Posted on 12/20/2001 4:01:19 AM PST by shuckmaster
Some reviewers have had a hard time with the present book. They imagine that there is a single historical thesis therein, one subject to definitive proof or refutation. In this, I believe they are mistaken. Instead, what we have here is a multifaceted critique of what must be the most central event in American history.
This is not Mr. Adams’s first book. His For Good and Evil: The Impact of Taxes on the Course of Civilization (1999) lives up to its title and underscores the importance of a matter frequently ignored by conventional historians. Taxation and other fiscal matters certainly play a major role in Adams’s reconstruction of the War for Southern Independence.
Those who long for the simple morality play in which Father Abraham saved the Union (always capitalized) and emancipated the slaves out of his vision and kindness have complained that Adams has ignored slavery as a cause of the war. That is incorrect. Slavery and the racial issue connected with it are present; they do not, however, have the causal stage all to themselves.
In chapter one, Adams sets the American war over secession in a global context by instancing other conflicts of similar type. He plants here the first seeds of doubt that political separation is inherently immoral. Chapter two deals with Fort Sumter and Lincoln’s successful gamble to have the Confederacy “start” the war. Here one learns that the Fort was primarily a customs house – a nice bit of symbolism, especially since the South paid roughly four times as much in tariffs as the North did.
Given that, Lincoln was very concerned about his tariff revenues in the absence of the Southern states. After Fort Sumter, the (Northern) President unconstitutionally established a blockade of Southern ports on his own motion. Soon, Lincoln had robbed Maryland of self-government and was making other inroads on civil liberty – his idea of preserving the Constitution via his self-invented presidential “war powers” (of which there is not a word in the actual document).
In chapter four, Adams unfolds his revenue-based theory of the war. The shift from a pro-peace to a pro-war position by the New York press and key business interests coincided exactly with their realization that the Confederacy’s low tariffs would draw trade away from the North, especially in view of the far higher Northern tariff just instituted. There is an important point here. It did not automatically follow that secession as such had to mean war. But peace foretold the end of continental mercantilism, tariffs, internal improvements, and railroad subsidies – a program that meant more than life to a powerful Northern political coalition. That coalition, of which Lincoln was the head, wanted war for a complex of material, political, and ideological reasons.
Adams also looks at what might well be called Northern war crimes. Here he can cite any number of pro-Lincoln historians, who file such things under grim necessity. Along the way, the author has time to make justified fun of Lincoln’s official theory that he was dealing with a mere “rebellion” rather than with the decision of political majorities in eleven states.
Other chapters treat the so-called Copperheads, the “treason trial” of Jefferson Davis (which never took place, quite possibly because the unionist case could not have survived a fair trial), a comparative view of emancipation, and the problems of Reconstruction. The author’s deconstruction of the Gettysburg Address will shock Lincoln idolators. Adams underlines the gloomy pseudo-religious fatalism with which Lincoln salved his conscience in his later speeches. This supports M. E. Bradford’s division of Lincoln’s career into Whig, “artificial Puritan,” and practical “Cromwellian” phases – the last item pertaining to total war.
To address seriously the issues presented by Adams requires a serious imaginative effort, especially for those who never before heard such claims about the Constitution, about the war, or about Lincoln. Ernest Renan famously wrote that for Frenchmen to constitute a nation, they must remember certain things and were “obliged already to have forgotten” certain others. Adams focuses on those things which Northerners, at least, have long since forgotten.
What Adams’ book – with or without a single, central thesis – does, is to reveal that in 1860 and early 1861 many Americans, north and south, doubted the existence of any federal power to coerce a state and considered peaceful separation a real possibility. In the late 1790s, The Federalist Papers, for example, laughed down the notion that the federal government could coerce states in their corporate, political capacity. For much of the nineteenth century Americans saw the union as a practical arrangement instrumental to other values. That vision vanished in the killing and destruction of Mr. Lincoln’s war. Americans paid a rather high price for making a means into an end.
I'll betcha nowhere near 1/3rd of the Confederate soldiers who died owned slaves...this was a War started by monied interests from both sides, but it was the CommonFolk who shed a vast majority of the blood.
"And what you would have to show is that the great mass of CSA soldiers were NOT fighting for the type of society they wanted to live in. That they didn't some day want to raise their station where THEY could own slaves. Can you show that?"
Of course I'm not about to make the argument that slavery could ever be justified in any society...at any time, EVER!! Yet...the North had Irish, Welsh and other folks who they brought overseas as "indentured servants" and Yankees don't seem to be the least bit bothered by that...why not?! Aren't "indentured servants" a whole lot like "slaves"?
MUD
LOL...yer probably right, I avoid these threads like a plague usually. They're a good way to make mortal enemies and I rather prefer to focus all my angst on Lib'ral RATS!!
FReegards...MUD
ROFL!!
"There were plenty of ways for the abolitionists to triumph without plunging the Country into a Civil War..."? Who started the rebellion, north or South?
Rebellion?! Exercising yer Constitutional Right to self-governance is now "rebellion"?! I humbly disagree.
"Who fired the first shot, north or South? You may say that the war could have been avoided if the north had only let the South leave. I can respond by saying that the war could have been avoided if the South had not rebelled."
You COULD say that...but you'd be ignoring the States' Constitutional Right to Secede from this VOLUNTARY Union of Commonwealths.
"For you to put the blame entirely on the north is yet another case of Southern revisionism and selective memory."
Woah there, sunshine...I never blamed this entirely on the north and I don't believe that in the least. I specifically blamed the War on the Effete Elite from BOTH the north and the South.
"Regardless of what you thought you were fighting for, the men who started the rebellion had an agenda of their own. And that agenda was the defense of slavery. Their agenda was your agenda. Their cause was your cause. Nothing will change that."
FYI...I wasn't alive in 1860 or even 1865. And, FWIW, my kinfolk were either living in Kansas--which had its own little BloodFeud goin' about this issue--or were still in Europe during the Unpleasantries. And I hereby reject yer assertion that the Southern Agenda was the retention of Slavery as a Way of Life...Nothing will change that!!
Reckon we'll just have to find something else to argue about.
FReegards and Have a Joyful Holiday...MUD
I would like to see the statistics you use to support that. If true it would contradict most of what I have read on the subject. And would also weaken the claim that slavery was a 'dying institution'.
Talk is cheap. What documents from the period do you have to support your claim?
Actually, IMHO, the South had a "productivity DIS-advantage" due to its over-dependence on slave labor. Sure...plantation owners could maintain lavish lifestyles because of their abhorrent practice of enslaving other human beings as chattel/work units, but it kept them from exploring more-advanced, non-agrarian industrial options. Plus, without air-conditioning, the work year was much shorter in the South unless you were working as an alternative to being whipped.
FReegards...MUD
They were clearly traitors under the definition given in the Constitution.
But you might argue that what they did was justified--you know, like what George Washington, Thomas Jefferson et al did. After all, they were called traitors under British law-and they clearly were.
And that would be when I ask you what had happened prior to 1860 that would justify taking up arms against the government in Washington and firing on the US flag. Why couldn't they just be cool and talk it out?
Walt
FReegards...MUD
Union of Commonwealths? First time I've ever heard it referred to as that. Regardless, the right doesn't exist. Arbitrary secession is not Constitutional. The Supreme Court ruled on that in 1869.
Happy Holidays back at you. I guess I assumed that y'all didn't celebrate Christmas what with Santa being a Yankee and all. He does live at the NORTH pole you know.
If it was left up to the Sheeple, I believe that could have--and would have--occurred; however, the North's Effete Elite did not want a low-tariff competitor to the South and the South's Effete Elite did not want to give up their cushy lifestyle that would have gone away had slavery been abolished.
FReegards...MUD
No such right exists in US law.
The Judiciary Act of 1789 gives the Supreme Court jurisdiction where any state is a party, except suits against citizens of that state or aliens.
Too, the Supreme Court ruled as early as 1793 that the sovereignty of the United States rests on all the people of the United States.
Consider:
"To the formation of a league, such as was the confederation, the State sovereignties were certainly competent. But when "in order to form a more perfect union," it was deemed necessary to change the alliance into an effective government, possessing great and sovereign powers, and acting directly on the people, the necessity of deriving its powers from them, was felt and acknowledged by all... "
And:
If any one proposition could command the universal assent of mankind, we might expect that it would be this -- that the government of the Union, though limited in its powers, is supreme within its sphere of action. This would seem to result, necessarily, from its nature. It is the government of all; its powers are delegated by all; it represents all; and acts for all. Though any one state may be willing to control its operations, no state is willing to allow others to control them. The nation, on those subjects on which it can act, must necessarily bind its component parts. But this question is not left to mere reason; the people have, in express terms, have decided it, by saying, "this constitution, and the laws made in pursuance thereof,: shall be the supreme law of the land," and by requiring that the members of the state legislatures, and the officers of the executive and judicial departments of the states, shall take an oath of fidelity to it. The government of the United States, then, though limited in its powers, is supreme; and its laws, when made in pursuance of the constitution, form the supreme law of the land, "anything in the constitution or laws of any state, to the contrary notwithstanding."
And:
"Among the enumerated powers, we do not find that of establishing a bank or of creating a corporation. But there is no phrase in the instrument which, like the articles of confederation, excludes incidental or implied powers; and which requires that everything granted shall be expressly and minutely described. Even the 10th amendment, which was framed for the purpose of quieting the excessive jealousies which had been excited, omits the word "expressly," and declares that the powers "not delegated to the United States, nor prohibited to the states are reserved to the states or to the people," thus leaving the question, whether the particular power which may become the subject of contest, has been delegated to the one government, or prohibited to the other, to depend on a fair reading of the whole instument... It would probably never be understood by the public. Its nature, therefore, requires, that only its great outlines should be marked, its important objectives designated, and the minor ingredients which compose those objects,, be deduced from the nature of the objects themselves. That is the idea entertained by the framers of the American constitution, is not only to be inferred from the nature of the instrument, but from its language. Why else were some of the limitations, found in the 9th section of the 1st article, introduced? ....
The subject is the execution of those great powers on which the welfare of the nation essentially depends. It must have been the intention of those who gave these powers, to insure, their beneficial execution. This could not be done, by confining the choice of means to such narrow limits as not to leave it in the power of congress to adopt any which might be appropriate, and which were conclusive to the end. "
--John Marshall, Chief Justice, writing in McCullough v. Maryland, 1819
Also consider:
"As in his opinions, Marshall's essays completely rejected the compact theory upon which the position of state's rights advocates such as Roane was based. "Our Constitution," Marshall affirmed in his essays, "is not a compact. It is the act of a single party. It is the act of the people of the United States, assembling in their respective states, and adopting a government for the whole nation."
--from "A History of the Supreme Court, p.55, by Bernard Schwartz.
And what about Chief Justice John Jay?
"...the people, in their collective and national capacity, established the present Constitution. It is remarkable that in establishing it, the people exercised their own rights and their own proper sovereignty, and conscious of the plenitude of it, they declared with becoming dignity, "We the people of the United States," 'do ordain and establish this Constitution."
Here we see the people acting as the sovereigns of the whole country; and in the language of sovereignty, establishing a Constitution by which it was their will, that the state governments should be bound, and to which the State Constitutions should be made to conform. Every State Constitution is a compact made by and between the citizens of a state to govern themeselves in a certain manner; and the Constitution of the United States is liekwise a compact made by the people of the United States to govern themselves as to general objects, in a certain manner. By this great compact however, many prerogatives were transferred to the national Government, such as those of making war and peace, contracting alliances, coining money, etc."
--From Chisholm v. Georgia, 1793.
That's another big ouch for confederate apologists.
There is no right to legal, unilateral state secession in our system of government. Not now, not in 1793 and not in 1860
Walt
I don't have statistics close at hand but will see if I can dredge them up.
However, common sense plays part of a role here.
If you have two businessmen, one a slave owner (A), one not a slave owner (B), if (A) just minimally feeds, clothes, and shelters the slave does it not make sense that he will probably pay less to do that than (B) pays a free man to do the same thing?
Now if you have a machine that will do the same thing, NOW if (B) buys the machine he might pay less to do the same thing.
(A), however, is thinking, "Yeh, but that machine doesn't make more machines and my slaves do.", so he wants to keep the slaves.
I don't say this is what happened, but maybe a possibility of the thinking?
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