A note on the Phenomenon of Civil War

As distinct from the American Civil War, but very much related to it. This is a short passage from one of the texts I'm reading for my Security Studies and Conflict Analysis class, and it's a nice theoretical expression of one of the points I've been trying to make regarding the American Civil War; essentially that war in general, here civil war, is a much more complicated affair than, say, an evil, greedy North trying to destroy the beautiful way of life that was the South.

In "The Ontology of Political Violence" Stathis Kalyvas argues:

"Civil wars are typically described as binary conflicts, classified and understood on the basis of what is perceived to be their overarching issue dimension or cleavage: we thus speak of ideological, ethnic, religious, or class wars. Likewise, we label political actors in ethnic civil wars as ethnic actors, the violence of ethnic wars as ethnic violence, and so on. Yet such characterization turns out to be trickier than anticipated, because civil wars usually entail a perplexing combination of identities and actions.

Consider the following description of the American War of Independence in South Carolina: “There came with the true patriots a host of false friends and plunderers. And this was true of both sides in this terrible struggle. The outlaw Whig and the outlaw Tory, or rather the outlaws who were pretended Whigs and Tories as the occasion served, were laying waste the country almost as much as those who were fighting for the one side or the other.” Years later, Abraham Lincoln described the Civil War in the American West as a situation in which “murders for old grudges, and murders for pelf, proceed under any cloak that will best cover for the occasion.”

The Chinese Civil War was often fought by diverse and shifting coalitions of bandits and local militias; for a long time, the Communists were for the bandits “only one of several possible allies or temporary patrons.” In Manchuria, for instance, it was extremely difficult to differentiate between members of the Anti-Japanese Resistance and bandits because moving from one to another was very common: it is estimated that 140,000 of a total 300,000 resistance members had a bandit background. Common criminals were also used extensively during the Cultural Revolution. The determinants of violence in the province of Antioquia during the Colombian Violencia were “far more complex than any innate, unavoidable differences between monolithic groups of Liberals and Conservatives—the traditional explanation for la Violencia—might suggest”; in fact, “the point of la Violencia, even in supposed areas of ‘traditional settlement’ where partisan objectives were the guiding force behind armed insurrection, is that it was multifaceted and ambiguous, that politics and economic considerations can never be considered as discrete forces."

In short, ambiguity is endemic to civil wars; this turns their characterization into a quest for an ever-deeper “real” nature, presumably hidden underneath misleading facades—an exercise akin to uncovering Russian dolls. Thus, it is often argued that religious wars are really about class, or class wars are really about ethnicity, or ethnic wars are only about greed and looting, and so on. The difficulty of characterizing civil wars is a conceptual problem rather than one of measurement. If anything, the more detailed the facts, the bigger the difficulty in establishing the “true” motives and issues on the ground, as Paul Brass has nicely shown in the case of ethnic riots in India. An alternative is to recognize, instead, that the motives underlying action in civil war are inherently complex and ambiguous."

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."

North vs. South

It's pretty natural, I suppose, being as I am at a college in an unambiguously southern state, that I should be exposed to some fairly strong opinions about the Civil War. Barely any of these, it needs hardly be said, are particularly complementary to the North. I was rather surprised coming down here, actually, to find opinions on the subject still so vehemently held... I mean, the war was nearly 150 years ago, and everyone in the South is now benefiting on equal terms with all the rest of us from the Union of the states. And you just need to look at the history of the 20th century to see how beneficial that union has ended up being to us and to the rest of the world (WWI, WWII, etc).

Be that as it may, my American History class has been quite wonderful in its approach to the era, treating the writings of the period to a rigorous interpretation in light of the country's inheritance from the Founding Fathers. My current understanding of Lincoln's writings leads me to refine my earlier ideas that it is possible to analyze the Civil War from two major perspectives: it was either a war about slavery or a war about states' rights. I do think each of these two aspects was decisive in raising the main issue at stake as an issue divisive enough to split the county, and in the minds of many involved, one or the other was the sole reason for which they were fighting. But there is a more fundamental issue at stake, I think, and it's one that is more intimately connected with the message of the Declaration than either of those two.

I believe that before it was a questions of states' rights explicitly, the dispute at the heart of the war was about how we are to understand rights at all. Perhaps it would be more precise to say that this issue is implied in the states' rights and slavery interpretations. The essential question at the heart of, for example, the Lincoln-Douglass debates, is whether it is accurate to conceive of "liberty" as the capacity to override existing statutory law (here, the Missouri Compromise and the Compromise of 1850) just because a majority wishes to do so. Of course, if you're going to go by the principles laid out in the Federalist papers, to legislate purely according to the will of the majority as opposed to precedent and fundamental law "may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny" (Federalist 88).

This becomes a question of greater significance if the fundamental law on which the government is based purports to be a reflection (at least to some degree) of the absolute laws of justice, as we see in the claim of the Declaration to be based on the self-evident truth that "all men are created equal" and that their rights to "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" are inalienable. Of course, if the government is such an organic institution, existing in principle from before their actual codification, as Lincoln suggests in his First Inaugural Address (paragraph 13), you really can't throw it off legally (i.e., Constitutionally for Lincoln) unless it itself breaches the fundamental law at its core. The fundamental law moreover is essentially the sum of absolute duties intrinsic to man in virtue of his personhood, not in virtue of majority rule in their favour, while the rights resulting from this fundamental law comprise the freedom to fulfill it. Thus if you reject the government that is trying to uphold the fundamental law, you're rejecting this conception of liberty for excellence in favour of a conception as liberty as the random will of a majority.

Of course, a question that comes up as to whether one could see the South in the Civil War as not intending to reject the fundamental law at the heart of the Constitution at all but to merely change the external form of government that protects it. However, slavery intrinsically violates fundamental law by denying certain people their absolute rights. Looking at the matter chronologically, it is fairly easy to trace the natural progression of thought that would come from support of such an institution. First you have a slave or two, you need to justify the fact that this manifestly contradicts the principles of the Declaration, you naturally enough begin to cry for "states' rights!" "our natural liberties to do what we want with our own property!". Thus you have the concept of states' rights deriving easily from the fact of slavery. Implied in this in the sense that it is necessary to make this view coherent is the redefinition of what it means for Americans to be self-governing.

The idea at the heart of Lincoln's battle for the Union, for the upholding of the American Constitution is that the liberty to which we have a Constitutional right is the freedom to do what is right, not to have equal freedom to do good or evil. If we deny the existence of moral absolutes, civil society disintegrates, Lincoln believes, and it is for this conviction that he came back to politics, debated Stephen Douglass, and finally became president.

The Education of Frederick Douglass

Frederick Douglass’ autobiography follows the development of his earnest conviction of his innate humanity and liberty. This realization has its roots in his early childhood when he entertained “a deep conviction that slavery would not always be able to hold [him] within its foul embrace” (Douglass, 43). The rest of his years as a slave are a continual struggle to retain this inborn sense of humanity in the face of repeated attempts to reduce him to a state of bestial apathy towards his natural liberty. Preservation of his sense of inherent freedom and humanity requires that his embryonic understanding be nourished through education from some trustworthy source which supports, deepens, and sophisticates the vague comprehension with which he is born. This source he discovers by learning to read.

Experience is the first form of education Douglass receives. As a small child he witnesses much brutality in plantation life. Recounting his experience of seeing his aunt brutally beaten by his master, he observes that “it was the first of a long series of such outrages, of which I was doomed to be a witness and participant” (Douglass, 21). He speaks of the songs and chants of his people, each of which is “a testimony against slavery, and a prayer to God for deliverance from chains,” and traces his “first glimmering conception of the dehumanizing character of slavery” from his hearing of these songs (Douglass, 27, 28). Despite his horror at the injustices suffered by his people however, he does not “understand the deep meaning” of their sadness well enough to express it in concrete terms (Douglass, 27). He longs vaguely for freedom but has little comprehension of why the opposite is wrong and poor ability to phrase his intuition.

Moreover, though experience reveals to him the ugliness of the institution, in the long run it has the potential to deceive him. Natural sentiment, met with the sights the young Douglass witnesses, initially revolts. However, constant dehumanizing treatment can hardly fail to make some impression on most people, and the Narrative recounts the deadening effect slavery—both the experience of being enslaved and owning slaves—has upon the souls of men, black and white alike. The masters beastialize themselves by denying the humanity of other men, convincing themselves and others that these slaves are incapable of “virtuous freedom” (Douglass, 80). Slavery can prove as injurious” to such tyrants as it does to those from whom they have withheld freedom (Douglass, 49). The slaves in their turn, having no guide to reveal the path from servitude to freedom, begin to swallow the lie that they are not fit for the “privilege” of basic human liberty. Constant mistreatment and attempts to break their natural spirit can only reinforce such a misconception. Experience can degrade more than it enlightens, Douglass shows. Some further teacher is necessary to sustain the germ of liberty within the heart of a slave.

Douglass attains this further education through reading. Ironically enough, his master, Hugh Auld, is responsible for kindling Douglass' enthusiasm for this mode of education by remarking that to teach a slave his letters “would forever unfit him to be a slave” (Douglass, 45). Upon hearing this, Douglass realizes that “the white man's power to enslave the black man” is found in the former's ability to keep the latter illiterate. Books and education in language give “tongue to interesting thoughts of [Douglass'] soul, which had frequently flashed through [his] mind, and died away for lack of utterance (Douglass, 51). By preserving ideas in concrete words, a book helps to immortalize and clarify glimpses of the truth that appear in experience. In Douglass' soul, “freedom now appear[s] to disappear no more” (Douglass, 51).

The experience of slaves in the American South was of being perpetually ground deeper into a “beast-like stupor” that crippled the natural feeling of innate freedom. Insofar as his only education was experience, the indoctrination his brutal treatment imposed could “disgust the slave with freedom” by causing himself to believe himself unfit for it (Douglass, 81). Thus, the strength of the innate notion of human freedom is to some degree a matter of cultural inheritance, due to the influence of the education provided by one's culture. The result of Douglass' reading is that his education is not confined to the indoctrination pressed upon him by his cultural circumstances. His formation in knowledge and understanding “rekindles the few expiring embers of freedom,” and “revives in [him] the sense of [his] own manhood” (Douglass, 78).

Slavery's Destruction of the Family

This small paper begins to get at some of what I was talking about previously, though it's not in any sense complete. I'm only focusing on the family here, and even my treatment of that is quite restricted due to length limits. It's a good pre-exercise for the real thing, though. The prompt here was "What role does the cabin play as the dominent image in Stowe's argument against slavery?"

Given the title of Harriet Beecher Stowe's classic protest against slavery, it is not surprising that Uncle Tom's cabin plays an important symbolic role in her argument. This cabin, as the center of Uncle Tom's family life, represents the most sacred and fundamental unit of human society. However, in a slave-owning society, both Uncle Tom and his home are no more than pieces of property, vulnerable at any moment to separation. According to Stowe, the social and moral ills of slavery are rooted in the destruction of the family, in robbing human beings of the capacity to create a safe and secure home.

Physically present for only a few brief pages towards the beginning of the book, the cabin nevertheless acts as the dominant image of slavery's catastrophic effect on family life, particularly in its later conspicuous absence. First presented as a neat, welcoming sanctuary of family life, with its "neat garden patch" and good food, the position of this "snug territory" is nonetheless insecure (Stowe, 32). Its status as center of life for the small community of relations and friends on the estate is legally subordinate to that of the master's "close adjoining" house (Stowe, 32). The preceding scenes in which the master and trader plan to sell Tom, the spiritual and familial head of this small community, make the reader aware that the most attentive efforts of a slave to create a happy, peaceful household are in vain if the master finds it convenient to break up this state by selling a member of the family. Tom is sold, removed from his home and family in order to satisfy the debts of a relatively decent master. He has no right to defend his home; no liberty to fight for himself and the welfare of those he loves. Not only is his lifestyle insecure, but he has no freedom to secure it.

The motif of the breaking up of familial relationships continues from the time Tom is sold to the end of the narrative. George and Eliza Harris' desperate bid to preserve their family in a free land, Topsy's lack of a good and loving upbringing, and Cassy's bitterness at having been robbed of her daughter and of the chance of a stable family demonstrate how this legal and societal lack of respect for the home of a slave plagues those who live in such a society. Thus, even in the best of circumstances where a kind master and mistress allow the foundation of such a community among the slaves, the home cannot truly flourish. The system of slavery destroys the essential characteristic of security in family life by viewing people as property, liable to be sold to satisfy a good master's debts or a bad master's whims. As another decent slave owner, Augustine St. Clare puts it, the heart of the evil of slavery does not lie in its "abuses": "the thing itself is the essence of all abuse" (Stowe, 262).

During Tom's absence, his cabin is "shut up" (Stowe, 301). He is robbed of it and it is robbed of him. Not until the very end is this break in some sense healed. George Shelby—himself a former honorary member of Uncle Tom's family, though the master's son—frees the slaves and removes this insecurity from them "in case of [his] getting in debt or dying" (Stowe, 509). The cruel fate of Uncle Tom had caused Shelby to resolve "that nobody, through me, should ever run the risk of being parted from home and friends, and dying on a lonely plantation" (Stowe, 509). His final exhortaion to his former servants serves as an exhortation to Stowe's readers as well. "Think of your freedom," he says, "every time you see Uncle Tom's cabin"; this simple house will be a reminder of the evils of slavery that tear apart the family and uproot a loving household (Stowe, 509).