An Unnecessary Horror

Lew Rockwell ^ | 12/03/2001 | Myles Kantor

[sheltonmac]

An Unnecessary Horror

Midge Decter writes of Abraham Lincoln in the November issue of Commentary, "Union came first, and he was prepared to preside over what would become the bloodiest war in the country's history to preserve that union...Lincoln's war was a horror, but it kept us together, and in the long run made possible a full national life in common." By these lights, the Confederacy’s conquest was a sanguinary necessity.

In fact, there was nothing necessary about smashing the consensual cornerstone of American government and sacrificing over 620,000 American on the altar of unitary dogma. Lincoln’s course of action was a colossal atrocity.

An all-purpose source of exculpation for Lincoln’s apologists is slavery in the Confederacy. Given the denial of self-ownership to four million blacks, goes this claim, Lincoln’s denial of secession’s legitimacy was just. (Don’t be insolent and mention to them the perpetration of slavery and disenfranchisement in Union states or the irrelevance of slavery to Lincoln’s conquistador motivation. Definitely do not mention the sentiments of abolitionists such as George Bassett in May 1861: "It is not a war for Negro Liberty, but for national despotism. It is a tariff war, an aristocratic war, a pro-slavery war.")

To most starkly illustrate the odious premise of the anti-secessionists, I will present a counterfactual scenario where secession was asserted not by the South but against it.

During the 1850s – a period that would be more aptly described as the Civil War than 1861-1865 – the Fugitive Slave Act incensed many Northerners. It was one thing for Southern states to perpetrate slavery in their territory; it was another to have the federal government send marshals into non-slave states, arrest runaways, and return them to bondage. Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote in 1855:

…when the poor people who are the victims of this crime [slavery], disliking the stripping and peeling process, run away into states where this practice is not permitted – a law has been passed requiring us who sit here to seize these poor people, tell them they have not been plundered enough, and must go back to be stripped and peeled again, and as long as they live.

(The federal welfare for slaveholders evident in the Fugitive Slave Act mirrored slaveholding states’ welfare. Professor William Marina notes in A History of Florida: "Slave patrols, required by law, were in a very real sense a tax on the non-slaveholder in favor of the slaveholder. Absent such governmentally mandated subsidies, the labor costs in a market-oriented society would tend toward manumission. The best evidence that such economic tendencies were operative is that laws were increasingly passed over the years to make manumission of slaves more difficult. Why would such laws have been necessary unless manumission was an option that undercut the slave system imposed by government? In any event, such massive governmental political-economic interventionism on behalf of the slave owning interest group is hardly descriptive of a laissez faire, small government, market-oriented society." Professor Mark Thornton similarly observes in the Summer 2001 Austrian Economics Newsletter: "The political institutions of the American South were set up to socialize the costs of the system while privatizing its fruits. This was a huge public subsidy and a way of keeping the system going. Everyone was drafted into the slave patrols, and you couldn’t free your slaves; it was against the law. All of this reduces the private costs of owning slaves but increases the overall social costs.")

Abraham Lincoln consistently pledged to enforce the Fugitive Slave Law, i.e., to make northern states complicit in the perpetuation of the peculiar institution. He moreover opposed efforts in the Republican Party to repeal the Fugitive Slave Law. (See his letters to Salmon P. Chase and Samuel Galloway on June 20, 1859 and July 28, 1859, respectively.)

Now begins the counterfactual scenario.

On December 20, 1860, a Massachusetts convention passes the following ordinance:

Whereas, Abraham Lincoln has been elected President of the United States, and

Whereas, President-elect Lincoln has affirmed support of the Fugitive Slave Act, and

Whereas, The Commonwealth of Massachusetts and all non-slaveholding states shall be bound to aid in the rendition of fugitive slaves under this administration, and

Whereas, Such complicity with the iniquitous institution of slavery is repugnant to the consciences of this commonwealth’s citizens, and

Whereas, Seeking to throw off this wretched yoke and be a beacon of freedom for the enchained masses of this country,

Therefore Be It Resolved, That the Commonwealth of Massachusetts hereby dissolves its political bands with the United States of America and shall hereafter exist as a free and independent state.

Other states enact similar ordinances soon after Massachusetts.

According to Lincoln in his First Inaugural Address, secession is "the essence of anarchy"; he made no exemption for secession by non-slaveholding states. Thus, these withdrawals would be illegitimate.

To restore the union, troops would have to invade Massachusetts and the other seceded states. The abolitionists’ attempt to be a safe haven for runaways would be subdued, and free states would then have to tolerate by threat of occupation the periodic presence of slave-hunters. (Efforts to repeal the Fugitive Slave Act – never mind slavery – in this coercive union would be fruitless due to the congressional and judicial power of the master class.)

It requires a despotic temperament to endorse this. Only someone who believed in Union über Alles instead of federal republicanism and self-determination could say, "The invasion of Massachusetts was righteous." (It was all too appropriate when Chinese premier Zhu Rongii told President Clinton in 1999 regarding Taiwan, "Abraham Lincoln, in order to maintain the unity of the United States…resorted to the use of force…so, I think Abraham Lincoln, president, is a model, is an example." No doubt the mainland regime considers secession the essence of anarchy as well.)

Ms. Decter’s romanticism of Abraham Lincoln’s monstrous error is common among her peers. To restate a conclusion on one of these peers that applies equally to Ms. Decter: Examined from the perspective of Southern secession, this orientation can claim a fig leaf of justice. Examined from the perspective of abolitionist disunion, we see its unvarnished tyranny.

[sheltonmac]

Every once in awhile it's nice to throw in a good Lincoln-bashing thread to get under someone's skin! ;-)

[donmeaker]

The interesting thing was that the North was growing faster than the south. One could not work in the south without degrading oneself. One could not use high technology because all labor had to be done by unskilled slaves. Lincoln would have to enforce the fugitive slave law, but he stood for limitation of slavery to where it currently existed, to wit, free territories and reversal of the Dred Scott decision. In fact, the north had stomached the Fugitive Slave Law for 10 years, because it meant that they needed to pass the slave to Canada, and then the slave could come back with papers from Canada. It was a weak law for that reason, and enforcing it was not a major problem. The south benefited from runaway slaves, for the most recalitrant, those who would knife the master in his bed, would usually prefer to run away.

It was the south who set up an illegal compact between states, specifically forbidden by the Constitution. It was the south which sought alliance with foreign powers to gain continued government subsidy of their peculiar institution. Hurrah for Lincoln!

[Brigadier]

Anybody have change for a five? Now that they have made the portrait of the Tyrant larger, they are even worse!

Deo Vindice,
Brigadier

[ravinson]

In fact, there was nothing necessary about smashing the consensual cornerstone of American government...

Slavery was "the consensual cornerstone of American government"? Whatever you want to believe, Confederate glorifier-breath.

[Tauzero]

Great post.

[shuckmaster]

The tyrant who destroyed America needs to be bashed on a fairly regular basis.

[wasp69]

Slavery was "the consensual cornerstone of American government"? Whatever you want to believe, Confederate glorifier-breath.
5 posted on 12/4/01 12:25 AM Eastern by ravinson

Wow, sheltonmac, look who's back! And there was absolutely no delay in the first insult to be hurled.

[wasp69]

It was the south who set up an illegal compact between states, specifically forbidden by the Constitution.

The South legally withdrew from the Union, state by state, thereby once again becoming seperate sovereign bodies before forming their own government.

[WhiskeyPapa]

bump

[Bloody Sam Roberts]

A very interesting article, but just for a second forget the intent. Look at the content. The Unnecessary Horror is the author's disregard for one of the cardinal rules of simple and direct writing: "Never use a dollar and fifty cent word when there's a good ten center handy."

sanguinary
exculpation
odious
counterfactual

Just a pet peeve.

[WhiskeyPapa]

The South legally withdrew from the Union, state by state, thereby once again becoming seperate sovereign bodies before forming their own government.

The forming of confederacies and alliances is explicitly forbidden in the Constitution. And the people, acting through special conventions called for the purposed agreed that the Constitution would be the supreme law of the land.

Your position is fantasy.

Walt

[stainlessbanner]

FL was an independent republic before joing the confederacy. It withdrew from the Union and was on it's own for a while.

[Lazamataz]

Slavery was "the consensual cornerstone of American government"? Whatever you want to believe, Confederate glorifier-breath.

I have glorifier-breath. When I breathe on wilting flowers, they bloom again. HhhhhAAAAAAAAAhhhhhhhhhhhhhh........

[billbears]

Bump to that!!

[William Terrell]

Whatever you want to say about slavery, there are certain facts you can't argue with. One of the formeost facts is that America was consolidated under a central government who had sovereignty over the states.

This was the second stage in suborning America. The first was moving from a confederation to a federation and the third was the setting in place of social institutions presided over by the newly empowered central government. The fourth was locking these social institutions into law and custom.

We are in the fifth stage now, the federal government finally moving into the full use of actual powers that were only potential after the war between the states, and have been slowly, carefully implimented over the decades.

But it all started with Lincoln. If he had been stopped the federalization step would have been minimal. Slavery? The feds were not concerned with slavery; they were concerned with maximizing power over all the people. The slavery issue was just to get enough useful idiots on board.

I take it that you agree with and support the expanded federal power creep. You would have to if you supported Lincoln's war and goals. It's interesting to note that your thoughts are still conditioned by the slavery dogma.

Certainly slavery was bad, but was a doomed institution. The South was already moving toward mechanical farming implimentation. The war was hurried along and pressured. If not slavery could not have been used in the way it was: to entice fools to enter on a path to tyranny.

Evidently, the fools today still buy it.

[ravinson]

We are in the fifth stage now, the federal government finally moving into the full use of actual powers that were only potential after the war between the states, and have been slowly, carefully implimented over the decades. But it all started with Lincoln.

Nonsense. Read Tocqueville's "Democracy in America". He predicted twenty years before Lincoln set foot in the White House that majoritarian tyranny would result in an ever-expanding federal government:

“After having thus successfully taken each member of its community in its powerful grasp and fashioned him at will, the supreme power then extends its arms around the whole community. It covers the surface of society with a network of small complicated rules, minute and uniform, through which the most original minds and the most energetic characters cannot penetrate, to rise above the crowd. The will of man is not shattered, but softened, bent, and guided; men are seldom forced by it to act, but they are constantly restrained from acting. Such a power does not destroy, but it prevents existence; it does not tyrannize, but it compresses, enervates, extinguishes, and stupefies a people, till each nation is reduced to nothing better than a flock of timid and industrious animals, of which the government is the shepherd.”

The federal government under Lincoln actually expanded very little compared to any 20th Century president (and many 19th Cnetury ones). In fact, one of the main counterforces to big government in the late 1800's was Supreme Court Justice Stephen J. Field, a Lincoln appointee, who among other things declared the federal income tax law of 1894 unconstitutional, expressing a fear of "a war of the poor against the rich".

Take a look at a chart of the growth of federal spending and you'll see that it was relatively slowly but steadily growing until the 1900's, when it took off like a rocket into the stratosphere. Lincoln had nothing to do with that.

To the extent that Lincoln did (like most Presidents) expand the federal role, he only did so in response to a determined effort by the Confederates to preserve slavery (which they apparently didn't know was dying in you look at their declarations of secession). If you want to blame any Civil War era political figure for an expansion of the federal government, blame Jefferson Davis and his followers, who gave the federal government the best excuse it ever had to expand its power. The Confederates proved quite effectively that it wasn't only Washington politicians who were tyrannical.

The feds were not concerned with slavery...

Nevertheless, slavery was snuffed out as a direct result of the Civil War and Lincoln's leadership.

I take it that you agree with and support the expanded federal power creep.

No, I just see no point in glorifying a group of people who so vividly demonstrated that individual states can be just as tyrannical as the feds.