Could the South Have Won?

NY Books ^ | June 2002 ed. | James M. McPherson

[x]

I think you are right that size alone doesn't produce the kind of freedom Madison sought. There is, as you've said, the example of the Soviet Union, and of other megastates as well. On the other side, many of the city states of the Middle Ages provided freedom, opportunity, and toleration, within the bounds set by the dominant merchants, though the Italian city states were beset by all the dangers of faction, that Madison warned against.

Madison wasn't arguing for size per se, but for a federal system that diffuses intense local conflicts over a larger and more heterogenous area. The separation of powers would make it harder for local disputes to bulk so large on the national scene or for national conflicts to disrupt local politics. The late 20th century system didn't reflect this perception, but neither did the Articles of Confederation.

As between unionists and secessionists, it's not clear to me that the secessionists were closer to the Madisonian balance than the unionists. I'd say the reverse was true. Of course if you had no federal government, you wouldn't have had such an imbalance of federal power in the next century, but we make our choices on present conditions. We may look generations into the future, but we can't anticipate all contingencies and shouldn't throw away something that works because of what it might become if our decendents don't have the virtues we do.

This is a living debate, since there are those even now, who see the US breaking up along regional lines. Part of the dispute here is about whether a divided or fragmented America would be more like those peaceful and prosperous Northern European city states or more like the contentious and tumultuous Italian city-states. What would happen now is anyone's guess, but the talk of absolute state sovereignty, distrust of industry, reliance on single crop agriculture, racial questions and slavery makes me expect that the Southern states of 1860 would have been in the unfortunate category had they truly tried to go it alone. You may dislike the chicanery and economic empire building of the Gilded Age, but they did direct the energies of the ambitious away from politics towards technology and business. Where this path isn't open, the ambitious young turn towards coups and political mischief. It's also possible that the Confederate government would have tried to keep the states in line and the same conflicts would have developed as we have known since the Civil War, as the new national elites sought to use the government for their own projects.

Not sure about ancient history, but the empires of the Hellenistic period allowed Greeks, Jews and others to move throughout the world, so there must have been some openness to other cultures. The opportunity for different peoples in pagan empires to just add each others gods to their own must have helped as well. As you note, such empires could be hard on those who weren't polytheists.

[WhiskeyPapa]

The reasons to seek independence are irrelevant, it is the Right of the people to alter or abolish is what matters. If the British colonies had the Right, then the 13 Southern States did also.

The so-called seceded states may have had a natural right to break the Union. They had no rights under U.S. law to do so.

Even their natural right is suspect, if it takes a "long train of abuses" as Jefferson suggested in the D of I. There was no long train of abuses prior to 1860. Southerners had controlled the federal government for decades.

The source of their distress was an election that didn't go their way.

Walt

[WhiskeyPapa]

"It is SO easy to make you look a fool.:"

As I have told you many times "In your eyes only." In the eyes of people who understand what is going on, the fool and idiot is you. But live happily in your self-delusion, arsehole.

Lincoln said:

"As I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master. This expresses my idea of democracy. Whatever differs from this, to the extent of the difference, is no democracy."

Are you going to address what he -said- or not?

I've only asked three times.

Walt

[lentulusgracchus]

There was no long train of abuses prior to 1860. Southerners had controlled the federal government for decades.

The "long train of abuses" to which Jefferson referred went back only to the French and Indian War, and the taxes that were levied to pay for it -- 13 years, count 'em, from the Peace of Paris that ended that war in 1763, until independence was declared in 1776.

The concatenation of abuses and discontent the South had put up with went back to the Missouri Compromise of 1820 and the Tariff of 1824 -- 40 years.

No, Walt, as usual it's your sweeping generalizations that are off-base. Particularly when you combine them with graceless slurs against the characters of the men you disagree with and pretend to despise. You couldn't look down at Alexander Stephens, Judah Benjamin, and Bobby Lee unless you stood on your head.

[lentulusgracchus]

The source of their distress was an election that didn't go their way.

The source of their distress was people like you.

[Non-Sequitur]

But if your contentions are true then that means the south was still holding a grudge over legislation which had long since been done away with. The Missouri Compromise had been overturned by the Kansas-Nebraska Act in 1854 which made the expansion of slavery possible, leaving the issue up to the people of the territories themselves. Shades of State's rights. As for the tariffs of 1824 and later, the tariff had been falling all through the decade of the 1850's until, as Alexander Stephens pointed out in 1860, "they were made just as low as Southern men asked them to be, and those are the rates they are now at."

[lentulusgracchus]

Re your 966: Sir, you have achieved complete refutation of Walt's claim of a nationwide populus assuming Sovereignty for his and Lincoln's purposes.

Elenchus for 4CJ. The States were the People, and the People by sovereign acts not ordinances, seceded. Their actions were the lawful exercise of the rights that they enjoyed unimpaired by the Constitution, as noticed by the Ninth and Tenth Amendments, the Supremacy Clause notwithstanding.

Well argued, sir. Congratulations. The juleps await us -- today we are on the lawn, in the shade of the mossy oak behind the pavilion, and the ladies have preceded us.

[WhiskeyPapa]

The concatenation of abuses and discontent the South had put up with went back to the Missouri Compromise of 1820 and the Tariff of 1824 -- 40 years.

Please.

Tariffs were lower in 1860 than they had been in 40 years.

Can you gainsay Governor Pickens?

"We have the Executive with us, and the Senate & in all probability the H.R. too. Besides we have repealed the Missouri line & the Supreme Court in a decision of great power, has declared it, & all kindred measures on the part of the Federal Govt. unconstitutional null & void. So, that before our enemies can reach us, they must first break down the Supreme Court - change the Senate & seize the Executive & by an open appeal to Revolution, restore the Missouri line, repeal the Fugitive slave law & change the whole governt. As long as the Govt. is on our side I am for sustaining it, & using its power for our benefit, & placing the screws upon the throats of our opponents".

- Francis W. Pickens, June,1857

Yours is revision. Pickens is straight from the horse's mouth, or perhaps another orifice.

Walt

[WhiskeyPapa]

Elenchus for 4CJ. The States were the People,...

Straight out of "1984", just like the rest of the neo-reb rant.

Walt

[WhiskeyPapa]

The source of their distress was people like you.

You can always count of distress from me directly proportional to your attacks on the Union.

Walt

[lentulusgracchus]

What the 20th century made of the Constitution is another matter, though. It reimposed regulation and regimentation at the federal level.

Features of government don't appear in isolation. A University of Houston professor taught a distance-education course a couple of years ago in which, unusually, he surveyed the stresses of American social and political life as seen through the prism of Hollywood. The concept was, that Hollywood puts up on the screen the themes and preoccupations that are on people's minds, and while the representations aren't even wildly approximate to the precision of a modern survey or long-form Census, nevertheless for the period of interest they incorporate additional information about the period about social conventions, fashion, preoccupations, and taboos. (Imagine what would have happened if Michael Jackson's or Rob Lowe's scandals had surfaced during, say, the trial of Fatty Arbuckle.)

Regardless of the distortions and deliberate suppression of really controversial issues (what will 24th-century filmgoers make of Arlington Road, I wonder?), the course did demonstrate the reflection, in film, of themes of psychological tension caused by the regimentation by business of urban and industrial life at the end of the 19th century, and the simultaneous (but unrelated? -- I don't recall) epochal shift in thinking from literalism and composition of thoughts based on the parsed and printed word, to the kind of thinking based on images and impressions, which the lecturer referred to as the more modern and, for membership in our era rather than the "premodern" era, determinative. These two developments occurred about the same time but I don't recall whether they were supposed to be causally related. I bring them up more to refer to the change in the work environment and the social environment, as cities became chicken coops (which the New Urbanism is trying to replicate) and workers became flogged peons in many industries. My own great-grandfather, who had personally known Bill Hickock, ridden as a scout with Custer, and watched the frontier settled and closed, in his last years with the Southern Pacific R.R. (I have his conductor's watch, a gold-plated and engraved Illinois Bunn Special) in the 1920's was working at the Indianapolis station, 12 hours a day, 7 days a week.......that's an 84-hour workweek, boys and girls, for a septuagenarian!

[WhiskeyPapa]

The States were the People, and the People by sovereign acts not ordinances, seceded.

Wouldn't the -People- have to pass a -single- ordinance?

There is only sovereign of the United States and that is the people of the -whole- United States.

We are constantly bombarded with this nit-picky unreasonable/belittle the framers neo-reb rant.

Where is similar verbiage from the actual participants?

By the way, YOU can pass soevereign acts too. If you can back them up with force -- which the so-called CSA could not.

Walt

[WhiskeyPapa]

You couldn't look down at Alexander Stephens, Judah Benjamin, and Bobby Lee unless you stood on your head.

Oh yes I can.

I took an oath to the Constitution, and I haven't broken it.

Walt

[Non-Sequitur]

bump

[Non-Sequitur]

The reasons to seek independence are irrelevant, it is the Right of the people to alter or abolish is what matters. If the British colonies had the Right, then the 13 Southern States did also.

But the colonists recognized that their actions were a rebellion. They didn't pretend that their actions were legal and they didn't whine when the British tried to prevent them. If you want to compare your actions to the founding fathers then you have to begin by admitting that the federal government was within it's rights to try and prevent them.

[Non-Sequitur]

No political dreamer [except Walt] was ever wild enough to think of breaking down the lines which separate the States, and of compounding the American people into one common mass.

Or, George Washington...

"The name of American, which belongs to you in your national capacity, must always exalt the just pride of patriotism, more than any appellation derived from local discriminations. "

[Non-Sequitur]

bump

[Non-Sequitur]

bump

[Non-Sequitur]

Bingo! (I'm shameless, I admit it freely.)