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Warning Long Rant

Have no doubt Obama will not let us go easily. If we were to try to break away we would need to make some hard choices as to what areas to bring out, and how to frame the argument for secession. If we were crazy enough to ever consider scesssion we would need to learn from the lessons of the Confederacy as to what not to do.

Make it clear to the other side that they would be better off with us gone. In the run up to Bull Run the Confederate states continuously tried to raise local morale by stressing how after session they would be able to screw the Yankees. They claimed that all of the Federal territories (think where Montana and Washington State are now) were part of the Confederacy. These sorts of proclamations played great at home, but since they Yankees could read southern newspapers it caused panic in many of the western states like Illinois and Kansas. Many of these western states were not pro emancipation and generally had southern sympathies. But they wanted those western lands for expansion and were completely dependent on the Mississippi, Ohio and Missouri rivers for transportation of goods to markets. This left the Union with the option of economic strangulation and perpetual frontier warfare with the Confederacy or going to war. Facing the choice of war now or war later, they answered Lincolns call for militia.

Imagine if instead the Confederacy had offered all the western territories. The Confederacy could expand into the Caribbean and by giving up the western territories they would ensure that the Union would expend its energy expanding away from the Confederacy. Also offer open navigation to Union shipping on the Mississippi. Sure you lose some money in tariffs, but you also remove the main reason for war among several of the key Union states. The Union wanted to become an industrialized, steam driven, capitalist society. The Confederacy should have used their many contacts in the north to stress how much easier this expansion would be without having to constantly fight the agrarian, rural interests in the south. Want a railroad to the Pacific, not problem once the south is gone. Want protective tariffs, no problem once the south is gone. Want to ban all slavery in the remaining states and territories, no problem once the south is gone.

The secessionists should not claim any territory that does not overwhelmingly want to come with them. If they claim territory, no matter how valuable it might be, that doesn’t want to leave the union it makes the secessionists the aggressor, and force the other side to fight. In 1861 the Confederacy admitted several border states based on the votes of “State Governments in Exile”. Their claims to Maryland can be understood, as the Majority of people there were sympathetic to the south. However in states like Kentucky, Missouri they insisted that those states were part of the Confederacy even though the local populations had voted to stay in the Union. In the case of Kentucky the vote was 3-1 in favor of staying in the union.

Make it clear that if allowed to go the seceded states will stay out of the business of the states that remain behind. In 1861 the Confederate congress passed a resolution that Confederate agents could still go into northern states to retrieve runaway slaves. This law was insane for two reasons. First it could never have been enforced if the Union were a separate country. Two it only served to anger the Union and convince them of the need to fight.

The hardest of all is to give the other side an honorable way out. War is emotional as well as military. Any coach will tell you that you don’t go on TV and guarantee victory before the game or hurl personal insults at the players on the other team. Yet this is exactly what the Confederacy did again and again. Sure the Union threw back as many insults, but the Union’s goal was not a negotiated settlement. There was no chance of Robert E. Lee marching into New York and Chicago. The Confederacy should have known that the war was going to end at a bargaining table, not on a battle field. And under such circumstances it would be best if the other side was not needlessly antagonized.

On the day Georgia left the Union an Atlanta newspaper published an article claiming that the need not fear a Yankee invasion as any Southern farm boy could whip ten Yankee factory workers. Knowing the fate that awaits Atlanta at the hands of those Yankee factory workers their statement seems a bit ironic. For a nation obsessed with honor the South did everything imaginable to offend the honor of the Northerners. The day before fort Sumter was fired on the Union officer commanding the fort, Robert Anderson, told his old friend, the Confederate commanding officer Gen. P.G.T. Beauregard [CS], that he could not surrender the fort under threat of arms without loss of honor, but that he would have to abandon the position due to lack of food in a few days. Unwilling to wait the Confederates fired on the fort the next day. Imagine if instead the Confederates had offered to buy Fort Sumter and Pickens as a face saving gesture to the Union. President Buchanan would have had the choice of a long, expensive war over a fort, that he couldn’t possibly hold in any case, or to accept peace and a big pile of money.

The South mistreated prisoners. Sure the Northern prisons were no picnic, but the North wasn’t seeking a negotiated settlement, they were crushing a rebellion. It is always important to remember your goals, and not to simply react based on emotion. Live, healthy Union prisoners were a bargaining chip. Dead and starving prisoners in Andersonville were just reasons for Sherman to send his avenging army into Columbia South Carolina.

The goal in a session should be to unite your own side while striving to divide those who are against you. The South’s effort to have it all, on their terms, and without any concessions, and without any respect for the humanity or honor of the Northern citizens served only to unite those who stood against them.