Posted on 01/06/2005 8:00:30 AM PST by cougar_mccxxi
The Civil War's Tragic Legacy
The Civil War produced at least two important outcomes. First, although it was not President Lincoln's intent, it freed slaves in the Confederate States. Second, it settled, through the force of arms, the question of whether states could secede from the Union. The causes of and the issues surrounding America's most costly war, in terms of battlefield casualties, are still controversial. Even its name the - Civil War - is in dispute, and plausibly so.
A civil war is a struggle between two or more factions seeking to control the central government. Modern examples of civil wars are the conflicts we see in Lebanon, Liberia and Angola. In 1861, Jefferson Davis, the President of the Confederate States, no more wanted to take over Washington, D.C. than George Washington wanted to take over London in 1776. George Washington and the Continental Congress were fighting for independence from Great Britain. Similarly, the Confederate States were fighting for independence from the Union. Whether one's sentiments lie with the Confederacy or with the Union, a more accurate characterization of the war is that it was a war for southern independence; a frequently heard southern reference is that it was the War of Northern Aggression.
History books most often say the war was fought to free the slaves. But that idea is brought into serious question considering what Abraham Lincoln had to say in his typical speeches: "I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the states where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so." Slavery makes for great moral cause celebre for the War Between the States but the real causes had more to do with problems similar to those the nation faces today - a federal government that has escaped the limits the Framers of the Constitution envisioned.
South Carolina Senator John C Calhoun expressed that concern in his famous Fort Hill Address July 26, 1831, at a time when he was Andrew Jackson's vice-president. Calhoun said, "Stripped of all its covering, the naked question is, whether ours is a federal or consolidated government; a constitutional or absolute one; a government resting solidly on the basis of the sovereignty of the States, or on the unrestrained will of a majority; a form of government, as in all other unlimited ones, in which injustice, violence, and force must ultimately prevail."
Calhoun's fear, as well as that of Thomas Jefferson, was Washington's usurpation of powers constitutionally held by the people and the states, typically referred to as consolidation in their day. A significant bone of contention were tariffs enacted to protect northern manufacturing interests. Referring to those tariffs, Calhoun said, "The North has adopted a system of revenue and disbursements, in which an undue proportion of the burden of taxation has been imposed on the South, and an undue proportion of its proceeds appropriated to the North." The fact of the matter was that the South exported a large percentage of its output, mainly agricultural products; therefore, import duties on foreign products extracted far more from the South than the North. Southerners complained of having to pay either high prices for northern-made goods or high tariffs on foreign-made goods. They complained about federal laws not that dissimilar to Navigation Acts that angered the Founders and contributed to the 1776 war for independence. Speaking before the Georgia legislature, in November 1860, Senator Robert Toombs said, ". . . They [Northern interests] demanded a monopoly of the business of shipbuilding, and got a prohibition against the sale of foreign ships to the citizens of the United States. . . . They demanded a monopoly of the coasting trade, in order to get higher freight prices than they could get in open competition with the carriers of the world. . . . And now, today, if a foreign vessel in Savannah offer [sic] to take your rice, cotton, grain or lumber to New York, or any other American port, for nothing, your laws prohibit it, in order that Northern ship-owners may get enhanced prices for doing your carrying."
A precursor for the War Between the States came in 1832. South Carolina called a convention to nullify new tariff acts of 1828 and 1832 they referred to as "the tariffs of abomination." The duties were multiples of previous duties and the convention declared them unconstitutional and authorized the governor to resist federal government efforts to enforce and collect them. After reaching the brink of armed conflict with Washington, a settlement calling for a stepped reduction in tariffs was reached - called the Great Compromise of 1833.
South Carolinians believed there was precedence for the nullification of unconstitutional federal laws. Both Thomas Jefferson and James Madison suggested the doctrine in 1798. The nullification doctrine was used to nullify federal laws in Georgia, Alabama, Pennsylvania and New England States. The reasoning was that the federal government was created by, and hence the agent of, the states.
When Congress enacted the Morrill Act (1861), raising tariffs to unprecedented levels, the South Carolina convention unanimously adopted and Ordinance of Secession declaring "We assert that fourteen of the States have deliberately refused for years past to fulfill their constitutional obligations. . . . Thus the constitutional compact has been deliberately broken and disregarded by the nonslaveholding States; and the consequence follows is that South Carolina is released from her obligation. . . ." Continuing, the Ordinance declared, "We, therefore the people of South Carolina, by our delegates in Convention assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, have solemnly declared that the Union heretofore existing between this State and the other States of North America is dissolved and that the State of South Carolina has resumed her position among the nations of the world, as a separate and independent State, with the full power to levy war, conclude peace, contract alliances, establish commerce and to do other things which independent States may of right do." Next year war started when South Carolinians fired on Fort Sumter, an island in the harbor of Charleston, South Carolina.
The principle-agent relationship between the states and federal government was not an idea invented by South Carolina in 1861; it was a relation taken for granted. At Virginia's convention to ratify the U.S. Constitution, the delegates said, "We delegates of the people of Virginia, . . . do in the name and on the behalf of the people of Virginia, declare and make known, that the powers granted under the Constitution being derived from the people of the United States, may be resumed by them whensoever the same shall be perverted to their injury or oppression, and that every power not granted thereby remains with them, and at their will. That therefore no right, of any denomination, can be canceled, abridged, restrained or modified by the Congress, by the Senate, or House of Representatives, acting in any capacity, by the President, or any department or officer of the United States, except in those instances where power is given by the Constitution for those purposes." The clear and key message was: the powers granted the federal government, by the people of Virginia, "may be resumed by them whensoever the same shall be perverted to their injury or oppression" and every power not granted to the federal government by the Constitution resides with the people of Virginia. The people of Virginia, through their delegates, set up a contractual agreement, along with the several sovereign states (emerging out of the 1783 Treaty of Paris ending the war with Great Britain), created the federal government as their agent. They enumerated the powers their agent shall have. When the federal government violates their grant of power, then the people of Virginia have the right to take back the power they granted the federal government, in other words, fire their agent.
The War Between the States, having settled the issue of secession, means the federal government can do anything it wishes and the states have little or no recourse. A derelict U.S. Supreme Court refuses to do its duty of interpreting both the letter and spirit of the Constitution. That has translated into the 70,000 federal regulations and mandates that controls the lives of our citizens. It also translates into interpretation of the "commerce" and "welfare" clauses of our Constitution in ways the Framers could not have possibly envisioned. Today, it is difficult to think of one elected official with the statesman foresight of a Jefferson, Madison or Calhoun who can articulate the dangers to liberty presented by a run amuck federal government. Because of that, prospects for liberty appear dim. The supreme tragedy is that if liberty dies in America it is destined to die everywhere.
Walter E. Williams
Child labor was the equivalent of slavery for the time the child was forced to work, only age-emancipation could set him free.
Do you have evidence that Lincoln (or his wife while they were married) ever owned slaves?
Unbelievable.
I thought you guys might be interested. This thread needs an injection of common sense and historical accuracy.
What evidence do YOU site? The financial ledgers at that time indicated that the cost to keep a slave population was through the roof. Contrary to Disneyland fantasies about slavery, it cost money to keep them. (Oh my!) An expensive piece of property needs to be maintained if it is to be any use, and slaves are no different. The cost just to feed a slave population skyrocketed in the late '50s.
What machinery was that?
Oh, golly gee, let me think: how about the steam engine? modern thrashing machinery, milling machinery, ....Non farmers don't think of these things. What was the north MAKING if not modern machinery?
The cotton gin made slavery profitable by automating the removal of the seeds from the cotton boll.
But you already said slavery was profitable BEFORE machinery, which is it? Another point here is that it still cost the farms money to maintain the slaves.
"Do you have evidence that Lincoln (or his wife while they were married) ever owned slaves?"
GEEZ LOUISE!!!! Are you blind or merely illiterate? I never said Lincoln or Mary Todd ever owned slaves.
I said Mary Todd's FATHER owned slaves!
Maybe we understand Jim Crow to be two different things, but my understanding is that southern segregationist laws stayed on the books until the 60's.
But I fully agree that Yankees could be even more racist than their Reb counterparts. When Klan membership peaked in the 1920's, it was strongest in those notorious Deep South States of Illinois and Indiana. Northern enlightenment often lasted only until the first black migrant worker showed up on their street.
I owe my soul to the company store.....
No he was suggesting that the states were sovereign nations who delegated authority to the federal government with the express reservation that the states had the right to resume such delegated powers any time the federal government sought to overstep it's authority.
Do you mean that the Constitution is a legal contract that is binding on both parties and void if one party fails to keep it's commitments?
Let's grant that, then.
What relevance does that have?
Most of Lincoln's wealth didn't come by way of dowry but rather from his very lucrative law practice, particularly from railroad clients.
But perhaps you are trying to get at Lincoln's views on the subject: that he wasn't so enlightened or that he was a hypcrite. I don't see the hypocrisy, as I said, though I think it might be better directed at men like Jefferson who railed against slavery while keeping slaves himself. But as for Lincoln, his views certainly evolved. Convinced from an early age that chattel slavery was wrong, he took until the final eyars of his life to begin approaching a point where he started considering blacks as something like real equals. You can find all kinds of apparent racist comments from Lincoln in the 1850's. Frederick Douglas, however, noted the enormous growth in Lincoln's views on race by the time of his Second Inaugural.
LOL, just a bunch of RECONQUISTAS exercising their RIGHT to "take back" what is "theirs"!
None of the anti-southern federalists will even notice.
"But I don't think most Founders would have understood the states in 1789 as "sovereign nations."
You are incorrect. Every state constitution contained a clause providing for the re-assertion of that states sovereignity in the event of an over reaching federal government.
Until the mid 1800's the right of succession was never seriously questioned. Many states had threatened succession including New York and Masachussetts.
Even during the Civil War many people even in the north asserted that succession was constitutional. In fact this was one of the issues which moved Lincoln to shut down many northern newspapers and jail writers and editors.
It is true that several of the founders argued against succession in these early cases but only from the standpoint of what was best for the state - never was it argued that succession was on it's face illegal or unconstitutional.
If the founders had argued that succession was somehow illegal they would have been undermining their own assertions against England
States' Rights are nice in theory. But then some State comes along and legalizes medical marijuana or assisted suicide, and we can clearly see the folly in the idea.
Yes, some state does something stupid and only the citizens of that state who are stupid enough to stay suffer. Making everything national just means every issue is a fight to the death winner take all struggle(like abortion). If that's the way you want it, fine, but don't whine about all the divisiveness and maybe actual war.
"Do you mean that the Constitution is a legal contract that is binding on both parties and void if one party fails to keep it's commitments?"
That certainly seems to be the way the founders viewed it. Every state retained the right to reassert it's sovereignity under certain conditions. Even Texas included this right in it's constitution when they joined the union in 1845
Indeed. Slavery was very profitable for southerners. Any perceived threat to that insititution was certainly serious in their view.
Slavery was abhorrently wrong. Were slaves as consistently ill treated as northern factory workers? Debatable.
It seems to me that the War of Northern Agression, in the larger sense, achieved in dissolving the very thing the constitution largely set out to define, that being that our freedoms a duely derived from God, and those rights, once ursurped from the people, then dismantled the rights the people granted the states. The ancillary changes of emancipation proclaimaition, though desirable and a good outflow of the conflict, were well on their way to being constitutionally recognized, as this concern against slavery had gone on since long before we fought the war of independence. Federalism continues as a juggarnaut against those freedoms which only God can give or take. Those given to the individual can be taken by force and that is what the federal government is...It is raw force, becoming more and more unrestrained. Starie decisis is one of our biggest enemies. Our congressional leaders need to represent the people.
In a true constitutional republic, that would be a right reserved to that state. However, enactmaent of a particular law or legislation does not prevent citizens from either choosing to stay, or choosing to go.
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