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
Not necessarily. It is not a natural law that the South would have industrialized were there no slavery. It might well have remained an economically undeveloped backwater, in which case the tariff issue would stll have been a serious point of division, probably critical. And without slavery, cotton and tobacco might still have developed pretty much the way it did, on large plantations, but with hired labor and the reliance of the region on foreign trade for its manufactured goods.
Well, when you are as famous a columist, and have his credentials, let me know.......:)
Right...and pigs fly into La Guardia too!
No....they hang traitors to their home, and state.
Your first loyalty should be to your STATE, then so on....
Show me in the Constitution where secession is FORBIDDEN....
I believe that the differences, both culturally, and economically, were so distinct, war would have happened without slavery being an issue. It still wasn't the main issue regardless.....
Jim Crow came after the Civil War.
The damage had been done already. And if a individual state can abridge the rights of a citizen, it has extended beyind Jim Crow.
Look at the anti-gun legislation and "gay" marriages.
That's not really accurate here.
The legally, duly constituted governments of several states, elected by the citizens and reflecting the sentiments of the majority of them, voted to remove themselves from a civil compact they had willingly entered several decades before.
A "Civil War" is more properly a situation as existed in Englan in the 1660's when fighting broke out between Royalist forces and Puritan Parlimentarian forces all over England. In this situation, there was no attempt to establish an independent state, but rather to overthrow an existing government.
Do you believe everything, say, Maureen Dowd says as well? After all, she's a famous columnist as well.
So howcum they tried and executed John Brown for treason to Virginia? He had never ever lived in the state.
Your first loyalty should be to your STATE, then so on....
A stand not supported by some of the better men in our nation's history, thank God.
"The name of American, which belongs to you in your national capacity, must always exalt the just pride of patriotism more than any appellation derived from local discriminations." -- George Washington
You'd be surprised how many yankee types like Hillary and Schumer are armed while disarming the New York State citizens and throwing some in prison even (before arresting criminals).
The perhaps worthy idea of secession became inextricably linked with slavery. If the critical issue had been something other than slavery, they probably would have gotten support from Europe, or maybe the North would not even have cared enough to stop them. Or the even better result is that the mere threat of secession would have acted as a brake on the federal government acquiring more power. We would have stayed a united country, but a far more free one because of the ever present threat of secession.
Instead, secession became tied to slavery, and died the same death. A real tragedy.
Since they lacked the authority to do so then their actions were illegal and constituted a rebellion or a civil war, take you pick.
All men(women) are NOT created equal.
'Secessions' only existence is in the minds of those who oppose our Constitutional principles.
Those principles can be applied to the Federal government, by the States, to force the feds to comply, or vice versa.
The people have never authorized any level of government the power to violate our Constitution, nor to secede.
221 jones
Prof. Williams might be an adequate economist, but he had proven to be a terrible historian.
In a war for Indpendence, like that of 1775-1783, one does not need to resort to sophistic legal arguments. If the acts of the southern insurrectionists were revolutionary, you need no pretense that they were also legal.
Actually, N-S, it is a dead one. That article was published in 1999. I've seen it posted at FR before - a couple of times.
That what historian Shelby Foote noted in the Burns documentary on the Civil War.
I didn't mean to suggest it was.
I only meant to suggest the South would have been considerably different in its social structure and economy.
It might well have remained an economically undeveloped backwater, in which case the tariff issue would stll have been a serious point of division, probably critical. And without slavery, cotton and tobacco might still have developed pretty much the way it did, on large plantations, but with hired labor and the reliance of the region on foreign trade for its manufactured goods.
Slavery made possible the heavy emphasis on cash crops, which are labor intensive. Without that labor force, you almost certainly would have seen a more diverse mix of crops (as today), many of them food staples. Cotton still would have cultivated, but not to the overwhelming extent that it was. It also would have changed the nature of the settlement of the western areas of the South, which were highly sought after because of the way in which exclusive cotton cultivation wore out the soil.
Southern aristocrats could have tried the route you're suggesting: hiring out (white) labor. But that would have entailed different difficulties. It would have been more expensive, for one thing. It also would have created new class tensions that did not exist in the slave-based south. It would mean millions of poor southern whites suddenly turned into sharecroppers or worse rather than small yeoman farmers - because you'd need that to replace the 3 million African slave laborers who constituted the work force for cotton (and tobacco) cultivation.
All of which is not to say that a non-slave South would not have been heavily agrarian. It could have been. And as such it might not be keen on high tariffs. But to the extent that it was less dependent on cash crops for expot markets (as opposed to foodstuffs, which were at that time mostly sold for domestic consumption), that antipathy would have been tempered to a greater degree, just as it was in the Upper Midwest, which was still heavily agrarian, after all, before the Civil War.
So you would have to explain why the very agrarian, non-slave antebellum Midwest did not oppose high tariffs to the degree that the very agrarian, slave-based antebellum South did.
gay marriage comes to mind...
The USA as the lone superpower would not exist if the issue of states' rights had not been resolved.
I do not see the Federal government as a threat, I see liberalism as the threat we face today. Conservatives are now beginning to take a stand vs a group, a mindset, that has had its way for many years, primarily on the social front...and see where that's gotten us today?
We must win the culture war...and we are. It's today's civil war.
Some ex. of issues evident in the culture war: gay marriage, broadcast decency, public referrence to God and Christianity, the War on Terror)
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