A reader writes:
I have enjoyed your take on the whole Osama situation. I do agree with most of what you say ... if not all. I have to admit that my initial reaction was of most people, aka “ding dong Osama’s dead,” etc. but the Catholic filter kicked in and I was able to use this situation to evangelize to our Edge middle school group about this situation ... thanks to our astute children asking questions.
I do have a question for you though on the Just War doctrine and how it could apply (or not) the the War Between the States that took place starting 150 years ago. Since you are better versed in the doctrine than I am, what is your take on this conflict and do you believe this was a just war? One caveat, do not include the slavery issue, it was *not* the primary reason for the conflict although in today’s culture it is taught as such.
Hoo boy! There’s a question to get the juices going!
Of course, this is not something to which, for a Catholic, there is a necessarily correct or incorrect answer, particularly since, in a civil war it is especially meaningless to ask if the war was just. Just for whom? Americans fought on both sides. If we determine that it was just for one group of Americans, that means that the other group was fighting an unjust war. And it’s possible, of course, that neither side in a war is fighting a Just War (as could be argued, for instance, in the great war between the two despotic butchers Hitler and Stalin). There is no dogmatic definition for Catholics concerning what to make of the Civil War. And it is worth noting that one Catholic (G.K. Chesterton) has made an astute observation concerning the conviction most modern people have that, throughout history, the right side has always won every war:
There is everywhere the habit of assuming certain things, in the sense of not even imagining the opposite things. For instance, as history is taught, nearly everybody assumes that in all important past conflicts, it was the right side that won. Everybody assumes it; and nobody knows that he assumes it. The man has simply never seriously entertained the other notion. Say to him that we should now all of us be better off if Charles Edward and the Jacobites had captured London instead of falling back from Derby, and he will laugh. He will think it is what he calls a “paradox.” Yet nothing can be a more sober or solid fact than that, when the issue was undecided, wise and thoughtful men were to be found on both sides; and the Jacobite theory is not in any way disproved by the fact that Cumberland could outflank the clans at Drummossie. I am not discussing whether it was right as a theory; I am only noting that it is never allowed to occur to anybody as a thought. The things that might have been are not even present to the imagination. If somebody says that the world would now be better if Napoleon had never fallen, but had established his Imperial dynasty, people have to adjust their minds with a jerk. The very notion is new to them. Yet it would have prevented the Prussian reaction; saved equality and enlightenment without a mortal quarrel with religion; unified Europeans and perhaps avoided the Parliamentary corruption and the Fascist and Bolshevist revenges. But in this age of free-thinkers, men’s minds are not really free to think such a thought.
What I complain of is that those who accept the verdict of fate in this way accept it without knowing why. By a quaint paradox, those who thus assume that history always took the right turning are generally the very people who do not believe there was any special providence to guide it. The very rationalists who jeer at the trial by combat, in the old feudal ordeal, do in fact accept a trial by combat as deciding all human history. In the war of the North and South in America, some of the Southern rebels wrote on their flags the rhyme, “Conquer we must for our cause is just.” The philosophy was faulty; and in that sense it served them right that their opponents copied and continued it in the form “Conquer they didn’t; so their cause wasn’t.” But the latter logic is as bad as the former. I have just read a book called, “The American Heresy,” by Mr. Christopher Hollis. It is a very brilliant and original book; but I know it will not be taken sufficiently seriously; because the reader will have to wrench his mind out of a rut even to imagine the South victorious; still more to imagine anybody saying that a small, limited and agricultural America would have been better for everybody—especially Americans.
So: when asking whether the Civil War as a Just War, we have to ask what that means. Was it just that the North won? Was it just that the South tried to win? Was the North fighting for a just cause? Was the South? Did they use just means? etc.
On the the whole, I think a case can be made for the justice and injustice of the cause for both sides. In the North’s favor was, quite simply, the survival of the experiment of representative democracy in the world. A nation where (as the North saw it), half the country could just take their ball and leave when an election didn’t go their way was a formula for national suicide. In the South, Southerners fought for a simple reason: ‘Cuz Yankees were down there when they should mind their own business and stay on their side of the Mason-Dixon. Lee’s remark that he could not raise his sword against his country (meaning Virginia, not America) sums up the Southern ethos and the Southern doom: they prized the small, local, and old and wanted to keep it from becoming part of the Borg Collective of the North. In fact, they prized it so much they could never form a coherent nation capable of defeating that centralized, industrialized northern power.
Telling against the North was the fact that, in a certain sense, they destroyed the country in order to save it. Most of our present-day quarrels about the size, power and piggyness of the Federal government spring from the fact that we got the government the North wanted and that it has done nothing but metastasize ever since the Northern victory. Lincoln is remembered as a hero, but he is a hero who swept away habeus corpus, annihilated freedom of the press, laid the foundations for ginormous and unaccountable corporations to crush the ordinary citizen (beaten back only by the rise of labor with the encouragement of Pope Leo XIII), and gave complete approval for General Sherman to initiate a campaign of war crimes against innocent civilians in his March to the Sea. In short, Lincoln was the first practitioner of the sort of warfare which the 20th century would create War Crimes Legislation to try to curtail.
Meanwhile, like it or not, in the South, the reality is that slavery had everything to do with the shots fired on Fort Sumter and the whole domino fall of secession. The South fought for “State’s Rights” because the South was fighting for the right to keep an agrarian economy based on slavery. That’s what the war was about. It was the simmering resentment of a northern economy that was squeezing the life from the South *and* looking down on the South with increasing contempt for their “peculiar institution.” No slavery, and there might very well never have been a Civil War.
So I think the verdict is mixed on the justice of the Civil War. For the North, the war (which began as a war to preserve the Union from rebellion) morphed (as wars are wont to do) into a moralist crusade against slavery (much as the Gulf War morphed from fending off a spectre of mushroom clouds over America into Operation Enduring Freedom once the WMDs promised by the war zealots failed to materialize). The psychological dynamic is fairly simple: When thousands of corpses—killed in a few hours—lie dead at Antietam with nothing to show for it, you can’t tell your population—heck, you can’t tell yourself—that all this pointless carnage was in order to preserve a viable port on the mouth of the Mississippi or to keep selling steel to some smithy in Birmingham, Alabama. You have to believe it was for something higher than just economics and power politics. So you focus on freeing the slaves and that becomes your cause.
It is notable that Pius IX thought enough of Jeff Davis that he sent the poor imprisoned man a crown of thorns he wove himself as a sign of sympathy for all that he and the South lost in the war. It is also notable that Americans, who are basically a big-hearted lot, waited a generation or so, and then began to look back on the war with regret for what was lost when the South was destroyed. It’s telling that from the dawn of the cinema until the dawn of the Civil Rights movement (roughly 50 years), most depictions of the war tended to favor the South. From “Birth of a Nation” to Buster Keaton’s “The General” to that great epic of Southern Romanticism “Gone with the Wind” and even as late as the “Twilight Zone” you find tale after tale filled with sad regret over what was lost when the Cause was lost.
However, what the Civil Rights Movement forcefully reminded us of with the images of good white Christian folk screaming at kids for the crime of going to school in a black skin, or Bull Connor and his dogs and fire hoses, was that the Romanticism of the South (much like our culture’s present Romanticism about the rise of the Women’s movement) acted not only to celebrate what was good, but to obfuscate some real evils. Just as the story of feminism includes not only the righting of real wrongs against women, but also the sacramentalization of abortion as a core value, so the romanticism of the Southern role in the Recent Unpleasantness systematically overlooked the continuation of the slave culture under other names until the Civil Rights movement reminded us that the war may, after all, have been a necessary first step in purging America of the original sin of its founding.
Might slavery have disappeared without the Civil War? We can’t know. All we can know is that it was outlawed after that scourge was, in fact, visited on us. Perhaps a more interesting question is not whether the Civil War was just, but whether the American Revolution was. After all, had it never been fought, the slave trade might have ended for us when it ended for Britain, due to the tireless, peaceful, and unbloody work of the great William Wilberforce. But, as Aslan points out in the Chronicles of Narnia, nobody is ever told what would have happened.
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I see the Southern apologists are out in force today. I am a proud Virginian, but not so much as to swallow this noble Southern cause nonsense or to whistle Dixie (figuratively as well as literally). Let’s quote one of the men who brought the war on us:
“Our new Government is founded upon exactly the opposite ideas; it’s foundations are laid, it’s cornerstone rests, upon the great truth that the Negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery, subordination to the superior race, is his natural condition.”—Alexander Stephens, Vice-President of the Confederacy
This, of course, coheres perfectly with the phenomenon that once the North left, the South passed Jim Cow laws. It is also remarkable that the South erects monuments to their Conferate dead—not to their Civil War dead.
Mark, I think you should read up on the Vendee Massacre, which occurred during the French Revolution. Brutal warfare has always, ALWAYS existed. The Civil War merely mechanized it with railroad, ironclads, Gatlin guns, and so forth. For that matter, southern militias had no qualms massacring towns and villages that didn’t toe the line and produce recruits, or spoke against the “Rich man’s war, poor man’s fit,” etc.
Dear Mr. Perry. Please. That speech by Stevens was a recruiting stump speech that was remembered, after the fact, by a reporter who heard it. He did not record the speech by quoting it or writing it down.
Lincoln, similarly, thought that whites and blacks could not live together and he never thought they were equals and the War for Southern Independence was about tariffs. For the evidence of that please read Lincoln’s First Inaugural address.
It can not rationally be called a “Civil War” because the CSA was not trying to rule all the states - just their own who legally seceded.
Staging troops at Fort Sumter was an act of invasion/aggression by Lincoln and the South took his bait.
Of course the south had the legal right to secede and that, in and of itself, is an act of representative democracy that was extinguished by the north.
John Quincy Adams addressed the legal issue publicly in his speech on anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence and Jefferson, famously, had long-before, pontificated on the right of secession.
“Might slavery have disappeared without the Civil War? We can’t know.”
- Uhmm, yeah, I actually think we can. Two reasons right off the top:
First, slavery was becoming less and less economically viable.
Second, there are other nations who eventually abolished slavery without the wholesale bloodshed of a civil war. Why do people have this idea that the only sure way of removing slavery is via the mass slaughter of a civil war? I think that is the same faulty logic that Chesterton talks about.
This is also a very good run down on some of the talk about Lincoln:
http://takimag.com/article/being_dishonest_about_abe/print
Vermont,
EVERY reporter in those days would have to report on stump speeches by memory. As far as I know, no one at the time or even now denies the accuracy of the report.
Separation is one thing; repugnant to us today, yes, but it far different from denying through law even fundamental civil rights such as the right to vote or the right to liberty (as opposed to slavery). Or, as in the case of Wilmington, overthrowing a duly-elected government.
As for the right of secession, this was debated, but by no means recognized as a right except when people could not win elections. Andrew Jackson, a southern president, mocked South Carolina’s claims to have the right to secede, and threatened to send troops into the state.
The Civil War was not caused by slavery. It was caused by secession. Slavery, or more precisely the debate over extension of slavery to the territories, was the issue that divided North and South. But we are talking about a war here. Without secession, there would have been continued contention and conflict, but no war. Don’t take my word for it. Read Lincoln’s many statements in 1860-62.
It is a trope of the Left, now enshrined in education, that the cause of the Civil War was a matter or “Bad Guys had slaves; Good Guys wanted to free them.” This is not history, it is liberal guilt-mongering, and you’ll find it wherever political correctness reigns.
Dear Mr. Perry. In denying a right to secession you are implicitly denying that America had a right to secede from England.
Here is the execrable war criminal tyrant, Lincoln, in his 1st Inaugural:
” I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so…The power confided to me will be used to hold, occupy, and possess the property and places belonging to the Government and to collect the duties and imposts; but beyond what may be necessary for these objects, there will be no invasion, no using of force against or among the people anywhere.”
The reality is far from the myth of Honest Abe the freedom-loving slave-redeemer. He was four-square in favor of the slave act, he had no intention of freeing the slaves, and the war of northern aggression was about money and power.
Lincoln lied; more’n 600,000 died.
Here are the words of one U.S. Grant ( not his real name; his first name, as I recall, was Hugh), hardly a southern sympathiser:
“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.
It is an insane proposition to think that the several states (back in the day each state was a country, so that, Rhode Island was like unto France) had the liberty to join a union but once having done that it surrendered forever the right to leave that union if the union went nuts.
What kind of logic is that?
Andrew Jackson was also big on ethnic cleansing. Forgive me if I don’t hold him in high enough esteem to give a rat’s patoot what he thought about secession. (Besides, the New England ancestors of those who condemned secession when it was the South doing the seceding apparently had no qualms about talking up secession when it was their ox being gored.)
But all this talk about the “right” to secede is misplaced. The fact is that the Southern states DID secede, whether they had the “right” to do so or not. They, like their forebears during the American revolution, decided that they no longer wished to be associated with the government from whom they broke away. It’s called self determination.
The question then becomes, given the FACT that secession had indeed occurred, whether it was just for Lincoln to make war against the populations of those states based on some Manifest Destiny ideal of the Union One and Undivided in Perpetuity.
Now, I’m NOT saying that it was just for the South to secede, either (and, knowing that war was almost inevitable, I believe the decision to secede must meet just war criteria - which it did not). Indeed, slavery and secession were unjustifiable blights on America’s history. But, in my view, so was Lincoln’s decision to make war against the populations of those states once they decided they no longer wished to be associated with the Union. There is nothing sacrosanct about an America undivided, and such an exalted Manifest Destiny notion does not justify making war against the populations of the Southern states.
I do not deny (nor am I proud of) the fact that the Southern states seceded to preserve the systematic enslavement of their fellow man. But then, the South’s preservation of slavery was not the justification with which Mr. Lincoln went to war.
SCOTUS , in the Prizes case of 1862:
“By the Constitution, Congress alone has the power to declare a national or foreign war. It cannot declare war against a State, or any number of States, by virtue of any clause in the Constitution. The Constitution confers on the President the whole Executive power. He is bound to take care that the laws be faithfully executed. He is Commander-in-chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the militia of the several States when called into the actual service of the United States. He has no power to initiate or declare a war either against a foreign nation or a domestic State. But, by the Acts of Congress of February 28th, 1795, and 3d of March, 1807, he is authorized to called out the militia and use the military and naval forces of the United States in case of invasion by foreign nations and to suppress insurrection against the government of a State or of the United States.”
The tyrant Lincoln illegally, and immorally, invaded the south and he was the cause of the deaths of over 600,000 of his fellow Americans. He is one of the great war criminals and for every Constitutional Principle he put-down he raised a lie of justification
Lincoln was supported by Karl Marx (writing in the Herald) while the Pope fashioned a crown of Thorns for Jefferson Davis while he was, unjustly, imprisoned after the south surrendered
Well, well, now we are “fighting the Civil War again”. I was born and raised in N.Y.State 84 yrs ago. Yes, the Blacks had their ‘section’ of town where they lived, but they were also our policemen, firemen, teachers, etc. The B/W students were integrated in my public high school. That is how I was brought up. Ten yrs ago I moved to Virginia and a friend was always referring to the Northerners as “damn Yankees”. Finally I told her that it wasn’t nice to even think that way because during the Civil War, it was brother fighting brother and we are one Nation. She looked at me and I believe finally saw the light, saying “I never thought of it that way”. Remember Martin Luther King changed a great deal as to the Black/White issue. Today it is the Blacks in power who keep this problem alive. I live in a mixed neighborhood in N.Carolina. All the neighborhoods are mixed. Things have changed as far as the populous is concerned. Jackson, Farrakhan and other Black leaders keep this problem on-going. One day, I pray, the words Black & White will be gone and all of us accepted as being just God’s people. Already mixed races are marrying and maybe that is a start.
As to “Just War”—My husband fought in WWII with the 101st Airborne in 5 battles. When our 8 yr.old son said to him once “we won that war didn’t we Dad” His answer to his son was “No one wins a war, everyone loses”. When our son was the last class obligated to sign up for Selective Service, my husband said to me “if he is ever called, I would give anything to go in his place, I would never want him to go through what I went through”
So, you intellectual historians can argue “just war” and Civil War, but my husband was right. Whether “Just” or “Not Just” everyone loses. Governments may win or lose, but the “people” on both sides lose.
Your question in reference to whether The Civil war was just. Well we can begin with Diviine Science in reference to war and evaluate human actions in reference to the Civil war .
War ( instances of war : Exodus 7:8-16)Evils of war ( psalm 79:1), weapons of war ( Exodus 17:3) the ban of war ( Numbet 21:2-3) private ban ( Leviticus 17) Miscellaneous references ( Jodhua 7:1) Battle Fields ( Judges 9:27-44) , Beast of( Genesis 1:24) , Grass of ( Psalm 103:15),Tares and mustard seed in ( Matthew 13:31,36) two men in ( Matthew 24:40), sacrifice in open field ( Leviticus 17:5) , Sundry Laws concerning fields ( exodus 22:5-31) Chariots used ( Jeremiah 17:25)Kings killed in ( Joram 2 Kings 5:9), in peace ( Genesis 41:43) , in war ( Jodhua 17:16) , number ( judges 4:3), battle ( exodus 14:6) used in God’s providence( psa
M 104:3), used in art ( 1 king 7:33), figurative ( Isaiah 66:20) Depended on skilled archery ( Genesis 49:23) ,archers( Genesis 21:20), arrow of deliverance (2 Kings 13:17), wounded with ( psalm 64:7) bow and arrow ( 2 Kings 9:24) figurative ( Numbers 24:8) Help in times of need ( 2 Chronicle 25:8) reckless of soldier ( Numbers 1:1-46) Salvation from enemies ( Deuteronomy 21:8) sword chief of weapon ( Genesis 27:40) women treated cruely ( Isaiah 13:16)
Therefore distinctions will have to be made by the person who is judging that particular historical events. for some all aspects of the war was just and for others some aspects were not but overall the Civil war reflect the the covenant, testament and the will of God ( Between God and Men ) Old covenant and new covenant an expression of God’s Mind and Will.
Hope this will be a good place to start for reflection
1n 1861 Lincoln canceled General Fremont’s order that freed the slaves in Missouri and in 1862 the liar cancelled general Hunter’s orders to free the slaves in Georgia, South Carolina, and Florida.
And as for a right to secede, there was no legal right to establish the Constitution of the United States. At the time, 1789, the several States/Countries operated under the Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union (AC/PU) and that legitimate, legal, government did NOT authorise a new Constitution.
The liars meeting at the convention that resulted in the over-throw of the legitimate laws of the land (AC/PU) had no authority to do what they did unless what that drafted was agreed to in Congress and then voted on and accepted by EVERY SINGLE STATE LEGISLATURE.
And, of course, that never happened.
The liars first stole the country then declared that only 9 of the 13 had to agree with their official sedition and secession from AC/PU.
And all of the heroes we are told to worship were, secretly (their star-chamber-like deliberations were not open to the public), the ones who successfully launched this official sedition and secession from the existing legal framework agreed to by the several States/Countries and then they solemnly told everyone else they could not legally do what they did illegally.
And that is what America is all about, baby. What our national heroes illegally stole is Washington’s, baby, and keep your liberty-loving mitts off’n it,Capiche?
@Vermont Crank
It’s obvious; you just hate Republicans, and no amount of facts will ever change your mind.
Dear Stillbelieve. Yep. Every single thing I wrote was about the Republican Party except for the reality that , literally, there was not one singe word about the republican party in every single word that I wrote.
Still,, you make an excellent observation :)
If it is any consolation, I hate the Evil Party as much as I hate The Stupid Party
“‘Our new Government is founded upon exactly the opposite ideas; it’s foundations are laid, it’s cornerstone rests, upon the great truth that the Negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery, subordination to the superior race, is his natural condition.’—Alexander Stephens, Vice-President of the Confederacy”
(Thanks for the quote, Jack Perry)
As I read the words of Alexander Stephens, I can’t help but see the similarity of the Democrat thinking back then to their thinking in our modern times. Today, they have subtly found a new way to re-enslave the Blacks; so subtle that this time the Blacks don’t even know they are enslaved. It is so successful that the small percentage of Blacks that are free and not under the mind control of the Democrat masters are explained “away” as being ashamed of their color by the lieutenants of the re-enslaved.
Jack:
I’m not sure how you discern “Southern apologist” from what I wrote, unless you mean that failure to regard the Recent Unpleasantness as an obvious case of Pure Northern Goodness vs. Pure Southern Evil constitutes Southern apologetics. I regard the war as an immense tragedy for both sides, but believe that, at the end of the day the South was fighting to defend a grave and intrinsic evil: chattel slavery. That said, I cannot but feel admiration for a man like Robert E. Lee and great pity for the many innocent and good men and women who suffered so terribly on both sides.
In the end, I think Sue has made the best contribution to the whole discussion.
It is silly to claim that a stump speech (recruiting soldiers) by a VP represents the sole Southern Cause but when there is no such phrase that one can take from the official words of Jefferson Davis’ 1st Inaugural, the northern polemicist has no choice but to ignore President Lincoln’s official words as to the cause of the war and to seize on the words of a stump speech by a VP of The CSA.
That is a dishonest tactic perfectly consistent with the enormous enterprise of lying propaganda by the north as they, well after the fact, try and justify Lincoln’s execrable and indefensible actions and for one hundred and fifty years their public schools have endlessly propagated this lie and filled the heads of American children with the official lie.
And Glenn Beck and The Tea Party worships at the feet of this moral monster which is all one needs to know about how reliable as guides they are.
There are not many Americans who take the time to become autodidacts but an autodidact is what one must become if one is to sever the ties to the anchor of lies that drags liberty down into the river Styx.
Jsck:
See, now Vermont Crank *is* a southern apologist. Pure Southern Goodness vs. Pure Northern Evil. How comforting to live in such moral simplicity. I wonder when we will start hearing the tales of how much slaves *loved* living the happy, carefree life their masters provided for them.
This is a case where neither side was fighting for was entirely noble. Lincoln was certainly anti-slavery, but the North fought against secession, not slavery. Lincoln never passed a bill banning slavery and the Constitutional Ammendment happened only after the war was over. Lincoln was fighing for a Hamiltonian view for a strong national government more than the noble pursuit of a slave-free world.
Lincoln certainly provoked the war, which conflicts with Aquinas’ emphasis on the virtue of prudence. Virginia, for example, voted more than once against secession and only voted for secession after the events at Fort Sumpter.
The South, however, may have been fighting for “state’s rights”, but the only right that they were fighting for is the right to keep slaves and any nonsense about tariffs is easily disproven. The Washington Peace Conference met in December 1860 before Lincoln took office in order to try to avert conflict (it failed) and the subject of the conference was slavery. The southern states wanted to gain some type of guarantee that they would get to keep their slaves.
Some southern apologists also argue a number of other fallacious points, such as “most people in the South didn’t own slaves, therefore southerners weren’t fighting for slavery”.
That’s easily rebuked. One doesn’t have to own a thing to be dependent upon a thing and supportive of a thing. The vast majority of Iowans are not farmers yet all Iowa politicians holding statewide offices support massive ethanol subsidies, because even non-farmers are affected by the farm economy.
The slave economy of Virigina backs this up. Virginia, which had an economy that was affected by slavery seceeded. West Virginia, on the other hand, has little arable land and had little to no slaves. They joined the union. It’s ironic to note that West Virginia’s had also felt overtaxed and underrepresented in the Virgina legislature.
As to the “slavery would have disappeared naturally” argument . . . really? I suppose eventually it would have, but when? The 19th century? The 20th century? The 21st century? That sounds a bit like a cheating husband saying to his wife “honey, I know that cheating is wrong, but I can’t help it, but eventually I’ll grow old and won’t be able to cheat with anyone.” Forgotten in such a calculation is the victmized wife.
Likewise, saying “slavery would have disappeared naturally” forgets all those aditional generation of blacks who would have been slaves.
And I seriously doubt that it would have disappared as quickly and easily some might have thought.
Did serfdom disappear in Russia? Yes, but by the time that it did, it had fomented so much anger that Russians were ready to do anything to overthrow their existing system, including embracing the Communist Revolution. How long did it take apartheid to disappear? Are women in Afghanistan allowed to read and write? Are they anything more than chattle in some Middle East countries? Unfortunately, in this world we have a lot of proof that large, cultural sins don’t disappear easily.
I can, as a moral man, be opposed to both sides of a war. As a Catholic, I believe that the ends never justify the means. So I must oppose Lincoln. Contrarily, the South was using a legally justifiable means (secession), but was fighting on behalf of an immoral cause. I indict both parties.
When arguing about the cause of secession, how about looking at the documents of secession that the southern states produced? South Carolina’s is here:
http://www.sonofthesouth.net/leefoundation/secession_causes.htm
And I can’t help but notice that slavery is all over it as a cause.
I used to feel respect and pity for Robert E. Lee. Then I read some more about him and what he did to blacks in the war. I have no particular respect for him now.
@Vermont Crank
“Lincoln lied; more’n 600,000 died.”
“Still,, you make an excellent observation :)” Thank you - I think.
Your choice of words so resembled the Bush haters of today that such besmirching caused me to think, “Here’s a guy that so hates Republicans that it goes all the way back to the first Republican President.”
There is little doubt that the issue of slavery was a paramount issue to Lincoln and was a major topic in the Lincoln-Douglas debates. While Lincoln was not politically in support of ending slavery in total, he was strongly opposed to its extension into new territories of Kansas and Nebraska and that was a motivating factor for his re-entry into politics. However, the ending of slavery became the second most important issue to him after he was elected President; the most important issue was – holding the Union together. He truly believed in the idea, “A house divided can not stand.” That applied to the Union and to the human race of whites and blacks living in the United States. While for a long time it looked like his presidency was going to fail, in the end he was able to save “the Union,” and also end slavery by outlawing the ownership of blacks. Both have continued to be important accomplishments of this nation that I am grateful for which are primarily due to his beliefs and persistence, and reliance on God’s will. However, I am saddened that the Democrat Party has engineered a new way to re-enslave the Blacks.
Mark,
I admire Lee, too. I wish there had been a lot more Southerners who shared Lee’s understanding that secession was wrong, would be a disaster, and would lead to a long, devastating war. Sadly, the Southern elites were far more interested in making their cotton and tobacco plantations more profitable, and enshrining slavery as a law of nature.
My words regarding apologists were primarily directed towards the guy who wrote you, insisting that slavery was not the primary reason, but is taught as such only in “today’s culture”.
That said, I was disappointed that you argued that the South fought primarily for home and country. The truth is much more complicated, although neither side admits it. This is why I pointed to Southerners who fought for the Union cause, and were vilified or even exterminated by Southern militias, and ideologues of a glorious Southern heritage subsequently attempted to erase their memory.
Many Southerners wanted nothing to do with the war. Small farmers had to work their own land, and didn’t see the sense in running off to fight to protect another man’s right to own slaves. How willing were Southerners to fight for “their country”? In 1862 the Confederate government enacted, and enforced brutally, an act of conscription. The Union did not do so until 1863.
Ordinary Southerners were so attached to their states, and so “favorably” disposed toward secession from the Union, that the westernmost counties of Virginia revolted against the decision made in Richmond, giving us the state of West Virginia. The carnage of “brother against brother” in many rural counties of the South was no less than that of many battles on the front lines, but with much smaller numbers attracted much less attention.
So I don’t buy the argument that Southerners were fighting for their country. Sure, rich Southerners were trying to get poor Southerners to fight for their slave-worked plantations, and they managed to raise a fair number. But they certainly weren’t able to find enough who were willing to “defend” the South absent a draft.
John,
I don’t generally disagree with what you wrote, but serfdom was abolished from Russia before slavery was abolished in the United States, more than fifty-five years before the Communist Revolution. The causes of that are another story entirely.
A very fair assesment, I think:
http://catholicism.org/catholicism-south.html
Jack:
I think you do my reader an injustice. I think a case can be made that, from a Northern perspective, the war certainly was not about slavery (at first). It was about “the triumph of the government” as Sullivan Ballou put it in language that would make everybody from Ronald Reagan to the Tea Partiers retch. That’s what the North set out to fight for and (freeing the slaves as an afterthought aside) that’s what the North won. The modern Republican party is, in many ways, fired by the sort of localism and hostility to “the triumph of the government” (and, frankly, lunacy) that some of the craziest Secessionists embraced. That’s why it’s so funny to see so many Tea Partiers and Righties shouting against the Federal Government—at Glenn Beck Rallies before the edifice of the man who killed more Americans than any other to establish forever the grip of that Federal government over every state in the Union. The cognitive dissonance is amazing. So, for instance, stillbelieve, up above, has repeatedly expressed his/her enthusiasm for Beck and her hostility to the Federal government (a common trope on the Right) but she sees VC’s hostility to Lincoln, not as a hostility to federalism, but as some sort of covert attack on the Republicans and (in the land where there are only two sides to every question) therefore as Dem sympathy, Obama worship, and all the rest. It’s almost impossible for most modern GOPers to really wrap their minds around the fact that Reagan’s “Government is the problem” is much more in sympathy with the South than with Lincoln’s insistence (at a huge cost in blood) on the “triumph of the government”.
Mark,
An excellent article on the whole, but a couple of points:
1) “In the North’s favor was, quite simply, the survival of the experiment of representative democracy in the world. A nation where (as the North saw it), half the country could just take their ball and leave when an election didn’t go their way was a formula for national suicide.” I find the argument a bit weak. Not sure how representative democracy would conceivably have been threatened by secession, even if that was an argument brought forth by the northern pols (“as the North saw it”).
2) “Might slavery have disappeared without the civil war? We can’t know.” Of course it would have. Perhaps you meant to ask if it would have disappeared soon enough, or as soon as it did, without the war. Either way, the rhetorical question seems to invite cost/benefit considerations and open the door to the ever lurking evil of consequentialism…
God bless,
Given that slavery still exists at this hour, I’m not so confident it would have just “withered away” to borrow a phrase from Marx. The 20th century provided technology, not only to free men, but to make them more entrapped in slavery than ever as the Commies and Nazis abundantly attest.
@Mark,
Correct, but you also point out what the Commies and Nazis took from the Lincoln playbook… “No slavery, and there might very well never have been a Civil War,” points to the Southern responsibility. But the opening shot came from the North. The only point that you make in favor of the North’s just cause is the alleged defense of representative democracy.
Interesting points. Forgotten (not your fault) is that, without coercion, many blacks fought on behalf of the Confederacy. Forgotten, that in Louisiana, New Orleans in particular, there were equal amounts of black slave owners as there were white. Forgotten, that a black man by the name of Anthony Johnson was the first to own black slaves. Forgotten that Lincoln raised an extreme amount of hell screaming to his cabinet about his “damn tariffs, what about my damn tariffs!!”. Forgotten, that the “slave trade” as it was was dead and there were no more ships transporting slaves to America (which, by the way were Northern ships). I could go on but I can see Vermont Crank (love the handle…what the hell are you doing up in the Soviet Northeast?) has said many of the things I was going to say. Suffice it to say, sugar, tariffs and centralized power were the reasons the citizens of the Confederacy saw fit to seperate themselves from a northern aggressor who was determined to enslave the entire South, not just the black ones.
By the way, as a Southerner, I am very proud to say Martin Luther King, Jr. is one of our own, and am proud he is from the South…he was definitely a man ahead of his time and is sorely missed by anyone who believes in freedom and equality.
The best part about these debates on the justness or unjustness of the War Between the States is that the respective apologists for each side want to talk around the justifications behind the actions each side took.
Southerners (of which I am proudly one, despite my current exile in the land of Grant and Sherman) want to talk about everything BUT slavery, despite the fact that slavery was the key dividing issue between North and South, and the preservation of which was indisputably (yes, INDISPUTABLY) the catalyst for Southern secession. Northerners want to talk ONLY about slavery, despite the fact that slavery was not the justification Lincoln used for making war on the populations of the Southern states, relying instead upon some Manifest Destiny view of the nation as One and Undivided in Perpetuity.
This has been one of the most fascinating discussions we have ever had.I enjoyed the way our current national discusscions have peeked our between the cracks.
How about Bush policy haters instead of Bush haters?
How about the “abortion fixation” being so great that it obsucres the fact that capitalist masters are fixing things so that the whole nation will soon be slaves to our economic Wall Street masters?With the cooperation of the idiots who only want to talk about abortion? and who are going to go into slavery muttering “abortion"while the chains are afixed to their one issue limbs?
“Jsck:See, now Vermont Crank *is* a southern apologist.” Pure Southern Goodness vs. Pure Northern Evil.”
Dear Mr. Shea: Tsk, tsk. You have got to be more discerning. Like Flannery O’Connor, I scream at the nearly deaf and use florid rhetoric to draw the attention the nearly blind who have a difficult time seeing the truth.
Nowhere have I written the South was pure. What I have done is rhetorically torpedoed (that is what the south called their mines they salted the rivers with) the propagandistic lies of the north that the war against southern independence was about slavery. It was about Tariffs as Lincoln confessed in his 1st Inaugural.
As to the attempt to blackednthe entire southern cause with the sin of slavery, it was, in fact, one of the causes of America’s secession from England. The Declaration of Independence references “domestic insurrections"which refers to England governors freeing the slaves in several states.
IOW, We seceded from England, in part, to keep slavery legal here. The Slave Trade was a huge money maker for the North (How do you think the money for the construction of Faneuil Hall Hall in Boston was arrived at?) and a huge free labor market for the south and if the Southern Cause is infected by the mortal sin of slavery then our secession from England is, similarly, rendered indefensible and so is the entire existence of the north.
The South had a right to secede and had it been allowed to freely secede then the Jacobins of the North would not have been able to so easily successfully propagandise the southern men who were so instrumental in serving as soldiers in all of our unjust wars against other nations to remake them in our own image.
Generals of both the North and The South were educated at West Point which used two legal texts and both of them taught the right of secession.
But woe betide the autodidact who decides to do his own research and tries to free his own self from the chains of deceitful and self-righteous lies of the north which continue to enslave the intellects of the captives of the public schools because then he can be simply dismissed as a southern sympathiser which are code words for racists.
Dear John at 12:15. Yes, Lincoln was a Mercantilist and the Republican Party ain’t moved a whit off that collectivist orientation.
As for the claim that slavery would not have ended peacefully here. It ended peacefully everywhere else in the west and it could have been done via emancipation and with the the govt paying-off the slave-owning farmers.
I imagine a much smaller and humbler America that tends to its own and its own business and returns to sanity but the Jacobins of the north have spread their venomous and poisonous ideology so successfully throughout the body politic that one has to wait for the poison to work its will and kill America and then we will be forced by circumstances to split into a Confederation of Regional States.
I am the same age as Israel and I think there is a reasonable chance I will witness the end of these United States and the birth of smaller and regional governments. It is the best that can be hoped for in this life.
I would like to add what I think is the most important aspect to the Just War Theory. Remember this comes from heaven itself and reflects Christ and his teaching. As all things of our Lord, it starts with love. Love, and its fruits, and the blessings brought forth from those fruits, is the spiritual linkage required to understand the good work called Just War. I am a Catholic Warrior currently serving you in the conflicts we are engaged today. So for me, as well as all those fighting Christians throughout the ages who have sworn to defend the vulnerable, the innocent, the weak, it (Just War) is essentially a good work from a loving heart. The world will plant many seeds in you, to ensure you do not get to the point where the “light bulb” goes off on this concept, because if it did, we would see a bigger cry to subdue “evil and all its works.” It is in evil’s best interest to attack, confuse, and corrupt all thinking that would lead you to the revelation of this truth about love. To begin the linkage, we identify the origin of this good work in the deep love of neighbor manifested as patriotism, or rather, love of one’s own family/people/community. The fruit this love produces is an ordered and peaceful life, rich in freedom for our people to live the goodness of their lives as God has called them to (and for Americans- all this is Under God). The blessings of those fruits (fruits of peace, order and freedom) is the means and tools found to employ Just War, that is to say, to defend what is precious and vulnerable from the wiles of evil. For us in the military, it is easier to “get it” than many of our brother/sisters living very secular and modern lives. They don’t understand this kind of love. To them, this kind of love can only be romanticized in literature and songs of long ago. And no matter, how many times they see it pass right in front of them, see images of the honorable fighting man, and the many times they get told about these noble fighters of today, they still cannot “see it.” Mainly because they cannot believe that people can love in those ways anymore and that the Lord, would not create instruments of his will to perform that service for his people. Even though he keeps producing, all manner of other holy lifestyles, to include the consecrated life (another form of love, that most modern/secular types cannot understand). That is why, there is such a polarizing effect around this concept, because when the truth of this love begins to manifest, evil within men, will demand to attack it, marginalize it, rationalize the evidence to reduce the beauty of what is right in front of you. However, from this Catholic warrior, who has come closer to our Lord because of his warrior vocation, I assure we are here to perform Just War for you. For we share in our Lord’s love of you, since we understand what it is to carry our crosses, while we are bleeding, tired, chastised and forgotten. We understand the agony in the garden deeply, since we go there before every dangerous mission or deployment order. We have seen the glory of love, when it leads you to die, in the service of your people. For all those, that have a responsibility over others, and therefore must answer to God for those entrusted to your care, you may find it easier to understand that eternal call of Justice, that compels action to subdue evil, called Just War. I hope this helps give you a better frame to use, when you ask your questions about the Civil war and perhaps even brings you to a better understanding about our Lord.
“could go on but I can see Vermont Crank (love the handle…what the hell are you doing up in the Soviet Northeast?”
Dear Confederate Papist. back at ya re the handle.
Due to the grace of God I was born in the hills of Vermont in Springfield, which is a ten minute car ride from Perkinsville (Population 98) where the prettiest strawberry blonde on the planet lived and we met and fell in love as high school sweethearts- and then I moved the hell outta there because political control in the state was seized by the flatlanders who moved up there and they brought with them their pernicious collectivism and they have ruint the damn state.
So, I am now southron by choice :)
Dear Mr. Shea @2:08.
I never knew you thought that way about this issue. It is gratifying to read your thoughts, sir. Thank you.
“So, I am now southron by choice :)”
Good choice of term, VC….and I agree with you about your note to Mark. He did a great job on this subject. There are some differences I would say, but I think he put a lot of research and prayer behind this piece.
The South seceded to preserve slavery, and the North fought to prevent secession. So when the war began, neither was fighting for a just cause.
The North ended up fighting to end slavery, and Southerners ended up fighting to defend their invaded home states. So when the war ended, both were fighting for just causes.
We tend to focus on what the side we sympathize with was fighting for at the end, and what the side we abhor was fighting for at the beginning. Let’s try to be charitable instead.
“No slavery, and there might very well never have been a Civil War,” points to the Southern responsibility. But the opening shot came from the North.
No. The opening shots were fired by Confederate Brigadier General Pierre Gustave Toutant Beauregard, who fired on the Union troops at Fort Sumter.
@Mark
Ok, I stand corrected. (Electrons are cheap…What categories of sin does talking about things you know next-to-nothing about fall into? )
@ + joseph veelone
“How about Bush policy haters instead of Bush haters?”
Because Obama apologist, including himself, can’t stop talking about Bush, and never attack his policies without attacking him personally. For gosh sake – CBS had to fire their evening news anchor, Dan Rather, when it was made known that he fabricated a lead story he ran about George W. Bush for a week. Go back to the two months after 9-11 and see how the two political camps in Congress, Republican and Democrats, talked and sounded. I was pleased and shocked to hear how Democrats sounded just like Americans, no longer attacking her or their opponents. They called a truce for two months. After that they started returning to their olds selves – proving to me they are just phonies. I can say that because I used to be a true believing Democrat from Chicago, south Chicago to be specific. Science showed me how phony the Democrat Party was. They couldn’t tell the difference between nuclear weapons and nuclear energy or knew when life began. Having a year of embryology in college and working with chick embryos in the lab made it easy for me to know when life began, but I could never understand why it was so difficult for Democrats to know being they are soooo concerned about the “little guy.” Well, that turned out to be a lie, and still is, they don’t give a damn about the “little guy” other than how they can use them to acquire the power they want to become the dictators they have proving to be when they controled Congress AND the White House. If it wasn’t for the swooning, liberal media running interference for the Democrat Party, and liberal Catholics who support the pro-abortion party, Obama would never have been elected. Their two years of total control of our government was enough to wake up enough Americans to sweep the Republicans into control of the House of Representatives, and weaken the Democrat control of the Senate. Yet, the Democrats continue to act as they always do – doing what will to give them more power regardless of what is best for Americans. You think $4+ gasoline is good for the “little guy?” Why has Obama shut down the oil production capacity in the U.S. putting thousands of people out of work in the Gulf, and why are the Democrat Senators silent about the obvious – the need to drill and explore more? Why are they preventing development of extracting oil from coal? Why are there more people today depending on handouts from big government than since the 1930’s Depression? It’s not Wall Street that is interested in enslaving us, although the majority of bosses on Wall Street are big time Democrats and donors, it’s the pro-abortion party.
Then +joseph veelone said, “How about the ‘abortion fixation’ being so great that it obsucres the fact that capitalist masters are fixing things so that the whole nation will soon be slaves to our economic Wall Street masters?With the cooperation of the idiots who only want to talk about abortion? and who are going to go into slavery muttering ‘abortion’while the chains are afixed to their one issue limbs?”
Interesting how you brush aside abortion so cavalier, exposing your disinterest in innocent human life, while in the same move you replace murdered babies with your unrealistic concern for becoming enslaved by an imaginary evil. At least the ‘false evil” you worry about, “capitalist and Wall Street,” provides things that we, the living consumers, want and have the freedom to choose with whom we are going to do business. In the process that employs people who now can make a living for themselves and their families instead of having to depend on some disinterested, self-centered, big government handouts. And that is what Lincoln saw for this country long ago, before people like you became so prevalent, wanting to give all the power to an elected few who will make decisions for all of us, such as Obama is doing with the Gulf states and oil, and healthcare. That’s enslavement You enjoying the freedom you are having with $4+ gasoline for your car? You like the idea that some bureaucrat appointed by Obama in Washington D.C. is going to make the decison on whether your heart surgeon is going to be able to give you the urgent by-pass surgery you need to live?
.........well someone has their historical facts straight…...slavery was NOT the determining factor in the War Between the States…...a side note—the largest and most violent anti-war(draft)riots this country ever had was in New York, over their refusal to fight in the war to free slaves !!!!!!!!!
Michael S.
Imaginary evil? What caused the economic crisis but republican disinterest in controlling the housing market?What caused the $4.00 gas,Wall St. Speculation which the president can’t do anything about because of a Republican House.What is causing the the disppearance of the middle class but republican greed,backed up by idiots who changed parties because the democrats “don’t care”? What’s causing the average worker’s salary to go down,but the greed of republican management? What’s causing the unions to disappear from the American scene so that management is getting more and more aggressive towards workers’ rights? What’s causing the unions to be disarmed even in the public sector,but republicans put in by idiots who are swayed by wedge issues and voting democrats out? You keep listening to Fox and swayed by their stupidity and you’ll kiss the chains put on you while you can use your beloved voucher bearing republicans with their hypocrtical anti abortion planks take your medicare
from you.Sure, you can buy what Wall St. provides you by slave labor and underpaid american workers.Both parties are beholden to lobbyists and donations by fat cats,while your republican Supreme Court says that anyone can donate as much as they want so that republican smear campaigns make many a sincere democrat who cares goes down into the dirt while another tea partier can make government smaller along with your income.
How dare you comment on my Catholic stand against abortion when I am simply aware that abortion and its downfall is not the only issue out there.Good luck,sucker,while the nation is controlled by the super rich and you go back to the hovels that the democrats saved the nation from with their social legislation!
Slavery was not the issue. Like an angry married couple, it was merely the catalyst that started the disagreement and therefore was the thing which both sides focused on when speaking to or about one another. The disagreement was over power - who had it, how much of it they had, and whether or not other men had the right to restrict the amount of power held by an individual.
Early in the war, the little red head, Sherman, had to be relieved of his duties because he was too nervous anticipating battles but he later grew to become a true monster and what he did in Georgia at the behest of the Tyrant is impossible to reconcile with Just War.
Here is the great Waylon Jennings, from the wonderful CD,“White Mansions,” with a song about the evil and depravity of the Total War waged against even civilians.
http://www.myspace.com/waylonhossjennings/music/songs/they-laid-waste-to-our-land-73761
When Mr. Waylon Jennings died America lost a truly distinctive voice. I absolutely still love his music and voice.
In a too-neglected Double CD “White Mansions/Legend of Jessie James,” Mr Waylon Jennings sings a fair amount on “White Mansions” and whenever I listen to him sing on that CD, when I hear his deep, rich, soulful voice, and I hear his mournful low-note guitar playing, I always imagine that I am hearing a chain of memory being dragged across the rocky floor of some long-forgotten Southern Sepulcher.
And the chain is being dragged by a hated Haint, dressed in his ragged Confederate Gray Long Coat, and the chain he is dragging is comprised of the links of lies, enmity, and ignorance, forged in the minds of the Jacobinite North and imprisoning nearly the entire populace with its haughty and vindictive “memory,” and this Haint will haunt that sepulcher until America releases him from his bondage with the key of righteousness; a righteousness that, finally, after long last, gives the Southern Cause its due respect and honors the memories of the descendants of those who fought with such heroic courage.
Thank you, Mr. Shea, for this article. As a Southerner, born and bred, I agree that the cause of the Civil War was “States’ Rights,” specifically, the right of states and their citizens to own slaves.
That President Lincoln did not agree with equality does not compromise his personal opposition to slavery.
I see President Lincoln, General Sherman, President Grant, as heroes. I grew up in a house with uncompromising racist parents. My father never gave up his racist attitudes, and while my mother has become much more polite around me, the racism still seeps through. As she is in her 80s, I simply sigh. Southerners would not have given up slavery without force, as so many of them did and still do(My father was one of these) saw slavery as justified and even commanded by God.
- Uhmm, yeah, I actually think we can. Two reasons right off the top:
First, slavery was becoming less and less economically viable.
That seems to be the assumption, but the assumption is never backed up with fact, far as I have seen. Southern intellectuals such as George Fitzhugh (“Sociology for the South”) would have been incredulous at such a claim, to the extent they didn’t find it a non-sequitur. In any event,slaves were working in southern factories (usually small scale, but still) when the Civil War began. Slave labor can work profitably well in an industrial setting, as the 20th and 21st Centuries have demonstrated.
Mr. Vellone:
Your charge about GOP being the party of the rich has some merit. It sadly ignores the fact that the Democrats are, too. Their reaction to the near-collapse of 2008 confirms it—promoting those whose “oversight” led to it (e.g., Geithner), jailing no one responsible for it and passing a “reform” bill drafted by men in the back pocket of American finance (Dodd).
Both parties are Wall Street’s men.
Dale, I am no fan of Geithner.The only value to his appointment might be that it takes a thief to catch a thief.
If the reform bill is so terrible,why are the republicans doing ther best to eviscerate it.
“Men in the back pocket of American finance”...ya got it.Both parties have members of this elite club,sometimes we know who,sometimes we don’t.
Finance reform would take care of the whole situation,unless the Supremes put in their two cents again.
Whe whole affair makes one want to retire to a cave in death valley!
Was the civil war just or unjust? Who knows. A more pertinent question would be what are the functional relationships between those with more power and those with less? What form do the powersharing relationships take that render them more stable? Answer that question and we might forge a more peaceful world to live in.
Those who doubt that the issue of slavery was not at the heart of the civil war should read South Carolina’s justification for secession - http://avalon.law.yale.edu/19th_century/csa_scarsec.asp
This justification included the following:
“We affirm that these ends for which this Government was instituted have been defeated, and the Government itself has been made destructive of them by the action of the non-slaveholding States. Those States have assume the right of deciding upon the propriety of our domestic institutions; and have denied the rights of property established in fifteen of the States and recognized by the Constitution; they have denounced as sinful the institution of slavery; they have permitted open establishment among them of societies, whose avowed object is to disturb the peace and to eloign the property of the citizens of other States. They have encouraged and assisted thousands of our slaves to leave their homes; and those who remain, have been incited by emissaries, books and pictures to servile insurrection.
For twenty-five years this agitation has been steadily increasing, until it has now secured to its aid the power of the common Government. Observing the forms of the Constitution, a sectional party has found within that Article establishing the Executive Department, the means of subverting the Constitution itself. A geographical line has been drawn across the Union, and all the States north of that line have united in the election of a man to the high office of President of the United States, whose opinions and purposes are hostile to slavery. He is to be entrusted with the administration of the common Government, because he has declared that that “Government cannot endure permanently half slave, half free,” and that the public mind must rest in the belief that slavery is in the course of ultimate extinction.
This sectional combination for the submersion of the Constitution, has been aided in some of the States by elevating to citizenship, persons who, by the supreme law of the land, are incapable of becoming citizens; and their votes have been used to inaugurate a new policy, hostile to the South, and destructive of its beliefs and safety.”
@Mark Shea;
Perhaps the opening SHOTS were fired by the C.S.A. but the fort was on Confederate territory. If A foreign power landed troops in a fort in the U.S. we would not be taught as “having started the war” even if we shots first.
So…why don’t you write an article about the Revolution, then?
One thing that first got me to question Lincoln’s Godhood was after reading some articles by Patrick Buchanan (a good Catholic) who showed from Lincoln’s own mouth that he was not the virtuous hero we make him to be.
One of the biggest proofs of this is to simply look at the Emancipation Proclamation. Everyone knows what this was about: freeing the slaves. What 99% of people don’t know is that the Emacipation Proclamation came during the Civil War and it did NOT in fact free all of the Slaves. The EP was an executive order that ONLY the slaves in rebellious states (i.e. the South) were to be free, but NOT the slaves in faithful territories (e.g. parts of Louisiana, Tennessee, etc). Thus, the intention of Lincoln never was to free the slaves in the way we think, rather it was strictly a military strategy to undermine the South by having ex-slaves running around causing rebellion.
Another important detail Pat Buchanan pointed out was that in Abe’s First and I’m pretty sure Second Inaugural Address (the second given DURING the war), Abe made it clear his intention was not to free the slaves.
Another thing to add is that I’ve been told that the Southerers often pointed out that they treated their slaves much more humanely than the Northerers treated their sweat shop factory workers. I don’t know if the slavery in the South was that of “chattel slavery” (the main form condemned by the Church), or if it was merely a step below that of indentured servitude (something we’d call ‘slavery’ today).
Actually, Lincoln made clear that his role as President was to keep the Union together, but, in a published letter to Horace Greeley’s New York Tribune, found here: http://showcase.netins.net/web/creative/lincoln/speeches/greeley.htm
Lincoln makes clear that his duties as President - to maintain the Union, were paramount but did nt compromise his personal disgust for slavery.
Lincoln, like most human beings, was complex, and while he may not have been an integrationist, neither was he a supporter of slavery.
Nck, as a southerner, I assure you: it WAS chattel slavery, and in fact, may states passed laws AGAINST the freeing and educating of slaves; doing so, of course, would close an avenue to freedom that an indentured servant would have.
After reading the Letter of Secession South Carolina issued which people linked to above, I got a more full insight on the situation from the South’s perspective. They saw slavery as an institution and ‘right’ that was enshrined in the US Constitution, which itself was drafted on a few slavery ‘compromises’. The Constitutional Delegates compromised in (1) letting slaves be counted as three-fifths of a person for representational purposes, (2) allowing the slave trade to continue until 1808, after which it was outlawed, (3) the agreeing on all states to return run away slaves to the state and owner from which they escaped.
So there was a deeply engrained slave problem from the ‘start’, and thus it was an issue that was bound to be addressed. After about 20 years of peace on the subject, the South charges that the North began enacting various laws to undermine particularly the 3rd slavery ‘compromise’ of the Constitution as well as not allow ‘new states’ to decide for themselves on the issue of Slavery.
Following the previous link, it also listed the Official Letter of Secession for Mississippi, Alabama, and Georgia:
——————————
http://www.sonofthesouth.net/leefoundation/Mississippi_causes.htm
http://www.sonofthesouth.net/leefoundation/Alabama_secession_Speech.htm
http://www.sonofthesouth.net/leefoundation/Georgia_Secession_Causes.htm
——————————
They are all explicit that the fundamental point they see attacked is slavery. In all three cases, their “grounds” for Secession was that they (a) had a right to do so according to the Constitution, and (b) this was warranted given the North had undermined the slave ‘compromises’ in the Constitution (particularly violating the legal injunction to return run away slaves) and forbade new states the right to decide the issue for themselves. ONLY Georgia mentions (briefly) the issue of the North imposing unfair import taxes and such with the intent to get rich off the South, otherwise it mostly spoke on Slavery. As Alabama’s letter made it very clear, if slavery were abolished, the Southern economy would tank and there would be 4 million slaves with no place to go and even malicious will in regards to their masters.
———————————
This information, to me, is most valuable because it’s based on Primary Sources. In my mind, this puts to rest the idea the Civil War wasn’t about Slavery and rather about unfair Tariffs. Of course, Tariffs or something similar could have been the ‘spark’ or ‘surface level’ problem, but I cannot close my eyes to the fact all those states mentioned explicitly in their individual Declarations of Secession that they were leaving the Union precisely because they saw a long track record of the North blatantly violating the ‘slave compromises’ enshrined in the Constitution (and was the only way the South accepted the Constitution in the first place). Legally speaking, the issue was about State’s Rights, which were violated by the North, but “morally speaking” the North wanted to end Slavery (presumably for moral reasons).
Do not forget that it was the Northern states that wanted to count the slaves as 3/5 of a person for representative purposes in congress whilst the Southrons wanted to count them as whole people. Modern race pimps don’t want you to know about that in today’s education system.
Federal northerners are occupiers, plain and simple. There was no formal surrender between Washington and Richmond. You can blah, blah, blah about Lee surrendering to Grant but generals surrendering to generals does not end war…or in our case, an invasion. We are a conquered people held to ridicule, even to this day. The problem for the goverment in Washington is that many in the North have the same morals as we and they villianize it in the press as racism, tea-bagism, etc., and they also feel the grip of an ever growing and oppressive government.
There may never be (I pray) another armed conflict for the freedom of the Confederacy, but it will happen, preferably through the ballot box and negotiations, and it will happen within the next 40~50 years. An educated oppressed people is the mortal enemy of the tyrant, which is why the education system in the South has traditionally lagged behind the rest of the continent….intentional????
There is plenty of room for all free people to live in a modern Confederacy, regardless of race, creed or national origin. In fact, Allen West or Herman Cain would be my choice of president of the New Confederacy!
Do not forget that it was the Northern states that wanted to count the slaves as 3/5 of a person for representative purposes in congress whilst the Southrons wanted to count them as whole people. Modern race pimps don’t want you to know about that in today’s education system.
No, no, no, no, no—a thousand times NO. I’ve seen this canard brandished so often in so many places (not least by “race pimps”) I want to scream.
The 3/5 compromise was indeed a dehumanizing fraud, but not for the reasons you and countless others have claimed. It did not—NOT, NOT, NOT—count slaves as 3/5 of a “person.” It counted them as 3/5 of a *free* person, which they manifestly were *not.*
Here is the constitutional language in question:
Representatives and direct Taxes shall be apportioned among the several States which may be included within this Union, according to their respective Numbers, which shall be determined by adding to the whole Number of free Persons, including those bound to Service for a Term of Years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three fifths of all other Persons.
What the 3/5 compromise did was allow southerners to pretend, for the purposes of apportioning representation in the House of Representatives, that its chattel slaves were free citizens. This was a manifest fraud, because the chattel had none of the rights of free citizens. However, it nicely boosted representation in the House for states with high slave densities—e.g., South Carolina, Mississippi.
The abolitionist framers rightly wanted reality to prevail. They argued that the slaves should not be counted at all for political purposes—because the slaves manifestly did not count as far as voting, etc. was concerned. For them to be counted to increase the strength of pro-slavery concerns was wormwood and gall in the irony department.
Instead, as is usually the case with politics, reality was partially shunted aside for the 3/5 expedient.
Then why count them at all? Maybe, perhaps, it was known that since slavery was eventually going to be a thing of the past in the South, the northerners knew they’d be outnumbered in congress? It all depends on your source. Carpetbagging northerners did more to seperate whites and blacks in the South starting in “reconstruction” onward, than the federal invasion prior.
Funny how this discussion was not to focus on the slavery issue, but Just War principles, and because of Yankee indoctrination over the last 150 years, it still all boils down to stupid red-necked Southerners can’t get over the slave thing. Oh, and that we’re a bunch of racists….
“Then why count them at all?”
That was the abolitionist argument.
“Maybe, perhaps, it was known that since slavery was eventually going to be a thing of the past in the South, the northerners knew they’d be outnumbered in congress? It all depends on your source.”
I’d like to see your source, then. Frankly, unless you can name one Framer who argued that, I can’t see how such an argument is but an ex post facto anachronism. Moreover, given “Yankee” acquiescence in the post-Reconstruction restrictions on the black vote the former Confederacy, I’d say there wasn’t much likelihood of that.
Funny how this discussion was not to focus on the slavery issue, but Just War principles, and because of Yankee indoctrination over the last 150 years, it still all boils down to stupid red-necked Southerners can’t get over the slave thing. Oh, and that we’re a bunch of racists….
I hope that wasn’t a response to me.
I agree that the 3/5 ‘compromise’ was ironic at it’s core, but the ‘danger’ the South saw, and eventually came to pass, was that the more populous North would be assigned more representation in Congress, which would lead to them making more North friendly policy. So counting Slaves as 3/5 would at least balance the scales temporarily, but this didn’t last. As the North grew, their influence grew, along with ‘rigging the deck’ by Federally creating new “Free States” which gave them more seats in congress.
One of the most shocking details I learned was that by the time Lincoln was elected, the Union was already very sectarian between North and South, and by then (if not earlier) the North had 57 more electoral votes than the South, and Lincoln won solely by winning the North, he didn’t get any votes from the South (nor was he even on the ballot in the South). Thus, the South felt like they were fading away.
Founding a nation (or any big contract) on such an unholy ‘compromise’ is doomed to failure. It would be similar to founding a nation on a compromise between Catholics and Protestants. After looking at the facts, I agree with Confederate Papist that it was, legally speaking, a foreign invasion, totally unprovoked. Focusing on the South firing on the fort is a ploy, since the fort was no longer on Union land. I’m just now learning about how the South was ravaged and “Reconstruction” took place.
I can totally see why they put Lincoln and Grant on their own dollar bill. Us “Northerners” don’t know US history, so we don’t think twice, but to the South, that’s a big middle finger.
I can totally see why they put Lincoln and Grant on their own dollar bill. Us “Northerners” don’t know US history, so we don’t think twice, but to the South, that’s a big middle finger.
I tend to find Civil War arguments to be all heat and no light, and this is the reason: gratuitous overstatements about both regions.
“The South” can’t take it as a middle finger because the region isn’t a monolith pining for the Lost Cause—and that has been the case since the guns fell silent. At a bare minimum, (1) blacks and
(2) southern Unionists wouldn’t have taken it that way—far from it. The latter especially get short shrift in these discussions, which is remarkable given that over 100,000 men from the south fought for the Union.
As a final aside, it’s remarkable how bitter today’s conversations sound when you consider how the brave Southerners who actually fought in the war managed to be astonishingly gracious about it and even donned the uniform of the United States later on.
Dale - first…the “redneck” comment wasn’t directed toward you because I did not interperet your well-thought comment as such…even if I disagree with most of it. I and most Southrons are tired of constantly being described as such by media and morons alike. I consider many people born and raised in the South, regardless of race, creed or national origin, Southerners, equal in God’s eyes and equal in the eyes of the law of the land. When it comes to the issue of slavery, the trade itself was abolished in the NA continent in 1808 or thereabouts which means that no more northern slave ships being brought into port to be shipped to the South (and other states in the union). Were there rotten, good-for-nothing slave owners? Hell yes! They are miserable people. Many slave owners gave the slaves an education, evangelized them and a place to live, eat and sleep. At the end of northern hostilities, many of the slaves stayed put with their former masters and worked for them, some got paid with money, some got land to keep and work, some did move into cities throughout the South and some went north to reunite with family and friends that did escape or were emancipated during the conflict. Reconstruction was brutal to Southern whites and blacks for different reasons. The whites were the beaten enemy and deserved no respect. They did not treat blacks any better…why? They didn’t like the blacks, thought they were a lesser people. So much for self rightousness.
Confederate Papist:
Please provide a source that “many slave owners educated slaves,” as to have done so was forbidden by law.
I’m not sure how many of you have read Robert Fogel’s and Stanley Engerman’s book “Time On The Cross: The Economics of American Negro Slavery,” but it wouldn’t hurt to give it a look. I read it 20 years ago during an American Economic History course I was fortunate to take at Mount Holyoke College under Fred Mosely. In spite of what some folks on both sides of the Mason Dixon line felt then and are saying nowadays, slavery was extremely profitable and efficient. Huge cotton plantations using large numbers of slaves were the huge Agribusinesses of the Antebellum age.
The North’s industrial leaders, paying immigrant (mostly) Irish Catholics barely pennies above what their Dixie plantation-owning collaborators were not giving their (respective human chattel) only escaped the verdict of history for their complicity and for one reason, the North won. Winners get to write and rewrite both the rules of post-war economics, and of course, history.
However, to say slavery wasn’t the reason for the war is to ignore a wide range of contributory factors which all fed into the war itself. Think of all the deals and compromises hashed out over slavery by the respective regions’ powers that be to either spread slavery or contain it. Think of the major overriding spark of the “Bloody Kansas War” leading right up to the much larger conflict. Think of why the Southern politicians banged away for so long and arduously for nullification, and putting the rights of one or more states over that of the security and general welfare of all American citizens. Would they have gone that far to defend the rights to maintain such a diabolical institution as our own kind of slavery (said to be one of the worst, if not the actual worst) if they didn’t believe it stood to benefit their legally predominant white population.
I used to buy into the notion that slavery was dying out and the South was fighting for its dignity to maintain its rights to have some rights over others they never would’ve granted had it not been for the pain and shame of losing a hard and bitter war to realize what folly it was.
Give up the ghost of the “rights” and all the other myths about the noble plantation cavaliers standing up to the mongrelized Northerners who simply ground down the South with their numbers and industrial strength.
Has anybody stopped even today to wonder why the North practically leaped past the South when it came to industrial progress? Their “leaders” were still looking into the past, never mind “look away Dixie-Land.” They were willing to fight for a system that used a stolen population base for its primary labor supply in order to maintain a largely feudal and baronial system that was anything but “American” in any way shape or form.
Lincoln and the Republicans of his time looked past the day when the war would be over and passed the Homestead Act, one of the greatest legislative achievements in our history, right up there with Teddy Roosevelt’s Panama Canal, National Park system, Eisenhower’s interstate highways and Kennedy/Johnson’s NASA. (Think of all the private sector jobs created by the government. That’s right, GOVERNMENT DOES CREATE JOBS.) And during the Civil War, it wasn’t just rifles. cannons and mortars being produced in large numbers; but shoes and many other clothing items… all of which employed many people. At least the Northern soldiers had shoes to march with. The Battle of Gettysburg was started because some barefoot Rebels came across both a shoe manufacturer outside the town and most inconveniently for them, shod Yankees.
As hated as the draft was, at least the North had it to rely on, which came in hand immediately following Grant’s initial losses at the Battle of the Wilderness and Spotsylvania C.H. Robert E. Lee begged both Jefferson Davis and the Confederate Congress to start conscription. It wasn’t until the South was in its final death throes that the general got his wish. By then it was too late. What was the hold up? States rights! Some states governors and legislatures wouldn’t give up their soldiers to fight for their .... drumroll please here ... STATES RIGHTS TO HAVE OR NOT HAVE THE RIGHT TO OWN SLAVES.
It all comes back to slavery, no matter one looks at it. The best summation of the war is Abraham Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address.
On a more personal note, I’d love to know what a Union soldier who joined up to serve in the famous Mass. 54 Regt., buried not far from my home, would have to say. I think he’d have something to say about fighting for rights, but from a vastly different perspective than those coughed up by states’ righters then, and their apologists of today.
He fought for not only his own people, but for all peoples’ rights to make a decent living for their families as free men and women, and not on any owner or factory boss’ economic cross.
Michael Jeter - just perusing the internet you can find instances, one prominent figure was Fredrick Douglass, whose education by his master’s wife was cut short initially when his master found out about it, had then had the tools necessary to continue his education himself, and established a “Black Sunday School” at his new master’s church to teach the Word and to learn to read.
There are many instances of situations like this…why? Because as I indicated above, not all slave owners were monsters. There were a fair share, that is true…AND, I do not condone the institution of slavery, PERIOD. There were laws against teaching slaves to read…yes. Many slave owners looked the other way when they found books in the slave quarters..why? Mainly because the books they found were bibles. Do you always go 55 mph on the interstate?
We are all going to have to agree to disagree on this one I am afraid. I am not going to change your mind, and you’re not going to change mine.
You prove my point: Douglass was tutored by his Master’s wife, not the Master, who forbade it.
Yes, some slaves were taught to read the bible, but many contemporaneous sources report they were only taught those sections which justified slavery, though the slaves, of course, would begin to extrapolate and read other parts.
Some slave owners allowed some slave to read the bible because they saw their evil enterprise - slavery - as a means to “Christianize” Africans, forgetting of course, African Church Fathers, such as Augustine, and, according to some, Athanasius.
I’d like to get more info on how ‘bad’ (or good) slaves were actually treated. We’ve all seen the pictures in textbooks of horrific treatment, but really, is that the ‘norm’?
As some have noted, if a slave is ‘valuable property’, it seems that the master would want to care for that ‘property’ and not just abuse it. It would make no sense to put that property out of commission or over work it, etc. Thus, I would lean towards the idea slaves were not badly treated, would have to have had proper nutrition, medical, and housing. Also, I’ve seen pictures where female slaves would often help care around the house, especially caring for the white children, which wouldn’t make sense if the slaves were dangerous or felt cheated. I mentioned above how during the same period the sweat shops in the north were running child labor and slave-wages and could care less if the worker dropped since they could be replaced.
Nick, last night when I referred to Robert Fogel’s and Stanley Engerman’s book “Time On The Cross: The Economics of American Negro Slavery,” my rush to get my post in so I wouldn’t miss any of PBS’ show about the Freedom Riders caused me to leave out Amazon link, which includes an interesting review. (http://www.amazon.com/Time-Cross-Economics-American-Slavery/dp/0393312186) Right at the very beginning, reviewer Felix Sonderkammer makes an interesting point which would seem to (strongly)bolster your contention:
“It turns out that the predominant views are wrong: slavery wasn’t unprofitable, slaves were well-nourished and lived almost as long as free laborers, slave families were rarely split up, resistance to slave-owners was rare, and on and on.” This makes some “sense” from a business point, (Lord forgive me, Please! I can’t believe I’m even writing like this!) since it would be conterintuitive for a slave owner to so badly mistreat or neglect his best result-producers. Sadly, I can’t bring myself to call them “workers” because they weren’t even given the dignity due to them that the noble and more deserving description “worker” would have bestowed on them.
While it’s true some slaves had it better than others and were able to learn skills and trades they would need when the day came they’d eventually be free, this one sentence captures what we as a nation, have yet to come to grips with: “Since this is only a book on the economics of slavery (as the book’s subtitle says), it cannot examine the psychological or ethical damage that slavery caused, as the authors acknowledge. They do acknowledge that while slaves received a higher proportion of the pecuniary income they produced as wages, food, clothing, housing, and medical care than free laborers did, they also acknowledge that the non-pecuniary costs of slavery to the slaves themselves was enormous.”
Eliminating slavery without coming to terms with the underlying racism ... on both sides of the Mason Dixon Line, assuredly guaranteed that whatever short-term gains the freed slaves enjoyed during the Reconstruction Era reforms (backed only by the US Army), were doomed to be wiped away the moment the troops left Dixie, not to return on their behalf until the Civil Rights Struggle.
To this very day, with our first (and resoundlingly) elected Black president serving his first of perhaps two terms, we still have people who’ll resort to pulling out of their bag of political/ideological and yes, racist ideas, anything they can use to discredit the man just because he’s Black, liberal and not the guy whom they voted for. It doesn’t matter a thing to them that the man Pres. Obama defeated, Sen. John McCain, stands by Barack Obama’s legitimate claims to American citizenship and our duly elected 44th President. Just recently The Donald, a casino owner who lost running a gambilng joint, had the gall to question the president’s intelligence and entrance into Columbia and Harvard.
To his credit, President Obama has always openly and gratefully acknowledged Affirmative Action’s role in helping him gain entrance. But make no mistake…at that level, no matter what breaks a student accepted by Harvard, Columbia or even my much lesser-known alma mater, St. Thomas University/Biscayne College (FL), through Affirmative Action, every one of those breaks were EARNED. Contrast that to the legacy breaks that many wealthy white students used to gain entrance into the same elite schools; some of them treating them as damn birthrights of all things!
Come to think of it, President Obama has been spending the last two years cleaning up the financial mess caused by one certain Yale legacy.
Just as when it comes to Protestantism’s ascendant status within our nation’s religious makeup is concerned, the same can be said now and unfortunately for years to come, I suppose, for all minorities, no matter how much they contribute to the nation’s greatness.
Indeed, there were whites, many of whom also worked as children in the huge brick factories in milltowns like Lawrence, Manchester, Lowell and Holyoke in New England. And there were “No Irish Need Apply Signs” posted by the Yankees, and I’m not just referring to the factory owners, but many “Swamp Yankees” who ran a lot of the little towns spread throughout the region, and they wanted no part of any Irishman who wasn’t Scotch Protestant Irish. That they’d tolerate. There’s still a notable difference in duration and viciousness of the Yankees’ shunning of Catholics, particularly Irish Catholics, and what the South did to the free Blacks during the Jim Crow years.
There were some thick as factory red brick owners up here, but we didn’t have any damn Bull Connors to deal with.
I’d like all these Southern apologists who claim slavery wasn’t so bad to answer one question:
How many of you feel comfortable being a slave of a mortal -thus eliminating all the pious ninnies who will tell me they are slaves for Christ, or some such, while they are free to own property, pursue any and all educational avenues, do not have to worry about their owner/master raping their wives and daughters indeed, do not have to worry about people outside of their family busting up said family, selling spouses, children, siblings away from said family, often never to be heard from again, as part of a business decision - or as punishment.
How many of you wish to live with the daily knowledge that if your owner felt like raping your wife, daughter, sister, there is nothing you can do about it, and if you try, you will be beaten, sold, or killed?
Yes, some slaves were kept in the house. Often, they were their owner’s children, or the owner’s “mistress,” “concubine,” rape victim.
Yeah; slavery wasn’t so bad.
People should just get over it.
By your arguments, Mark, it would seem to me that the Revolutionary War was just, because although honestly it was started primarily because colonists didn’t like taxation, it ended up giving religious freedom. Just as soldiers in the Civil War needed something other than their military achievement to comfort them, so in the Revolutionary War the thought that if they die, at least future generations wouldn’t have as high taxes hardly would buoy them up…
The North’s motives for restoring the Union by force were far more noble than those of the Founding Fathers during the years leading up to the formal break with London in ‘76 and pf course, afterwards during the Revolutionary War. Yes, we were taxed without representation, but so were other parts of the Empire and Scotland was still reeling after the brutal put down of Bonnie Prince Charlie’s rebellion in the late 1740s. The quality of life for most British Americans was superior than what many of their cousins in the home country enjoyed.
Our forefathers benefitted greatly from the protection given to them at great cost in blood to many British soldiers sent over to fight both the French and their Indian allies. When what we call the French and Indian War (which was actually the last of several which began when Indians working on behalf of the French raided Deerfield in western Massachusetts in 1703) was finished with Britain finally conquering and NOT returning the territory its regular colonial provincial regiments fought, died and took from the French…the colonists enjoyed a degree of security they had never known before.
The monetary costs for waging this war, which began outside of Pittsburgh when a captured French officer was killed by one of George Washington’s Indian scouts…thus triggering what actually was the THE first “world war” in scope ... had to be paid by somebody; thus, London expected we’d pay a portion which the King’s and Parliament’s top bean-counters felt was proper. While that irritated the colonists to a great deal, being told they could not move west of the Appalacians into this new territory of the vastly expanded British Empire only added more logs to the growing fire. To be fair, London had point. The Empire was capable of defending only so many square miles of land with x number of troops. If the people were allowed to move in en masse, who could they count on for protection? France only gave up her eastern provinces; she still owned a vast empire’s worth of land to the west of the Mississippi. And there was the Spanish Empire to worry about as well.
When London allowed for the Quebecois to practice their Catholic faith, that perhaps more than taxes was the real emotional tipping point, especially for professional agitators and hard-core anti-Catholic bigots like Sam Adams and many other New England Protestant Yankees. Allowing the Quebecois to continue practicing Catholicism represented no less than a still extant “popish threat” to them. Finally, since the revolution was a “top-down” and very conservatively entered-into break with the mother country, one can say that unlike the Civil War, it was hardly a “people’s war.” In fact, throughout much of the war, support for the Revolution was not anything like what we have a habit of romanticizing it to have been. (Prior to the Civil War, if you want to find a real “people’s revolution,” there’s no better example to point to than Shay’s Rebellion, led by Dan’l Shays of Pelham, Massachusetts on behalf of farmers who were being foreclosed, hounded and taxed out of their farms and homes by the courts, legislature and merchants, all of which were located primarily in Boston. Most of Shay’s fellow rebels were veterans of the Revolutionary War. (Indeed, as the centuries passed, the more things stay the same ... especially in Massachusetts.) Shay’s “unsuccessful” rebellion which put the fear of God in the economic ruling elite’s heads and hearts almost toppled the fledgling post-revolutionary confederacy of former colonies. So frightened was our elite and monied class that they agreed to meet in Philadelphia to shape what became our Constitution and nation.
Yet, it was still a fairly loose “nation” compared to what the sacrifice of 620,000 casualties brought about during the Civil War. As the late Shelby Foote aptly pointed out during Ken Burns’ The Civil War PBS series, before the Civil War, the “United States are ...” after the war, we turned to saying “the United States is ...”
Enormous difference. Enormous, and certainly, given what we can now look back at history ... and not just ours, but the world’s history as well, and our role in shaping it ... the world is a far better place now that we speak as one nation, which happens to contain fifty sovereign states (to a lesser degree of course). For the longest time, nobody would be taken seriously in politics if they ever mentioned another “n word” ... nullification. No thanks to Tea Party politicos, nullification seems to be coming back in vogue. I’d suggest to anybody becoming enamored with politicians calling for their respective states’ nullification of “Obamacare” that the same pols swing by Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville, Gettysburg, or Antietam the next time they visit the nation’s capitol. If that’s not possible, they should sit and watch Burns’ series. If they’re still unconvinced, then they should resign their offices immediately. Every elected state as well as Federal politician is required to honor and serve both Federal and their state constitutions.
Lastly but not least ... there’s always the Jackson and Lincoln ways to handle such recalcitrant traitors: Andrew Jackson, when faced with the first such nullification threat and civil war with (where else, South Carolina…the “Mother of Secession,”) rightly promised to hang every member of the South Carolina Legislature who voted for it. In 1861, Lincoln, facing the real possibility of Maryland’s secession, simply locked up the pro-secession legislators, yanked their right of habeas corpus and saved the seat of the national government from falling into rebel control.
Just how badly do people want to spike Obamacare? Is it worth the loss of another 620,000 casualties in a nuclear age of all times? Maybe the Tea Party should rename itself the Kool Aid Party.
Steven,
Thanks for your summary. Regarding racism, that’s just a fact of every day life, it’s not something that we can get rid of, nor is it necessarily bad since it acknowledges races are different and not every group likes the same things or thinks the same. Even after “desegregation,” blacks and whites still naturally prefer to hang out with their own kind, not out of malice. And racism cuts both ways too, since 99% of the Black vote went to Obama (who isn’t technically even Black), yet most blacks don’t approve of his type of morality - in other words, they voted for him principlally on racial grounds, as did many whites who voted for him. It’s a fact, but not necessarily a bad thing. As Catholics, we know Obama was the worst choice on strictly moral grounds, but I’m not going to turn this into an obama talk since it’s another subject than the Civil War.
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Michael,
I’m not Southern, much less a “southern apologist,” but your argument is a bit unfair. Nobody here is even saying slavery is ‘good’, only that maybe the mistreatment wasn’t as ‘black and white’ (pardon the pun) as sectarian sides like to paint it. Also, more troubling is that the charges you make equally apply to ‘free’ people, particularly those in impoverished conditions like the sweat shop factories in the North (where, arguably, most of these white/immigrant ‘workers’ were treated less humane than black slaves in the South). Further, we could say people in America are more “free” than back then, but the level of sexual deviancy, including rape and child abuse, are at an all time high, particularly in places like public schools and divorced households. And with the divorce rate and cohabitation levels of today, there is a lot of ‘rape’ and child mistreatment of single parents by “live in boyfriends” and fathering children out of wedlock.
In short, the ‘moral’ case you make fails in my book, since today those things are at levels unheard of at earlier times of US history.
I am Southern, grew up with racist parents and their racist family and friends.
There is clearly, no end to the evil of the human heart.
I do not justify the evil against families of today or yesterday.
That will not stop me from condemning Southern racism and the slavery and segregation it practiced, and the effects thereof in which I was raised.
My moral case passing in your book matters not one whit to me.
It’s one thing for people to “stick with their own kind” out of local parish/church affiliations and ties, neighborliness, kinship by blood, sports, school allegiances, etc. all of which are fine. The game changes completely when people start saying “those people” and using code words to describe and/or just diss the general intellect of whomever “those people” happen to be. This shouldn’t be too difficult to comprehend. But, in my parents old city of Holyoke, MA (and I’m sure it likewise happened in places like Lowell, Lawrence, MA and Manchester and Nashua, NH ... when the Catholics started earning more money and found it easier to make a living outside of their old parish/ward boundaries within these older “milltowns” in respective Connecticut and Merrimack River valleys, they did so in rapid fashion. Unfortunately, they also pulled up the drawbridges when they landed in newer, albeit equally white and English speaking suburban tract neighborhoods. This ugly pattern also occured within the parish structure, and when I say ugly, I mean PLUG UGLY. Why it seemed that all the Irish, French and Polish Catholic folks who came up from the tenements all of a sudden forgot what they learned in their parochial schools and sunday school lessons. “Y’know, they’re all on food stamps and they’re the ones who are ALWAYS holding up the grocery lines as they’re buying all this stuff for their ever growing brood fathered by this or that father and I’ll bet those gals don’t even know who their daddy is, much less their kids daddies,” and this persistent whine delivered with that ever present nasaly northeastern urban accent, “WHy don’t they ever bother to learn English and become like us?”
I sure as hell wouldn’t want to become like that “us.” Nor do I blame all “those people” for not wanting to either. Would you?
And I’ve heard from Polish Catholics some embarrassing horror stories about the abuse many of their fellow, albeit “Anglo”—though predominately Irish, Catholics who attended an all English speaking parish down the street. Same faith, almost two species from two different planets. I’ll admit that I couldn’t disagree with my southern sister-in-law who said she saw more prejudice in north than the south. As horrible as Jim Crow was, and it was diabolical, at least the Southerners were up front with their racist nonsense. And before I toss any more of my own rocks, I’ll admit to having some awful notions in my head and heart years ago which unfortunately came out as words. But better to recognize it and deal with it than to tip toe around it and blur the lines between normal strong ties based on innocent associations than to keep all that denial plugging my system and moral vision from recognizing racism’s effects on myself as well.
I’m far from perfect; none of us are. But I’ll tell you, it’s a lot easier to get by in life when we don’t have to carry any more emotional weight and guilt caused by our own misdeeds. It’s easier to forgive others in order to move on and do better things for other people than to carry a huge load mostly out of fear and, sometimes the simple unwillingness to recognize that our fears and prejudices are nothing more than placeboes and comfort blankets.
Those blankets don’t do a great job of really keeping that gnawing coldness of our hearts that tears us up, inside out and keeps us down; do they?
Fifty four percent of Republicans believed in the birther nonsense.Teapartiers are insisting on all kinds of cuts on the backs of the old and poor,all the while insisting that we cannot afford these helps for the most needy.At the same time,they want to give the rich tax breaks that many of the affluent admit they don’t need.Just yesterday the republicans sank a new source of income for the feds,the big fed bucks to the oil companies that our economy really needs and the oil companies don’t.We just found out yesterday that an organization of big companies has been writing legislation against labor,minorities and the democratic base.This legislation has been being copied almost verbatim viz the Wisconsin,0hio and Indiana.Kansas Republicans have recently passed legislation requiring birth certificates for voter registration,thus the evisceration of voter registration drives that were going to help which party? All of this thinly veiled rascist undertoning regarding the horror of horrors,illegals swelling the democratic vote of minorities which is an exaggerated fear of “them.” The following is of utmost concern to Catholics: Representative Ryan, of medicare fame, makes in mandatory for his staffers to read Ayn Rand, whose main theme is that selfishness is a virtue, and that there are winners and losers in the world and the losers just don’t deserve any kind of break.The losers being minorities,elderly and children.Meanwhile Catholics are distracted by the ugly fact of abortion ,so much so that legislation that is in their own financial interest, is failing because they have elected teapartiers to represent them.Then there is global warming which even Rome is worried about,is considered a democratic plot to destroy big business.0ur Lord in one of His private revelations,said he would punish America through the economy,and from what we can see,the racism and one issue blindness of the people of His own Church.0ne would think that Predident 0bama was doing abortions in the basement of the White House.He,tragically,in good faith,has terribly chosen a pro choice position which he considers to be an enlightened view.He doesn’t like abortions.He, like president Clinton, wants them to be rare and safe.I am totally against abortion.I want it to be illegal,but not to the extent that we have to revert clothes hangers and back alley abortions.I want abortions to disappear,but not to the extent that I am going to vote into office, hypocrites who agree with me on this issue,and feel free to neglect the needy,elderly and children and to kill our democracy so that their corporate sponsors can pay less to workers,destroy unions,pollute the enviornment and buy our senators and representative.
Joining late .. and not reading all the posts, sorry. But what I have read - there seems to be a ton of “feeling” and “stretching” beyond the intent of the question. Yes, a “just” war is never black and white (no pun intended). Too many answers here are trying to make a case of it being just or unjust by the way it was fought. That’s not the question One can argue that it was just in that it wished to (and succeeded) in preserving the union. After all, the United States maintained to be the north - it had the existing president and government. This same preserved government went on to effectively reconcile with the south—and then effectively support just causes in WWI, WWII and on. Would the world have been the same or safter with two America’s? Doubtful. Given only that, histroy proves the justness.
How many Southern states emancipated their slaves before Lee surrendered?
How many Southern states would’ve freed their slaves if Lee hadn’t surrendered? Lincoln recognized that in order to defeat evil, evil had to be addressed directly and called out for what it was. There are some evils that all the lawyering in the world cannot possibly come close in helping us rid the planet of them. FDR recognized this with militarism in Germany and he was dedicated to seeing Germany brought to her knees for its atrocities committed not only in the name of a mish mash of socialism and cult-like racialist nationalism. In doing so, such a defeat would help stamp it out of the Germans like no other means had ever done before in history. (Ditto for Japan’s militarists.)
There’s no sense “engaging in dialogue” with thugs and debasers of human dignity. It has to be eradicated much like any other infection in the human body, mind and especially our hearts and souls. Lincoln had no desire to hurt Southerners per se, but his growing disgust and impatience with slavery and what he saw it was doing to us led him to take the gutsy step of issuing the Emancipation Proclamation.
It wasn’t an easy step to make knowing as he did (within his own extended family.) Even immediate family members were wearing different uniforms and taking strong sides over even what should be an unspeakable “right” to own another human being for the purpose of economic gain and ease of life from otherwise necessary tasks. Signing and issuing the proclamation gave the nation something more to think about: the “WHY” behind the what he and the War Department was expecting so man young men give.
Eighty years later, the two largest German armies in the world first faced off each other in Tunisia. Hitler’s Germans at first carried the day because ours were not in a hating mood yet; and Ike had to pull it out of them from the time they arrived till the last bomb was dropped on Berlin. The final “convincer” was the liberation of the death camps at Dachau, Buchenwald, etc. (Our other allies had little need of any extra steps to build up their necessary hate to motivate their men.
The Germans, especially Goering’s Luftwaffe over Britain and the SS in Russia gave them more than plenty of reasons.) We, on the other hand, were, save for the U-Boat front, relatively unscathed from the Nazi war machine. Of course, on the other side of the planet, Japan gave us direct tangible reasons to go after the Empire in the harshest way possible.
Both Lee and Sherman nailed it: “war is hell,” but Lee’s added words, “it is good that war is hell lest men grow too fond of it” would seem to have guided and now capture the essence of our overall strategic policy-making during WWII. We wanted the Axis to be beaten so thoroughly once and for all so that it wouldn’t take any pleasure out of threatening, blackmailing, invading, despoiling their neighbors, much less depopulating them and having the gall to justify this depopulation on racial/religious grounds.
Lincoln and the most ardent abolitionists and anti-slavery Union officers wanted to beat the living hell out of the South or simply beat the South into hell itself (thank you Billy Sherman!) in order to make sure the multi-headed scourge of slavery and what it wrought would never surface again.
Astonishingly enough, slavery, albeit in legal drag, is making a comeback through the increased use of privatized prisons, who, in order to make sure profits are met one way or another, are willing to cut moral corners and arrange for making side contracts for prisoners to make X number of widgets. Can’t you just see the response of these companies when called on this part of the rush to privatize one of the most sensitive components of our criminal justice system? “Well, at least the contracts aren’t going out to sweatshop nations abroad.”
How forward-looking of them. Let these same exploiting, robbing and mortal-sinning union busters explain this to American workers working like hell to keep their jobs, especially in retail, when they’ve got to worry about their employer making back-end-low-ball deals privatized prisons in their states. It’s bad enough to be scratching by on chump wages, but knowing their state income and sales taxes are being “saved” at their expense via their state’s privatization of their respectie states’ correction systems with prisoners making things that used to be made bt decently-employed American workers just makes my blood run hot.
How do deliberately concocted labor-market devolutions this help us avoid retreating back to polarized conditions akin to the post-bellum 19th century conditions where today’s oligarchs can be have much like yesterday’s and “justify” pulling anything uder the sun to make (or rake) a buck and and all the while look like a hero for “saving taxpayers’ dollars”? Even doing the right thing is now reducible to a money-making cliche.” Some progress.
It’s not the region. This isn’t just a “Sunbelt thing” though it’s most popular down there.
It’s all in the mindset, which does so much to corrode the workings of our hearts and souls.
Was the Civil War justified to end slavery (as well as save the Union)? You bet, on both counts! Would another revolution be necessary to save the hard fought, bled and died-for gains every man, woman and child must have in order to be treated with dignity?
Let’s pray to God it wouldn’t be necessary. But if the revolution is forced upon the middle and poorer classes of this country to restore the American Dream for, everyone, what must come will come. We owe it to our children, ourselves and to our ancestors who laid their sacrifices and more on the “altar of freedom.” If our ancestors wouldn’t give our American birthrights to the Kaiser, Hitler, Hirohito, Mussolini and Stalin, we have no business caving into today’s traitors “toiling” in corporate corner suites. We need to remind them that if they want to betray the American worker by using back-room deals to reinstate slavery through our corrections systems, they have no business whining about “class warfare” no thanks to the one they started in the first place. And the American worker, once riled, as Ike’s soldiers were as they discovered what Naziism really stood for; also discover what the insidious plans the oligarchs are so enamored of thrusting on the American working class—they too will learn the costs of loving to the real price they’ll bring upon themselves from something they grew too fond of: the instigation of continual classwarfare by turning American workers against each other, manipulating their anger via submiminal wage contract labor.
The Civil War was far more “just” than we can begin to appreciate; and its first shots were fired 150 years ago.
My apologies for leaving out the link to where readers can learn more about this “practice” where private prisons further contract out their inmates ... or semi-slaves ... to other private-for-profit retailers. (I could really let loose with a much stronger string of words, but this IS a forum for religiously minded people.)
http://motherjones.com/politics/2008/07/what-do-prisoners-make-victorias-secret
Some good points Steve ... and you were going well ... until you jumped ship to prison slaves and a MotherJones post. Dang. Preserving the “union” has a whole new meaning for ya I guess? :)
Thank you. However, I’m not so sure I jumped any ships. If slavery can be reintroduced via our prison systems, it’ll come back through other means. Debtors prisons/farms, you name ‘em. And you’ll still be behind those all-too-clever jerks who are always out to find ways to squeeze a buck out of every living being and even the dead. (The cosmetics industries made boodles out of body parts from aborted children till they were called on it. Don’t know if they’re still at it. But it was embarrassing.) Back to squeezing the live folks: Don’t forget that sweetheart arrangement Tom DeLay and his pal Jack Abramoff set up with their cronies out in the Northern Marianas. And so long as we remain enslaved to our consumer addictions ... well, it’s late and I presume you and I know where this could lead to. Unfortunately, there are too many dots and bloody spots to list and follow.
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