Posted on 09/06/2003 9:14:08 AM PDT by quidnunc
Abraham Lincoln is thought of by many as not only the greatest American statesman but as a great conservative. He was neither. Understanding this is a necessary condition for any genuinely American conservatism. When Lincoln took office, the American polity was regarded as a compact between sovereign states which had created a central government as their agent, hedging it in by a doctrine of enumerated powers. Since the compact between the states was voluntary, secession was considered an option by public leaders in every section of the Union during the antebellum period. Given this tradition — deeply rooted in the Declaration of Independence — a great statesman in 1860 would have negotiated a settlement with the disaffected states, even if it meant the withdrawal of some from the Union. But Lincoln refused even to accept Confederate commissioners, much less negotiate with them. Most of the Union could have been kept together. Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Arkansas voted to remain in the Union even after the Confederacy was formed; they reversed themselves only when Lincoln decided on a war of coercion. A great statesman does not seduce his people into a needless war; he keeps them out of it.
When the Soviet Union dissolved by peaceful secession, it was only 70 years old — the same age as the United States when it dissolved in 1860. Did Gorbachev fail as a statesman because he negotiated a peaceful dissolution of the U.S.S.R.? Likewise, if all states west of the Mississippi were to secede tomorrow, would we praise, as a great statesman, a president who refused to negotiate and launched total war against the civilian population merely to preserve the Union? The number of Southerners who died as a result of Lincoln’s invasion was greater than the total of all Americans killed by Hitler and Tojo. By the end of the war, nearly one half of the white male population of military age was either dead or mutilated. No country in World War II suffered casualties of that magnitude.
Not only would Lincoln not receive Confederate commissioners, he refused, for three crucial months, to call Congress. Alone, he illegally raised money, illegally raised troops, and started the war. To crush Northern opposition, he suspended the writ of habeas corpus for the duration of the war and rounded up some 20,000 political prisoners. (Mussolini arrested some 12,000 but convicted only 1,624.) When the chief justice of the Supreme Court declared the suspension blatantly unconstitutional and ordered the prisoners released, Lincoln ordered his arrest. This American Caesar shut down over 300 newspapers, arrested editors, and smashed presses. He broke up state legislatures; arrested Democratic candidates who urged an armistice; and used the military to elect Republicans (including himself, in 1864, by a margin of around 38,000 popular votes). He illegally created a “state” in West Virginia and imported a large army of foreign mercenaries. B.H. Liddell Hart traces the origin of modern total war to Lincoln’s decision to direct war against the civilian population. Sherman acknowledged that, by the rules of war taught at West Point, he was guilty of war crimes punishable by death. But who was to enforce those rules?
These actions are justified by nationalist historians as the energetic and extraordinary efforts of a great helmsman rising to the painful duty of preserving an indivisible Union. But Lincoln had inherited no such Union from the Framers. Rather, like Bismarck, he created one with a policy of blood and iron. What we call the “Civil War” was in fact America’s French Revolution, and Lincoln was the first Jacobin president. He claimed legitimacy for his actions with a “conservative” rhetoric, rooted in an historically false theory of the Constitution which held that the states had never been sovereign. The Union created the states, he said, not the states the Union. In time, this corrupt and corrupting doctrine would suck nearly every reserved power of the states into the central government. Lincoln seared into the American mind an ideological style of politics which, through a sort of alchemy, transmuted a federative “union” of states into a French revolutionary “nation” launched on an unending global mission of achieving equality. Lincoln’s corrupt constitutionalism and his ideological style of politics have, over time, led to the hollowing out of traditional American society and the obscene concentration of power in the central government that the Constitution was explicitly designed to prevent.
A genuinely American conservatism, then, must adopt the project of preserving and restoring the decentralized federative polity of the Framers rooted in state and local sovereignty. The central government has no constitutional authority to do most of what it does today. The first question posed by an authentic American conservative politics is not whether a policy is good or bad, but what agency (the states or the central government — if either) has the authority to enact it. This is the principle of subsidiarity: that as much as possible should be done by the smallest political unit.
The Democratic and Republican parties are Lincolnian parties. Neither honestly questions the limits of federal authority to do this or that. In 1861, the central government broke free from what Jefferson called “the chains of the Constitution,” and we have, consequently, inherited a fractured historical memory. There are now two Americanisms: pre-Lincolnian and post-Lincolnian. The latter is Jacobinism by other means. Only the former can lay claim to being the primordial American conservatism.
David W. Livingston is a professor of philosophy at Emory University and the author of Philosophical Melancholy and Delirium (University of Chicago Press).
And his "view" should trump the founding fathers and the Constitution because .....?
No I didn't. On Friday I consistently criticized their lack of economic credentials by noting that they were historians rather than economists. Here is the exact quote from post #350:
"Also for the record - the authors of that paper are not economists but rather historians. They lack the credentials and background to properly calculate and analyze the protective effects of a tariff."
Now you say they don't know anything about economics because you don't agree with their interpertations of Confederate customs inspections
It is not only a matter of disagreement but also and more importantly a matter of their ignorance of the matter. They stumbled upon the CSA's continuation of the 1846 Warehousing Act - a measure that significantly BENEFITED merchants - and, not knowing what it was or how it worked, attempted to pass it off as a protectionist trade impediment.
which even if they are wrong, has nothing to do with the question at hand.
It has everything to do with the question at hand. One of that paper's arguments is the absurd claim than "onerous" import regulations created a bureaucracy barrier to trade thereby enhancing the protectionist agenda that they ignorantly allege against the CSA.
But with all of your rants and attacking the messanger bluster
I'm in no way attacking you on their message. That is why I pointed out that the passages to which I responded were in your link. I am however challenging the credibility and arguments of that paper. That is perfectly legitimate considering that you posted it into this thread in hopes of using their arguments to further your side.
you have done absolutly nothing to show where they are wrong in saying that the Confederate tariff was indeed a protectionist tariff
To the contrary. I've already posted statistics many, many, many times showing that the CSA tariff, by comparison to all the major US tariffs up until that time and day, was the lowest in half a century. I've also shown that the authors of that paper, be it through ineptitude or willful dishonesty, artificially inflated their protectionist characterization of the CSA tariff on the whole by emphasizing its upper outlier. I've shown that they ignored from consideration several major pieces of evidence that indicate the presence of a significantly stronger free trade faction in Virginia government than the protectionist minority they quote to make their case. And now I've shown that comprehension of underlying trade economics is generally lacking from even the most basic elements of their argument.
You may not like those facts and you certainly have not given much effort to rebutting any of them but there they are, unrefuted and, IMHO, irrefutable.
And you are evidently neither a lawyer nor have you figured much of anything out. The first southern negotiators, a team appointed by South Carolina, reached Washington on December 26, 1860 before a single fort had been taken. They were scheduled to meet with President Buchanan the next day but that was thrown into turmoil thanks to Robert Anderson in Charleston. Anderson had command of the city's forts and was stationed in Fort Moultrie. The other forts, including Sumter, were virtually unoccupied and in a sort of "mothball" state. The War Department and South Carolina were of mutual understanding that neither would act so long as Anderson stayed put in Moultrie and the other forts be left unoccupied. On December 26 that all changed when Anderson, acting unilaterally and without orders, quietly snuck his men over into Fort Sumter. The move was a practical one for him as Sumter was more defensible, but it was also a diplomatic disaster because it came without orders and voided the War Department's part of the bargain in what had been until then a stalemate with neither side acting. In Washington the commander of the army, Gen. Winfield Scott, informed Buchanan that Anderson had recieved "no order, intimation, suggestion, or communication" since his arrival in Moultrie and the War Secretary informed the President that Anderson had acted "in the face of orders." Buchanan met informally with the SC negotiators the day after Anderson's move but only agreed to convey their message to Congress. Also responding to Anderson's move, the South Carolina militia moved in behind him and occupied the forts he had pulled out of starting with the virtually abandoned Fort Johnson, which had been in near ruins for decades.
So in other words, the initiating act of the dispute was NOT the seizure of the forts by the south but rather the occupation of Fort Sumter by the north under a commander who acted without orders and thus unsettled a shaky but nevertheless present peace.
Even later for them.
Actually no it wasn't. The South Carolina negotiators arrived in Washington before any fort had been taken and were met there with the shock that Anderson, acting without order, militarized the mothballed Fort Sumter thereby initiating the events that led to seizure.
Oh, and one more thing. There is also the issue of how the federals came into ownership of the forts in Charleston to begin with. The South Carolina legislature had, over the previous decades, granted them permission by statute to occupy, maintain, and build upon the Charleston forts so long as they were kept in working condition and used for coastal defenses against foreign enemies. Virtually every of the fort in Charleston save Sumter predated the revolution itself and thus was property of South Carolina to begin with. Those authorizations are key because when South Carolina seceded it also repealed all of those previous laws in which it granted the forts to the US army. Thus, by statute, they technically resumed ownership of what was theirs to begin with on December 20, 1860. When SC occupied the abandoned Fort Johnson (built in 1708) a day or two after Anderson moved to Sumter they simply took control of a fort that had been theirs when it was built and had been resumed in ownership when the laws granting it to the army were repealed. Moultrie and Pinckney were taken over the next few days and both were pre-revolutionary properties as well.
Sumter, where Anderson removed to until April 1861, was built by the government in the 1810's and 20's on an artificial island after the South Carolina legislature authorized it. Though that act was also repealed by the secession ordinance, the feds did have a greater claim to Sumter than any of the others since, unlike the others, they built it. But since the SC troops did not take Fort Sumter at the time of the negotiations, they cannot be said to have assumed control over anything other than what South Carolina had constructed itself back in revolutionary days and before. So in that sense they didn't "steal" anything. They reassumed control over what they themselves had constructed by repealing the statutes that had given control to the feds and by moving on them only after they had been abandoned and in direct response to an aggressive act by the commander who abandoned them.
12 out of the 13 states officially recognized by the confederacy seceded by one of the following options:
(a) their popularly elected state legislatures
(b) a popularly elected state secession convention
(c) a popular referendum among the state's voters
Only Kentucky, which officially declared its neutrality in the conflict but was claimed in part by both sides, did not secede by one of these means. As for ensuring a republican form of government, by far the greatest violation of that requirement was at federal hands in Missouri. In June 1861 Lincoln marched his army on the state government in Jefferson City and literally chased them out of town even though they had not voted to secede. Only two state officers remained behind, assuming that their staunch unionist political views would ensure their safety. One resigned in protest of Lincoln's attempted hijacking of the state government. The other was imprisoned and deposed from office by military force. The remainder fled for their lives. This included both a secessionist minority and the very same legislature that had resisted calls to secession for months. Shortly before the capitol was invaded they passed an act calling up the state militia and even placed it under the command of former Gov. Sterling Price - a unionist who had been president of the convention a few months earlier that had decided AGAINST secession. Price and the militia were tasked with defending the government from the federal attackers and went to work holding off the larger union army as best they could. This bought the state government enough time to flee to the southwest, where they reconvened under the defense of the state militia. Acting in direct response to Lincoln's aggression, they finally voted to secede. Lincoln meanwhile proceeded to install his own illegitimate and unelected military government in their place back in Jefferson City, thus denying Missouri its constitutional right to a republican form of government.
As for the southern states seceding after free elections, that's nonsense. All of the south was essentially under martial law. There was no real freedom, and in particular, the voting in Tennessee that is cited as 'for secession' was taken with Confederate soldiers at the poll booths, and it reversed a recent and resounding free vote to deny secession. On that basis alone the Confederacy was a born a bastard and a fraud.
And his "view" should trump the founding fathers and the Constitution because .....?
There is not a nickel's worth of difference in the way Washington, Madison, Jefferson, Jackson and Lincoln viewed the nature of the Constitution. Everything President Lincoln did was in keeping with what had gone before.
Walt
That's a load of crap. Cite the statute.
South Carolina ceded complete ownership to the federal government. The federal government refused to build the fort until this was done. Since the fort was a pork barrel project initiated by John C. Calhoun, the SC legislature lost no time in transferring the property.
"In the specific case of Fort Sumter, in 1827, the Secretary of War, a man named John C. Calhoun (!) had approved the construction of a new fort in the harbor. The first appropriations were made by Congress in 1828 and construction started on the harbor shoal. In November, 1834, after the Untied States had expended roughly $200,000, a person named Major William Laval, Esq., claimed title to the land& which included the under-construction fort.
A South Carolina statute passed in 1791 established a method by which the state disposed of its vacant lands (we tend to forget that much of the territory of the states was empty in the Nineteenth Century: in the original thirteen states, this land was held by the states; in the remaining part of the country, it was held by the Federal government, except in Texas, where the public lands were retained by the state when it was admitted). Laval used the law to claim title to the land – but he described it in a vague manner and given the lack of decent maps of any of the country, his vagueness hid the exact location of the tract he claimed.
When Laval appeared on the scene, he Corps of Engineers stopped work and asked for instructions. It appeared that Laval had filed a proper claim for the land except that land was below low tide and therefore exempt from purchase.
Well South Carolina was aghast! They did not want to lose the fort to protect themselves, nor the payrolls that would come with the completed fort.
The result was a state law:
The Committee on Federal relations, to which was referred the Governor's message, relating to the site of Fort Sumter, in the harbour of Charleston, and the report of the Committee on Federal Relations from the Senate on the same subject, beg leave to Report by Resolution:
Resolved, That this state do cede to the United States, all the right, title and claim of South Carolina to the site of Fort Sumter and the requisite quantity of adjacent territory, Provided, That all processes, civil and criminal issued under the authority of this State, or any officer thereof, shall and may be served and executed upon the same, and any person there being who may be implicated by law; and that the said land, site and structures enumerated, shall be forever exempt from liability to pay any tax to this state.
Also resolved: That the State shall extinguish the claim, if any valid claim there be, of any individuals under the authority of this State, to the land hereby ceded.
Also resolved, That the Attorney-General be instructed to investigate the claims of Wm. Laval and others to the site of Fort Sumter, and adjacent land contiguous thereto; and if he shall be of the opinion that these parties have a legal title to the said land, that Generals Hamilton and Hayne and James L. Pringle, Thomas Bennett and Ker. Boyce, Esquires, be appointed Commissioners on behalf of the State, to appraise the value thereof. If the Attorney-General should be of the opinion that the said title is not legal and valid, that he proceed by seire facius of other proper legal proceedings to have the same avoided; and that the Attorney-General and the said Commissioners report to the Legislature at its next session.
Resolved, That this House to agree. Ordered that it be sent to the Senate for concurrence. By order of the House:
T. W. GLOVER, C. H. R.
IN SENATE, December 21st, 1836
Resolved, that the Senate do concur. Ordered that it be returned to the House of Representatives, By order: JACOB WARLY, C. S.
Poor Maj. Laval lost his scheme to blackmail the United States!
For those wishing to further pursue the ownership of Fort Sumter, et. al, most college and university libraries will have American State Papers: Documents Legislative and Executive of the Congress of the United States, Military Affairs, vol. 5, Twenty-third Congress, Second Session, No. 591, The Construction of Fort Sumter, Charleston Harbor, South Carolina, pp. 463-472.
The War Department became concerned in the 1890s that they might not have clear title to all of their various installations, so they had a civilian attorney in the Judge Advocate General’s office research the chain of title. Fortunately for us, not only were the various National Cemeteries still War Department properties, but so were most of the forts used in the early Republic, the Civil War and the Indian Wars.
The result was James B. McCrellis, Military Reservations, National Military Parks, and National Cemeteries. Title and Jurisdiction, Washington: Government Printing Office, 1898. If you can not locate a hard copy, CIS has copied McCrellis on microfiche: U.S. Executive Branch Documents, 1789-1909: War Department, W 1002.8."
From the ACW Moderated newsgroup
Walt
First, the federal government by and large did NOT pay for those forts - all but one of them predated the revolution. But even if we were to assume they did pay for other stuff, the only thing SC siezed in the first days after Anderson's move was those forts.
Southerners had been seizing and stealing Federal property for months before then
Name the property and date of so-called theft then. My timeline shows the very first siezure was about a day after Anderson moved into Sumter and that it was an empty fort.
and in any case, there were the long term operating costs of all sorts which SC had the full benefit of without coming anywhere near adequately paying for them.
Long term operating costs? Please. Past operating costs are SUNK costs of use. They carry over no inherent value with them. If I were to sell you a five year old car but before doing so demanded that you pay me for the "long term operating costs" of driving that car for the previous five years would you be willing to pay it? Unless you are incredibly stupid, I think not.
As for the southern states seceding after free elections, that's nonsense. All of the south was essentially under martial law.
Uh, no it wasn't. Three southern states all had popular referendums on secession (Texas, Virginia, and Tennessee) and all passed in a landslide. The remainder of the states either went out by their legislatures, which had also been popularly elected the previous November, or by a secession convention, which had been popularly elected by way of chosen delegates from each county. In fact the CSA did not even form its military until March 1861, at which point six states had been out of the union for over a month. Thus the timeline itself renders your claim of "martial law" impossible.
There was no real freedom, and in particular, the voting in Tennessee that is cited as 'for secession' was taken with Confederate soldiers at the poll booths
Cite your evidence of that and in doing so account for the fact that about 1/3rd of the Tennesseans voted "no" on the referendum - an unlikely event if "soldiers" as you allege were guiding them all through the polling places.
and it reversed a recent and resounding free vote to deny secession.
No it didn't. Gov. Isham Harris had called together a referendum back on February 9th that to decide whether the state would call a convention together to DECIDE the secession crisis. That vote failed due to opposition in the middle tennessee counties (the western counties were strongly in favor and the eastern ones were strongly opposed). Between then and Fort Sumter secession sentiments grew, especially in response to Lincoln's call for arms. Some Tennessee counties even adopted their own secession ordinances, demanding to be removed from the state and attached to Alabama if the legislature would not act. The legislature finally acted in May and put secession to an up/down vote. Contrary to your fib this was the first and only time this happened in Tennessee. That vote passed in a landslide, carrying the western and central counties while losing only in the eastern ones. In other words, a shift of opinion strongly toward secession had occurred in the middle regions of the state while holding strong in the west, thus giving it a majority.
That's an interesting claim, Walt, except that we are not talking about the seizure of Fort Sumter, which did not occur until after all diplomatic efforts had been refused by The Lincoln. We are talking about the other forts - the ones that Anderson abandoned when he moved into Sumter - Forts Moultrie, Johnson, and Castle Pinckney. All of them were from revolutionary days or before.
Walt
Document that statement.
Walt
the TRUTH is that the absense of a CSA supreme court during the war is a BIG ISSUE to YOU and to NOBODY ELSE.the structure of the CSA was a loosely bound confederation of independent states;in point of fact, i think a CSSC would have had few cases to decide, when after the war, the CSA government had gotten around to staffing it.(FURTHERMORE, the USA might be better off without the USSC-MUCH that they have done is WRONG MORALLY & LEGALLY in the minds of a majority of the citizens, like roe v. wade for example.)
it's a minor side issue that you like to bring up to beat us southrons around the head & shoulders with. sorry, we aren't interested in any more of that NONSENSE!
free dixie,sw
free the southland,sw
the French Revolution tempered TJs taste for bloodshed as a tool to secure liberty, due to the republic' blood-drenched excesses.
free dixie,sw
Moultrie, Johnson, and Pinckney were given to federal control in 1805. The process by which they were obtained under federal control was a 1794 statute in which the government was authorized to recieve cessions of land from the states. That statute signified that cession was conditional to the terms of a given state:
See http://memory.loc.gov/ll/llsl/001/0400/04700346.gif
In the 1805 act, South Carolina imposed conditions upon its cession of the land, those being that the US had to occupy and maintain the forts within three years of the act.
"That, if the United States shall not, within three years from the passing of this act, and notification thereof by the Governor of this State to the Executive of the United States, repair the fortifications now existing thereon or build such other forts or fortifications as may be deemed most expedient by the Executive of the United States on the same, and keep a garrison or garrisons therein; in such case this grant or cession shall be void and of no effect."
the federal government owns NOTHING;the people own everything.the public servants work for US, not the other way around.
free dixie,sw
the damnyankee government cared NOTHING about the plight of the slaves. NOTHING!
"freeing the slaves" was just a self-serving excuse they thought up AFTER the war started going badly for their side.
free dixie,sw
"The South Carolina legislature had, over the previous decades, granted them permission by statute to occupy, maintain, and build upon the Charleston forts so long as they were kept in working condition and used for coastal defenses against foreign enemies."
You just made it up.
Walt
Yes it does, Walt. What did I say in 623? That the SC legislature had in the previous decades granted the forts to the US government conditionally. I also said that those conditions were to keep the forts in working order, upgrade them, and man them in defense of the city.
And what did the 1805 law require as those conditions? Exactly what I said: To "repair the fortifications now existing thereon or build such other forts or fortifications as may be deemed most expedient by the Executive of the United States on the same, and keep a garrison or garrisons therein"
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