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.
The north wasn't as economically dependent on slavery as the South but was just as supportive of it. In fact Massachusetts was the last state to do away with slavery.
If slavery has been the real issue all the northern states would have been slave free well before the end of the War of Northern Aggression BUT THEY WEREN'T.
It was and emotional bit of propaganda to hide Lincoln Monarchical aims.
Give it some time though. It may not be long before the 'cut and paste cookie monsters' drop in and enlighten us on the "cold hard facts".
There is no validity to any of the D.S.'s arguments not one and that is easily proven. But next thread the D.S.'s are back pretending that their arguments have never been refuted throwing endless misleading, deceptive or outright lying statements from discredited or rightfully obscure hacks at the audience.
Pathetic waste of time defending treason and anti-Americanism. The D.S.'s hatred of Lincoln is particularly hilarious. His superior intellect over any of the Slaveocrats' "leaders" drives them to mad attempts to pretend he was actually worse than those beating and whipping the slaves. But the slaves knew the truth as their love for President Lincoln clearly showed.
It is particularly disgusting to watch the D.S.'s attack a true martyr. A man who gave his life (and happiness) for his country now becomes the subject of venomous vituperation from the hateful ignorant. Even one as confused as Jefferson Davis understood that the death of Lincoln was a tremendous blow to the defeated South. His latter day worshippers are too stupid to understand that.
Perhaps it is because the 'cold hard facts' all indicate that the defense of the institution of slavery was the primary reason for secession? If one reads the Declaration of the Causes of Secession for the various states it becomes clear. Mississippi, for example, said,
"In the momentous step which our State has taken of dissolving its connection with the government of which we so long formed a part, it is but just that we should declare the prominent reasons which have induced our course.
Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery-- the greatest material interest of the world. Its labor supplies the product which constitutes by far the largest and most important portions of commerce of the earth. "
Georgia said,
"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. "
Texas said,
"Texas abandoned her separate national existence and consented to become one of the Confederated Union to promote her welfare, insure domestic tranquility and secure more substantially the blessings of peace and liberty to her people. She was received into the confederacy with her own constitution, under the guarantee of the federal constitution and the compact of annexation, that she should enjoy these blessings. She was received as a commonwealth holding, maintaining and protecting the institution known as negro slavery-- the servitude of the African to the white race within her limits-- a relation that had existed from the first settlement of her wilderness by the white race, and which her people intended should exist in all future time. "
Alexander Stephens, vice president of the confederacy, said,
"But not to be tedious in enumerating the numerous changes for the better, allow me to allude to one other -- though last, not least. The new constitution has put at rest, forever, all the agitating questions relating to our peculiar institution -- African slavery as it exists amongst us -- the proper status of the negro in our form of civilization. This was the immediate cause of the late rupture and present revolution."
The southern leadership - in it's own words - makes it clear what the most important factor in their decision to enter into rebellion was and that was the institution of slavery.
That would have been New York in 1827. From a strictly legal standpoint it actually would have been Kentucky and Deleware and those parts of the southern states controlled by the North when the Emancipation Proclamation became effective. Slavery was theoretically legal there until December 1865.
Wrong. The question of the legality of the blockade was decided by the Supreme Court in 1863 in what are commonly called the "Prize Cases". The Supreme Court decided that the blockade was a legal extension of the President's powers to supress rebellion.
That is my major complaint with Adams' book. It if very poorly researched and full of inaccuracies such as these. The Civil War is one of the most thoroughly documented wars of the 19th century. There are warehouses full of government documents before, during, and after the war for both North and south. Every major figure in the war except Lincoln wrote memoirs. Every political leader of both the North and the south left masses of written documentation on their thoughts and positions both before the war and after. And yet Adams uses none of this. He quotes endlessly from newspaper editorials and nothing from the figures who actually made the history. All in all it is a very poorly researched work and little more than page after page of his own opinions.
BTW, I have a used copy of the book I am willing to sell cheap.
may i also recommend, LINCOLN & the SECRET SIX? that's another EYE-OPENER of a book.
for dixie,sw
?
You are telling us that there were no slaves in the North for approximately 20+ years before the War of Northern Aggression?
So were there slaves in the North during the Civil War? Yes. But even taking into consideration the 4 border south states that remained loyal to the Union 9 out of every 10 slaves still lived in the confederate states.
If you can't disprove them then how can you claim that they are lies?
That's interesting - kind of like they love Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton?
TIME OUT - no flames, please. I don't think Lincoln was evil incarnate, but he was not faultless, either. Slavery was (and is) evil.
I've made observations that I'd love to write a book about, but I know I'll never get around to it. But, let me ask you, and everyone else something - Doesn't it seem to you that we have substituted very poor education today for illegal education of slaves back then? - Is it too much of a stretch to see that those poorly educated people (too often "coincidentally" black) are now paid very little to work at the "McDonald's Plantation", or at the local "Hometown Factory Plantation"?
This is not a Southern problem alone. And there will always be bigots on BOTH sides of the fence. Your insistence that those of us who long for states's rights are all bigots is comparable to me calling you a Communist because you like a strong federal government.
I'll grant that slavery was a big part. But it was NOT the only issue.
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