Posted on 10/15/2020 10:58:01 PM PDT by robowombat
They Were Not Traitors
By Philip Leigh on Sep 16, 2020
A typical calumny directed at Confederate soldiers is that they don’t merit commemoration because they were traitors. It is a lie for two reasons.
First, the Confederate states had no intent to overthrow the government of the United States. They seceded merely to form a government of their own. The first seven states that seceded during the winter of 1860-61 did not “make war” on the United States; they accepted it when the Washington government decided to coerce them back into the Union. The four upper-south states that remained Union-loyal until the coercion in the spring of 1861 had previously warned Washington that they regarded the coercion of any state to be unconstitutional and would fight to prevent it. Those four states provided half of the 11-state Confederacy’s white population, the chief source of her soldiers. In truth, the legal status of secession was unsettled in 1861. The Constitution neither outlawed nor authorized it. It was a remedy that geographically isolated political minorities repeatedly considered from 1789 to 1861.
The Northeastern states threatened secession at least five times during America’s first fifty-six years. The first time was during George Washington’s presidency when Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton warned that the Northeastern states would secede unless the Federal Government agreed to assume an obligation to pay-off their Revolutionary War debts. In 1803 New Englanders threatened to secede over the Louisiana Purchase. They worried that the new territories would become new states thereby reducing New England’s influence.
In 1807 New England again threatened secession after America announced a trade embargo, hoping to avoid the War of 1812 by use of economic sanctions. New Englanders objected because their region was then America’s maritime center. After the embargo failed, Congress declared war on Great Britain during President James Madison’s first administration. Yet New Englanders were uncooperative in our nation’s defense. They traded with the enemy and refused to put their militia into Federal service as ordered by President Madison. When the British finally extended their blockade to New England during the last seven months of the thirty-month war, the region held a convention in Hartford to discuss secession or other steps to protect their interests from Federal powers. In January 1815 the Convention sent emissaries to President Madison to demand five additional constitutional amendments. Upon arriving in Washington, they learned that the war had ended and went home in embarrassment. They did not need the amendments because the Treaty of Ghent ended the war thereby ending the British blockade.
Even as late as 1844 leaders in the Northeastern states warned they would secede over the proposed annexation of Texas. In 1843 twelve congressmen, including former President John Quincy Adams, signed a letter to the people claiming that Texas annexation would not only result in the secession of “free states” but would “fully justify it.” A year later former New York Governor and future secretary of state under Presidents Lincoln and Andrew Johnson, William H. Seward, wrote that the “free-labor states cannot yield” to Texas annexation. They would consider it grounds “for secession, nullification and disunion.” The Massachusetts legislature underscored the opinion by declaring the 1845 Texas annexation to be unconstitutional.
In sum, secession was a remedy that geographically isolated political minorities repeatedly considered. As a result, it tended to find favor within those regions that were out-of-power in Washington. It was a game of musical chairs. Whenever a regional minority felt that they could never regain the majority they worried that their constitutional rights might be trampled by a tyrannical simple majority in the central government. By 1861 the South was caught without a chair in the game when the music stopped. Under different circumstances it could have been the North. Although they threatened secession often enough, Northerners were never destined to become a permanent minority as were Southerners.
The second reason that Confederate soldiers were not traitors is that their loyalty was first to their state and secondarily to the central government. Prior to the war the average Confederate soldier was a yeoman farmer who rarely travelled outside his state. His taxes were chiefly paid to his state. He only paid federal taxes indirectly when he purchased imported dutiable items that implicitly included a tariff as a component of the purchase price.
Northerners felt much the same way. As Shelby Foote explained, prior to the Civil War the United States was often thought of as a collection of independent states and spoken grammatically as “the United States are.” After the Civil War it was increasingly spoken of as “the United States is,” which we commonly say today without even thinking about it. The war made us an “is.”
Finally, after a couple of decades postbellum Southerners welcomed reconciliation. They eagerly volunteered to fight in the 1898 Spanish-American War. One of them was former Confederate General Joseph Wheeler. President William McKinley appointed the sixty-one year old erstwhile cavalryman as Major General commanding a cavalry division that included Theodore Roosevelt’s “Rough Riders” regiment. Despite the censure historians heap upon white Southerners of the 1890s, those volunteers can be credited for fighting under a flag that belonged to their enemy only thirty-odd years earlier. Southerners also readily enlisted in World War I, World War II, Korea, Vietnam and later wars. Even today the South accounts for 44% of America’s army volunteers while containing only 36% of her population.
In short, Confederates soldier were not a traitors in the context of the unsettled constitutional principles of their era. They were asked to do what men have done since prehistoric times: defend their homes. They did so as heroically as any army of American soldiers.
Share on Facebook Tweet it Share on Google+ Share on LinkedIn Pin it Share on Reddit Share on StumbleUpon Email this Print Philip Leigh Secession Southern History Treason United States Constitution War for Southern Independence About Philip Leigh
Philip Leigh contributed twenty-four articles to The New York Times Disunion blog, which commemorated the Civil War Sesquicentennial. He is the author of U.S. Grant's Failed Presidency, Southern Reconstruction (2017), Lee’s Lost Dispatch and Other Civil War Controversies (2015), and Trading With the Enemy (2014). Phil has lectured a various Civil War forums, including the 23rd Annual Sarasota Conference of the Civil War Education Association and various Civil War Roundtables. He holds a Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering from Florida Institute of Technology and an MBA from Northwestern University.
“If you bring these [Confederate] leaders to trial it will condemn the North, for by the Constitution secession is not rebellion. Lincoln wanted Davis to escape, and he was right. His capture was a mistake. His trial will be a greater one.” Chief Justice Salmon P. Chase, July 1867 (Foote, The Civil War, Vol. 3, p. 765)
“If you bring these leaders to trial, it will condemn the North, for by the Constitution, secession is not a rebellion. His [Jefferson Davis] capture was a mistake. His trial will be a greater one. We cannot convict him of treason” Chief Justice Salmon P Chase [as quoted by Herman S. Frey, in Jefferson Davis, Frey Enterprises, 1977, pp. 69-72]
The Constitution of the United States would never have been ratified if the right to secession was not understood. New York, Rhode Island, and Virginia would never have signed on to the new government.
(Were the colonists in those states simply traitors in waiting?)
“Another 400+ thread with half pro-Confederacy and half anti-Confederacy.”
A little off topic, but your post reminded me of a quilt show I attended in Tennessee. The maker — a Tennessean — had a divided family (as did many) during the CW. Her quilt was a tribute to all of the soldiers with their names, broken down by north and south. Kind of sobering, really.
Bump
You can always go and not read me on Twitter and Facebook (if you knew those nics).
I want to read stuff I disagree with so that I can disagree with it. I don’t care whether it is popular.
If you are a citizen of a nation, and then fight to throw out that nation in order to create a new one—-that pretty much tells me they are a traitor to the first country, and a patriot to the second.
But when you take a shot at the king...you better kill them. They failed.
That said, the day to day soldier and 99% of the rebels were pardoned. And it was proper to do so.
Debating this 155 years later is kind of an academic exercise.
You nailed it. Bigger fish to fry...
As if we didn’t have enough going on right now and didn’t need to “keep the troops together”. Point in fact, these WBTS threads aren’t just picking the scab of North vs. South - in reality they’re a fanciful (delusional?!) indulgence in historical revisionism between “The South” and everybody else.
I keep reading these inciteful statements about “The North felt..” or “The South said...” as though they were holistic sentient beings, but in truth there were (and remain) gradations to affinities, alliances, and attitudes. These threads boil them down to a silly simplistic stew, designed to inspire enmity amongst fellow FReepers.
I would urge FReepers to keep their eye on the real ball - the marxists who wish to enslave us all.
excellent post
Just advising you that it’s Fort Sumter, not Fort Sumpter.
Thank you!
This is pretty much what I’ve been saying. The Gaia worshiping, gun grabbing, global socialists are the real threat to us all.
This article sounds to me like an attempt to re-brand the Confederate traitors-—who should have been declared such by Lincoln whereby he could have taken the planters’ land constitutionally and followed through with “40 acres and a mule,” then pardoned everyone.
What would be the purpose of this now?
While I don’t believe this will happen, this could be the beginning of the effort to take the sting out of the word “traitor” in advance of DOJ/Durham indictments.
Again, I don’t see that happening-—but when you see articles like this, they are allowed out there for a reason.
Appreciate it.
Spoken like a gentleman, sir.
Exactly
“The Congress shall have Power: To exercise exclusive Legislation in all Cases whatsoever, over such District (not exceeding ten Miles square) as may, by Cession of particular States, and the Acceptance of Congress, become the Seat of the Government of the United States, and to exercise like Authority over all Places purchased by the Consent of the Legislature of the State in which the Same shall be, for the Erection of Forts, Magazines, Arsenals, dock-Yards, and other needful Buildings.“
Did then legislature of S. Carolina consent to Fort Sumter being built in the harbor? If so, I don’t see how the case can be made that the South was in the right to attack the fort when the garrison refused to give it up to them, considering that S. Carolina had assented to the fort.
You are really confused
David Barton is no Larry Schweikart
Wrong answer. Try again. Firing on Fort Sumter was every bit the aggressive action that claiming ownership of Fort Sumter by the north was. Which of these came first? Also, name ONE military installation not in the Confederacy that the South claimed part ownership of AFTER secession. One. Just ONE. There are always two sides to a story. Your side isn't being truthful to the facts.
Another point, did the South, after secession have a moral right to defend itself against northern aggression? Continuing to claim ownership of a fort no longer in your country is certainly an aggressive act. The South didn't do this to the north. They just wanted to be left alone to chart their own course. They had no intention of getting into a war with the north because they knew that they were at a severe disadvantage and would likely lose over the long run. The north wanted war and thus provoked it.
My family history had soldiers on both sides
I don’t hate Southerners. I do think the actually history should be taught
“No they weren’t. Dred Scot was a Supreme Court decision. “
Lol.
So was sodomite marriage.
Do you even know what the Demicrats do and how they use the courts to legislate.
They did it in the 1850’s and they do it now.
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