves against
you, and using them as our tools for maintaining dominion over you; for the
control of your markets we will have, whether the tools we use for that purpose
be black or white, and be the cost, in blood and money, what it may.
On this principle, and from this motive,
and not from any love of liberty, or justice, the money was lent in enormous
amounts, and at enormous rates of interest. And it was only by means of these
loans that the objects of the war were accomplished.
And now these lenders of blood-money
demand their pay; and the government, so called, becomes their tool, their
servile, slavish, villainous tool, to extort it from the labor of the enslaved
people both of the North and South. It is to be extorted by every form of
direct, and indirect, and unequal taxation. Not only the nominal debt and
interest --- enormous as the latter was --- are to be paid in full; but these
holders of the debt are to be paid still further --- and perhaps doubly,
triply, or quadruply paid --- by such tariffs on imports as will enable our
home manufacturers to realize enormous prices for their commodities; also by
such monopolies in banking as will enable them to keep control of, and thus
enslave and plunder, the industry and trade of the great body of the Northern
people themselves. In short, the industrial and commercial slavery of the great
body of the people, North and South, black and white, is the price which these
lenders of blood money demand, and insist upon, and are determined to secure,
in return for the money lent for the war.
This program having been fully arranged
and systematized, they put their sword into the hands of the chief murderer of
the war, and charge him to carry their scheme into effect. And now he, speaking
as their organ, says, "Let us have peace."
The meaning of this is: Submit quietly to
all the robbery and slavery we have arranged for you, and you can have
"peace." But in case you resist, the same lenders of blood-money, who
furnished the means to subdue the South, will furnish the means again to subdue
you.
These are the terms on which alone this
government, or, with few exceptions, any other, ever gives "peace" to
its people.
The whole affair, on the part of those
who furnished the money, has been, and now is, a deliberate scheme of robbery
and murder; not merely to monopolize the markets of the South, but also to
monopolize the currency, and thus control the industry and trade, and thus
plunder and enslave the laborers, of both North and South. And Congress and the
president are today the merest tools for these purposes. They are obliged to
be, for they know that their own power, as rulers, so-called, is at an end, the
moment their credit with the blood-money loan-mongers fails. They are like a
bankrupt in the hands of an extortioner. They dare not say nay to any demand
made upon them. And to hide at once, if possible, both their servility and
crimes, they attempt to divert public attention, by crying out that they have
"Abolished Slavery!" That they have "Saved the Country!"
That they have "Preserved our Glorious Union!" and that, in now
paying the "National Debt," as they call it (as if the people
themselves, all of them who are to be taxed for its payment, had really
and voluntarily joined in contracting it), they are simply "Maintaining
the National Honor!"
By "maintaining the national
honor," they mean simply that they themselves, open robbers and murderers,
assume to be the nation, and will keep faith with those who lend them the money
necessary to enable them to crush the great body of the people under their
feet; and will faithfully appropriate, from the proceeds of their future
robberies and murders, enough to pay all their loans, principal and interest.
The pretense that the "abolition of
slavery" was either a motive or justification for the war, is a fraud of
the same character with that of "maintaining the national honor."
Who, but such usurpers, robbers, and murderers as they, ever established
slavery? Or what government, except one resting upon the sword, like the one we
now have, was ever capable of maintaining slavery? And why did these men
abolish slavery? Not from any love of liberty in general --- not as an act of
justice to the black man himself, but only "as a war measure," and
because they wanted his assistance, and that of his friends, in carrying on the
war they had undertaken for maintaining and intensifying that political,
commercial, and industrial slavery, to which they have subjected the great body
of the people, both black and white. And yet these imposters now cry out that
they have abolished the chattel slavery of the black man --- although that was
not the motive of the war --- as if they thought they could thereby conceal,
atone for, or justify that other slavery which they were fighting to
perpetuate, and to render more rigorous and inexorable than it ever was before.
. . .
Still another of the frauds of these men
is, that they are now establishing, and that the war was designed to establish,
"a government of consent." The only idea they have ever manifested as
to what is a government of consent, is this --- that it is one to which
everybody must consent, or be shot. This idea was the dominant one on which the
war was carried on; and it is the dominant one, now that we have got what is
called "peace."
Their pretenses that they have
"Saved the Country," and "Preserved our Glorious Union,"
are frauds like all the rest of their pretenses. By them they mean simply that
they have subjugated, and maintained their power over, an unwilling people.
This they call "Saving the Country"; as if an enslaved and subjugated
people --- or as if any people kept in subjection by the sword (as it is
intended that all of us shall be hereafter) --- could be said to have any
country. This, too, they call "Preserving our Glorious Union"; as if
there could be said to be any
Many Republican leaders, while claiming
they were “saving
the
The Republicans and their generals waged a
shameful form of “total war” against the South, causing the deaths of some 50,000 Southern civilians and wiping out whole towns
in the process. They hired thousands of
unscrupulous mercenaries, including many criminals fresh from European
jails. They violated just about every rule
of civilized warfare known to man. They
used tactics that today would justify prosecution for war crimes. A few Union generals, including George
McClellan, objected to this cruel form of warfare, and at least one general,
Don C. Buell, resigned from the army in protest--but these men were the
exception, not the rule. On the other
hand, the vast majority of Confederate generals refused to use the brutal
tactics that so many Union generals were using.
At one point, some Confederate officials urged Jefferson Davis to order
Confederate forces to employ the barbaric tactics that were being used by Union
generals like William Tecumseh Sherman and Phil Sheridan, but
After the war, most Republican leaders
continued to violate the Constitution.
They imposed a clearly illegal military rule on the Southern states and
proceeded to plunder those states for years.
The Radicals and their supporters in the federal army accused and jailed
Jefferson Davis on the absurd charge that he was involved in the conspiracy
that killed
The Radicals came close to establishing a
military dictatorship in the name of “reconstructing” the defeated Southern states. The
Radicals passed a bill that said the military didn’t have to obey the
president’s orders unless the commanding
general of the Army approved those orders (McDonald, States’ Rights and the Union, p. 213). The
bill also made it a crime for any officer to obey orders except those that came
from the commanding general (Brodie, Thaddeus Stevens, p. 298). Just imagine what most Americans would think
if Congress even considered such a law in our day—it
would be denounced as a dangerous step toward military dictatorship.
Or, just imagine what most Americans today
would think if the Secretary of Defense refused to step down when suspended by
the president but instead barricaded himself in his office, issued an order for
the arrest of the man appointed to replace him, and asked friendly members of
Congress to intervene. And imagine what
most Americans would think if the commanding general of the Army then stationed
troops around the Pentagon in order to keep the Secretary of Defense in power
against the president’s express wishes. Impossible?
Couldn’t
happen in
Meanwhile, General Grant in effect placed
the army in direct opposition to the President by publicly throwing his support
behind
During this same period, Grant told
President Johnson that he would only obey his orders if they were written. This was serious insubordination. “Since when,” asked Stryker, “had a general the right to tell the President of the United States
that he would disobey his commands unless they were in writing?” (Andrew Johnson, p. 547). Since
There were other Radical abuses. In January 1868, the Radicals and most of
their fellow Republicans passed a bill, over Johnson’s veto, that transferred all of Johnson’s authority in
Reconstruction to General Grant. The Radicals also worked to deny President
Johnson his constitutional authority to appoint
justices to the Supreme Court by amending the Judiciary Act so the president
couldn’t fill
vacancies that might occur on the high
court (McDonald, States’ Rights and the Union, p. 211).
After Edwin Stanton barricaded himself in his office and asked the
Radicals for help, two Radicals, Senator Zachary Chandler and Representative
John Logan, personally led a company of one hundred men to guard the War
Department building (Brodie, Thaddeus Stevens, p. 335).
When even the Lincoln-packed Supreme Court
tried to curb Radical lawlessness, the Radicals reacted with outrage. In the Ex Parte Milligan case, the
high court finally gathered enough courage to conclude that it was illegal to
impose military rule on civilians in non-combat areas where civil courts were
still in operation (which was what the Republicans had been doing, in the
North, for much of the war). The
Radicals were furious with this ruling, partly because it implied they had
committed judicial murder, since several civilians had been sentenced to death
by federal military courts. Then, in Ex
Parte McCardle, the Supreme Court upheld the right of habeas corpus and
reaffirmed the principle that civilians couldn’t be tried in military courts when civil courts were available. The Radicals were so angered by this decision
that they introduced bills in Congress that would have (1) abolished the
Supreme Court’s
jurisdiction in all habeas corpus cases,
(2) ended all judicial review of acts of Congress, and (3) prohibited the high
court from reviewing cases that involved “political
questions,”
including the Reconstruction Act. This was an open attack on basic American
concepts of government, justice, and due process. For example, if the Supreme Court were denied
jurisdiction in habeas corpus cases, it would be unable to protect citizens
against unlawful arrest and imprisonment.
That was exactly what the Radicals wanted. Forrest McDonald observes,
That decision [Ex Parte McCardle]
elicited the most outraged Radical response yet. Three drastic bills were introduced in
Congress: to abolish the Court’s jurisdiction in all habeas corpus cases; to abolish entirely judicial review of acts of
Congress; and to deny the Court power to review “political questions,” including cases
arising under the Reconstruction
Act. Loud protests against the measures
were heard throughout the country, and none was passed. Had they been enacted, the Court would have
been destroyed as an arbiter of the Constitution. (States’ Rights and the Union, p. 218)
Gideon Welles, a cabinet member under both
Lincoln and Johnson, viewed the Radicals with disdain and distrust.
“Hate,
revenge, and persecution enter largely
into their composition,” wrote Gideon Welles. “These fanatics want a God to punish, not to love, those who do not agree with them”. . . .
Four fifths of the radicals, he wrote, “are small party men . . .
without any knowledge of the science of
government or of our Constitution. With
them all, the great, overpowering purpose and aim are office and
patronage. Most of their legislation
relates to office and their highest conception of legislative duty has in view
place and how to get it”. . . .
“These Radical patriots are swindling the country while imposing on
its credulity,”
wrote Welles. “The granting of acts of incorporation, bounties, special privileges, favors,
and profligate legislation of every description is shocking.” (Stampp in Grob and Billias, editors, Interpretations of
American History, Volume 2, pp. 58-59, 60)
Northern Democrat W. C. Prime, who
strongly opposed secession, said the Radical Republicans wanted war in order to
achieve political power. He argued that
the Radicals prevented the federal army from winning the war quickly because
they wanted to prolong the war until they were in a position to subjugate the
South after the fighting ended. Said
Prime,
The history of the war is inextricably
involved in the history of party politics.
No one can understand the former without knowledge of the latter. . . .
Congress, at the moment of McClellan’s arrival in Washington,
as if to instruct him in his duty,
expressed the unanimous sentiment of the North in a resolution which declared “. . . this war is not
waged, on our part, in any spirit of oppression, nor for any purpose of conquest or subjugation, nor purpose
of overthrowing or interfering with the rights or established institutions of
those States [the Southern states], but to defend and maintain the supremacy of
the Constitution and to preserve the Union, with all the dignity, equality, and
rights of the several States unimpaired; and as soon as these objects are
accomplished the war ought to cease.”
McClellan accepted this instruction. It expressed his own views. . . .
But if this purpose were achieved in this
way, the Southern States . . . would reappear in future elections as a solid South
against the machine politicians who had gained power in 1860. If the white vote could be suppressed and the
slaves be freed with the immediate right of suffrage, their vote might be
controlled and a solid South secured for those who had given them the right of
voting. . . .
Various schemes were devised to
accomplish the desired end. For a time
efforts were made to induce the North to adopt a policy which Mr. Chase [Salmon
P. Chase] formulated in an interview with Mr. Wade of the Senate and Mr. Ashley
of the House, December 11, 1861 [both of whom were Radicals].
Mr. Chase said that a State attempting to
secede, the State government being placed in hostility to the Federal government,
“the State
organization was forfeited, and it lapsed
into the condition of a Territory”; that “we could organize territorial courts, and, as soon as it became
necessary, a territorial government”; that “those
States [the Southern states] could not properly be considered as States in the
Union, but must be readmitted from time to time as Congress should provide.” Mr. Wade and
Mr. Ashley were understood to concur in this doctrine; and, as a matter of
fact, it was given out as sound doctrine and was widely advocated in newspapers
and at war meetings engineered by politicians in various parts of the North.
Mr. Chase was too good a lawyer not to
recognize the absurdity of the doctrine as American law. . . .
There was a body of noble, conservative,
and patriotic men in the old Republican party strong enough to interpose many
obstacles in the way of the radicals.
The latter adopted the customary tactics of unscrupulous partisans in
this country, and visited on all who opposed them storms of foul epithets and
charges. . . .Mr. Lincoln was alternately praised and vilified. But no one of the radical coalition was his
friend or desired his continuance at the head of the party. Some old Democratic politicians, recognizing
good prospects of its success, joined the radical party. Congress in time yielded to its control. A committee called The Committee on the
Conduct of the War was created, to be the machine of partisan politics, in
control of the most unscrupulous leaders of the combination, who used it to good
effect in the deception of the confiding people of the country. (“Biographical Sketch,” in
W. C. Prime, editor, McClellan’s Own Story: The War for the Union,
General George McClellan, the commander of
the Army of the Potomac and the Democratic Party’s presidential candidate in 1864, said the Radicals’ real goal wasn’t the restoration of the
The real object of the radical leaders
was not the restoration of the Union, but the permanent ascendancy of their
party, and to this they were ready to sacrifice the
When it became clear to the Radicals that
McClellan would have no part in their plans to ravage the South, they turned on
him with a vengeance. McClellan said the
Radicals “directed
all their efforts to prevent my achieving success” (McClellan’s
Own Story, p. 159). McClellan also said that Edwin Stanton became
Secretary of War after the Radical Republicans and a group of
I’m not arguing that all the Radicals were corrupt or that everything they believed was
wrong. Although I share the view that
many of the Radicals were more interested in power than in civil rights, I also
believe that some of them were sincere.
Many of the Radicals deserve credit for eventually forcing
In a very real sense, the Civil War was
not North vs. South; rather, it was Republican leaders and powerful Northern
business interests vs. the rest of the country.
Although the vast majority of Southerners supported the Confederacy, at
least 40 percent of Northerners did not support the Republicans and wanted to
halt or even abandon the federal invasion of the South. Before the war, dozens of Northern newspapers
voiced the view that the South should be allowed to depart in peace. During the war, so many Northern citizens
opposed
A good indication of
At just about any
point in the war, it’s probable that a majority of Americans
opposed the use of force to hold the
One of the many untold stories of the
Civil War is the fact that Indians, Hispanics, and African Americans supported
and even fought for the Confederacy. The
five tribes of the
Thousands of Hispanics served as soldiers
in the Confederate army, and some even served as commissioned officers. In his book Hispanic Confederates (Clearfield Company, 1999),
John O’Donnell-Rosales identifies over 5,000 Hispanic
Confederate soldiers by name and unit. The
Confederate commissioner to northern
There is evidence that thousands of
African Americans fought for the Confederacy.
For example, the chief inspector of the U.S. Sanitary Commission, Dr.
Lewis Steiner, reported that he saw about 3,000 well-armed black Confederate
soldiers in Stonewall Jackson’s army and that those soldiers were "manifestly an integral portion of the Southern Confederate
Army." Said Steiner,
Wednesday,
September 10--At four o'clock this morning the rebel army began to move from
our town, Jackson's force taking the advance. The movement continued
until eight o'clock P.M., occupying sixteen hours. The most liberal
calculations could not give them more than 64,000 men. Over 3,000 negroes must
be included in this number. These were clad in all kinds of uniforms, not
only in cast-off or captured
In a Union army battle report, a “General D. Stuart” complained about the deadly effectiveness of the black Confederate soldiers whom
his troops had encountered. Confederate
general Nathan Bedford Forrest had slaves and free blacks serving in units
under his command, and said of them, “These boys stayed with me . . . and better Confederates did not live.” After the
Battle of Gettysburg, Union forces took seven black Confederate soldiers as
prisoners, as was noted in a Northern newspaper at the time, which said, “. . . reported among the
rebel prisoners were seven blacks in
Confederate uniforms fully armed as soldiers.” None other than African-American abolitionist
Frederick Douglass complained that there were “many” blacks in the Confederate army who were armed and “ready to shoot down”
Union soldiers. During the Battle of
Chickamauga, slaves serving Confederate soldiers armed themselves and asked
permission to join the fight—and
when they received that permission they fought commendably. Their commander, Captain J. B. Briggs, later
noted that these men “filled a
portion of the line of advance as well as any company of the
regiment.” There are numerous accounts of slaves
assisting Confederate soldiers in battle and helping them to escape capture
afterward (see, for example, Francis Springer, War for What?,
Down in
In the July 1919 issue of The Journal of Negro History, Charles
S. Wesley discussed the issue of blacks in the Confederate army:
The loyalty of the slave in guarding home and family during his master’s absence has long been eloquently orated. The Negroes’ loyalty extended itself even to service in the
Confederate army. Believing their land
invaded by hostile foes, slaves eagerly offered themselves for service in
actual warfare. . . .
At the outbreak of the war, an observer in
Two weeks after the firing on
Civil War author Francis Springer noted two other accounts of free
blacks showing support for the Confederacy:
The Petersburg Daily Express of April 26, 1861, had it that 300 free
Negroes about to leave the city to work on fortifications, assembled at the
courthouse to hear a speech by ex-mayor John Dodson. Charles Tinsley, one of the free Negroes,
said, “We are willing
to aid
Springer also discussed an incident in which a group of slaves who had
been forced to serve in the Union army volunteered to fight for the Confederacy
after they were captured by Confederate forces:
Some Union Negro troops, captured by General Forrest on his last
As mentioned above, there are many accounts of slaves coming to the aid
of Confederate soldiers during and after combat. Perhaps this is an indication that
Confederate officers usually tried to properly care for the slaves who were
working in their units. General Braxton Bragg, commander of the Confederate
Army of Tennessee, issued a written order that “All employees of this army, black as well as
white, shall receive the same rations, quarters, and medical treatment.”
In late April 1862, General John B. Magruder of the Confederate Army of
Northern Virginia learned that Secretary of War George Randolph had received
complaints about how slaves were being treated in his unit. Magruder wrote to
Sir, I have learned that complaints have been made to you of the
treatment of the slaves employed in this army.
It is quite true that much hardship has been endured by the negroes in
the recent prosecution of the defensive works on our lines; but this has been
unavoidable, owing to the constant and long-continued wet weather. Every precaution has been adopted to secure
their health and safety as far as circumstances would allow. The soldiers,
however, have been more exposed and have suffered far more than the
slaves. The latter [the slaves] have
always slept under cover and have had fires to make them comfortable, while the
men have been working in the rain, have stood in the trenches and rifle pits in
mud and water almost knee-deep, without shelter, fire, or sufficient food. There has been sickness among the soldiers
and the slaves, but far more among the former than the latter. (Letter from
General John B. Magruder to Secretary of War George Randolph, April 29, 1862,
in Segars and Barrow, Black Southerners in Confederate Armies, p. 44)
Another untold story of the Civil War is the brutal way that many Union
forces treated Southern slaves. One
Union unit, commanded by Colonel John Turchin, moved into
While northern soldiers had no love for
slavery, most of them had no love for slaves either. . . . While some Yanks
treated contrabands with a degree of equity and benevolence, the more
typical response was indifference, contempt, and cruelty. Soon after Union
forces captured
The case of the Union army’s
treatment of the slaves in
Textbooks note that approximately 150,000 slaves served in the Union
army, but they rarely inform the reader that thousands of those men were forced
to serve. Union army records and other
sources document that thousands of slaves were abducted and then forced into
federal military service; some were taken from their plantations during Union
raids, while others were seized in areas that were occupied by federal
forces. General John Logan told General
Grant, “A major of colored
troops is here capturing negroes, with or without their consent.” General Lovell Rousseau informed General G.
H. Thomas that “officers in command
of colored troops are in constant habit of pressing [i.e.,
forcing] all able-bodied slaves into the military service of the
The scenes of today . . . have been distressing. . . . Some 500 men were hurried . . . from Ladies
and
The next day Pierce wrote to General Hunter to tell him about the
consequences of his order. He said
slaves were taken suddenly and weren’t allowed to go home before leaving. He added that some of the slaves wailed and
screamed and that others fled into the woods but were pursued by soldiers:
The colored people became suspicious of the presence of the companies of
soldiers detailed for the service. . . .
They were taken from the fields without being allowed to go to their
homes even to get a jacket. . . . There
was sadness in all. As those on this
plantation were called in from the fields, the soldiers, under orders, and while
on the steps of my headquarters, loaded their guns, so that the negroes might
see what would take place in case they attempted to get away. . . .
On some plantations the wailing and screaming were loud and the women
threw themselves in despair on the ground.
On some plantations the people took to the woods and were hunted up by
the soldiers. (Keys, The Uncivil War, pp. 21-22)
The conscription of slaves by federal forces continued even after the
Emancipation Proclamation was signed.
For example, several months after the proclamation was issued, General
Innis Palmer wanted to provide “laborers”
for federal troops at
. . . the negroes will not go voluntarily, so I am obliged to force
them. I have sent seventy-one and will
send this afternoon about 150. I expect
to get a large lot tomorrow. . . The
matter of collecting the colored men for laborers has been one of some
difficulty, but I hope to send up a respectable force. . . . They will not go
willingly. . . . They must be forced to go. . . . I am aware that this may be
considered a harsh measure, but . . . we must not stop at trifles. (Keys, The
Uncivil War, p. 106)
Southern family journals and letters contain numerous accounts of Union
soldiers forcefully removing slaves from their homes, even when the slaves made
it clear they didn’t want to
leave (see, for example, Henry Steele Commager, editor, The Civil War
Archive: The History of the Civil War in Documents, New York: Black Dog and
Leventhal Publishers, 2000, pp. 333-336, 675-677).
I’m not suggesting
that all slaves remained loyal to their masters or to
the South during the war. Many thousands
of Southern slaves did in fact flock to Union lines, just as thousands of
colonial slaves flocked to British lines during the Revolutionary War. But many Southern slaves remained loyal, and
quite of few of them viewed Union troops as invaders.
What If the South Had Been Allowed to
Go in Peace?
Did the world end when
I think both the
Some critics have suggested that if the
Confederacy had survived, World War II may have had a different outcome. But the fact that
If the South had been permitted to go in
peace, slavery would have died a natural death in a matter of a few decades, if
not sooner. Before the war, even some
Northern politicians, such as William Seward, said slavery was a dying
institution. The percentage of Southern
whites who belonged to slaveholding families dropped by 5 percent from 1850-1860
(Divine et al, editor, America Past and Present, p. 389). Historian Allan Nevins noted that by the
1850s "slavery was dying all around the edges of its domain" (The
Emergence of Lincoln, Volume 2, p. 469).
Although slavery was still economically profitable, its days were
numbered. Interestingly, some of the
most vocal Northern abolitionists, including Wendell Phillips, welcomed the
South’s
secession because they believed Southern slavery would die out more quickly if the South were no longer
part of the Union. Historians Randall
and Donald, after noting the Confederacy’s move toward officially using slaves as soldiers
and the support of key Confederate
leaders for granting freedom to slaves and their families for faithful military
service, acknowledged that the Confederacy may very well have abolished slavery
even if it had survived the war:
On November 7,
1864, President Davis went so far as to approve the employment of
slave-soldiers as preferable to subjugation, and on February 11, 1865, the
Confederate House of Representatives voted that if the President should not be able to raise sufficient troops
otherwise, he was authorized to call for additional levies “from
such classes . . . irrespective of color . . . as the . . . authorities . . . may
determine”. . . . There was no
mistaking the meaning of this action.
The fundamental social concept of slavery was slipping; an opening wedge
for emancipation had been inserted. Lee’s
opinion agreed
with that of the President and Congress.
On January 11, 1865, he wrote advising the enlistment of slaves as
soldiers and the granting of “immediate freedom to all who
enlist, and freedom at the end of the war to the families of those who discharge their duties
faithfully. . . .” This fact, together
with other indications, suggests that, even if the Confederacy had survived the
war, there was a strong possibility that slavery would be voluntarily abandoned
in the South. (The Civil War and Reconstruction, p. 522)
If the South had been allowed to leave in
peace, over 600,000 soldiers (over half of them from the North) would have been
spared death. Over 50,000 Southern
civilians likewise would have been spared death. Hundreds of thousands of soldiers would not
have been wounded for life. Millions of
families would have been spared sorrow and anguish over their dead and wounded
loved ones. Billions of dollars in
property damage would have been avoided.
And, race relations would not have suffered the poisoning that they
experienced during and after the war.
“But,” some
will ask, “wouldn’t the
What would the South be like today if the
Confederacy had survived? No one can say
with certainty, but it’s likely that taxes of all kinds would be much
lower. Citizens would have much less
government interference in their lives.
Parents would have more control over their children’s education and over
their local schools. Southern schools would most likely allow
voluntary prayer, moral instruction, nativity plays at Christmas time, and
formal Bible reading (as our schools used to do until the 1960s when the
Supreme Court suddenly decided these things were somehow “unconstitutional”). There would
be tough anti-pornography laws, and those laws would be enforced. The lives of unborn children would be protected
by law. There would be no question that
marriage should be reserved for a man and a woman. And a state government could place a Ten
Commandments monument in front of a state judicial building without having to
worry about a federal judge ordering its removal on the basis of an erroneous
interpretation of the Constitution.
However, all this being said, I think that
if the South had been allowed to go in peace, it may very well have eventually
rejoined the
Final Thoughts
Some people think it is unpatriotic or divisive to defend the Southern
side of the Civil War. As a retired U.S.
Army veteran and a flag-waving patriot, I reject that view. Confederate citizens were Americans
too. They were citizens of the “Confederate States of
It is time for the demonization and smearing of the Confederacy to
stop. Compared with other nations of its
day, the Confederacy was one of the most democratic countries in the
world. Even during the war, the
Confederacy held elections and had a vibrant free press. In fact, on balance, the Confederacy was more
democratic than some nations in our day.
Confederate citizens enjoyed every right that we now enjoy, if not
more. The Confederacy sought peace with
the federal government and only fought because it was invaded. The Confederate Constitution was patterned
after the U.S. Constitution and contained improvements that even some Northern
commentators acknowledged were praiseworthy.
(An excellent study of the Confederate Constitution is Marshall DeRosa’s book The Confederate
Constitution of 1861: An Inquiry into American Constitutionalism,
University of Missouri Press, 1991.)
Yes, the Confederacy permitted slavery, but it left the door open for
the admission of
I agree with the sentiments that former Confederate army officer
Does the propriety of discussing the causes of the War Between the
States belong exclusively to Northern writers and speakers? Did the South, when she laid down her arms,
surrender the right to state in self-justification her reasons for taking them
up? If not, I fail to see how it can be
improper, when perpetuating the memory of the Confederate dead, at least to
attempt to correct false and injurious representations of their aims and deeds
and to hand down their achievements to posterity as worthy of honorable
remembrance. (The Men in Gray, pp. 11-12)
I also agree with James Webb, who served
as Secretary of the Navy and Assistant Secretary of Defense under President
Ronald Reagan:
. . . to tar
the sacrifices of the Confederate soldier as simple acts of racism, and reduce
the battle flag under which he fought to nothing more than the symbol of a
racist heritage, is one of the great blasphemies of our modern age. (Born Fighting: How the Scots-Irish Shaped
America, New York: Broadway Books, 2004, p. 225)
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Michael T. Griffith holds a Master’s degree in
Theology from The Catholic Distance University, a Bachelor’s degree in Liberal
Arts from Excelsior College, two Associate in Applied Science degrees from the
Community College of the Air Force, and an Advanced Certificate of Civil War
Studies and a Certificate of Civil War Studies from Carroll College. He is a two-time graduate of the Defense
Language Institute in
Mike Griffith's Civil War
Website