Posted on 12/07/2010 11:31:03 AM PST by presidio9
On a recent pilgrimage to Gettysburg I ventured into the Evergreen cemetery, the scene of chaotic and bloody fighting throughout the engagement. Like Abraham Lincoln on a cold November day in 1863, I pondered the meaning of it all. With the post-Tea Party wave of libertarianism sweeping the nation, Lincoln’s reputation has received a serious pillorying. He has even been labeled a tyrant, who used the issue of slavery as a mendacious faux excuse to pummel the South into submitting to the will of the growing federal power in Washington D.C. In fact, some insist, the labeling of slavery as the casus belli of the Civil War is simply a great lie perpetrated by our educational system.
First of all, was Lincoln in fact a tyrant? For me the root of such a characterization centers on the man’s motivations. A man of international vision that belied his homespun image, Lincoln saw the growing power of an industrialized Europe and realized that a divided America would be a vulnerable one. “The central idea of secession,” he argued, “is anarchy.” Hence, maintaining the Union was his prime motivation, not the amassing of self-serving power.
It is true that Lincoln unilaterally suspended the writ of habeas corpus. From a Constitutional standpoint, the power of the federal government to suspend habeas corpus “in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety” is clearly spelled out in Article 1, Section IX. And an insurrection of eleven states would certainly qualify as such. Whether or not Lincoln had the authority (Article I pertains to Congress) most significant to me is that the Constitution does allow for the suspension of habeas corpus in times of severe crisis. So, doesn’t the question distill down to a more wonkish matter of legal procedure, rather than the sublime notion of denying the rights of man?
Constitutional minutia aside, the question remains whether or not Lincoln’s actions made him a tyrant. Consider the country in 1861-1862, the years in which the writ was suspended, re-instituted and then suspended again until war’s end. The war was not going well for the North, and Southern sympathies were strong in the border states and the lower Midwestern counties. The federal city was surrounded by an openly hostile Virginia on one side and a strongly secessionist Maryland on the other. “Copperhead” politicians actively sought office and could only sow further seeds of discord if elected. Considering these factors, one wonders what other course of action Lincoln could have taken to stabilize the situation in order to successfully prosecute the war. “Must I shoot a simple-minded soldier boy who deserts,” he asked, “while I may not touch a hair on the head of the wily agitator who induces him to desert?”
It seems that one’s appreciation for Lincoln’s place in history is largely an off-shoot of one’s position on the rebellion itself.
If the South was within its rights to secede, then Lincoln was a cruel oppressor. If not, then he had no choice but to put down a major insurrection.
What most glib pro-Southern observers of the war’s issues forget is that there were three million Americans enslaved in that same South, who would have been dragged into a newly formed Confederate States of America. “How is it,” asked Samuel Johnson as early as 1775, “that we hear the loudest yelps for liberty among the drivers of Negroes?” Can any true libertarian argue that using the power of the federal government to end a state’s perpetuation of human bondage is an act of tyranny, regardless of the reason? And whether or not either side was willing to admit it, slavery was indeed the core issue of the war.
For those who believe otherwise then I ask you: In 1861, if the entire country was either all free or all slave states, would war have still come? If secession was about securing the South’s dearest rights, I must ask a follow-up: the right to do what exactly? We know the answer of course.
Was the North without sin? Certainly not, as anyone who understands the economic symbiosis of the two regions can attest. But in the end it was a Northern president using Northern troops who freed the slaves, and erased from the American experience what Lincoln himself referred to as “the base alloy of hypocrisy.”
A common blasé position among the Lew Rockwell’s of the world (a man who never felt the lash himself of course) is that slavery would have eventually died out as modernization overtook the antebellum Southern way of life. Yes it can be argued that it was economically inefficient – but it’s Marx not Mises who argues that systems of production necessarily dictate political forms. Consider that the de facto servitude of Blacks in the post-reconstruction South lasted well into the 1960s, and South Africa’s apartheid into the 1980s…both of which were ended by external pressures rather than internal catharsis .
Given the cost in dead and treasure, would it have been best to let the South go and hope for the best in slavery’s natural demise? As Patrick Henry, a southerner, once asked: “Is life so sweet or peace so dear as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery?” Certainly Lincoln’s steadfast prosecution of the war revealed his feelings on this fundamental question.
So when I look at Lincoln I see a man who, for myriad reasons ranging from realpolitik to moral imperative, released three million people from the shackles of slavery. I see a man who may have over-reached his legal authority by making the suspension of habeas corpus an executive rather than legislative initiative, but did not act outside the spirit of the Constitution regarding its position on whether such a right was untouchable.
I can only conclude that to think Lincoln a tyrant is to support the Confederacy’s right to secede in the first place…and take its enslaved Americans with them. Given what a weakened state a split country would have placed us in as we moved into the industrial age, given the force for good that a united and powerful America has been in the world since Appomattox, and considering even his most brazen suspensions of Constitutional rights were temporary, and resulted in no one swinging from the gallows for their opposition to the war, I must support the actions of this great President who was ultimately motivated by love of country, not lust for power. As Shakespeare might have said: “Despotism should be made of sterner stuff.”
What do you mean by that?
According to one author on the topic, Charles Adams, total Federal revenue during the 1830s and 40s was $105.7 million, of which $90 million came from the South. So I was wrong, it was over 85%.
And I can point out that in his book "Lifeline of the Confederacy" Stephen Wise quotes congressional reports that show that in the year prior to the rebellion upwards of 95% of all tariff income was collected at three Northern ports. So that must mean that it was the North that paid 95% of all taxes, right?
Or if the South had taken the time to negotiate a fair and equitable settlement of all possible matters of contention before separating with the approval of all the parties impacted.
It's immaterial if the South was "right" or "wrong"...
Especially if you've already blamed the North for the whole matter.
If the South didn't have the right to leave the union, for whatever reasons they chose or for no reason at all, then our founding as a nation by severing ties to Britain is a farce.
Our 'severing ties with Britain' was accomplished only after a little seven year period of unplesantness known as "The American Revolution". So the real difference is that the founders won their rebellion while the confederates did not.
One example we have, of how things could have been very different, as others have pointed out, is Great Britain, who abolished slavery without a civil war.
In every single case where slavery was ended peacefully, it was done through government action and over the strong opposition of the slaveowners themselves. So how long do you think it would have taken for the U.S. slaveowners to agree to end slavery without launching a bloody and protracted rebellion?
Britain was a monarchy in which the distant colonies that held slaves didn't have effective veto power over the entire government.
Surely after LBJ, Carter, Clinton, and two Bush's the South has gotten it's revenge on the rest of us?
Your kind of govt only exists in your imagination.
The People, in any form, always have the natural right of rebellion. But that's not the same as saying they have a legal right. Even the Constitution gives the government the power to put down insurrections.
Decades? Reconstruction lasted 12 years, and the worst part of reconstruction and the only thing that made it last more than a year or so was brought upon the south not by the North, but by southerners in the Klan and other organizations who used the same tactics of terror, murder and intimidation as we see in Iraq and Afghanistan now.
To say reconstruction was wrong is saying that terrorists should be rewarded.
Maybe, but then you Yankees resorted to Obama. Just like a bunch of Yankees to place a socialist over all of us, even if he wasn’t born in the USA.
So which has preeminence, natural rights granted by our Creator or legal rights granted by man?
New England pay-rolled them? Was there a "New England' government that did that? Was it a "New England" government policy to do that? Did all the people of "New England" support that? Or was it individual ship owners who did it?
There were also southern ship owners who engaged in the slave trade -- not as many because, the south did not have as many ships or as many salors as 'New England." But they were sure as hell willing to buy slaves when one of those 'New England' slave ships showed up.
New England pay-rolled them? Was there a "New England' government that did that? Was it a "New England" government policy to do that? Did all the people of "New England" support that? Or was it individual ship owners who did it?
There were also southern ship owners who engaged in the slave trade -- not as many because, the south did not have as many ships or as many salors as 'New England." But they were sure as hell willing to buy slaves when one of those 'New England' slave ships showed up.
I’m giving you one, and only one, warning. You refer to my ancestors as terrorists again and we’re going to have some serious problems.
There was more going on in the South than what you seem to know about and the reason the KKK was originally founded, long before it became a racist organization, was to protect Southerners from Northern Carpetbaggers who literally stole everything they could get their hands on.
Legal rights aren't granted by man, but they are protected by man at the cost of other rights. This is the essence of the Social Contract.
Here's a question: Did black slaves in the south have a natural right of freedom and the right to rebel to obtain that freedom? Did they have a legal right to do so?
Marx and the commies of '48 supported him.
We also gave you Ronald Reagan. What have you done for us lately?
The Civil War was a great tragedy. To turn it into the evil Lincoln's victimization of the South is to distort the historical record and to diminish the tragedy.
But it was largely predictable and predicted. You can look up Webster's and Clay's warnings of what secession inevitably would mean -- war, destruction, and misery. There was no way to make unilateral secession at will work peacefully -- or if there was such a way, it wasn't the one the Confederates took.
Arguing over and over that secession was a constitutional right is like repeating over and over again that an experiment that always produces a given result ought to have a different one.
Secession at will wasn't constitutional and it wasn't a thing that could be made to work in our system -- or if it was, the people who attempted it weren't the kind of people who could make it work and they didn't approach dissolution of the union in a spirit that could have made it successful.
Who were they supposed to support? The slaveocracy of Jefferson Davis?
"Traitors" would not be inaccurate either.
I don’t know if I agree with you that legal rights aren’t granted by man but are protected by man at the cost of other rights. I need to think on this and process it, but I will admit that my first reaction to it is that legal rights are granted by man but only as a recognition of the natural rights granted by God.
As for the natural rights of slaves in the South, let me ask you this.
Does mankind have a natural right to freedom or just liberty? Is there a difference between the two? Can liberty exist without freedom, or can it exist despite the lack of freedom?
We use the words “liberty” and “freedom” interchangably, but are we correct in doing so?
I honestly don’t know. I have a hunch that they are interchangable, but there’s a nagging doubt that I’m missing something here.
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