The Litmus Test for American Conservatism (The paloeconservative view of Abe Lincoln.)

Chronicles Magazine ^ | January 2001 | Donald W. Livingston

[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).

[mac_truck]

President-elect Lincoln’s secret communication to General Scott, urging him to formulate plans to retain the fort, was consistent with Scott’s representative Major Buell’s suggestion to Major Anderson that he could withdraw to Ft. Sumter if he chose to do so.

You seem confused as to whom Assistant Adjutant General D. C. Buell represented during his visit to Charleston in December 1860, or his purpose for going there. The offical record of this matter has already been presented several times. 884

The invisible hand of Lincoln did not guide Major Anderson's actions. It was Democrat President Buchanan and Secretary of War John Floyd who gave Anderson his orders.

These are primary sources. Why do you persist in distorting them?

[PeaRidge]

"It was Democrat President Buchanan and Secretary of War John Floyd who gave Anderson his orders."

Supposedly. However, on December 11, it was Major Buell who conveyed the orders to Anderson. If he had conveyed the exact orders given him by Secretary Floyd, then this would not have happened:

12/23/1860 On this day, Major Anderson at Fort Moultrie received a hand delivered letter from Secretary of War, John Floyd, giving him more specific orders. He was told to “exercise a sound military discretion,” defending his post if attacked, but to make no “useless sacrifice” of lives. He stated that under Buell’s instructions, he might infer that he should make a vain attempt to save the fort, but this was not the President’s wishes.

He was instructed to surrender if superior forces compelled it.

Major Buell reported to the Army Chief of Staff, Winfield Scott. Having advocated holding the Forts prior to this time as published in his "Views" and addendum in October, his attitude was public knowledge.

Meanwhile, Lincoln was writing and meeting with Thurlow Weed, Washburne, and Frank Blair, telling them not to compromise on anything, and to convey to Scott his intentions of either holding or retaking the forts.

[donmeaker]

Anderson's decision to move out to Ft Sumpter was made to prevent conflict with the hotheads. Sumpter was further out of the way, and could be defended without risk to the noncombatant population. The rebels fired on her, though he had agreed to surrender if not reenforced. The rebels wanted to make their point. Lincoln, Grant, Sherman, and Sheridan made theirs.

"Let us have peace." as Grant said.

[donmeaker]

Actually there were people willing to fight over slavery. Alas, they lived in the south and were willing to break apart a great nation, fire on their countries flags and forces, and risk all for the sake of that peculiar institution. What a joy it is that most of the miscreants died in the battles that they instigated. What a pity it is that so many GOOD men had to die fighing the rebels.

[donmeaker]

After the first 9 states ratified the new constitution, Rhode Island had not yet ratified, and ships were sent to pick up the tariff at Rhode island for imports comeing into RI for goods shipped to Connecticut or Mass.

Even if secession was legal, Tariff would still have to have been paid.

[stand watie]

what a DUMB post.

only about 5-6 % of southerners EVER owned a slave.

TWBTS was about just ONE main cause= DIXIE LIBERTY.

true in 1861;true NOW.

free dixie,sw

[PeaRidge]

Sounds as if donmeaker thinks he is a historical donquixote after having too many doneduardo tequilas.

[stand watie]

very likely.

free dixie,sw

[donmeaker]

"only about 5-6 % of southerners EVER owned a slave."

Well, yes, if you count the slaves as southerners.

But if you look at the state governments, to include state governors and legislatures, you will find that it is closer to 70 percent who owned slaves. And you would find that they enslaved whites (through the draft) just as they enslaved blacks. They tried to enslave indians, but it largely didn't work.

[stand watie]

would you care to explain that SILLY & OBTUSE post??

inquiring minds want to know.

free dixie,sw

[donmeaker]

Which word don't you understand?

[donmeaker]

Lee was the perfect embodiment of .....


Which is what always confused me about Lee. How could such a decent man own slaves? How could he support the slave power? How could he spend 10s of years in the Army, and then resign when his services were most desparately needed?

At least he freed his slaves before the war was over. And at least Grant showed laudible mercy with the captured prisoners, in both Vicksburg and in the surrender terms in Virginia.

Genocide in the west began long before Grant took over. A stone age people wanted to continue to be a stone age people, partly because they always had been. A steam and steel age people also wanted to grow, and use the same land as the stone age people, because they could. It seemed unoccupied, compared to the teaming cities of the east.

I don't know how it could have ended differently. I submit that any indian which didnt care for the competition could have withdrawn to the reservation. There still are indians, so genocide didn't occur. Seneca, Mohawk, Lakota, Apache, Navaho, Hopi, all are still alive.

The fact is, you can keep what you can keep. The indians were unable to keep all the land they had held before the europeans arrived. The native americans conquered the land from the people who were there before, and were in turn conquered by the people who came after.

You may not be interested in War, but War is interested in you.

[Paul C. Jesup]

Well master hairspliter, Grant owned slaves.

Also, one genocide doesn't make another genocide right.

You remind me of Clinton supporters in that you will defend the most evil acts imaginable and refuse to admit when you are wrong by acting your opposition.

[donmeaker]

you wrote "Where would your sorry rear ends be if it were not for the southern states? Can you say president Albore?"

Are you suggesting that the American Negroes should be reenslaved because they overwhelmingly voted for Al Gore Jr.?

[stand watie]

i understand every word. it's your silly post that doesn't make sense.

free dixie,sw

[stand watie]

TWO points which point out how IGNORANT you are:

1. Lee NEVER owned a single slave ever. his wife received a few slaves from her family, which Lee UNLAWFULLY freed immediately. (Lee was so POOR when stationed at Fortress Monroe, that her family sent the couple CARE PACKAGES, so that the children wouldn't go hungry. the USA paid military officers almost nothing in those days.)

2. reference my people, the American Indian & the hatefilled/racist/cruel damnyankees like Grant/Sheridan/Sherman: do you believe that might makes right???? (is anything you CAN do become OK thereby????)

free dixie,sw

[stand watie]

YEP!

[stand watie]

yet another STUPID, meaningless, off-point post.

rave on fool; someone will cover up for you.

free dixie,sw

[donmeaker]

I believe that when indians left the reservation, raided settlers, that it was understandable that military power would be neither discriminating nor proportional.

I also believe that when a farming culture meets a hunter-gatherer culture, the farming culture has significant advantages. I believe it is unrealistic to expect the farmer culture to adopt the lack of property rights that characterize the hunter gatherer society. I also believe it is ridiculous for a child of the industrial society to look into the past and apply the industrial society property rights to a hunter-gatherer culture that was in competition with the farmer culture.

The hunter-gatherers had no doubt that they had rights to free passage over the land, and rights to the buffalo. The farmers had no doubt that the land they occupied was open land, free under the homestead act to anyone who would build a residence, occupy it, and improve it. Each by their own reference was right. That differeence in viewpoint was the source of the conflict.

In the beginning, humans often look to "Right" to avoid conflict. Where there is no common frame of reference as to "Right", a common frame of reference will be found, and in the past, that has often been power. The agrarian-industrial society had access to much more power than the hunter gatherer society. The end was sure, in the absence of direct intervention by the Divine.

[donmeaker]

It is my understanding that Lee freed his family slaves shortly before the Wilderness. It is also my understanding that Lee personally was opposed to slavery, that he never bought a slave, and never sold one. My reference is the book Lee and Grant by Gene Smith. It compares and constrasts Lee and Grant, in the manner of Plutarch's "Parallel Lives". A delightful read, though the picture on the cover is reversed to put Lee and Grant each beneath their name on the cover.

Custis, aka George Washington Parke Custis Lee, a son of Robert Edward Lee, said that he would rather fortify Arlington, with the guns facing south.

I suppose we must once again say "The south began the war to preserve slavery. The north fought and won the war to preserve the Union, with freedom for the slaves as a consequence.

The North began the war with forbearance, the South began it with intrigue and theft. Northern militia companies wer necessary to even get Lincoln in office.

The south began by shelling Ft Sumpter. The North ended by dictating the terms at Appromatox. The South murdered those who opposed them. The North granted generous terms both during the war (at Vicksburg) and at the end (at Appromatox). There was no triumph, no mass hangings. Officers retained their side arms, and soldiers were permitted to take horses or mules to their homes, to support farming. Grant silenced gun salutes from his soldiers. "Stop the firing," he said. "The rebels are our countrymen again."