Revisionist History: What If the South Had Won the Civil War? (Editorial)

The FReeper Foxhole: As the federal government grows bigger, stronger, and more corrupt with each passing year, maybe it’s time to dream about how life would be today if the South had won the Civil War.

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Am I the only one who dares to speculate about how life would be today if the South had actually won the Civil War? I know, I know….“How dare he bring this up! Arrest this raving racist at once! Send for the Though Police!” It has to be the ultimate violation of political correctness to even broach this subject!

As conservatives, can we be happy that a segment of the country that fought valiantly for limited government, states rights, and the rule of law under a strong constitution was defeated? Indeed, one of the most malicious consequences of the war was the beginning of the vast shift of political power to the central government in Washington, with the resultant monopoly of power that the federal government extends over us today. This shift came, of course, at the expense of traditional Jeffersonian personal liberty and freedom, and a concomitant emasculation of the power of the individual states. It was also accompanied by a gradual corrupting of the Executive branch (which was virtually completed in the scandalous administration of Bill Clinton}, a corrupting of the rule of law, and a progressive coarsening of the culture - all outcomes, I might add, that serve as testimony to the wisdom of Lord Acton – a strong contemporary defender of the South – about the corrupting influence of absolute power. This is hardly what I would call a favorable result. As a matter of fact, I’d term it an absolute disaster – the Founding Fathers’ worse nightmare! Isn’t this the reason they fought the Revolution in the first place?

But, you say, had the South won, America would never have become the great nation that it became in the 20th century. Well, my response is that monopolies of power are never good – especially in government, as the totalitarian governments of the 20th century have shown us. . If the South had gained its freedom, there would have been two separate governments competing with each other to be efficient and honorable. Explain to me why this is bad. If either government fell short of these ideals, people would have had the option to “vote with their feet” – and option that doesn’t exist today. Competition is always good.

And, no, maybe we wouldn’t have become the “world power” that we became in this the latter half of the 20th century. Why do we assume that this would have been necessarily bad? Consider this: it’s highly unlikely that the two separate nations would have experienced anything besides limited involvement in World War I, especially since one of them – the South – would have been adhering to the wise admonition of George Washington to avoid foreign entanglements. And, as Pat Buchanan and others have suggested, WWI was an unmitigated disaster for Western civilization. Instead of making the world safe for democracy, we helped make it safe for Bolshevism, Fascism, Socialism, and Nazism.

Follow me on this. With limited American involvement, England and Germany would likely have fought it out to a resource-draining stalemate. There would have been no clear-cut winner and no clear-cut loser – and outcome, I might add, immeasurable more favorable than what actually did occur. Our involvement unquestionably tipped the balance against Germany. Without a victorious England and a defeated, humiliated Germany, there would have been no vengeful, retribution-extracting Versailles treaty sapping the German people of their pride and resources. And, it follows, there would have been no occasion for the rise of militant German nationalism, no Hitler, and, quite possibly, no World War II. All and all, not a bad tradeoff, wouldn’t you say? Oh, and I forgot to mention, no victorious Soviet empire after WWII extending communism over half the world.

But, you say, slavery was a monumental evil that had to end! Yes, I agree that slavery was terrible – but I simply disagree with the way it ended. Wouldn’t a period of gradual emancipation – which many Southern leaders were favoring by the 1860’s, although with terms not to be dictated by the North – have been immensely better for all involved, most especially the black slaves themselves? Gradual emancipation over a period of about sixty years was exactly how the North itself ended its association with slavery. Why couldn’t the South be allowed the same solution?

The problem with the Civil War as the solution to slavery was that it destroyed the fabric of Southern society, leading to immense poverty and destitution for the entire South. Would anybody deny that the worse part of this societal destruction was experienced by the freed slaves themselves? And the North wanted no part of the social problems created by freeing the slaves, as the many racist laws restricting the settlement of freedmen in the North indicate. What was the value of receiving freedom without justice?

Before the war, most slaves had a better quality of life than the poor white farmer. The war put an end to that. This massive poverty and total decimation of Southern society also served as the germination for the horrendous, nation dividing post-bellum racial tensions and animosities – the ramifications of which we have with us even today. The conditions of emancipated slaves was so bad that seventy-five years after emancipation, in a 1930’s government study called the Slave Narratives, over 70% of surviving former slaves stated that their standards of living were better before the war. We can all agree that slavery was a monumental evil, but surely gradual emancipation would have been better than this!

As a conservative who longs for limited government and the ideals of the Constitution, I am not ashamed to speculate that quite possibly we would have a better world today had the South won the Civil War. Maybe I’m dreaming, but I think limited government, personal freedom, and higher degrees of racial harmony are what we’d be experiencing. In addition, we would have a clear choice between two governments competing for our approbation. Or maybe you’re content with the rapacious, out-or-control, ever-expanding, corrupt federal government that is overwhelming us today!

NOTE: i DID get him to admit that his attack, on my thesis concerning steam traction machines/animal powered agricultural equipment, as replacements for persons (slave or free), was FALSE! (when dealing with a HATER/BIGOT, any progress, no matter now slight, is an improvement.)

At long last, sir, have you no shame? I always said it was possible to plow with a steam tractor. What I have always claimed is that it was expensive and impractical, for the reasons listed, including that it took more horses and people to fuel, water and run the thing than it relieved of the job.

Don't be tooting your horn thinking you've scored some sort of victory over me, you delusional lunatic. You've yet to provide a single bit of evidence for a single thing you've said, especially since that ace in the hole you kept playing ("Don't argue with me, argue with the agricultural curator at the Smithsonian") refuted your argument. (And you're afraid to go back and ask him yourself) .You still haven't explained why you said he was the agricultural curator when a cursory examination of his resume reveals that he wasn't. That's one of lie of many.

everyone who doesn't agree with him is fatally flawed as well.

No, not really. I have a lot of respect for the scholarship of many of the Lost Causers here, including nolu chan. It's just you that I object to because you make crazy assertions without a single shred of evidence, resort to rants when challenged on it, and are generally an idiot. I'll also confess that it's great fun to watch you unravel when you're challenged on your pet theories.

Say, do you need Dr. Lubar's e-mail address? I wrote to him again to tell him what was going on and that I thought you might write to him.

[Heyworth] And there's a big difference between saying that only 5% of southerners owned slaves and saying that 30% of southern families owned slaves.

Just as there is an enormous difference between enumerating and SWAGGING.

DeBow's irrational method takes the number of slaveholders (347,255) and arbitrarily multiplies by the average family size (~ 5.76) to synthesize an irrational result which is averred to be the number of slaveholders.

Let us take a real life example.

Mrs. John Emerson (nee Eliza Irene Sanford) became a widow and inherited property rights in a family of slaves -- a husband, wife and two daughters. Mrs. Emerson became Mrs. Chaffee by marrying Mr. Calvin C. Chaffee. In this manner, Massachusetts Congressman Calvin C. Chaffee obtained property rights in said slaves. The Chaffee family slaves were in Missouri.

Was there 1 slaveholder, or 2 slaveholders, or 5.76 slaveholders, or 11.52 slaveholders?

Presumably, DeBow derives at least 5.76 slaveholders consisting solely of Massachusetts Congressmen. (1 Massachussetts Congressman multipled by 5.76 equals 5.76 Massachusetts Congressmen.)

Now, let us take a hypothetical example. There is a slave named Walt, and three more just like him. Their masters are four single, unmarried Southern gentlemen who are brothers. Are there 4 slaveholders? Are there 23.04 slaveholders?

Moreover, DeBow made no attempt to determine if those Southern gentlemen wealthy enough to own slaves, had wives who punched out as many babies as those of the less priviliged classes.

There is no evidence to suggest that the size of the average family was the same as the size of the family of the privileged elite.

DeBow makes no allowance for multiple individual slaveholders within a single family.

DeBow states that he assumes published reports to be correct. All of his figures and assumptions flow from this assumption.

You have claimed you have "posted academically-accepted evidence that about 30% of southern FAMILIES owned slaves...."

Of course, if you hold DeBow's paper to be authoritative and academically-accepted, it would seem you must accept the rest of the paper as authoritative and academically-accepted.

For example, DeBow also stated:

1. The non-slaveholder of the South is assured that the remuneration afforded by his labor, over and above the expense of living, is larger than that which is afforded by the same labor in the free States. To be convinced of this he has only to compare the value of labor in the Southern cities with those of the North, and to take note annually of the large number of laborers who are represented to be out of employment there, and who migrate to our shores, as well as to other sections. No white laborer in return has been forced to leave our midst or remain without employment. Such as have left, have immigrated from States where slavery was less productive. Those who come among us are enabled soon to retire to their homes with a handsome competency. The statement is nearly as true for the agricultural as for other interests, as the statistics will show. . . .
2. The non-slaveholders, as a class, are not reduced by the necessity of our con dition, as is the case in the free States, to find employment in crowded cities and come into competition in close and sickly workshops and factories, with remorseless and untiring machinery. They have but to compare their condition in this particular with the mining and manufacturing operative of the North and Europe, to be thankful that God has reserved them for a better fate. Tender women, aged men, delicate children, toil and labor there from early dawn until after candle light, from one year to another, for a miserable pittance, scarcely above the starvation point without hope of ameliora tion. The records of British free labor have long exhibited this and those of our own manufacturing States are rapidly reaching it and would have reached it long ago, but for the excessive bounties which in the way of tar iffs have been paid to it, without an equivalent by the slaveholding and non-slaveholding laborer of the South. Let this tariff cease to be paid for by a single year and the truth of what is stated will be abundantly shown.
3. The non-slaveholder is not subjected to that competition with foreign pauper labor, which has degraded the free labor of the North and demoralized it to an extent which perhaps can never be estimated. From whatever cause, it has hap pened, whether from climate, the nature of our products or our own labor, the South has been enabled to maintain a more homogenous population and show a less admixture of races than the North. This the statistics show.
* * *
They [the non-slaveholders of the South] perceive the inevitable drift of Northern aggression, and know that if necessity impel it, as I verily velieve it does at this moment, the establishment of a southern confederation will be a sure refuge from the storm. In such a confedeation our rights and possessions would be secure, and the wealth being retained at home, to build up our towns and cities, to extend our railroads, and increase our shipping, which now goes to tariffs or other involuntary or voluntary tributes, to other sections; opulence would be diffused throughout all classes, and we should become the freest, the happiest and most prosperous and powerful nation upon the earth. [5]
[5] In his concluding remarks in which he responds to Robert Gourdin's request for the speech, De Bow cited Kettell, Southern Wealth and Northern Profits, to show that the "annual drain in profits which is going to the North" was nearly $250 million.

Of course, DeBow's paper was not presented as, nor was it ever intended as, an academic paper. It began as a speech given on December 5, 1860 in Nashville, Tennessee. Robert Gourdin of the South Carolina "1860 Association" reprinted it as pamphlet number five of his secession pamphlets.

DeBow's speech was designed to provide support for secession. It was designed and delivered as a propaganda effort.

In this, DeBow's effort is much like the slanted, propaganda effort of Michael Zak in his book, "Back to the Basics for the Republican Party." For example, Mr. Zak avers, "Overlooked by so many histories of the Reconstruction era is the fact that until 1867 the white supremacist Democrat regimes of the pre-Civil War era were back in business." This observation fails to note that prior to Andrew Johnson there was the regime of the White supremecist, Abraham Lincoln, and after Andrew Johnson was the regime of the racist bigot, Ulysses S. Grant, who is widely credited with presiding over the most corrupt administration in American history. In stretching credulity, Mr. Zak averred,"Not until the 1852 publication of Uncle Tom's Cabin did northern whites give much thought to the actual suffering of the slaves. Perhaps the biggest bestseller in U.S. history...." Then again, perhaps not. Not even the most wild-eyed optimist would lend credence to the notion that, up to that time or this, the fictional Uncle Tom's Cabin had outsold the Bible.

Surely there are some good points to B2B, but nobody should imagine that it could properly be cited as academically accepted evidence of the claims therein. Neither can one properly cite DeBow's partisan effort as authoritative and academically-accepted.

[sw] arguing with "heyworth the hateful" is pointless.

Oh, heck. To have some fun one just needs to point out the wrongness of material in the propaganda efforts of those of his persuasion.

Take a favorite source, "Back to the Basics for the Republican Party," by Michael Zak.

For example, Mr. Zak writes:

By 1868, congressional Republicans had had quite enough of Andrew Johnson. That year he at last gave our Party a legal pretext for impeachment -- it was not much of a pretext, but it would have to do.
* * *
[T]he Tenure of Office Act was passed so that Johnson could not prevent Secretary of War Stanton from administering the Reconstruction Act which so closely resembled his own plan that he had presented to Abraham Lincoln. When in February 1868 President Johnson went ahead and dismissed Stanton anyway, the House of Representatives immediately impeached him for this and ten other alleged offenses, by a strictly party-line vote of 128 to 47.

How can one praise a group of half-crazed partisans for trying to impeach a president on a legal pretext, which even the author admitted was not much of a pretext? Moreover, how does one do this without noting that the Tenure of Office Act was blatantly unconstitutional?

Moreover, how does one note that the Reconstruction Act resembled the plan Stanton had presented to Lincoln without noting that Lincoln rejected important aspects of said plan?

As Gideon Welles memorialized Lincoln's last cabinet meeting of April 14, 1865,

Mr. Stanton read his project for reorganizing, reestablishing, or reconstructing governments. It was a military or executive order, and by it the War Department was designated to reorganize those States whose individuality it assumed was sacrificed. Divested of its military features, it was in form and outline essentially the same as the plan ultimately adopted. This document proposed establishing a military department to be composed of Virginia and North Carolina, with a military governor. After reading this paper, Mr. Stanton made some addtional remarks in furtherance of the views of the President and the importance of prompt measures.

However, Mr. Lincoln did not accept lumping Virginia and North Carolina together.

The President directed Mr. Stanton to take the documents and have separate plans presented for the two States. They required different treatment. "We must not," said he, "stultify ourselves as regards Virginia, but we must help her." North Carolina was in a different condition. He requested the Secretary of War to have copies of the two plans for the two States made and furnished each member of the Cabinet by the following Tuesday -- the next regular meeting. He impressed upon each and all the importance of deliberating upon and carefully considering the subject before us, remarking that this was the great question pending, and that we must now begin to act in the interest of peace. He again declared his thankfulness that Congress was not in session to embarrass us.
The President was assassinated that evening, and I am not aware that he exchanged a word with any one after the Cabinet meeting of that day on the subject of a resumption of the national authority in the States where it had been suspended, or of reestablishing the Union.

Within hours of overruling Mr. Stanton, President Lincoln was shot.

When President Johnson overruled Mr. Stanton, he was impeached.

For the chutzpah award, there is always the following from Mr. Zak:

To be sure, Union soldiers did wreck whatever war-related facilities they could get their hands on, but there was hardly any looting. The Union army's most destructive campaign, Sherman's march to the sea, it should be noted, was confined to a 60-mile wide stretch of land between Atlanta and Savannah. Confederate apologists would blame northern depredations for a South in ruins, but in truth the rebels had done it themselves.

[Heyworth #92] You're still not giving anything like a counter-number, only critiquing DeBow's methodology. But DeBow gave the matter a lot of thought, and had a great deal of input into the 1860 census formulation. That counted white households and slaveowning households and came up with a result of 30.8% of white households owned slaves in the seceding states.

It is not my job to validate your invalid figures or provide an alternative figure. That is your job.

In Heyworth #58, you asserted that you had, "posted academically-accepted evidence that about 30% of southern FAMILIES owned slaves."

If is -your- job to support your argument that the figures you provided are "academically-accepted evidence" as you alleged.

To be accurate, DeBow assumed published figures to be correct, and based on that assumption enumerated the slave-owners at 347,255.

THAT is the enumerated number of slave-owners.

Multiplying that number by the size of the average household demonstrably does not provide the "real" number of slave-owners.

DeBow starts with one assumption, that the published enumeration is accurate, and piles on another wild assumption, that each and every slaveowner represents a distinct slave-owning family, and adds a third wild assumption, that the family size of the privileged elite was the same as the family size of the average family, and tops it off with the absurd assumption that every family member is a slave-owner.

It is -your- job to defend these assumptions as "academically-accepted evidence."

Such absurd methodology raises absurd questions. For example, if life begins at birth, should a child be statistically counted as a slave-owner only at birth, or should every pregnant woman be counted as at least 2 slave-owners?

With feme sole laws preventing many or most women from owning any personal property, is it proper to count women as owners of slaves they are legally prohibited from owning?

Is it proper to swell your figures with minor or infant children, counting them as slaveowners? [Using an average family fudge factor of 5.6 raises the possibility that the majority of your purported "slave-owners" are actually minor or infant children. In virtually all cases that would seem to indicate either 2 parents and 3.6 children, or 1 parent and 4.6 children.]

DeBow gives the enumerated figure of 347,255 persons as being slave-holders. That is the only slave-holder figure given by DeBow which may withstand scrutiny as "academically-acceptable evidence."

Surely, DeBow expended equal effort in determining that "the 'annual drain in [Southern] profits which is going to the North' was nearly $250 million." However, quoting this appears to have activited your mute function on that part of DeBow's "academically-accepted evidence." It would appear that you would like to cherry-pick a convenient sentence or two and forget the rest.

As clearly demonstrated, DeBow's effort was a partisan speech, not an academic paper.

You apparently seem to believe that the DeBow's number is from the 1860 census. It is not. It is from the 1850 census.

Debow in 1861: "When in charge of the national census office, several years since, I found that it had been stated by an abolition senator from his seat, that the number of slaveholders at the South did not exceed 150,000."

So DeBow is talking about the 1850 census, which was not as detailed, forcing DeBow to his calculated estimate. Whether that estimate is accurate, however, is irrelevant if we're only counting the actual enumeration and considering it academically acceptable, as you've said. DeBow's 1854 report on the 1850 census cited a number of shortcomings in the methodology of counting slaves and slaveowners, and his suggestions were incorporated into the 1860 census. That census yields much more detail, including the number of free white households and slaveholders. While you can search the database I linked to above, here's the relevant results on a nice table:

http://alpha.furman.edu/~benson/docs/shfam60.htm

The total number of free families we get in the seceding states is 1,027,967. The number of slaveholders is 316.632. That gives us 30.8 of white households owned slaves. Yes, there's still an amount of estimation there, but here's the footnote from the bottom of the link above (from an academic):

"Note: These numbers should be considered a close approximation only of the percentage of free households that held slaves. While the normal case was that only one individual per household held title to all slaves, under special circumstances census takers sometimes counted more than one individual from a family as a separate slaveholder. On other occasions the census taker excluded out-of-state slaveholdings. Because slaves were taxed and census marshalls were government officials it is likely that under-reporting of the numbers of both slaves and slaveholders was higher than under-reporting of free families. On balance, therefore, these error sources should cancel out."

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