They Were Not Traitors

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.

Like others here (i.e., rockrr), I wonder why you're doing this -- seriously, what value is added to the conservative movement by constantly picking at such old scabs?
Will this convince some Biden voters to flip for Trump?
Will it motivate some reluctant Trumpers to get out & vote?

I don't think so, do you?

Further, all these points have been argued ad infinitum, certainly to my satisfaction, so why not to yours?

From the article: "A typical calumny directed at Confederate soldiers is that they don’t merit commemoration because they were traitors.
It is a lie... "

The historical truth is that President Andrew Johnson issued thousands of individual pardons to Confederates who requested them, and eventually a blanket pardon to virtually all Confederates.
So legally, the issue of "traitors" is totally mute, and it's strictly a matter of opinion as to whether Confederates waging war against the United States meets the Constitution's definition of "treason".
I would simply notice that if there was no treason, then there'd be no need for pardons.
Case closed, right?

robowombat: "No independent nation would tolerate foreign military bases in the middle of a major city. "

Total nonsense since there are US & other military bases in many foreign countries all over the world.
And not all are friendly invites -- for many years in Berlin US forces there were threatened with war, Communist Cubans today demand US withdrawal from Guantanamo Bay, Spaniards demand Brits withdraw from Gibraltar, etc.

But perhaps the best examples are the long list of British forts & trading posts in US states & Northwest Territories after the Revolutionary War was over and Brits agreed to withdraw -- they didn't, for many years.
And one result of British support for Northwest Indians was the 1791 St. Clair's Defeat, recognized as the greatest single US Army defeat (relatively speaking) in US history.
US Gen. Arthur St. Clair's force of 1,000 men was almost entirely killed near headwaters of the Wabash River in Ohio.

And yet our Founders never used British forts on US territory or British support for Northwest Indians as an excuse to start a war.

robowombat: "Lincoln would not accept secession.
The big, unasked question is why?
Not the usual intoning of saving the union’..."

Why not?
What Marxist brainwashing did you receive which lead you to believe that American ideals and the US Constitution are of no consequence, and only Marxist economics & class warfare can explain "the real reasons"?

The truth, as many have pointed out (i.e., OIFVeteran) is the President has no authority to accept unilateral unapproved declarations of secession, period.
Congress might (it would need to be adjudicated) have that authority, but the President on his own cannot authorize states to come or go.
Lincoln's best offer to secessionists is the one he made in his First Inaugural -- in effect, "peaceful coexistence".
If Confederates would allow the Feds to do their basic functions -- i.e., mail, tariffs -- he'd leave them otherwise alone.

Confederate newspapers called that a Declaration of War.

robowombat: "...why was the US unable to exist without South Carolina."

South Carolina itself contributed virtually nothing to Federal revenues.
The entire seven-state Confederacy contributed well under 10% of Federal tariff revenues.
So the "real reason" was just what they said at the time: President Buchanan announced in February 1861 that the US would not give up Fort Sumter without a fight, and President Lincoln was determined the fort not surrender for lack of basic supplies.

That's it -- Jefferson Davis then used Lincoln's resupply mission has his excuse to start war at Fort Sumter.
No insane Marxist economic theories are required to explain Lincoln's actions.

robowombat: "By 1860, it seemed pretty clear most northerners wanted no part of the South and leading northern intellectuals such as Emerson encouraged feelings of hatred and contempt for Southerners."

Rubbish.
In 1860, just as today, the vast majority of Americans North and South loved their Union, revered their Constitution and respected their Federal government.
But then, just as today, a minority of radical Democrats (then known as "Fire Eaters") began waging political warfare against the United States and were successful in convincing a majority in the Deep South that Republican victory in 1860 meant the utter destruction of life as they knew it.
Perhaps the state of Mississippi said it best:

"Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery-- the greatest material interest of the world.
Its labor supplies the product which constitutes by far the largest and most important portions of commerce of the earth.
These products are peculiar to the climate verging on the tropical regions, and by an imperious law of nature, none but the black race can bear exposure to the tropical sun.
These products have become necessities of the world, and a blow at slavery is a blow at commerce and civilization.
That blow has been long aimed at the institution, and was at the point of reaching its consummation.
There was no choice left us but submission to the mandates of abolition, or a dissolution of the Union, whose principles had been subverted to work out our ruin.

That we do not overstate the dangers to our institution, a reference to a few facts will sufficiently prove..."

x: "Do you really think "leading northern intellectuals" spoke for the average American, then or now -- or even that they had much influence on what most Americans thought and felt?
Abolitionists, so we're told, were only a small minority of the population."

Right, as recently as 1856 the majority of "Northerners" (meaning non-slaveholding states) were Democrats who totally sympathized with slavery, just like their Presidential candidate, Doughfaced Pennsylvanian, James Buchanan, who won that election.
In 1856 Republicans got only 45% of the Northern vote, only 33% overall.

Then in 1857, to show his love for the South, President Buchanan worked behind-the-scenes helping SCOTUS Chief Justice Crazy Roger Taney craft his Dred Scott decision.
Crazy Roger's Dred Scott words put the United States just one SCOTUS decision away from making abolition unconstitutional!

And that's what drove another 10% of Northerners to flip from Democrat or Know-Nothing to Republicans, giving Republicans 55% of the Northern vote in 1860.

But remember two points here:

Most Republicans were not radical abolitionists, they just didn't want slavery in our Western Territories or, in their own states.
Even in 1860 nearly half of Northerners voted for non-Republicans, meaning they were totally satisfied with slavery as it then existed, in the South.

So, regardless of what "leading Northern intellectuals" taught in 1860, the vast majority of Northerners had no interest in attacking slavery in the South, plus, for every "intellectual" who decried slavery, there were several wealthy Northerners who well understood the economic benefits of slavery.

Bottom line, there was then (just as today) huge sympathy for Southerners in the North, sympathies which, had they been effectively groomed & managed, could have helped the South accomplish its goals peacefully.

But many Southerners were afflicted with the vision of George Washington defeating the British Empire, and wanted that same glory for themselves -- not some wishy-washy compromised muddle-through endless political wrangling which would have, in the end, peacefully abolished slavery anyway.

Anything, even war, was better than that, they thought.

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