Civil War Myths vs. Reality

Miscellaneous History
1

I read this article on Yahoo! today (http://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/five-myths-about-why-the-south-seceded/2011/01/03/ABHr6jD_story.html), and everything is says seems to counter a lot of the literature I’ve read on it. One thing it was accurate on, though, was Lincoln wanting to do anything he could to preserve the Union, which is the feel I get from the Mises community regarding his stance. I was reading The Politically Incorrect Guide to the Civil War, though, and although I haven’t yet read it in detail, it makes a completely different case.

So my question is this: what is the easiest way to validate materials? With so many pro-Union writers using slavery as the biggest “southern sin” while other books, such as that aforementioned, says slavery was widely held to be ending on its own due to inconsistencies between it and the Declaration of Independence, for instance, how should one go about selecting the proper works and who to believe?

Using my common sense, which has tended to aid me better than any “expert,” I would say that the south did wish to secede because they viewed the overarching federal government to be infringing their property rights, which was within its legal rights. Although I disagree with slavery–and admittedly would like believe it would have been on its way out–I don’t know the real history of it. What I do know is that Lincoln seemed to be set on keeping the south a part of the Union at any cost; specifically, 970,227 casualties combined with deaths (http://web.archive.org/web/20070711050249/http://www.cwc.lsu.edu/other/stats/warcost.htm).

2

It’s not exactly a response to your question, but I recently had a couple of article shared with me on the Civil War, so I figured I’d include them here in case you or anyone was interested in more history on it…

Civil War Reconstructed

The Numbers War Between the States

3

Thanks for the links.

4

I posted this in another thread:

Some intersting tidbits left out of the glorification of the south found prevalent here:

http://www.sethkaller.net/catalogs/41-civil-war/853-confederate-secretary-of-war-ends-martial-law-in-dept-of-west-virginia-

Jefferson Davis also declared martial law in the border states.

http://www.etymonline.com/cw/conscript.htm

The Confederacy conscripted sooner, and in larger numbers than the Union.

http://www.civilwarhome.com/statesrights.htm

The Confederacy was no champion of state’s rights; specifically when it involved the right of a state to oppose slavery and/or the confederacy.

Also, if you want to know why the States seceeded… just ask them:
http://sunsite.utk.edu/civil-war/reasons.html

(Hint; the declarations of secession are pretty much unanimous in naming the continuation and expansion of slavery as the cause of secession).

5

As Tom Woods said to Tom DiLorenzo here:

Tom, the whole “pro-Confederate” thing is just laughable. They obviously know we’re not “pro-Confederate” in any sense — what is there to support in a government that (like the U.S. government at the time) condoned slavery, imposed a fiat currency, and engaged in military conscription?

I consider this a must-read article by Woods, and this and this by Block.

Dr. Jonathan M. Kolkey said, “Curiously enough, although ‘slavery’ is usually seen as the driving force behind the Secession movement, many of the anti-Secession Unionists were among the largest plantation owners. And the Confederates seems to have elected a Whig majority in their 1863 Congressional elections, which soon bedeviled Democratic President Jefferson Davis… For good measure, Honest Abe had skillfully managed to change the issue from the oftentimes abstruse merits of Secession to the simple defense of the Union.”

The war is a grey area because neither side fully recognized self-ownership rights. However, secession is a right that all people have for any reason whatsoever. Those who are not free to secede are in effect (partial) slaves to a king, or to a tyrannous majority under democracy. If you have a problem with why they are seceding, then the only position that is logically consistent with self-ownership is to allow for the secession and then take it from there.

For example, the North should have allowed for the secession of the South, recognized it as a sovereign country, and then cleaned up its own house by making slavery illegal in its territory and then announcing that it will declare war on the independant South unless it gives up all of its slaves. Did the North do that? No. If it had, the South may very well have complied. We can’t know for sure thanks to Lincoln who logically contradicted himself concerning self-ownership rights.

Or even better, Block says that, "Under limited government libertarianism, the government of the north would take no steps to rid the sovereign Confederacy of its slavery (or India of its suttee). The purpose of the state in this philosophy is to protect its own citizens. Period. And, on the (historically accurate) assumption that the Confederacy showed no indication of invading the north, but merely wanted to be left alone to its own devices, that would be the end of the matter as far as the northern government was concerned.

However, even under these assumptions individual abolitionists would be perfectly free, and, indeed, justified, in going in to the Confederacy, guns in hand, with the intention of ridding the south of this evil institution of slavery. But if things went poorly for them, they could not then scurry back to the north, tails between their legs, hiding behind their mama’s skirts, because that would necessarily bring in the northern government into the fray. It would violate the non-invasion (except in self-defense) provision of limited government libertarianism, or minarchism."

6

Looking at what politicians say doesn’t tell us much because they are only a few people and don’t in any accurate sense represent the people. For instance, a politician may support issues A and B but not C. I might support all three, but if his political opponent only supports A then I will vote for the first candidate, if I even vote at all.

Woods writes in his Politically Incorrect Guide to American History, “Recall that Virginia, Tennessee, North Carolina, and Arkansas seceded only after Lincoln had called up 75,000 volunteers to invade the South and prevent its secession. These four states, therefore, certainly did not secede over slavery, but rather over Lincoln’s decision to use military force to suppress Southern independance.”

The link you shared only shows what the politicians of Georgia, Mississippi, South Carolina, and Texas had to say. I remember watching the commentary to the movie Gods and Generals and they said that in researching the scene where Virginia’s legislature debates secession, they found that over and over the legislature used the word coersion to describe what Lincoln was doing by forcing states to remain in the union. Not once did they use the word slavery. Therefore if you believe the words of politicians must be taken at face value and you believe the war was simply over slavery then you must at least believe that Lincoln had no right to step foot in Virginia.

Woods continues, "Forget the politicians. What did ordinary soldiers of the North and South have to say about why they took up arms against their neighbors? Acclaimed Civil War historian James McPherson, in his 1997 book For Cause and Comrades: Why Men Fought in the Civil War, consulted a sizeable quantity of primary sources, including the soldiers’ diaries and their letters to loved ones, to try to determine how the ordinary soldier on each side thought of the war.

In two-thirds of his sources—the same proportion among Northern and Southern fighting men—soldiers said it was due to patriotism. Northern soldiers by and large said they were fighting to preserve what their ancestors had bequeathed to them: the Union. Southern soldiers also referred to their ancestors, but they typically argued that the real legacy of the Founding Fathers was not so much the Union as the principle of self-government. Very often we see Southern soldiers comparing the South’s struggle against the U.S. government to the colonies’ struggle against Britain. Both, in their view, were wars of secession fought in order to preserve self-government."

7

In response to… “For example, the North should have allowed for the secession of the South, recognized it as a sovereign country, and then cleaned up its own house by making slavery illegal in its territory and then announcing that it will declare war on the independant South unless it gives up all of its slaves. Did the North do that? No. If it had, the South may very well have complied. We can’t know for sure thanks to Lincoln who logically contradicted himself concerning self-ownership rights.”

The North should definitely have allowed for the secession of the south, but as far as invading them…well, it’s a tricky situation. Not black and white by any means (ha ha, get it?). Slavery is wrong, but so is invading states that choose to secede and form their own union. Lincoln’s side won, thus the books praise him when, in fact, he didn’t give much a concern fighting over slavery from what I’ve read of his words.

It’s ideological to assume slavery would have slowly gone away. Although I believe it would have eventually gone away, I also believe it would have been an internal struggle. Invasion of one’s own territory seems fundamentally wrong to me. Then again, so is slavery. You’d think the slaves would have revolted.

One ought to question, if a people decides to allow itself to be subdued by force with no uprising, couldn’t one argue that they, in essence, deserve the perpetuated treatment?

8

Lol, I understand. My first scenario was a whiter shade of black. My Walter Block quote was an even whiter shade. Block’s An-Cap scenario in his article I linked to is the purest white.

One historian (Herbert Aptheker), calculated that over two hundred separate slave revolts and conspiracies took place from the 1600’s to the end of the U.S. Civil War in 1865.

http://www.historyguy.com/slave_rebellions_usa.htm

But I don’t believe anyone deserves unjust punishment just because they love their life enough to not want to risk losing it by revolting.

9

July 4th, 1861.
House of Representatives
Speaker of the House, Galusha A. Grow, speaking: “No flag alien to the sources of the Mississippi river will ever float over its mouths till its waters are crimsoned with human gore; and not one foot of American soil can ever be wrenched from the jurisdiction of the Constitution of the United States until it is baptized in fire and blood.” [vociferous applause upon the floor and in the galleries, which lasted for many minutes.]

The best place is the Congressional Globe. Start turning the pages from December 1861. Not a word about slavery being the cause; “restore the authority of the Constitution” “preserve the Union” “restore cotton to loyalty” “the Republic must and shall be preserved” “suppress the rebellion”

Senator Howe, in the Senate, February 12, 1862:
“There are those who are pleased to represent this war as a protest against the abolition of slavery. There are those who pretend the war was a necessity to the rebels to prevent the abolition of their slaves. There is but one term in our language which fitly characterizes that pretense. It is, according to the authority of all English lexicographers, a lie. Slavery has existed longer than the Government has. The Government never has assaulted it once. It never has threatened it once, until now it is threatened with the punishment due to treason. The men who urge this pretense know that if every rebel south of the Potomac would lay down his arms to-morrow, every slave in those States would be as safe from the American Government as from the Government of Great Britain.”

10

No one, not me anyway, is saying the North fought the war over slavery. But the initial secessionist states did. That cannot be denied. It is in every one of their reasons for secession.

11

Yes, it was a reason and especially a propagandistic reason, since most fools are more concerned about keeping others in bondage than freeing themselves. The major and sufficient reasons, though, had to do with federalism and tarriffs. The slavery issue and cultural differences made it easy to convince the plebs to go along with it on both sides.

12

On the issue of whether the south really cared about tarrifs;

http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1861/us-civil-war/index.htm

13

"On the issue of whether the south really cared about tariffs;

http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1861/us-civil-war/index.htm

"

That there list is kind of vague. Any points upon exactly which ones address the issue? Also is there any reason why Marx stopped publishing on the subject after 1862 or is there another part of the list?

I’m not certain where to stand on this part of history, I think that a lot of libertarians actually make it out that the south was way more pro freedom and less about slaves than it actually was, while at the same time normal history downplays the role of states rights and tariffs. Both sides have a reason to downplay one side and overplay the other side.

However, the south did care deeply about the matter of tariffs, the first major threat of secession by the south when Jackson was president arose out of the tariff issue back in about 1832 when the south was under no threat of having their slaves liberated. Unless there was some dramatic change in those years (I am ready to admit that there might have been a sizeable increase in American industry but it still did not rival the output of Europe until the decades following the war so I doubt that the importance of tariffs could have abated much) then I’m betting the threat of significantly increased tariffs could well have driven the south to action.

14

Just read them. I think it’s the first one tho.

But he addresses the earlier tarrifs as well.

15

While I must say informative and matching up with all of the facts on the subject that I know this does not really address the issue

“It is characteristic of this discovery that it was made, not in Charleston, but in London. Naturally, in America everyone knew that from 1846 to 1861 a free trade system prevailed, and that Representative Morrill carried his protectionist tariff through Congress only in 1861, after the rebellion had already broken out. Secession, therefore, did not take place because the Morrill tariff had gone through Congress, but, at most, the Morrill tariff went through Congress because secession had taken place. When South Carolina had its first attack of secession in 1831, the protectionist tariff of 1828 served it, to be sure, as a pretext, but only as a pretext, as is known from a statement of General Jackson. This time, however, the old pretext has in fact not been repeated. In the Secession Congress at Montgomery all reference to the tariff question was avoided, because the cultivation of sugar in Louisiana, one of the most influential Southern states, depends entirely on protection.”

I bolded the areas that I found specifically useful. Let me just say that in the first link I found no other mentions of tariffs other than this.

According to Marx’s own claims there were no threats of secession at any time from his period of “free trade” of 1846 to 1861 where tariffs (assumedly) went down dramatically. Why is it that the 1831 case would have been a pretext? Jackson was ardently in favor of slavery and the abolitionist movement was still small, what other reason could there have been, other than the high tariffs, for this secession?

Simply because of the fact that the question of tariffs were utterly avoided in the statements of the south doesn’t mean that the south was not generally against tariffs, just not against tariffs that would have directly harmed their interests, and therefore could not attack them in a full and outright way. Just because a specific bill had not been passed at the time of southern secession did not mean that Lincoln, the former Whig who was an outspoken advocate of “protectionist” tariffs, coming to office had nothing to do fears from the south that they would be harmed by tariffs upon the goods that they bought, or possibly even trade wars on that which they sold.