Abraham
Lincoln, the North, and Secession: Questions for Lincoln Defenders
Michael
T. Griffith
2003
@All
Rights Reserved
As I dialogue with people who defend
Lincoln's course of action against the Southern states, I hear various reasons
for this defense. These reasons include the following arguments:
* "Southern states seized federal
installations, in some cases before the state had seceded."
* "The South fired the first shot by
attacking Fort Sumter."
* "Secession was the same as rebellion
because it would have broken up the Union."
* "The Southern states had no right to
leave the Union."
In response to these and other arguments, I
pose the following questions to those who defend what Lincoln and the North did
to the South:
1. If the South had offered to allow all
federal installations to be manned and maintained by federal troops, would this
have made any difference in how Lincoln responded to the South's desire for
independence? Would he have decided against invading the South? Would he have
dropped his threat to invade if the South didn't pay the recently hiked tariff?
If the answer is no, which it obviously is, then isn't it invalid to cite the
Southern states' seizure of federal installations as justification for the
North's invasion of those states? And isn't it therefore invalid to cite the
Confederate "attack" on Ft. Sumter as justification for the North's
invasion?
2. Why was it ok for the original thirteen
colonies to forcefully secede from England, even though this was in clear
violation of British law, but not ok for the Southern states to peacefully
secede from the Union, even though the Constitution is silent on the issue of
secession, even though three of the original thirteen states specified in their
ratification ordinances that the people of those states reserved the right to
resume the powers of government, and even though Thomas Jefferson said he would
allow a state that wanted to separate to do so?
3. Does anyone believe that states like
North Carolina and Virginia--two of the original thirteen states of the
Constitution--would have ratified the Constitution if they had believed they
would be forbidden from ever leaving the Union even if they felt they needed to
do so? Does anyone believe that any of the original thirteen states would have
ratified the Constitution if they had been told that, no matter what, they
could never secede from the Union unless they managed to fight their way
out--does anyone really believe this given how jealously the states sought to
guard their own rights as sovereign entities and given how worried they were
about the federal government exercising unauthorized power over them?
4. Why was it ok for the people of that part
of northern Mexico that would later be known as the state of Texas to
forcefully secede from Mexico, in an undeniable act of aggression and in clear
violation of Mexican law, but not ok for the Southern states to peacefully
secede from the Union, even though the Southern states offered to pay their
share of the national debt, offered to pay compensation for all federal
installations within their borders, and sought peaceful relations with the
North?
5. What does the Declaration of Independence
mean when it says that governments derive their just powers "from the
consent of the governed"? Can anyone deny that the vast majority of
Southern citizens no longer wanted to be governed by the U.S. but wanted to
form their own nation? Why, then, didn't they have the right to peacefully
leave the Union and to form their own nation?
6. Nearly all Americans supported
Lithuania's desire for independence from the Soviet Union. Do you know what
Gorbachev said to Bush Sr. when the latter told him it was unfair to keep
Lithuania in the Soviet Union against its will? He replied that that's exactly
what the federal government did when the Southern states sought their
independence. If you had been Bush, how would you have justified what Lincoln
did in response to the South's desire for independence, and how would you have
distinguished between what Lincoln and the North did and the Soviet Union's
refusal to allow Lithuania to secede?
7. With regard to Lithuania's desire for
independence, if you're going to reply that Lithuania had a right to
independence because it didn't voluntarily join the Soviet Union, are you
making the argument, then, that a union has the right to use force against
member states that want independence if those states joined peacefully and
voluntarily, but that it doesn't have the right to use force against seceding
states if those states were forced the join the union? In other words, if a
state is forced into a union, then the state has the right secede, but if the
state joins peacefully and voluntarily, then the union has the right to use
force to keep it from seceding? Isn't that a rather anti-democratic theory of
government?
8. If you're saying secession is only
acceptable if the seceding states can fight their way out, isn't this nothing
but mob rule, tyranny by the stronger, dictatorship by majority, might makes
right?
9. If the overwhelming majority of citizens
of eleven states want to form their own nation, and if they express this desire
in democratic elections conducted by their respective states, and if those
states then offer to pay their fair share of the national debt, if they offer
to pay for all federal forts within their borders, and if they seek peaceful
relations with the Union, what moral or ethical grounds would you have for
forcing them to remain in the Union? Of course, this was what happened when the
Southern states seceded.
10. Wasn't Lincoln's own Secretary of State,
William Seward, correct when he said, a few months before the North invaded the
South, "It would be contrary to the spirit of the American Government to
use force to subjugate the South"?
11. Wasn't leading abolitionist and
Republican leader Horace Greeley expressing a sentiment in keeping with the
traditional American principles of liberty and freedom of choice when he said
shortly before the war began that "We hope never to live in a Republic
where one section is pinned to the other section by bayonets"?
12. After the Ft. Sumter incident, which
side continued to speak of wanting peaceful relations with the other and which
side announced it was going to invade the other--and which side then sent
armies to invade the other? Which side sent large military forces into the
other's territory in an effort to crush the other?
13. Isn't it revealing that Lincoln
threatened to invade the seceded states if they didn't pay the tariff
("duties and imposts")? Could this threat have had anything to do
with the realization that the North would lose its economic dominance and would
lose a great deal of European merchant traffic if the Southern states were able
to trade directly with Europe and to offer European governments and merchants
tariff rates that were substantially lower than the federal rates at Northern
ports?
14. Was the attack on Fort Sumter really a
valid reason to declare war and to invade the South, given the fact (1) that
South Carolina and then the Confederacy had been trying for weeks to arrange
for the peaceful evacuation of the fort, (2) that the Confederacy had been
promised repeatedly by Lincoln's own Secretary of State that the fort would be
evacuated, (3) that the South was prepared to pay compensation for the fort,
(4) that not one of the federal troops at the fort was killed in the attack,
(5) that those troops were allowed to leave in peace and to return to the North
after the attack, and (6) that the convoy of ships that Lincoln sent to
"resupply" the fort included warships and armed troops?
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Michael T. Griffith holds a Bachelor of Science degree from Excelsior College in Albany, New York, 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 in Wisconsin. He is a two-time graduate of the Defense Language Institute in Monterey, California, in Arabic and Hebrew, and of the U.S. Air Force Technical Training School in San Angelo, Texas. He is the author of four books on Mormonism and ancient texts, and of one book on the John F. Kennedy assassination. He has completed advanced Hebrew programs at Haifa University in Israel and at the Spiro Institute in London, England. He is currently pursuing a Master's degree in Religious Studies from The Catholic Distance University in Hamilton, Virginia.