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.
Like it or not, it's indisputable that today's U.S. blacks are immeasurably better because their ancestors were dragged here in chains. Had Great-Great Grandpa not been dragged here in chains, today's generation of American blacks would be living alongside their cousins in the poorest nations on Earth.
for better research skills, sw
Shouldn't you apologise to me for saying I don't provide primary sources?
Hard to imagine one as primary as the 1850 census. That's okay, you don't have to apologise;
I forgive you.
I would find it hard to believe that the 1860 census is going to show a drop from 1850's 33% down to 3%.
But since you mentioned the 1860 census as supporting your position, you need to cite the 1860 census in this thread.
Walt
for better research skills, sw
Well it took me about 30 seconds to get some information on the 1860 census.
"Selected Statistics on Slavery in the United States
(unless otherwise noted, all data is as of the 1860 census) Total number of slaves in the Lower South : 2,312,352 (47% of total population).
Total number of slaves in the Upper South: 1,208758 (29% of total population).
Total number of slaves in the Border States: 432,586 (13% of total population).
Almost one-third of all Southern families owned slaves. In Mississippi and South Carolina it approached one half. The total number of slave owners was 385,000 (including, in Louisiana, some free Negroes). As for the number of slaves owned by each master, 88% held fewer than twenty, and nearly 50% held fewer than five. (A complete table on slave-owning percentages is given at the bottom of this page.)
For comparison's sake, let it be noted that in the 1950's, only 2% of American families owned corporation stocks equal in value to the 1860 value of a single slave. Thus, slave ownership was much more widespread in the South than corporate investment was in 1950's America.
On a typical plantation (more than 20 slaves) the capital value of the slaves was greater than the capital value of the land and implements.
Confederate enlistment data is incomplete because many records were lost when the South collapsed, but it is possible to estimate, very loosely, the number of men in the Confederate army who came from slave-holding families.
Slavery was profitable, although a large part of the profit was in the increased value of the slaves themselves. With only 30% of the nation's (free) population, the South had 60% of the "wealthiest men." The 1860 per capita income in the South was $3,978; in the North it was $2,040.
Selected Bibliography
Battle Cry of Freedom, by James McPherson
Ordeal by Fire, by James McPherson
The Confederate Nation, by Emory Thomas
Civil War Day by Day, by E.B. Long
Ordeal of the Union (8 vols.) by Allan Nevins
Reader's Companion to American History, by Eric Foner and John Garrity
Census data can be appealed to in order to determine the extent of slave ownership in each of the states that allowed it in 1860. The figures given here are the percentage of slave-owning families as a fraction of total free households in the state. The data was taken from a census archive site at the University of Virginia.
http://fisher.lib.virginia.edu/census/"
I don't know what you are peddling, or who you think you are fooling.
Walt
However, it has been 150 years. It's time to let the hatred go. No one alive today was responsible for any atrocities committed then. I think you can make better headway in these arguments if you use historical evidence as your weapon rather than hostility.
It is difficult to say how long slavery would have lasted without war. One can only speculate on that. I agree with you that most southerners did not fight for slavery (have you read Gary Gallagher's book?) - they fought for their land.
Merry Christmas to all Civil War students.
As for the tax roles, can you provide evidence that shows every southern state taxed personal property?
my assumption is that the 1850 vs. 1860 census figures, IF proper and accurate, prove my point that slavery was DYING a well-deserved death, by natural causes. the industrial revolution, NOT damnyankee bayonets, sounded the death-knell of "the peculiar institution".
BTW, the county i live in in VA, Prince Willian County (the 3rd most populous county in VA- Fairfax & Henrico are/were larger.), had, according to the 1861 county tax rolls a TOTAL of FOUR slaveowners, who combined had 126 slaves of various ages,skills and values for tax purposes. the county population, slave AND free was about 6,000 persons.
for dixie,sw
example: several persons on the forum wrote to me that the cold-blooded murder of Micheal David Westerbrook, 5 (FIVE) years ago, as well as the assaults and battery committed against his wife and elementary-age children by four thugs was PERFECTLY OK, since he had the temerity to fly a small battleflag on his pickup truck (the name of the high school team was the Johnnie Rebs- they were traveling acroos town to a football game at the time of the multipe crimes)!
two people sent me FReepmails about the murder, one of which said "that white [obscenity deleted) got just what the [obscenity deleted]he deserved and that the guys who killed him deserved a medal for killing the white-meat [obscenity deleted]"
sounds like a "hate crime" to me.
for dixie,sw
for dixie,sw
for dixie,sw
sorry, i don't have the interest or time to go look up every pre-war tax law in the country. for dixie,sw
the LA Civil Code statute i quoted was PRECISELY because LA called slaves taxed "agricultual property of value", rather than taxable "personal property".
do i have to tell you that LA, alone of the 50 states, is the only one that is Civil Code (French-derived), rather than a combination of English common law and statutory law, thus frequently LA laws/statutes refer to similar items/thoughts/concepts somewhat differently than the other states?
for dixie,sw
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