Posted on 12/20/2001 4:01:19 AM PST by shuckmaster
Some reviewers have had a hard time with the present book. They imagine that there is a single historical thesis therein, one subject to definitive proof or refutation. In this, I believe they are mistaken. Instead, what we have here is a multifaceted critique of what must be the most central event in American history.
This is not Mr. Adams’s first book. His For Good and Evil: The Impact of Taxes on the Course of Civilization (1999) lives up to its title and underscores the importance of a matter frequently ignored by conventional historians. Taxation and other fiscal matters certainly play a major role in Adams’s reconstruction of the War for Southern Independence.
Those who long for the simple morality play in which Father Abraham saved the Union (always capitalized) and emancipated the slaves out of his vision and kindness have complained that Adams has ignored slavery as a cause of the war. That is incorrect. Slavery and the racial issue connected with it are present; they do not, however, have the causal stage all to themselves.
In chapter one, Adams sets the American war over secession in a global context by instancing other conflicts of similar type. He plants here the first seeds of doubt that political separation is inherently immoral. Chapter two deals with Fort Sumter and Lincoln’s successful gamble to have the Confederacy “start” the war. Here one learns that the Fort was primarily a customs house – a nice bit of symbolism, especially since the South paid roughly four times as much in tariffs as the North did.
Given that, Lincoln was very concerned about his tariff revenues in the absence of the Southern states. After Fort Sumter, the (Northern) President unconstitutionally established a blockade of Southern ports on his own motion. Soon, Lincoln had robbed Maryland of self-government and was making other inroads on civil liberty – his idea of preserving the Constitution via his self-invented presidential “war powers” (of which there is not a word in the actual document).
In chapter four, Adams unfolds his revenue-based theory of the war. The shift from a pro-peace to a pro-war position by the New York press and key business interests coincided exactly with their realization that the Confederacy’s low tariffs would draw trade away from the North, especially in view of the far higher Northern tariff just instituted. There is an important point here. It did not automatically follow that secession as such had to mean war. But peace foretold the end of continental mercantilism, tariffs, internal improvements, and railroad subsidies – a program that meant more than life to a powerful Northern political coalition. That coalition, of which Lincoln was the head, wanted war for a complex of material, political, and ideological reasons.
Adams also looks at what might well be called Northern war crimes. Here he can cite any number of pro-Lincoln historians, who file such things under grim necessity. Along the way, the author has time to make justified fun of Lincoln’s official theory that he was dealing with a mere “rebellion” rather than with the decision of political majorities in eleven states.
Other chapters treat the so-called Copperheads, the “treason trial” of Jefferson Davis (which never took place, quite possibly because the unionist case could not have survived a fair trial), a comparative view of emancipation, and the problems of Reconstruction. The author’s deconstruction of the Gettysburg Address will shock Lincoln idolators. Adams underlines the gloomy pseudo-religious fatalism with which Lincoln salved his conscience in his later speeches. This supports M. E. Bradford’s division of Lincoln’s career into Whig, “artificial Puritan,” and practical “Cromwellian” phases – the last item pertaining to total war.
To address seriously the issues presented by Adams requires a serious imaginative effort, especially for those who never before heard such claims about the Constitution, about the war, or about Lincoln. Ernest Renan famously wrote that for Frenchmen to constitute a nation, they must remember certain things and were “obliged already to have forgotten” certain others. Adams focuses on those things which Northerners, at least, have long since forgotten.
What Adams’ book – with or without a single, central thesis – does, is to reveal that in 1860 and early 1861 many Americans, north and south, doubted the existence of any federal power to coerce a state and considered peaceful separation a real possibility. In the late 1790s, The Federalist Papers, for example, laughed down the notion that the federal government could coerce states in their corporate, political capacity. For much of the nineteenth century Americans saw the union as a practical arrangement instrumental to other values. That vision vanished in the killing and destruction of Mr. Lincoln’s war. Americans paid a rather high price for making a means into an end.
Interesting thread, shuckmaster...whattaya think, sw?!
FReegards...MUD
IMO, it wasn't the fact of slavery, per se. It was the fact that, with slavery, the south could produce with much less overhead and undercut the north.
Have you EVER seen a history where the lessons were not slanted by the winners side.
It may have been about slavery, in the main, for the south, I believe that the north had many more reasons than JUST slavery.
No, no, no.
What you don't realize is that we are all blinded by the yankee controlled National Education Association. That is why we spout all this pro-union crap. ;-)
Using the words of the actual participants...well, just don't, that's all. Then you'll see how wonderful and noble the secessionists were....not.
Walt
LOL...N-S, meet sw...sw, meet N-S...have at it!!
MUD
At the beginning of "Braveheart," the narrator says in a fine Scottish accent--and I paraphrase--"History is written by those who murdered [heroic FReedom-Fighters]." Can't remember the exact line, but it applies here, IMHO.
FReegards...MUD
We all agree that slavery was/is an abhorrent practice that needed to be abolished...but the reason a huge majority of Southerners fought and died had NOTHING to do with maintaining the economic status quo because most southerners didn't own slaves. The Patrician Plantation Owners were Effete Elitists...just like the Northern Mercantilists who forced the North into the War!!! What's so hard to understand about that?!
There were plenty of ways for the abolitionists to triumph without plunging the Country into a Civil War, but the Yankee Effete Elite would have none of it because it would have cost them profits, IMHO. And Honest Abe simply knew where his bread was buttered and reacted accordingly.
MUD
You just made my point.
For the south, it was almost all about slavery but not, I believe, just for slaverys sake. It was the advantages that slavery gave the south over the north in production that was the reason the south wanted to keep slavery so much.
You can rewrite history but you can't remove words from the mouths of men once they are spoken.
Again, you've made my point. The Union (north) HAS, for all practical purposes, rewritten history. I really DON'T believe that it was ONLY about slavery for the north. That was an incidental that would look good for the common man.
Well, I seem to recall that both Jefferson Davis and Alexander Stephens, the head traitors, don't you know, both wrote long tomes justifying their wartime actions after the war. Stephens (wink and a nod), Stephens later took up the SAME seat in the US Congress that he held before the war!
So, Davis and Stephens at least, appear to have avoided being murdered.
No single person was hanged for treason after the ACW. On the -other- hand, loyal citizens were hanged by the dozens in East Tennessee and in Texas by CSA authorities--simply for professing loyalty to the old flag.
What the record shows is that losers had a great hand in writing the history of the war, and losers perpetuate it unto this very day.
Walt
I thought this article may be about succession in the 21st century. Today, the southern culture is almost as different from the rest of the nation as it was 150 years ago. In the South, you have the conservative bible belt, and in the north you have the hedonistic secularists. If the South succeeds in the future, please keep the gate open until I can get in. I'm sick of Gomorrah.
But about 1/3 of southerners DID own slaves.
And what you would have to show is that the great mass of CSA soldiers were NOT fighting for the type of society they wanted to live in. That they didn't some day want to raise their station where THEY could own slaves. Can you show that?
Walt
I'm an amateur C.W. historian. Should I list some of the litany of war crimes committed by the northern invaders?
What is your source for this statistic? I think it's high.
If your going to misrepresent facts, say so.
The only Northern papers arguing for a peaceful separation were pro-South in general and spewed the Democrat party view in particular.
All you secesh are really D.U. trolls, admit it.
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