A Voluntary Federation ( Lincoln was Wrong )

http://mises.org ^ | January 18, 2013 | Donald W. Livingston

[Para-Ord.45]

This Humean notion of Americanism that acknowledges the right of a self-governing people to secede is framed in the Declaration of Independence. The Declaration is primarily a document justifying secession, but it has been thoroughly corrupted by Lincoln’s reading of it and the ritualistic repetition and expansion of that reading. The Lincoln tradition reads the Declaration as affirming a metaphysical doctrine of individual rights (all men are created equal) and takes this to be the fundamental symbol of the American regime, trumping all other symbols, including the symbol of moral excellence internal to those inherited moral communities protected by the reserved powers of the states under the Tenth Amendment. Indeed, this tradition holds that the Declaration of Independence is superior to the Constitution itself, for being mere positive law, the Constitution can always be trumped by the “higher” metaphysical law of equality.

The Constitution of the United States was founded as a federative compact between the states, marking out the authority of a central government, having enumerated powers delegated to it by sovereign states which reserved for themselves the vast domain of unenumerated powers. By an act of philosophical alchemy, the Lincoln tradition has transmuted this essentially federative document into a consolidated nationalist regime...

Lincoln’s vision of a consolidated nationalism in pursuit of an antinomic doctrine of equality had its roots in the French Revolution, which sought to unify the decentralized traditional order of France into a consolidated nationalism in pursuit of the rights of man. But Lincoln’s vision was also forward looking. By the 1830s, the forces of nationalism and industrialism were sweeping Europe, and had begun to have an impact on an industrial North all too eager to compete on the world stage with the empires of Europe. For this project, centralization and consolidation were necessary. Lincoln’s vision of consolidating the states into a nationalist regime was of a piece with that of Garibaldi in Italy, Bismarck in Germany, Lenin in Russia, and the general consolidating, industrializing, and imperializing forces on the move in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

(excerpt)

[Sherman Logan]

In the last days of the CSA, as in early 1865, the CSA Congress debated initiating (very) gradual and compensated emancipation on the theory that doing so might allow for foreign recognition and aid.

Leaving aside that no European power was stupid enough to intervene at this stage of the (lost) war, it is interesting what the congresscritters had to say.

Even when faced with the stark choice between (possible) independence if they agreed to free the slaves in the future, and pretty much guaranteed loss of both independence and slaves if they “stayed the course,” Congress just could not face emancipation.

The most common point made was that they had sought independence to protect their peculiar institution, and what point was there to gaining it if they gave up in the process that for which they fought? A paraphrase, but not far off.

IOW, they were willing to lose everything rather than agree to free their slaves. Doesn’t sound to me like people interested in finding a way out of slavery.

[MinorityRepublican]

Ulysses S. Grant considered the Civil War God’s punishment for what the United States did to Mexico in the Mexican-American war

[Psalm 144]

Proves the point. Anyway, it will all come out in the wash, and even before then the Beast on the Potomac will eventually go the way of the Politburo. Perhaps within our lifetimes.

[x]

Livingston writes articles with titles like "Secession: A Specifically American Principle." But here he says this:

It has been said that the constitution of the Soviet Union was the first to recognize explicitly the legal right of secession in a modern state. Strictly speaking this is true. Article 17 of the Soviet Constitution declares that “the right freely to secede from the U.S.S.R. is reserved to every Union republic.” A right of secession was not written into the U.S. Constitution ...

Ooops.

Livingston is a Philosophy Professor at Emory. It's sad that he spends his time on stuff like this, but I guess that too much philosophy can do that to people.

[Psalm 144]

“Ulysses S. Grant considered the Civil War God’s punishment for what the United States did to Mexico in the Mexican-American war”

I’ve seen that before. I can’t remember where, perhaps excerpts from his post war memoirs. He had a great deal of respect for the Mexican mestizo rank and file soldiers. For their officers and government, not so much.

[MinorityRepublican]

You should go to Mexico City and visit this castle.

The Niños Héroes (in English: Boy Heroes), also known as the Heroic Cadets or Boy Soldiers, were six Mexican teenage military cadets. These cadets died defending Mexico at Mexico City's Chapultepec Castle (then serving as the Mexican Army's military academy) from invading U.S. forces in the 13 September 1847 Battle of Chapultepec, during the Mexican–American War. One of the cadets, Juan Escutia, wrapped himself with the Mexican flag and jumped from the roof of the castle to keep it from falling into enemy hands.

[FredZarguna]

There is probably no more emphatic -- or hilarious -- way to drive home the truism that politics makes for strange bedfellows than to watch the multiculti diversity drones go at it so enthusiastically between the sheets with the slavemasters in the claim that the "Civil War was not about Slavery."

Standing just West of the Emmitsburg Road looking towards Cemetery Ridge I had the very great displeasure of hearing an employee of the US Parks Service at Gettysburg inform my daughter's third grade field trip that the "Civil War was not about Slavery." I proceeded to demolish that jackass, and referred him, chapter and verse, to contemporary sources. Maybe today's Southerners don't know what the war was about, but Southerners who published newspapers and ran the government -- and military -- in the 1860's most certainly did. They didn't get their hands bloody over abstract questions of Nullification, and they didn't march their sons off to war because of the Tariff.

[donmeaker]

It was the pressure of morality on the slave power that led them to seek to insulate themselves from morality by insurrection.

Stephen’s ‘Cornerstone’ speech is seen as the reaction of the slave power to moral persuasion.

They were not going to get rid of slavery without a fight, and not going to permit anyone to get rid of slavery without a fight.

And so they started a fight. Virginia’s deal was they wouldn’t pretend to secession unless a fight had started, and so it was necessary for the slave power to get a war started. So rather than wait, they started it themselves.

And then the slave power lost the war. 600,000+ deaths of the war are evil, and the guilt belongs to the people who started the war.

[donmeaker]

The southern states pretended to secession before the Morill tariff was passed. In fact, if the south had not withdrawn its senators, the tariff could not have passed.

When you assert that secession occurred after the tariff you invert time, or lie.

The Tariff was signed into law by Buchanan, before Lincoln took office.

[donmeaker]

In practice the pretended confederacy was far different. Jeff Davis never got around to appointing anyone to the confederate counterpart to the Supreme Court. In practice it was a military dictatorship, ameliorated by Union occupation of key areas and anarchistic tendencies of state governors.

[donmeaker]

Slavery was instituted as British policy before independence, to increase the speed of development in southern areas. Why did they want to do that? Because Spain and Portugal had instituted slavery, and had developed southern plantations.

Jefferson, as governor of Virginia regularly protested the law that limited slave owners from freeing their servants. That law limiting the ability to free slaves was passed after Washington provided in his will that his slaves be freed.

In response to being unable to free his slaves, Jefferson began paying them a salary. That was part of the reason why he died in debt.

North Carolina permitted free men of color to vote until 1835. In 1835 they withdrew the franchise from free men of color.

The institution of African Slavery was getting stronger before 1860, even as most people agreed the evil that was associated with that institution.

[ALPAPilot]

It begs the the question if they are self-governing, who are they seceding from? They must be schizophrenic?

[WriteOn]

Ah, but there is no escape from morality. The relationship between law and morality is intimate. The current battle with abortion is identical in many respects to the battle with slavery, except that abortion is not localized in the south. Would there be a war if it was?

The parallels are amazing right up to dred Scott and roe v wade. An industry thrives on it.

You have either to go to war or say that the civil war should not have happened.

[Sherman Logan]

I had the very great displeasure of hearing an employee of the US Parks Service at Gettysburg inform my daughter's third grade field trip that the "Civil War was not about Slavery."

So what do they say it is about? I can only assume that from their perspective making it "about slavery" would make white Unionists "good guys," and we can't have that! So the war "must" be about something Marxist. Am I right?

I assume you will agree that the CW was in a real sense not about slavery, since slavery was not really under genuine threat in 1860.

Rather, I think the issue was for most southerners, as they freely proclaimed, one of honor. Northerners kept saying slavery was wrong, and southerners resented it bitterly. The infamous Wigfall said something along the lines of how anybody would resent a neighbor who constantly denigrated your family, even if what he said might be true.

They got sick and tired of being told they were wrong and wanted their own country where they wouldn't have to listen to it. I truly believe this was the precipitating factor. The actual issue that split the country, expansion into the territories, was symbolic of this deeper issue.

The South was insisting that the federal government enforce slavery in all the territories, primarily as a symbol that slavery and therefore slavers were not evil, since slavery was not economically viable in most if not all of the existing territories. Northerners wanted slavery excluded from all the territories as a symbol of its evil and eventual demise.

The country could not both applaud and deride slavery and slaveowners, so it came apart.

As so often in history, contrary to vulgar Marxism, the war was not primarily about economic issues. It was primarily about issues of honor and feeeelliiings.

[central_va]

Northerners wanted slavery excluded from all the territories as a symbol of its evil and eventual demise.

But the real reasons were more racist, northerners wanted to keep the new territories lily white and free from the untermensch black encroachment. Everyone knew slavery was dying and they wanted to per-empt a black invasion.

[central_va]

Lincoln said the war WAS NOT about slavery. He said so in plain English many times. It only became about slavery when the North was running out of Irish conscripts to put between the Army of Northern Virginia and DC. The freshly “proclamated” blacks made good cannon fodder for the butcher.

[Sherman Logan]

I will cheerfully agree that most northerners of the time were highly racist by our standards, if you will agree that southerners were even more racist. After all, southerners almost unanimously supported the Dred Scott decision, which held that blacks, free or slave, were not and never could become citizens of the United States, in plain contravention of history and legal reasoning. And that the Founders had recognized black men as "beings of an inferior order, and altogether unfit to associate with the white race, either in social or political relations, and so far inferior that they had no rights which the white man was bound to respect."

IOW, blacks were undermenschen and therefore legitimate prey for the ubermenschen white race. Most northerners, while unwilling to recognize blacks as social and political equals, at least recognized they had the inalienable rights outlined in the DoI, to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Southerners denied them even those limited rights.

If the North had really had as its prime objective keeping the existing territories melanin-free, they could easily have struck a grand bargain with the South that would have accomplished it.

The USA becomes a conquering imperialist nation. The North gets Canada, the existing territories and the rest of North America for its black-free zone; and the South uses the military potential of the united country to expand into Mexico, the Caribbean and Central America, perhaps eventually South America, creating a great tropical slave empire. Numerous southerners were in favor of such a bargain, notably including Jefferson Davis.

This would have required a drastic change in American culture and at least one war with the British Empire, which unfortunately had a much more powerful fleet. But it doesn't seem likely such a war could have been more devastating than the one we got.

CVA, I'd like to lay out my biggest issue with your posts. For your claims to be true, every public figure of the 1850s and 60s, North and South, would have to be an egregious liar.

Men of both sections spoke at extreme length on their beliefs and goals, yet for your meme to be accurate, everything they said would have to be cover for their true objectives.

Northerners, by 1860, were largely united in opposition to slavery, varying from a desire to keep it from spreading into new areas to full-blown abolition. Over and over they spoke, wrote and campaigned for these positions. Yet you would make this only a cover for their racist desire to keep the west for white people. Which is kind of silly, since at the time nobody needed a "cover" for racism, which was the popular conventional wisdom in both sections.

OTOH, southerners insisted that slavery be allowed to expand into the territories, and hopefully into new territory acquired y purchase or war, with some for the notion that the Constitution protected slave "property" even in a (northern) State that prohibited the institution. But, according to you, when they said so, over and over again, they really believed that slavery was on its last legs and they would soon be forced to abolish it for economic reasons. IOW, their constant claims of the bright future of slavery were conscious lies.

See Senator Hammond's famous 1858 King Cotton speech. (BTW, he was an "interesting" guy. Bisexual and incestuously intimate with four teenage nieces.) Couple quotes from him:

"I firmly believe that American slavery is not only not a sin, but especially commanded by God through Moses, and approved by Christ through his apostles."

"I endorse without reserve the much abused sentiment of Governor McDuffie, that 'slavery is the corner-stone of our republican edifice;' while I repudiate, as ridiculously absurd, that much lauded but nowhere accredited dogma of Mr. Jefferson that 'all men are born equal.'"

Why do you believe all the leaders of the country, North and South, were such horrible liars for an entire decade?

[central_va]

The USA becomes a conquering imperialist nation. The North gets Canada, the existing territories and the rest of North America for its black-free zone; and the South uses the military potential of the united country to expand into Mexico, the Caribbean and Central America, perhaps eventually South America, creating a great tropical slave empire. Numerous southerners were in favor of such a bargain, notably including Jefferson Davis.

Writing a novel?

[central_va]

Facts:

1. Racism is racism and the 19th century the Northerners were More racist than Southerners. Southerners have daily contact with blacks and were not knee jerk in fear of the black man.
2. Time and again we see unions and the general fear(racism) of the black man "stealing" jobs if "they" ever were allowed North.
3. This fear of black labor extended to the new territories.

These are facts as I see them. You are welcome to disagree and continue your fiction. I will read your posts and continue to laugh at your reconstructed view of US history.

[Sherman Logan]

You have an odd definition of racism, IMO.

Were I black, I’d be a lot more concerned with the white man who was perfectly willing to have daily contact with me but insisted I do so as a slave totally without rights, than I would be with the white man who recognized my humanity (and my real albeit limited rights) but didn’t want to hang out together.