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.
Von Manstein was obviously a great general.
Hey, when I was in recruit training at PI, there was a guy in my platoon named Robin Speidel. So of course asked him if he was related to Hans Speidel, Rommel's Chief of Staff. Turned out he was General Speidel's nephew.
I had a CO whose CO in the 60's had been a Hitler Youth. He killed a T-34 and had an Iron Cross. He petitioned HQMC to wear it on his dress greens.
Nope, came back the answer.
Walt
Hey Mac (as fellow Marines addressed each other in WWII - or at least in the "Sands of Iwo Jima"), I would like to say:
Semper Fi and Merry Christmas.
Mark
Semper Fi.
Walt
As for Forrest, I'll repeat that he was never a threat because Sherman wouldn't leave him alone long enough to be a threat. Sherman kept after Forrest throughout the campaign and if Forrest kept beating the Union cavalry sent against him it kept coming back. Forrest couldn't go after the Union supplies because he had to constantly worry about the next Union force that would come and a Bedford Forrest looking out for his own ass was a Bedford Forrest who didn't have time to worry Sherman. And when he did break free what did he do? Went to Memphis, of all places, hundreds of miles away from Sherman's supply lines. What good was he doing there?
John Bell Hood. Now there is a story. An absolutely brilliant division commander and an absolute disaster as an army commander. Hood's campaign was doomed from the start because even he didn't have the slightest idea of what he wanted to accomplish other than a vain hope of forcing Sherman to turn north to meet him. So he blundered around Tennessee until he ran into Schofield at Nashville. It didn't take a genius to beat Hood, I could have done it. Hood went out of his way to destroy his army and to beat himself.
The members of which were almost 30% draftees. And a large percentage of the remainder were forced to remain in past their original enlistment. But I'm sure that those who were left no doubt were driven by an urge to drive out the invaders.
I concure. What little hope the south had of victory died with him. Best biography of the man is called "Stonewall" by Byron Farwell. It's been out a while but you can probably find in in paperback on amazon.com.
If there were Kennedys in Massachusetts back then, I can imagine what happened to a lot of the rum...
Who's word? You quote "Miississippi said". Name the author.
There were Summer's & Stevens' back then. When the Southern states banned the importation of slaves, their family business' took a huge hit & were forced to unload at cheaper prices at greater expense in Brazil & the Carribean. Probably the single main cause of the war was Charles & Thadeous' thirst for revenge.
Now, are you disputing that they said what they said?
The United States may have banned the legal importation of slaves but the south was an eager importer for decades afterwards.
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