One of my most-favored blog-peers, Glenn Reynolds, seems to disfavor the Right of Secession. So, I put this to you Glenn, man of Law and Letters, tell us how it is? And please place your argument in pre-1860 terms. Well, perhaps that means you must tell it to us how it was?
The fact is, secession was progressing apace under James Buchanan. It took the Unionist administration, under The Great Traitor, Lincoln, to go intransigent over the inconsequential forts at Charleston and Pensacola.
And then, when his unpopular war was getting politically out-of-hand, he did a very Bush43-esce move, and changed the whole paradigm from preservation of the Union, to emancipation of the slaves.
Of course, I could go deeper, into Lincoln’s unconstitutional suspension of Habeas Corpus (which also ties neatly into today), or his unconstitutional leveling of an income tax. But I think we are in agreement there.
And I might romanticize The Confederacy. But I can’t. We also agree it was a disaster. But, can I deny its right to exist? No!
Update: I was just rereading Lincoln’s July 4, 1861 Address Before the Joint Special Session of Congress. I suggest that anyone not familiar with it give it a read. It very much confirms the notion that Lincoln was indeed a “smooth talking lawyer.”
In it, Lincoln constructs the sophistry that all States, including the original 13, did not exist as sovereign entities prior to the creation of the Union. And that the several States are entities of the Union, in the manner that counties are entities of the States. He even goes so far as to claim that The Republic of Texas was not a “state” - thereby totally contorting the English language. Every sovereign nation is also a state. To give a modern-day example: we use the terms “State of Israel” and “Nation of Israel” interchangeably.
Lincoln relies on the notion which we here in America often condemn our European friends for: that rights emanate from the governing body, and are granted to the governed. This is contrary to the very principle that we Americans hold most dear: that each individual is sovereign unto themselves, and surrender certain limited powers to the States, with the intention of maintaining an orderly society.
Admittedly, the Right of Secession is not specified in the Constitution; it requires a certain amount of penumbral reasoning. But I seem to recall critiquing (favorably) an article by Glenn where he favors the concept of penumbral reasoning. I agree with Antifederalist Patrick Henry; the Preamble should have started with “We the People, of the States of…” Then perhaps Lincoln would not have been able to sow his misconceptions. But the Tenth Amendment, without which the Constitution, and thus the Union, would have never have existed, clearly states: “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people. ”
Further, Lincoln takes on faith the notion that partition of a nation will set of a domino effect leading to total chaos. We know from several latter-day examples that this simply is not the case. I ask, did Ethiopia cease to exist after the creation of Eritrea?
I must further ask, how is it that the dissolution of Yugoslavia was a good thing, and not the dissolution of the United States. Further, I must ask how anyone who supports a war which featured Grant’s Siege of Vicksburg, and Sherman’s March to the Sea, possibly have moral standing to condemn Saddam’s Repression of the Kurds?
Kevin, I’m a little confused. You seem to be either ironically calling Lincoln a traitor, which makes no sense; or actually calling him a traitor, which makes even less sense.
It is true that preservation of the Union was always Lincoln’s reason for the Civil War, contrary to what most people think, but what exactly are you trying to say here?
Comment by ThePie — 20050201 @ 0240
And you are upset that Glenn disfavors the right of secession? So you are in favor of states having the right to seceed? I come from the South and I am totally against it. Lee fought for the South and he was against secession.
Comment by ThePie — 20050201 @ 0243
How many of our boys died in The War Between The States? And for what? What great cause was served, that whouldn’t have been otherwise served by the natural forces of the marketplace? And without another century of anomosity and death?
Comment by Kevin L. Connors — 20050201 @ 0402
Kevin, except for those men and women who were vets who died after the War between the States, no one died because of that war once it was over. I’m from the South, and if you are implying that the civil rights movement was a continuation of the War between the states and it’s causes, you are wrong.
You already pointed out that that war was fought not over slavery and the rights of blacks, but rather over the preservation of the Union vs. states rights.
Comment by ThePie — 20050201 @ 0444
What does where you grew up have to do with the price of falafal in Baghdad?
My history teachers pretty much agree, this country was born in revolution and succession, it’s our birthright.
Comment by Timmer — 20050201 @ 0658
By succession above I think you mean secession. While trial by combat is there for all to claim once claimed the loser is supposed to recognize the blessing of God on the winner. In addition, the winner personnaly and all his thoughts and desires have those blessings as well. So, while you may claim a birthright in secession, it is already a blasted and damned right with no hope of success.
Comment by jim burke — 20050201 @ 0812
Article I, Section 8 -
“To provide for calling forth the Militia to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions;”
Sucession is just a fancy word, Newspeak, for insurrection by the insurgents.
Comment by Don — 20050201 @ 0823
OK, sorry to be a nitpick, but “Sucession is just a fancy word” for suceeding in something, as in getting it right. SECEEDING is the correct word, people. We have one of the best blogs on the internet, let’s try to write like it.
Comment by ThePie — 20050201 @ 0846
We do? Then what the hell am I doing here? I’m a hack! I can’t take that kind of pressure.
Comment by Timmer — 20050201 @ 0907
Mah great-granddaddy fought for the South in the Telfair Volunteers of the great state of Georgia during the last years of the War of Northern Agression. He proudly went off on a fine horse dressed in a sharp grey uniform, sitting tall in his saddle as he bid a sad farewell to the family. (A little context:the Mims family owned NO slaves. They believed the practice was WRONG!) In August 1865, He came a-walkin’ home after we lost the War of Northern Agression, with nothin’ but the clothes on his back. He had been greivously wounded and was near starved to death; they say he was near unrecognizable. His side had lost and there was nothing else to do but go home and try to get on with livin’. The family farm had been tended as best they could, and that warn’t much.
People did die after the War was over: Many of them right here in Gawga, where we had a carpetbagger culture forced upon us, and a so-called legislature of hand-picked, uneducated black folks that had no idea what they were supposed to do. It was forced upon us as “Punishment. It worked. We got punished bad, bad.
It took nearly 40 years to get our state even back to civilization, and another hundred years before all races here began to be treated equally.
Still today, there are sad pockets where racism is rife, and many still think the war was fought over slavery, which it was not. The fight of the 1860’s remains the fight of today: States’ rights. And when someone comes up with comprehensive federal legislation that will pass the Supreme Court, we shall all be blessed. And My granddaddy John W. Mims will then, at long last, rest in peace.
Comment by Joe Comer — 20050201 @ 0952
Ultimately, no people can be held in a shotgun marriage. The will of the electorate must ultimately rule.
Comment by Walter E. Wallis — 20050201 @ 1040
The secession of the South brewed for a long time. Almost from the time of the signing of the constitution. There were two major unsettled questions, slavery and big government.
Both of these kindled the flames of war. As far as using the forts to start the conflict. The war was going to happen and it was just a matter of what, where, and when.
I would think that the marriage between a state and the fed can be broken. Just like a real marriage. Question is: is it a legitimate separation. Seems that both the state and fed would have to approve the secession. Then it could happen.
Comment by Carl Tunich — 20050201 @ 1215
While slavey was always an issue, and the South feared the creation of new free states in the west, there simply was not enough abolitionist sentiment in Washington for it to be an immediate threat.
The real breaking point in the run-up to secession was the same as the Revolution: taxes.
Comment by Kevin L. Connors — 20050201 @ 1330
I always love the “it wasn’t slavery, it was taxes, economics, the Yankees wanted to keep all of the ducks up north in the winter, it was about state rights,” arguments. Well, when many of your largest land owners, those with the most influence in the political circles depended primarily upon slave labor, economics is about slavery. When the state’s rights you are most upset about losing is the right to own human beings, then states rights is about slavery. When you don’t want to be taxed on the human beings you own as your work force, saying that the northerners don’t get taxed for their work force, then taxation is about slavery. I am southern, and it seems that unlike too many of my brethren, able to admit that we had it wrong, and it took an a$$ whipping to try and get our thinking right. Then it took more love than most of us were able to recognize to get us back on the right track after nearly a century of listening to the devil. Secession is a tool for the weasels that lack the courage to actually live in a democracy. It is the grown up version of “I’ll take my ball and go home.”
Comment by Dan Ratcliffe — 20050201 @ 1456
Thanks for posting this story, Mr. Connors. Reynold’s entry had me seeing red.
The dispute wasn’t about slavery. What was there to dispute? The South damn well knew that slavery made them a poor and benighted civilization, that it was sapping their rightful place in the world, and that it had to end and soon. Anybody who could see could tell the difference between Yankee industrial capability and low-margin Southern agriculture. The “natural superiority of the white race” folks were in denial, like alcoholics who have convinced themselves that drying out would kill them. You don’t have to make a good-versus-evil value judgement to understand the trap they had caught themselves in, the blinders they had nailed over their imaginations. Getting out of that rut is hard.
But rather than deal with it for what it was, the radical abolitionists decided that it was pure deliberate evil, and the solution was absolute liberty, RIGHT THIS DAMN INSTANT. If there was a “slavery on/off” switch, they would have flipped it without a second thought. Nevermind that freedom doesn’t mean a whole lot when every single harvest is disrupted, all cargo delayed or hopelessly lost, and everybody is having to move themselves to a different social position all at the same time. What’s starvation, when you can eat whenever you want? When John Brown’s raid failed spectacularly for just these reasons, the abolitionists decided that Brown just hadn’t killed nearly enough bystanders or destroyed nearly enough stuff. They sure fixed that mistake.
As for Lincoln, we don’t need to worry about treason versus patriotism, gratuitous violence versus desperate measures for tough times. What matters is that he truly, honestly said secession was wrong, without bending his knee to the rightful King of England and the Several Colonies. He locked men away without benefit of due process, in order that freedom might increase. He was a hypocrite, and that’s all we need to know.
Comment by Daniel Newby — 20050201 @ 1729
The Southern States that rebelled, and those who fought for them, were traitors and insurrectionists.
There are people who say the war was not fought over slavery, but someone forgot to tell these States:
South Carolina Secession Declaration:
The Constitution of the United States, in its fourth Article, provides as follows:
“No person held to service or labor in one State, under the laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in consequence of any law or regulation therein, be discharged from such service or labor, but shall be delivered up, on claim of the party to whom such service or labor may be due.”
This stipulation was so material to the compact, that without it that compact would not have been made. The greater number of the contracting parties held slaves, and they had previously evinced their estimate of the value of such a stipulation by making it a condition in the Ordinance for the government of the territory ceded by Virginia, which now composes the States north of the Ohio River.
The first part deals with the “free and independent States” bit, but the meat of the document after this statement gives the reasons why they’re seceeeding.
Or how about Georgia’s Declaration of Secession? It’s basically all slavery, all the time:
The people of Georgia having dissolved their political connection with the Government of the United States of America, present to their confederates and the world the causes which have led to the separation. For the last ten years we have had numerous and serious causes of complaint against our non-slave-holding confederate States with reference to the subject of African slavery. They have endeavored to weaken our security, to disturb our domestic peace and tranquility, and persistently refused to comply with their express constitutional obligations to us in reference to that property, and by the use of their power in the Federal Government have striven to deprive us of an equal enjoyment of the common Territories of the Republic.
So maybe the Civil War wasn’t about slavery, it was about Property Rights.
Mississippi’s Declaration dispenses with the Constitutional pretense and just comes right out and says it:
Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery - the greatest material interest of the world.
Of all the Secessionists, Texas probably had the best legal authority to leave the Union. What was their position?
We hold as undeniable truths that the governments of the various States, and of the confederacy itself, were established exclusively by the white race, for themselves and their posterity; that the African race had no agency in their establishment; that they were rightfully held and regarded as an inferior and dependent race, and in that condition only could their existence in this country be rendered beneficial or tolerable.
That in this free government all white men are and of right ought to be entitled to equal civil and political rights; that the servitude of the African race, as existing in these States, is mutually beneficial to both bond and free, and is abundantly authorized and justified by the experience of mankind, and the revealed will of the Almighty Creator, as recognized by all Christian nations; while the destruction of the existing relations between the two races, as advocated by our sectional enemies, would bring inevitable calamities upon both and desolation upon the fifteen slave-holding states.
Obviously, slavery had nothing to do with the insurrection.
Comment by Stryker — 20050201 @ 1904
Wow. some excellent posts - which I might have to wait until tomorrow, when I’m fully sober, to address them properly. But, I would suggest that, in the meantime, you study the matter of abolition in Washington D.C.. This might have provided a model for abolition in the South, if cooler heads have prevailed
Of course, “if cooler heads had prevailed,” the South might have trusted that Lincoln would have honored Buchanan’s promises, Lincoln might have taken a more diplomatic tack. A lot of things “might have happened, if cooler heads had prevailed.”
BTW, I emailed Glenn Reynolds about this, but he seems to be mute.
Comment by Kevin L. Connors — 20050201 @ 1924
For all of Lincoln’s supposed faults, he wasn’t the one who tried to destroy the Union by seceeding and starting the bloodiest war in American history. He preserved the Union and freed the slaves. For all his questionable legal actions, he wasn’t fighting for the express purpose of keeping men in bondage, so he and the Union held the higher moral standard by default.
You have these revisionists running around nowadays who, for a variety of reasons, try to make the traitors into Noble Men Fighting for States Rights’, but they always fail to mention which State’s Right in particular they were fighting to maintain. I can’t explain it, other than to chalk it up to losing not only the physical war, but the moral one as well. The fought to maintain a vile institution and lost. Their cause discredited and tossed into the ashbin of history, they decided to sweep their shame under the rug and claim that their ancestors fought and died for some glorious cause, instead of fighting for the cause of Evil.
I guess people like to honor those who fought by doing this nice little historical jig, but it’s amazing how quickly the Germans renounced their evil and strove to redeem themselves, while it took the former Confederates 100 years just to recognize the Civil Rights of their former slaves. On top of that, some of them still insist on that “Noble Cause” bullshit. Even the Germans don’t try to claim that.
I think this attitude is a direct result of the failure to fully enforce and complete the Reconstruction. If the former Confederates had been well and fully occupied and knew, without a doubt, that they and their way of life were defeated and discredited, then maybe they wouldn’t have been as screwed-up as they were for over a century. If the Union had worked to rebuild the Southern States by bringing them into the Industrial Age and fully re-knitting them back into the Union as modern States with a productive and progressive citizenry, maybe they wouldn’t have felt the need to glorify traitors and persist in their delusions.
Comment by Stryker — 20050202 @ 0025
The falacy in your extremely well researched and thought-out opinion, Stryker, seems to be the same thing which befuddled Lincoln: that division of the Union would lead to it’s ultimate demise.
History has proven that that just isn’t so.
Comment by Kevin L. Connors — 20050202 @ 0056
Kevin, what are you trying to say?
“”The falacy in your extremely well researched and thought-out opinion, Stryker, seems to be the same thing which befuddled Lincoln: that division of the Union would lead to it’s ultimate demise.
History has proven that that just isn’t so.”"
If the country is divided, it is no longer the entire United States. It would be two separate countrys, or a bunch of little countrys. But, it would no longer be the United States. How could history bear it out when it didn’t happen?
Comment by Carl Tunich — 20050202 @ 0757
I want to second Carl. What are you saying? In my reading of the Civil War literature I did not see anything about the “demise of the Union.” Lincoln thought that the sucessionist states violated the law and the Constitution and saw his duty to prevent the South’s effort to break away. Lincoln seemed to despair of the situation that would exist if the South suceeded in establishing a Confederacy. The Confederates were doomed from the beginning. Each state thought of itself as its own country and their lack of being able to work together killed them. How long do you think the Confederacy would have held together before offended “Southern Honor” would cause some of the states to seek “independence”?
Comment by Richard Cook — 20050202 @ 0924
Sounds like you don’t like Lincoln because he won.
Comment by Richard Cook — 20050202 @ 0925
Lincoln believed that a nation, any nation MUST maintain it’s territorial integrity at all costs. Well, the cost was pretty damn high. And territorial integrity, relative to peaceful cooperation, just isn’t that important. Just look at the example of Russia: It has managed to spin-off several republics peacefully. Some, like the Baltic States, which have instituted the necessary reforms to become productive members of the world community, are doing quite well. Others, like Belarus, are virtual failures. Chechnya, on the other hand, which Russia refuses to grant its liberty, has turned into quite a quagmire.
And I already stated that the Confederacy was a disaster. It likely would have been even if there had been no war. At least they would have gone through quite a tumultuous gestation. But that’s not the point. This is a question of their liberty to try.
Comment by Kevin L. Connors — 20050202 @ 1055
>The South damn well knew that slavery made them a poor and benighted civilization, that it was sapping their rightful place in the world, and that it had to end and soon.
Well, no, they didn’t. Thomas Jefferson may have believed that. By the 1850s Southerners in considerable numbers were arguing that slavery was a positive good (e.g., Fitzroy), and far from trying to make it go away, they were working to make it stay around (e.g., making manumission harder).
Comment by Tony Zbaraschuk — 20050202 @ 1251
That was cetainly true in Mississippi and Alabama, Tony. But attitudes in the slave States were hardly monolithic. I would suggest you read EVIL NECESSITY, Slavery and Political Culture in Antebellum Kentucky by prof. Harold Tallant
Comment by Kevin L. Connors — 20050202 @ 1332
I stand most humbly corrected! The preponderance of the evidence seems to bear out my incorrect view of the subject. Thank you, gentlemen, for a good education on the subject.
In fact, I personally never agreed with slavery, nor with racial discrimination, thanks to my Mama.
Comment by Joe Comer — 20050202 @ 1504
And who does? But, in the context of the first half of the 19th century, slaves were legal chattel. And emancipation was, quite simply, a taking. And the 5th amendment requires compensation. Lincoln, to his credit, advocated this. But it only actually happened in Washington D.C..
Comment by Kevin L. Connors — 20050202 @ 1530
Its bad enough having to listen to all the 1960’s retreads and wannabes complaining ad nauseum about how Iraq is like Vietnam. Now we have this throwback to the 1860s, wanting to reguritate the Civil War. The South lost, the issue is one that a lot of folks fought and died for. Its done, stick a fork in it.
How bout the French and Indian wars, you okay with those?
Comment by ben — 20050203 @ 0419
The French and Indian War wasn’t an American War.
Comment by Stryker — 20050203 @ 1421
It was the only war I could think of that occured in the 1760’s. And was fought on what would be the United States. I half expect someone to come up and complain about THAT war as well. Why not, since we still have folks complain about the others?
Look, we have stuff to deal with NOW. There are too many folks wanting to refight battles that have been lost long ago. Its a waste of effort, time, resources and pointless unless you have a time machine.
Comment by ben — 20050204 @ 0341