Rethinking The Civil War

The other day I thumbed through a short book dealing with the Civil War that had been checked out from an elementary-school library.  Unsurprisingly, it set forth the cartoon version of events of how the North was good, the South was evil, and how saint Abraham Lincoln accomplished his holy mission of freeing the slaves.  For a long time I subscribed to this narrative as well; it's hard not to when your young brain is bombarded with it every time the subject comes up.  The good news is that it's never too late to use your mind and rethink what most everyone else regards as self-evident.  This is what I did about ten years ago when I decided to think more seriously about America's existential crisis, which can be directly attributed to the Civil War and its outcome.

The "root" of the problem that first germinated with the Civil War is this: the federal government became the final arbiter of its own powers.  Once that radical notion materialized into blood-soaked fact, it was only a matter of time before federal power ballooned to the obscene extent it has now and transformed a federal system into a unitary, nationalistic one.  It is fair to say from this perspective that Abraham Lincoln was America's Otto von Bismarck.  Quite defensibly, I do not view Abraham Lincoln as a champion of human freedom.

"But he ended slavery!" somebody's howling right about now.  No, he ended one form of slavery and replaced it with another, much worse one.  In antebellum America some were slaves and others were free, yet we're all slaves now, and there is no manumission from a state that claims the right to kill you for trying to secede and regards its own powers as boundless. At least the chattel could dream of being released by his master; we cannot, at least not without trying really hard to suspend our disbelief.  (Granted, there are those who get a kick out of being slaves, but I must work off the assumption that most sane people do not.) 

Let's assume you're unswayed by this because you actually regard yourself as free, perhaps because you have the privilege of voting for the oligarchic sock puppets who plunder you and regulate every move you make.  That still does not make the Civil War or Abraham Lincoln noble for ending chattel slavery.  Slavery was recognized by the Constitution and had the full force of a Supreme Court decision behind it.  Lincoln knew this and even stated in his first inaugural address that he had no legal authority to end slavery where it existed.  During the war years, he admitted in a letter to Horace Greeley that his goal was to preserve the Union regardless of whether that meant ending slavery or keeping it.  Let us not forget that Lincoln was very much a racist who saw African-Americans as inferior and believed that ending slavery required re-colonizing them to Africa.  So Lincoln most certainly was not motivated by ideals.  Even if he had been, to argue that a president may disregard the Constitution in the pursuit of idealism -- even for something as idealistic as ending slavery -- shreds the rule of law and once again converts us all into slaves who exist at the mercy of other men.  It is nonsensical and paradoxical to say that destroying the rule of law sets us free.  Moreover, the Civil War saw the deaths of over 650,000 men and untold injuries to others, when every other society in the modern era managed to end slavery peacefully.  If ending slavery was truly the objective, mass slaughter was not necessary to achieve it.  Slavery was dying out economically as it was, so patience and proper observance of the Constitution would have yielded real freedom in short order, and without slaughter.  But the unspoken objective was to forge a single nation out of what was designed as a federal republic, and Lincoln knew that required blood -- there was no idealism at work.

As an aside, America owes nobody an apology for slavery.  Slavery was a widespread institution dating from the dawn of recorded history, and it was Western civilization (i.e., Christendom) that first voiced serious objections to it.  Africans had no compunction about slavery and sold each other to Europeans and Americans alike.  There were also white slaves who served Muslim masters, but nobody remembers that.  If anything, America and other Western nations should be thanked for even having a debate over an institution that everyone else simply took for granted.  Slavery persists to this very day in parts of Africa.  Would African-Americans honestly prefer that the United States never had dabbled in slavery and thus never imported their ancestors?  America already has gone far beyond the call of duty to them and to all humanity.

If not slavery, what about secession?  Didn't Lincoln have to take radical measures to preserve the Union?  But there's the rub -- Lincoln did not preserve the Union; he destroyed it.  The modern argument presumes that pinning the Union geographically together with bayonets represents saving it, illustrating again the abject materialism of the modern mind.  In spirit the Union was a voluntary association of "free and independent states" (to quote the Declaration of Independence), and secession is a healthy part of our heritage.  We seceded from Great Britain.  Nine states seceded from the Articles of Confederation to create the Constitution, and the remaining four states made a sovereign choice to join the compact.  It was understood that this association was voluntary and that the federal government had only those few powers the states -- who retained their sovereignty -- delegated to it. It was well understood that the states could take their marbles and walk away if they grew weary of the compact.  To deny this is to suggest that marriages may never end in divorce; that contracts may never be breached; or that the United States today may not depart from the United Nations.  Here is a particularly apt quotation from Thomas Jefferson:

If any state in the Union will declare that it prefers separation . . . to a continuance in union . . . I have no hesitation in saying, “let us separate.”

And another:

I see, as you do, and with the deepest affliction, the rapid strides with which the federal branch of our government is advancing towards the usurpation of all the rights reserved to the States, and the consolidation in itself of all powers, foreign and domestic; and that, too, by constructions which, if legitimate, leave no limits to their power. Take together the decisions of the federal court, the doctrines of the President, and the misconstructions of the constitutional compact acted on by the legislature of the federal branch, and it is but too evident, that the three ruling branches of that department are in combination to strip their colleagues, the State authorities, of the powers reserved by them, and to exercise themselves all functions foreign and domestic. Under the power to regulate commerce, they assume indefinitely that also over agriculture and manufactures, and call it regulation to take the earnings of one of these branches of industry, and that too the most depressed, and put them into the pockets of the other, the most flourishing of all. Under the authority to establish post roads, they claim that of cutting down mountains for the construction of roads, of digging canals, and aided by a little sophistry on the words “general welfare,” a right to do, not only the acts to effect that, which are specifically enumerated and permitted, but whatsoever they shall think, or pretend will be for the general welfare. And what is our resource for the preservation of the [C]onstitution? Reason and argument? You might as well reason and argue with the marble columns encircling them.

"But wait, but wait!" somebody must be shouting, "the South fired upon the Union at Fort Sumter!"  There was not a single casualty in that incident, an incident that Lincoln did his level best to provoke.  Lincoln had refused for some time to talk to the Confederate government and chose war, since he refused to countenance the notion that the South could walk away from the Union.  War was not foisted on him or on the untold numbers of people whose lives he destroyed.  Once again, all this had nothing to do with his (non-existent) fervor to end slavery, but his desire to create a national government and keep tariff money flowing into the Treasury.  He made this clear in his first inaugural, almost in the same breath as his admission that he had no power to end slavery -- he went on to say that he fully intended to enforce tariff collections everywhere, even in the South.  He thus refused to abandon the garrison at Ft. Sumter and ignored every ultimatum that was given, almost certainly cheering the news of the bloodless barrage.

The horrific violence and oppression that Lincoln unleashed were unnecessary and unforgivable. It is impossible for me to recite the multiple examples here, but I can mention at least some of them.  War was made against Southern civilians; rape, pillage, and plunder enjoyed free rein.  On the few occasions when the South invaded the North (e.g., Antietam and Gettysburg), no such violence was directed against civilians, contrasting starkly yesterday's gentlemen warriors with today's amoral barbarians.  Lincoln imprisoned the Maryland legislature for fear that it would vote to secede; he threw people in jail for merely uttering opposition to the war; and he even blessed secession when it served his purposes, specifically when West Virginia tore itself away from Virginia.  (It's worth noting how that act of secession indeed was illegal because it violated Article IV, Section 3 of the Constitution barring a new state from being created out of the territory of an existing one, and yet it is the only act of secession treated as legitimate today.)  If you want a thorough review of the terrible things Lincoln did, I recommend The Real Lincoln by Thomas DiLorenzo. 

      

And I do lament the destruction of the South.  For all its faults -- yes, slavery was one of them -- the South retained a sense of chivalry and honor that has gone entirely extinct.  Instead of the gentleman we now have homo economicus, a creature who judges and is judged solely by his utility rather than his character.  It must be recalled that most Northerners were not animated by abolitionism.  Northerners engaged in the slave trade long after the constitutional ban of 1808.  Northerners were hostile to African-Americans and regarded them at best as cheap labor who drove down wages, so it's no accident that Northerners wanted to keep all the territory gained in the Mexican War lily white.  Many Northerners deserted the army upon learning of the Emancipation Proclamation.  In more recent times, some of the most vigorous opposition to de-segregation occurred in Northern cities such as Boston, Massachusetts and Wilmington, Delaware.  The mantle of moral superiority is something the North does not deserve to wear, especially when considering the violence and bloodshed the North perpetrated.  A typical Southerner was not fighting to preserve slavery any more than a typical Northerner was fighting to end it.  Southerners fought to defend their homes from an armed invasion, and they did so against a foe that had overwhelming advantages in terms of men and materiel.  They were heroes, and we have every right to honor them.       

Come to think of it, the very name "Civil War" arrogantly presumes the outcome achieved thereby, i.e., that we are a single nation whose disputes are forever internal, and that attempted departure is treason.  These presumptions are diametrically opposed to the American founding and spirit.  From here on out, I will refer to this conflict as either the War Between The States or the War For Southern Independence. 

In the final analysis, I regard America of yesteryear as freer than America of today, even when chattel slavery persisted.  Government left people alone for the most part, stepping in only when necessary to enforce the outer boundaries of civil order.  Today's mega-state is not something ordained by the Constitution; it is not something my ancestors fought for; and it is certainly not something I thank Abraham Lincoln for giving us.  His civic sainthood will last only so long as the mega-state does, and by all accounts its days are numbered.  Thank goodness.

EDIT:

I should have mentioned that a new movie about Abraham Lincoln directed by Steven Spielberg and starring Daniel Day-Lewis is coming out in November.  I'm a fan of Day-Lewis and think he should have won the Oscar for Best Actor for Gangs Of New York.  However, I understand that this new film is based on the work of Doris Kearns-Goodwin, who is a pure Lincoln hagiographer (and a plagiarist) rather than historian. My guess is that Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter will be a more accurate portrayal of the events surrounding the War For Southern Independence.

SECOND EDIT:

I stumbled on a column by none other than Thomas DiLorenzo in which he takes Kearns-Goodwin to the woodshed and explains her function as a "court historian" and myth-maker for the state.  This dovetails nicely with my own explanation of how "the best and the brightest" are middlebrows.