Between Empire and Anarchy: In Current Events

Not part of my original plan for this rather informal series, but I just came across this article from Foreign Policy magazine, and thought it deserved posting. It's disturbing, if not at all unexpected, to see violence against Christians and other non-Islamist minorities on the rise in the Middle East during all the recent turmoil. It's not like it hasn't been happening in Iraq for years. But what's interesting in the article with respect to the question of Empire vs. Anarchy is pretty obvious: Traub gives a bit of overview of the situation's historical background. The line of "progress" since the 1800s has essentially been from  the weakening of the Ottoman Empire to the rise of nationalism, and now to what is essentially anarchy (or at least very disorganized civil war) in much of the Middle East. Nationalism is still strong in the area, as one can see in countries like Turkey, Saudi Arabia, etc. But the problem, not the first of its kind in history, but particularly widespread today, is that "nationalism" becomes sectarianism and sects break up into smaller sects and suddenly you have a madhouse with everyone fighting for power.

I'm inclined to think that to some extent this is always a danger with nationalism. People unite into a "nation" and then begin to question whether they all really belong to it or if say, this branch of that ethnic group can really ever "belong". What I'm getting at is the idea that within the nationalist impulse, or rather, the nation-creating impulse (since nationalism in countries that already have a strong sense of national identity is, rather obviously, a different affair), can easily slip into the impulse to keep dividing and dividing along ever-finer political, ethnic, religious, etc lines. And eventually you have anarchy. Which, certainly, is not necessarily violent. But you have only to look at the Middle East (or Africa, or parts of Eastern Europe, or parts of South America, some further back in history than others) to see that violence is far too often both the means and the result of this infinite splintering.

Between Empire and Anarchy, part I: the birth of the Nation-state in France and England

In America, we tend to be rightly suspicious of both emperors and anarchists. Empires make us, consciously or not, remember Great Britain and our struggle for independence. Anarchy was the bogeyman of the Founding Fathers; fear of chaos and the Hobbsean state of nature motivated the writing of the Federalist Papers; it encouraged the North go to war in the 1860s. Honestly, whatever end of the political spectrum you come from, it's pretty easy to agree that both these alternatives are undesirable. I mean, sure, there are extremists on both sides, but your average person won't be in agreement with them.

What's fairly interesting, then, particularly in the context of the History of Eastern Europe class I'm taking currently, is to watch the rather delicate play between the two extremes as the concept of nationhood enters the cultural consciousness of Europe during the mid-nineteenth century. To be more accurate, I should note that the concept of Nationhood was already strong in England and France. But by the 1800s, that had been developing for almost 400 years in those two countries.

Actually, I'm going to allow myself to be sidetracked from the topic of Eastern Europe for a while to give a brief overview of that development, since it's interesting, and what's more, it helps to clarify what precisely is so different about conceiving of oneself as belonging to a nation--despite the fact that these two developed into nations by uniting somewhat disparate social/cultural entities whereas the nascent nationalism of Eastern European cultures tended to be a movement of separation from a larger, monolithic empire. From my perspective, which I believe is a fairly orthodox one in this regard, the concept of nationalism in both Britain and France has its roots in the Hundred Years War of 1337-1453, but more specifically in the Lancastrian (for Britain) and post-Jeanne d'Arc (for France) phases which occurred around 1415-1429 and 1429-1453 respectively.

Since Americans (if they are lucky) generally only know Shakespeare's version of the war, which pretty much involves Merry Old England as the Hummer rolling over the French barricade of sticks, let me point out that the war was A.) essentially a stalemate for about 85 years, and B.) it was more of a feudal quarrel for most of this time than anything: many whom we would today consider "ethnic" Englishmen had holdings in France and were fighting on the side of the French, and "ethnic" Frenchmen with lands in certain places were fighting on the "side" of the English--if you can even call them "sides" per se, given how fluid the divide was. In other words, France, insofar as it existed, was evenly matched with England, insofar as that existed. Things began to change when Henry V came to the throne (and of course, if you were to talk to the English, Henry V was the Hundred Years War). Not satisfied, like his predecessors, with conducting an interminable struggle for a bit of feudal land, Henry was determined to Be King. Of everything. Even if it meant breaking French inheritance laws--because of course, the fellow had no legal  right whatsoever to the French throne; just a lot of hubris and a talent for military things. He went ahead and defied the Pope's ban on longbows (oh wait, that's right, that's why the French weren't using longbows...not because they were stupid, because you could be excommunicated for it [note: most people will claim that this was only the case for crossbows, but if you read an actual history book, rather than just the internet, that misperception is corrected. Cf. for instance Joseph Priestly's General History of the Christian Church, Vol. 2]; also note that the charge up the hill at Agincourt was not as stupid as it sounds, because the plate armour of the French knights really couldn't be penetrated by longbow arrows. Which claim is borne out by the fact that the best-armoured knights in the front lines actually had a high survival rate; the problem came when the unforeseen rainstorm caused their horses to get bogged down and they couldn't advance and take care of the archers--essentially unopposed, the English archers were then able to slaughter the less-well-defended French common soldiers.). He had the strength of personality to unify the rather fractious, individualistic English nobles, and the intelligence (as Bismarck and other nation-creators after him would) to realize that finding a common enemy is the best way to preserve unity under a single ruling authority. The next step was to assert his legitimacy by allying himself with various European powers, the most important of whom was the Duke of Burgundy, who, being a fractious noble himself, was quite happy help prevent the French king from gaining the same kind of power over his vassals. After winning several dramatic victories, Henry went ahead and tried (again) to legitimize his claim to the throne by marrying the king's daughter and forcing the king (who was insane, incidentally) to disinherit the Dauphin. The idea being that Henry's heirs would inherit France, which is still illegal, because French law did not allow inheritance through the female line...one of those things having its roots in too many early medieval civil wars. The illegality was compounded by the fact that the Dauphin (eventually Charles VII) wasn't really illegitimate.

So on the English side we see the emergence of a single strong leader, the unification of often-divided vassals in a newly-mythologized struggle against a common enemy, and corresponding phenomenal success. What was going on in France? Well, after Charles V, who was actually quite successful during the earlier stages of the war, even if he was still conducting it like a feudal conflict, died, his son Charles VI inherited. Which makes the latter's reign about concurrent with that of Henry. In sharp contrast to Henry, however, Charles VI was anything but a strong leader capable of unifying feudal France and presenting a serious threat to Henry's endeavors...I mean, really, the fellow was legitimately insane. So insane that from he would spend days believing he was made of glass and taking precautions to prevent himself from breaking. The strongest of the nobles were in either partial or all-out rebellion throughout much of his reign, among them the Duke of Burgundy, (of course), the Duke of Berry, and the Duke of Orléans. As we've already seen, the lack of unity among the nobles made it easy for Henry V to court the alliance of the Duke of Burgundy. And the rest of this stage of the struggle was carried on essentially without any single authority directing the French armies, and in the face of an enemy that was very much on the same page and who had their hearts (thanks to Henry's inspiration) set on a concrete, undisputed goal.

Charles the Mad died in 1422 and there was chaos in France for seven years as the very young Dauphin tentatively claimed the throne, not even sure himself any more whether he was his father's son.

And lo God hath sent His messengers to a thirteen-year-old girl, saying: "These English are getting too big for their britches, and their habit of using longbows just isn't fair. Plus they're all gonna go Protestant in a generation or two and if French universities become English universities, where are the English going to get their Jesuit martyrs from? And I don't think the world wants to have to put up with the Royaume-Uni of Angleterre. There are some things I just can't let happen." So, when she was seventeen (seventeen!), she sneaked away from home, picked the Dauphin out of a crowd despite his being in disguise, assured him that he was legitimate, and inspired an exhausted army to an enthusiastic defense of France. And against all odds, they won. Drove the nasty English right out.

Of course, a lot more was involved with bringing both countries to the point of being modern nation-states. Each one would experience a Golden Age during which its wealth would increase enormously and its influence spread throughout the known world, and for both this age would be centered on the reign of a particularly strong, charismatic, intelligent monarch whose foremost political concern was to make England more English and France more French--think Elizabeth I and Louis XIV.

But the background of the Hundred Years War is crucial. Its historical events show how the nation is born: it requires a leadership strong enough to transcend internal divisions and to turn individuals loosely connected by geography and (perhaps) by language into a people. Moreover, the war was for both nations a defining moment of that "common past which was to reflect the common destiny " (as Miroslav Hroch puts it) of the people. Strong leadership can only get a country so far; it's dependent upon the availability of leaders, who are usually only around for a relatively brief time. It's what the leaders lead the people to do that makes the average person identify himself as French or English or any other nationality: it's the common history that is developed and that pours over into arts and folklore and culture. So you have Shakespeare and his "histories" telling the English what makes them English; you have the memory of Jeanne d'Arc, her rehabilitation, her beatification, her canonization reminding Frenchmen right up through the 20th century of what it "means"  to be French. And once it starts this cultural self-identification is addictive. You have the English looking back to find out more about who they are and what unites them into a single people: they rediscover (and exaggerate) the Saxons' struggle with the Normans, the Britons' struggle with the Romans, and so on. The French do the same and find Charlemagne, The Song of Roland, the crusaders, Louis IX, the old title of "Defender of the Church".

One can find countless more examples of this national self-discovery, and much could be said about the way that the "Glorious" monarchs Elizabeth and Louis would manipulate this national image in order to drive the people to a new ideal of "greatness". But that would take ages. And this serves well enough as a model and point of comparison for the next part of my discussion, which will look at how the nations of Eastern Europe would follow (or depart from) the British and French models during the 1800s.

Trench Poetry

 I went to Ypres yesterday to see the site of the Battle of Passchendaele, the inspiration of John McCrae's  Flanders Fields, and the phenomenal WWI museum in the city. It was a mind-boggling experience, partly because the museum does such an excellent job of conveying the experience of life in the trenches and that of civilian evacuees (to the extent that that's possible; that's actually a question I'll be briefly touching on in this post, though not in reference to the museum). Upon leaving the museum I browsed through the museum bookstore and (uncharacteristically) actually bought something: a pocket-sized paperback collection of WWI poetry, compiled by the ever-reliable Penguin.

When it comes to a genre like war poetry, one often feels like one's missing something. Like there's something you can't quite access, as touching as the poem may be. It's not exactly that it's less universal than poetry in general; at least the great poems aren't. But then there comes the question of what it means to be "universal". If you mean "something everyone can sympathize with", even the less phenomenal but still heartfelt poetry of some of the less talented but still decent trench poets should count. If it means "something everyone can identify with," we have a much less broad range of work to consider, but we're still including the majority of poems; love poetry is probably the most obvious example of this (even though "universal" still doesn't include some readers--I remember that Shakespearean sonnets seemed little more than ridiculous rhyming exercises to my mind as a child). However, that last definition (if you're okay with calling such a loose suggestion a "definition") doesn't seem to include war poetry. No matter how good our imaginations, the concept of actually being (in the case of this war) in the trenches, of hearing the shelling, of seeing men dying everywhere..that's more than a little staggering. We can try to put ourselves somewhere near their proverbial shoes, but we'll never (hopefully) be in them, and to suggest otherwise even seems disrespectful. Unlike most poets, they're not struggling to express the an experience that is common (to some extent) to us all.

But to accuse the poetry of lacking universal appeal is absurd. While the experience evoked is not one common to all, what the poems do is make it accessible to all. In this genre, poetry takes on a greater communicative function than I think it usually does. Which isn't to say that no other poetry is communicative; it's just that in describing many things, a poet can to some extent rely on a similarity of experience...here the similarity is minimal, so the images used, the comparisons made, are often very much at odds with the lived experience. They're bringing the real world into conversation with the world of the trenches, and the result is jarring (the setting of sun as an image for the blood coming to a dying soldier's lips? awful!), but it has the desired effect of violently reorienting the imagination of the reader such that he is brought closer to the horror of the poet's experience.

Of course, the poems of WWI are very modernist in this way, even if they are a sub-genre of modernism and rarely as innovative in formal matters as the Modernist poems proper were. The superficial similarities of violent metaphor and the conception that "reality" is much darker than the era of Swinburne and his ilk wanted to admit certainly has its roots in the fact that both trench poets and Modernists were in a sense poets of WWI; both experiencing the tragic loss of a generation and the accompanying disillusionment and reflecting that fact in their poetry. Beyond the more superficial, however, it's interesting to note how the common method of jarring the sensibilities to achieve the desired effects on the readers imagination is rooted in very similar preoccupations for the two groups. The Modernists are primarily concerned with freeing poetry from the stultified verse forms and "poetic" language to which it had been restricted for the previous fifty years or so. They are difficult, though they are condemned as being elitist for it, not to make their poetry inaccessible to the common reader, but to make poetry back into something that could communicate.

Though the trench poets were not at all (at least not while in the trenches) on the forefront of literary innovation, they faced an analogous problem: the contemporary literary defaults were incapable of expressing what these poets needed to express; the solution? Use the old images in unexpected ways. Unsettle the reader. Don't give him what he expects. Another layer of complexity is added by the fact that these soldiers weren't writing with the intent of publishing, at least not that immediate intention. The subversion of expectations may then be seen as something of a psychological demand on the part of the writer; he needs to understand what he's seeing; these are the poetic tools at hand; how can he reshape them to express what he needs to?

So yes, the poetry is less universal in that the experience described is not a common one, but something that we can only access through a tremendous stretch of the imagination, and then only partially. But rather than being merely "something everyone can sympathize with" or being "something everyone can identify with," the poets' (differently motivated) use of the modernist technique of dislocating metaphor from the traditional assumptions about its meaning makes it something that everyone can, with a little extra work, empathize with. That is, they can feel with the poem instead of simply feeling bad for the poet, even if they can't (unlike in the case of the Modernist poem, note) identify with the experience it describes.

All in all, that capacity of the best trench poetry makes my 6 euro purchase of a little collection of Siegfried Sassoon, Wilfred Owen, Isaac Rosenberg and others well worth the money.

One of my favorite poems by Owen:

I saw his round mouth's crimson deepen as it fell,
       Like a Sun, in his last deep hour;
Watched the magnificent recession of farewell,
       Clouding, half gleam, half glower,
And a last splendour burn the heavens of his cheek.
       And in his eyes
The cold stars lighting, very old and bleak,
       In different skies.

Belgium, A Bit of History

There's far too much to tell for me to go into detail about my experience of the first two weeks here in Belgium (where I am studying, for those who haven't heard, Belgian Symbolist literature at the Université Libre de Bruxelles, courtesy of a Fulbright grant). Nor do I have any single anecdote that sums up my first impressions of the country adequately. It's a complicated place, like every country with about 2000 years of recorded history, and perhaps is so even more than some given its history of being handed off from French noble to French noble and then from large empire to large empire for hundreds of years before gaining autonomy and a separate national identity in 1830.

First there were there was Charlemagne, then a long line of French nobles (and a few English and German ones tossed in, in places), then it sort of slid into being part of the Burgundian Netherlands, which was sort of French, sort of Dutch. After that, Charles V of Spain acquired it with his accession to the seat of Holy Roman Emperor. It doesn't seem like the Spanish Hapsburgs left a very large legacy, beyond the renaming of the prison in Brussels the "Amigo," due to some complicated linguistic confusions. Then the Austrian Hapsburgs came around; the Belgians tend to resent their legacy a bit, since they left the entire "Mont des Arts" region in Brussels littered with the gigantic, uniform, white buildings that Austrian emperors seem to have loved, but which the Belgians, with their idiosyncratic houses and fondness for small canals and small cobbled roads find aesthetically offensive. Also contributing to the unpopularity of the Austrians (and the Dutch, and the Spanish to an extent) is the fact that they made it into the front line for fighting the French.

Of course, the French contributed to that as well, which makes them similarly unpopular in Belgian historical accounts. And the French became rulers of many different parts of the country at many different times as the war proceeded. Hapsburg rule ended definitively, in fact, just after the French revolution, when the newly-formed French army (well before Napoleon was anyone to speak of) crushed all resistance in that area and threw out the Austrians.Unfortunately, since they were revolutionaries, they also did lots of nasty things to the churches all through the area, which is one of many reasons (the Germans being another major one, later on) that while almost all church buildings date from the gothic period, few of them are gothic in the interior--they were generally pillaged thoroughly and the Belgians would be obliged to replace the insides with decorations of the early-nineteenth century style.

Belgian was soon handed over to the Netherlands, but finding King William's rule to be despotic (both anti-Catholic and anti-democratic), the Catholics and the Freemasons united (for what may be the first time in the history of Europe; it had already happened in the American revolution) to throw off his rule in 1830. At first only the French, the Polish (quite a few Polish refugees actually fought for Belgian independence) and the USA recognized the country's independence. GB and the rest took nearly a decade to do so. Interestingly, one of the consequences of the US's early recognition is that the USA has it's second oldest ambassadorial residence in Brussels. A very nice place dating from the early-mid 1800s, to which I have actually been for a very classy reception honoring Fulbright peoples.

Being small, and not exactly possessing the most impressive of military forces thanks to its size, the country basically tried to remain militarily neutral for the remainder of the century while strengthening itself economically. That, as most know, became impossible when the 20th century and its two World Wars hit.

Now, regarding WWI, I've always seen Germany as being on pretty much equal footing with the allied powers morally speaking. The politicians on both sides were essentially responsible for a brutal, pointless war in which millions of lives were thrown away for (almost) nothing, leaving Europe (in a way that Americans who insist upon being snotty about the Continent during WWII will never understand) depleted, disillusioned, and traumatized. But really, despite my view of 1914-18 Germany in general, I have to admit that they were vicious to the Belgians. The whole concept of "Prussianism" really was a precursor to Nazism in the sense that it was already starting to see Germany as everything and the non-German as inferior. Hence the policy of going into towns, destroying the libraries, shooting city officials, soldiers, priests, and professors indiscriminately, and then instituting draconian punishments for resistance. It goes without saying that a lot of Belgian churches suffered at that time, as well as universities and other cultural institutions. And it also goes without saying that all the brutality of WWI was pretty tame in comparison with what would happen to the country in WWII. It's no wonder that almost none of the churches (if any) have their original stained glass (and that is a great loss in a gothic church).

Today the Belgians generally seem to pride themselves on a dry, skeptical sense of humor, their fantastic food, and the fact that they still exist after all that. They hate being mistaken for Frenchmen, and they hate being mistaken for the Dutch. They have, as is often reported, and which I can declare to be absolutely true, fantastic beer.

Another good article, and more Civil War Economics

The reading about the Civil War continues. I'm finding the whole subject more and more interesting, and that interest rises as I discover excellent articles about aspects of the conflict that are generally ignored in the textbook accounts. This one, by Howard Jones at The American Interest, discusses the international ramifications of the war. It's particularly interesting to me in context of those chapters of Henry Adam's Education that dealt with the complex diplomatic situation over in London; a conflict that you really learn next to nothing about (it existed, that's pretty much it) in most accounts of the war.

Another interesting part of the article is the discussion of  Confederate efforts to woo Great Britain. Essentially, by making continued supply of cotton to Great Britain and France contingent upon those countries' recognition of the Confederate states, the Confederacy put another nail in their own coffin, economically speaking. Because the response in Europe was simply to look for cotton elsewhere. Hence the explosion of the cotton industry in Egypt, India, and Brazil. So by the end of the war, when the South was looking to get back on its feet economically,  they found that they'd deprived themselves of their own customers.

Also--and this is only tangentially related to the article--it's interesting that the more I read about this whole affair, the more clear it becomes that economics motivated the both the North and the South, despite that whole lovely mythologization of the South as fighting for some Romantic principle of Aristocratic Living and Good Old Roman Virtue. If you want to view the North's motivations solely  in economic terms, it's fair to do the same to the South; and it's necessary, in the face of the evidence. Given the south's preoccupation with the Slave trade (and who wants to believe nowadays that there was a huge push in the Confederate states to reestablish the African slave trade that the Founders had abolished in the early 1800s as a means of "strengthening"  the economy?) and the cotton trade, economic motives were certainly strong in the Confederate states. Thus while we can admit that the North may have been motivated to stop slavery because of the expansion of industry and the surplus of available immigrant labor, one must also admit that the South was also fighting for economic reasons:  for the preservation of a pseudo-aristocratic, slave-owning agrarian economy vs. an industrial, wage-earning, talent-based economy. Again, any Romanticization of such motives is valid only insofar as we are willing to give a moral benefit of the doubt to both sides, since self-interest was at least as much an issue in the South as in the North.

The Economics of the Civil War

A fantastic, well-researched article about what I wrote in the title. Or perhaps more accurately, about the economic aftermath of the Civil War. Not arguing one way or the other for a "side", just giving some facts and helping to debunk some of the common myths about what happened economically in that messy time of so-called "Reconstruction". It's one bad spot? Guelzo unfortunately misreads Henry Adams'  sarcasm and casts him as an example of the Progressive disillusionment with the Civil War. Adams' position, if you read through to the end of his autobiography, turns out to be rather antithetical to Progressivism, and certainly not altogether disapproving of the C.W. Whatever my complaints about Adams, I find the explication of Lincoln's position to be quite excellent. Do persevere through to the end and get to that, even if economics bores you.

A War Lost and Found

Mark Shea on the Civil War

Very reasonably, Mark Shea does not attempt to make any definitive declaration about which side was "justified" in the Civil War, though that is what the questioner here asks him to do. He points out problems with both sides that I'm very ready to admit. Remember that my staunch defense of the north in this blog is a reaction to my time at college in the south, where I was horrified by southern attempts to make their half of the country into a bunch of martyrs for "the Roman ideal" or "Western Civilization" some such nonsense (Well, I guess the Romans did base their aristocratic leisure on slavery...but with the Catholic denunciation of slavery dating from St. Patrick and earlier, it was hardly "Western Civilization" at it's height..unless by Western Civilization they mean "that state in which non-Europeans are oppressed"). The north was never perfect, because there is no such thing as a "perfect" side in war. We could even get into all that with WWII...Look at FDR's motivations for fighting Hitler, for instance, and the rose-tinted glasses Hollywood has provided us for generations will disappear.

On the whole, I see the war not as a triumph, but a tragedy, in which the respective flaws of both parts of the country infected the conflict and turned the honest efforts and sacrifices of ordinary Americans into a mockery of idealistic intents. Particularly tragic is what the war turned into after it was fought. With Lincoln, despite his flaws, you have a man desperate to uphold the core of the constitution, whether he made mistakes in doing so or not. You have an honest desire to mend the divisions of the war and to welcome the south back after the war was ended. Instead, Lincoln died, the power-mongers of the Senate jumped into the gap, and the  powers that the Federal government can be argued to have constitutionally in time of war into the powers it has in time of peace as well. Reconstruction was botched. Opportunists from both parts of the country were allowed free reign. The ideals which were being fought for disintegrated as the slaves were freed but denied the opportunity to make an independent life for themselves and the southerners contributed to their own impoverishment by refusing to actually work in pursuit of their own self-improvement, preferring to live in a constant state of resentment of history that persists to this day and is comparable only to the African American resentment of their ancestors' enslavement--ironically, a complaint that said southerners tend to decry as "liberal" self-martyrization while they themselves do precisely the same thing.

Whatever the injustices of the war, however, it is absolutely crucial to recognize that imperfections in the way the war was carried out and mixed motives on the part of many northerners do not invalidate the heroism of the thousands of northerners in the field during the war who believed they were fighting for the just application of the Declaration to all men.

Two excerpts from Shea's blog nicely articulate what I've been arguing thus far; plus, it's always nice to realize one's not the only one crazy enough to suggest that the Civil War might actually have had something to do with slavery and that Romanticizing the south is inherently problematic:

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.

. . .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.

Lincoln's Nascent Christianity

As described by Joshua F. Speed in 1864:

“As I entered the room near night, [Lincoln] was sitting near a window reading his Bible. Approaching him, I said, ‘I am glad to see you profitably engaged.’ ‘Yes,’ said he, ‘I am profitably engaged.’ ‘Well,’ said I, ‘if you have recovered from your skepticism I am sorry to say that I have not!’ Looking me earnestly in the face, and placing his hand upon my shoulder, he said: ‘You are wrong Speed; take all of this book upon reason that you can, and the balance on faith and you will live and die a happier and better man.’”

Also this.

Emancipation

Though I have long defended the Emancipation Proclamation as a sincere piece of legislation rather than mere political manipulation on Lincoln's part (one is, after all, allowed to grow in one's beliefs, no? cf. Ronald Reagan's changing views on abortion for instance?), I did not know this. Namely, that great pressure was actually being put on the president in 1863 to use the Proclamation as a bargaining chip to end the war quickly. The idea being that the South would agree to rejoin the Union if the North would forget about publishing the Emancipation Proclamation. Lincoln's response?

 “I should be damned in time and in eternity were I to do that.  I will keep faith with the gallant black soldiers who have fought and died for this nation at Port Hudson and Olustee. The Proclamation sticks.”

A Few Quotes

Frederick Douglass: 

"The American people and the Government at Washington may refuse to recognize it for a time but the inexorable logic of events will force it upon them in the end; that the war now being waged in this land is a war for and against slavery."


"Viewing the man from the genuine abolitionist ground, Mr. Lincoln seemed cold, tardy, weak and unequal to the task. But, viewing him from the sentiments of his people, which as a statesman he was bound to respect, then his actions were swift, bold, radical and decisive. Taking the man in the whole, balancing the tremendous magnitude of the situation, and the necessary means to ends, Infinite Wisdom has rarely sent a man into the world more perfectly suited to his mission than Abraham Lincoln."



Sam Houston:

“To secede from the Union and set up another government would cause war. If you go to war with the United States, you will never conquer her, as she has the money and the men. If she does not whip you by guns, powder, and steel, she will starve you to death. It will take the flower of the country-the young men.”

 
"Let me tell you what is coming. After the sacrifice of countless millions of treasure and hundreds of thousands of lives you may win Southern independence, but I doubt it. The North is determined to preserve this Union. They are not a fiery, impulsive people as you are, for they live in colder climates. But when they begin to move in a given direction, they move with the steady momentum and perseverance of a mighty avalanche."

Stonewall Jackson:

(In response to a comment that it was a shame to shoot so many brave men): "'No, shoot them all, I do not wish them to be brave."

William Tecumseh Sherman:

 “You people of the South don’t know what you are doing. This country will be drenched in blood, and God only knows how it will end. It is folly, madness, a crime against civilization! You people speak so lightly of war; you don’t know what you’re talking about. War is a terrible thing! You mistake too, the people of the North. They are a peaceable people but an earnest people, and they will fight too. They are not going to let this country be destroyed without a mighty effort to save it.

Henry Adams:

"I think that Lee should have been hanged. It was all the worse that he was a good man and a fine character and acted conscientiously. It's always the good men who do the most harm in the world."


(Haven't I always said it's the impractical idealists who do the most harm? Bear in mind also that this was said in context of the South's pigheaded refusal to come to a compromise when Lincoln offered them a generous chance after Fort Sumter.) 




Joshua Chamberlain: 

"But out of that silence rose new sounds more appalling still; a strange ventriloquism, of which you could not locate the source, a smothered moan, as if a thousand discords were flowing together into a key-note weird, unearthly, terrible to hear and bear, yet startling with its nearness; the writhing concord broken by cries for help, some begging for a drop of water, some calling on God for pity; and some on friendly hands to finish what the enemy had so horribly begun; some with delirious, dreamy voices murmuring loved names, as if the dearest were bending over them; and underneath, all the time, the deep bass note from closed lips too hopeless, or too heroic, to articulate their agony...It seemed best to bestow myself between two dead men among the many left there by earlier assaults, and to draw another crosswise for a pillow out of the trampled, blood-soaked sod, pulling the flap of his coat over my face to fend off the chilling winds, and still more chilling, the deep, many voiced moan that overspread the field." 


 (On the surrender at Appomatox: "...On they come, with the old swinging route step and swaying battle flags. In the van, the proud Confederate ensign. Before us in proud humiliation stood the embodiment of manhood; men whom neither toils and sufferings, nor the fact of death could bend from their resolve; standing before us now, thin, worn, and famished, but erect, and with eyes looking level into ours, waking memories that bound us together as no other bond; was not such manhood to be welcomed back into a Union so tested and assured? On our part not a sound of trumpet more, nor roll of drum; not a cheer, nor word, nor whisper or vain-glorying, nor motion of man, but an awed stillness rather, and breath-holding, as if it were the passing of the dead!" 


(I can hardly help being proud that this fellow from Maine was also one of the best writers of the war.)



Abraham Lincoln:

If we shall suppose that American slavery is one of those offenses which, in the providence of God, must needs come, but which, having continued through His appointed time, He now wills to remove, and that He gives to both North and South this terrible war as the woe due to those by whom the offense came, shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a living God always ascribe to Him? Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman’s two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said “the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.”

  
Pope Gregory XVI:

"We warn and adjure earnestly in the Lord faithful Christians of every condition that no one in the future dare to vex anyone, despoil him of his possessions, reduce to servitude, or lend aid and favour to those who give themselves up to these practices, or exercise that inhuman traffic by which the Blacks, as if they were not men but rather animals, having been brought into servitude, in no matter what way, are, without any distinction, in contempt of the rights of justice and humanity, bought, sold, and devoted sometimes to the hardest labour. Further, in the hope of gain, propositions of purchase being made to the first owners of the Blacks, dissensions and almost perpetual conflicts are aroused in these regions. 

We reprove, then, by virtue of Our Apostolic Authority, all the practices above-mentioned as absolutely unworthy of the Christian name. By the same Authority We prohibit and strictly forbid any Ecclesiastic or lay person from presuming to defend as permissible this traffic in Blacks under no matter what pretext or excuse, or from publishing or teaching in any manner whatsoever, in public or privately, opinions contrary to what We have set forth in this Apostolic Letter."

 

To clarify:

The structure of the argument in the below-mentioned document is unclear from my quotations. Hence, who knows whether I might not be taking that (quite clear) statement out of context.

To ward off any possible suspicions of such faulty arguing, here's their argument, in brief:

1. They do start, admittedly, with a basic states' rights claim. Interpreting the original U.S. Constitution as that of a compact-style government, they claimed that the right to secede is inherent in the country's foundation. Cool. I don't disagree. What's interesting here is that they too assume the Lockean understanding of secession that I have always believed in: i.e., secession is justified if, and only if the government fails to fulfill its obligations to its citizens. Clearly then, if they are to justify secession, they must, as I have always argued, be capable of proving that the U.S. government was failing in its basic responsibilities to the state of South Carolina.
2. Their first claim is multipartite. They bring up the fact that not all U.S. states were cooperating in the enforcement of the Fugitive Slave Act. Okay, legally that might be a problem, despite the immorality of the act. However, individual states, and not the national government, were responsible for this lack of cooperation; while it might have been the duty (again, only legally) for the national government to interfere, this is a pretty minor complaint on which to base secession from the union. Almost like claiming "injustice" on the part of the federal government on a technicality. Just consider what that same horrible, oppressive government would have needed to use to enforce that law, anyway: ummm...army, anyone? So, basically, because the federal government was a monster because it wasn't invading a few uncooperative (but non-secessionist) northern states. But it was also an evil monster for invading states that claimed secession.
3. It also complained that the government was trying to end slavery. Maybe so (though that would hurt the "Civil War wasn't about slavery" issue), but even so, it was using legal methods. So you get outvoted in the most recent election. So you might lose your slaves. Does that seriously mean you're being tyrannized and having your sacrosanct rights taken away?
4. The most laughable claim? They admit that they've lived with these problems for 25 years. Why is the situation unacceptable now? Simple: the election of a president who was "planning"  to abolish slavery. Despite Lincoln's promises to work entirely within the bounds of the Constituion, they were convinced that he might pull a fast one on them and take away their God-given right to own other human beings. How can one even take this argument seriously? Preemptive secession? So now it's constitutional to secede simply because you think one of your leaders might someday do something unconstitutional?

Interesting comments from the “Declaration of the Immediate Causes Which Induce and Justify the Secession of South Carolina from the Federal Union.”

In their own words, the justification for secession was: “an increasing hostility on the part of the non-slaveholding States to the institution of slavery”. How interesting. Sounds like they're arguing against the right of northern states to be anti-slavery.

One of its other major objections is that New York (well within its rights) had begun to forbid slaveholders to bring slaves within New York State borders. Again, a slavery issue, not states' rights.

Another objection? Some of New England allowed black men to vote, and didn't outlaw abolitionist societies. Again, something that New England states are well within their rights to do, and that does not infringe upon southern states' rights.

Mississippi's secession declaration of 1861? "Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery — the greatest material interest of the world"

Another few words from Lincoln to close off:

“If I could save the Union without freeing any slave, I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves, I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone, I would also do that. What I do about slavery and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save the Union; and what I forbear, I forbear because I do not believe it would help to save the Union... I have here stated my purpose according to my view of official duty; and I intend no modification of my oft-expressed personal wish that all men every where could be free”

Another Compelling Argument against Secession

Again from Lincoln's first inaugural address:

From questions of this class spring all our constitutional controversies, and we divide upon them into majorities and minorities. If the minority will not acquiesce, the majority must, or the Government must cease. There is no other alternative, for continuing the Government is acquiescence on one side or the other. If a minority in such case will secede rather than acquiesce, they make a precedent which in turn will divide and ruin them, for a minority of their own will secede from them whenever a majority refuses to be controlled by such minority. For instance, why may not any portion of a new confederacy a year or two hence arbitrarily secede again, precisely as portions of the present Union now claim to secede from it? All who cherish disunion sentiments are now being educated to the exact temper of doing this.

Is there such perfect identity of interests among the States to compose a new union as to produce harmony only and prevent renewed secession?

Plainly the central idea of secession is the essence of anarchy. A majority held in restraint by constitutional checks and limitations, and always changing easily with deliberate changes of popular opinions and sentiments, is the only true sovereign of a free people. Whoever rejects it does of necessity fly to anarchy or to despotism. Unanimity is impossible. The rule of a minority, as a permanent arrangement, is wholly inadmissible; so that, rejecting the majority principle, anarchy or despotism in some form is all that is left.

Historical Precedent for Secession

One must be fair to the South in all of this; they were not the first to agitate for secession. Actually, New England had done so as far back as the War of 1812. Now, when the Federal government is creating trade embargoes left and right and going to war with a foreign nation that many states don't even consider much of a threat, there's a little more basis for the claim that that government is overstepping its legal bounds than there is for the claim that a government is overstepping its bounds merely by the legal election of a moderately anti-slavery president. Be that as it may, it's interesting to note that the Founders who were alive back then were vehemently against this proposal. They thought it a "foolish bid by petty minds who put selfish and regional interests over national good." Not a comment about the legality of secession, of course, but interesting to note that these men who were actually involved in the formation of the country were not ready to jump on board with a secession program that was much more justifiable (for all the claims about the Southern economy, notice that the North's economy was the one being harmed in this squabble) than that which would occur half a century later.

The Declaration of Independence on Secession

Here's how the Founders justified their own rebellion:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

Is a government that

just might

someday legally abolish slavery "destructive of these ends"?

Locke on Secession

It is a truism that the American Founders were heavily influenced by John Locke, the English political philosopher of the past century. While the extent of his influence is constantly debated, here's what he has to say about secession:

"... whenever the Legislators endeavour to take away, and destroy the Property of the People, or to reduce them to Slavery under Arbitrary Power, they put themselves into a state of War with the People, who are thereupon absolved from any farther Obedience, and are left to the common refuge which God hath provided for all men against force and violence. ... [Power then] devolves to the People, who have a Right to resume their original Liberty, and, by the Establishment of a new Legislative (such as they shall think fit) provide for their own Safety and Security, which is the end for which they are in Society."

--Second Treatise of Civil Government [1690], #222 (Lasslet Edition, Cambridge University Press, 1960)

Referring back to a previous post: is is "Slavery under Arbitrary Power" for a government to, by all due legal means, proclaim that it is unconstitutional to treat human beings as animals?

Lincoln, and some of the more Practical Arguments against Secession

One section of our country believes slavery is right and ought to be extended, while the other believes it is wrong and ought not to be extended. This is the only substantial dispute. The fugitive-slave clause of the Constitution and the law for the suppression of the foreign slave trade are each as well enforced, perhaps, as any law can ever be in a community where the moral sense of the people imperfectly supports the law itself. The great body of the people abide by the dry legal obligation in both cases, and a few break over in each. This, I think, can not be perfectly cured, and it would be worse in both cases after the separation of the sections than before. The foreign slave trade, now imperfectly suppressed, would be ultimately revived without restriction in one section, while fugitive slaves, now only partially surrendered, would not be surrendered at all by the other. 27

Physically speaking, we can not separate. We can not remove our respective sections from each other nor build an impassable wall between them. A husband and wife may be divorced and go out of the presence and beyond the reach of each other, but the different parts of our country can not do this. They can not but remain face to face, and intercourse, either amicable or hostile, must continue between them. Is it possible, then, to make that intercourse more advantageous or more satisfactory after separation than before? Can aliens make treaties easier than friends can make laws? Can treaties be more faithfully enforced between aliens than laws can among friends? Suppose you go to war, you can not fight always; and when, after much loss on both sides and no gain on either, you cease fighting, the identical old questions, as to terms of intercourse, are again upon you.

--First Inaugural Address

On a Fundamental Question of the Civil War

Can a government legislate morality? The Saint Superman blogger articulates the question using an analogy I've always thought of as the natural one, comparing the slavery issue to the current abortion debate.

Of course, one can very legitimately argue that the Civil War was not about slavery at all. And I'd be the last starry-eyed idealist to suggest that the North had entirely pure motivations in going to war. Politicians are politicians, and on both sides, idealism was pretty much confined to the individual soldiers dying for a cause.

The North's reason for going to war was an interpretation of the Constitution that, right or wrong, considered (as one sees in Lincoln's address) secession to be an act of rebellion against a legal government. I believe Locke would support that interpretation, but more on that later.

However, whatever the North's reasons for going to war, it is very difficult to take seriously any argument advancing the idea that the South was indifferent to the slavery question in seceding. For one thing, if they were not remotely afraid that Lincoln was interested in abolishing slavery (remember, KA-NB act man), why does he spend the first seven paragraphs of his inaugural address reassuring the South that he does not believe he has the legal right to abolish slavery?

Interestingly enough, Lincoln's address seems to suggest initially that the federal government has no right to legislate morality, which makes one wonder what his policy might have been in the current debate. On the other hand, his closing comments actually clarify this original position, suggesting that while he as president does not have the authority to interfere with slavery, he recognizes the right of the union as a whole to ratify amendments to the Constitution that would, logically, include any aiming to do what most of the Founders had wanted to do in the first place: make slavery as taboo in political law as it is in moral law.

For reference, here's the quote, though it would behoove anyone interested to actually read the address and note the movement he makes over its course:

This country, with its institutions, belongs to the people who inhabit it. Whenever they shall grow weary of the existing Government, they can exercise their constitutional right of amending it or their revolutionary right to dismember or overthrow it. I can not be ignorant of the fact that many worthy and patriotic citizens are desirous of having the National Constitution amended. While I make no recommendation of amendments, I fully recognize the rightful authority of the people over the whole subject, to be exercised in either of the modes prescribed in the instrument itself; and I should, under existing circumstances, favor rather than oppose a fair opportunity being afforded the people to act upon it. I will venture to add that to me the convention mode seems preferable, in that it allows amendments to originate with the people themselves, instead of only permitting them to take or reject propositions originated by others, not especially chosen for the purpose, and which might not be precisely such as they would wish to either accept or refuse. I understand a proposed amendment to the Constitution—which amendment, however, I have not seen—has passed Congress, to the effect that the Federal Government shall never interfere with the domestic institutions of the States, including that of persons held to service. To avoid misconstruction of what I have said, I depart from my purpose not to speak of particular amendments so far as to say that, holding such a provision to now be implied constitutional law, I have no objection to its being made express and irrevocable.

The point is, Lincoln reminds the South that he is not attempting to overstep his own legal limitations and abolish slavery. Yet the interpretation of the Constitution that he presents also reminds them, implicitly, that they are as bound by the Constitution as he is, and must be willing to adhere to that Constitution whether it abolish slavery or no.

On the other hand, the South, was attempting to counter what they assumed to be necessarily unconstitutional--that is, the federal government finally confirming that human beings are not property, nor can they be in any legal sense so. In objecting to Lincoln in particular, they were, in the first place, presupposing an unconstitutional act on the president's part that had not taken place; and surely one can't justify secession (again, I'm assuming Lockean terms for the purposes of this post) based on the idea that the government might do something illegal. The underlying, and probably much more deeply-rooted objection was to the idea that the government can make any laws at all regarding morality. In a democracy, is principle to count at all (as Lincoln had argued in the KA-NB affair), or is legality simply a matter of majority rule?

If the latter, I think we all need to have a problem with trying to outlaw abortion. Don't want to start getting ahead of ourselves here. I mean, we couldn't actually have the federal government confirm basic ideas like "Thou shalt not steal" and "Thou shalt not kill", could we?

From Lincoln's First Inaugural Address

A very intelligent, if brief, argument against secession.

"It is seventy-two years since the first inauguration of a President under our National Constitution. During that period fifteen different and greatly distinguished citizens have in succession administered the executive branch of the Government. They have conducted it through many perils, and generally with great success. Yet, with all this scope of precedent, I now enter upon the same task for the brief constitutional term of four years under great and peculiar difficulty. A disruption of the Federal Union, heretofore only menaced, is now formidably attempted.

I hold that in contemplation of universal law and of the Constitution the Union of these States is perpetual. Perpetuity is implied, if not expressed, in the fundamental law of all national governments. It is safe to assert that no government proper ever had a provision in its organic law for its own termination. Continue to execute all the express provisions of our National Constitution, and the Union will endure forever, it being impossible to destroy it except by some action not provided for in the instrument itself.

Again: If the United States be not a government proper, but an association of States in the nature of contract merely, can it, as a contract, be peaceably unmade by less than all the parties who made it? One party to a contract may violate it—break it, so to speak—but does it not require all to lawfully rescind it?

Descending from these general principles, we find the proposition that in legal contemplation the Union is perpetual confirmed by the history of the Union itself. The Union is much older than the Constitution. It was formed, in fact, by the Articles of Association in 1774. It was matured and continued by the Declaration of Independence in 1776. It was further matured, and the faith of all the then thirteen States expressly plighted and engaged that it should be perpetual, by the Articles of Confederation in 1778. And finally, in 1787, one of the declared objects for ordaining and establishing the Constitution was "to form a more perfect Union."

But if destruction of the Union by one or by a part only of the States be lawfully possible, the Union is less perfect than before the Constitution, having lost the vital element of perpetuity.

It follows from these views that no State upon its own mere motion can lawfully get out of the Union; that resolves and ordinances to that effect are legally void, and that acts of violence within any State or States against the authority of the United States are insurrectionary or revolutionary, according to circumstances.

I therefore consider that in view of the Constitution and the laws the Union is unbroken, and to the extent of my ability, I shall take care, as the Constitution itself expressly enjoins upon me, that the laws of the Union be faithfully executed in all the States. Doing this I deem to be only a simple duty on my part, and I shall perform it so far as practicable unless my rightful masters, the American people, shall withhold the requisite means or in some authoritative manner direct the contrary. I trust this will not be regarded as a menace, but only as the declared purpose of the Union that it will constitutionally defend and maintain itself."

Robin Hood?

I saw this movie a month or so ago when just coming off final exams for the Spring semester. It was one of the worst movies I've seen (other than the heinous romance novel turned film-played-for-obvious-teenage-girl-squealing-moments called Twilight). The reasons for my hearty dislike of it are manifold. There's the shoddiness of the storyline, predictability of script, lack of chemistry between Cate Blanchett and Russell Crowe, and the worst of all, gross historical inaccuracy. I wouldn't even mention any of this, however, since it's my general rule to not talk about movies here. Yet I was just catching up over at The Daily Kraken, and found this gem that says much of what I wanted to say--or rather, shout to the general population of Irving, TX as we drove back to campus-- about the disastrous historical errors that made the movie so much more heinous than it already was.

"Scott’s eye for history is what sees this movie maintain that Magna Carta was drafted by some non-entity stonemason who was summarily executed for his troubles; that Richard the Lionhearted died years earlier than he actually died, while doing something he never did, for reasons that were ridiculous, as a result of events that conspicuously never happened; that the same Richard spoke English like a native, rather than scarcely at all; that speaking French was unusual or uncommon in England at the time, and a sign of dirty doings afoot; that Philip II himself could speak English well, let alone fluently; that Philip II was a sinister brooding figure rather than an immensely popular reformer; that Philip II secretly invaded England rather than only taking English holdings in what is now France; and so on and so on."

Well said.

Of course if you really wanted to write a full critique (not the intention of this quote) you could complain for a bit about the complete lack of understanding of the Middle Ages anywhere in American society except in a few dusty old back corners of the history departments of a few Ivy League schools who have shamefacedly preserved a few relics of the days when liberal arts actually meant something...

But I do that enough in real life.