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Arguing the Case for Southern Secession
Lew Rockwell ^ | 12/20/01 | Reviewed by Joseph R. Stromberg

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.


TOPICS: Miscellaneous
KEYWORDS: dixie; dixielist; secession
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To: LadyJD
HI lady,

long time, no see!

for dixie,sw

301 posted on 12/29/2001 12:14:00 AM PST by stand watie
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To: stand watie
I drop by here when I have the time. FR is a great place to get updates on breaking news but seems to have become a bad place for those not enamoured of the regime.

Merry Christmas!

302 posted on 12/29/2001 12:14:03 AM PST by LadyJD
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To: LadyJD
YES Ma'am!

the forum is also frequently a unpleasant place for southron patriots as well. in the last 10 days i've gotten NUMEROUS e-mails that accuse us of being UN-AMERICAN! NOTHING is MORE American than being for LIBERTY & FREEDOM, imVho.

i also find it strange that MOST southron patriots have served in the armed forces in wartime, while most of the accusers didn't serve period (wee willie klintoon for one.)! one thing is for certain: running one's mouth is SAFER than military service!

for dixie,sw

303 posted on 12/29/2001 12:14:10 AM PST by stand watie
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Comment #304 Removed by Moderator

To: stand watie
But again you make a claim without having any idea if it is true or not. I would worry about how you look rather than how I look if I were you. I'll just chalk this one up as yet another 'stande watie whopper' and let it go at that.
305 posted on 12/29/2001 12:14:36 AM PST by Non-Sequitur
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To: bert
Southern Independence is going to happen. There is just too much difference between the "blue zone", Al Gore, North-east, and west-coast, and the traditional "Confederate South". Southern independence never looked so good...

For a free South

Larry Salley

306 posted on 12/29/2001 12:18:30 AM PST by l8pilot
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To: Non-Sequitur
as you are easily identified as one of the main anti-southron bigots on the forum, frankly i don't care what you think about me OR what you think of southron liberty.

nonetheless, the damnyankee propaganda you post is typical of the ignorant, arrogant, extremist,leftist, racebaiting northeastern revisionists of the "poison ivy covered halls" of academia;thus, it makes interesting, if not accurate/truthful, reading.

for dixie,sw

307 posted on 12/29/2001 12:22:13 PM PST by stand watie
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To: l8pilot
VERY too true!

as i've said numerous times: i will not likely live to see southron independence BUT my 11 year-old niece will live to bask in SOUTHRON LIBERTY in a FREE and much improved southron republic. (naysayers are reminded herewith that Ireland struggled for independence for FOUR HUNDRED YEARS!)

LIBERTY cannot come too soon! for dixie,sw

308 posted on 12/29/2001 12:25:47 PM PST by stand watie
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To: stand watie
as you are easily identified as one of the main anti-southron bigots on the forum, frankly i don't care what you think about me OR what you think of southron liberty.

Coming from the premier male anti-northern bigot on this forum you of all people should know what hatred is. But I also take it with a grain of salt given the lack of accuracy you have shown in your posts in the past.

309 posted on 12/29/2001 1:50:51 PM PST by Non-Sequitur
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To: WhiskeyPapa
The usual response of all the paperwork pushers!

First you assume that if any black served in CSA units they must have served in a segregated unit.

Then you assume that with it being illegal to enlist blacks, those who did so would have documented their breaking of regulations!

I was in the military in a maintenance function. According to regulation we were supposed to have X of item 'A' when we needed 3X of that item Y of item 'B' we never used an none of 'C' which was necessary. Needless to say we had 3X of A, non of 'B' except for the empty boxes and a sufficiency of 'C'. Of course there was an inventory every now and then but we were very good at counting what we did not have and not counting what we did!
According to the records we had X of 'A', Y of 'B' and none of 'C'. My CO was quite aware of the situation, and I have never heard of any other maintenance unit in the military, not even those of other branches, which functioned any different! Kept the bean counters happy!

If I had been in the CSA at that time I know how I would have dealt with the situation. The CSA always was short of men, and if someone wanted to fight, and I was forbidden to enlist him, I would have only two problems 1) how to get him a gun and food and 2) how to make sure he got paid. The easiest way would be to make him an "honorary white" and then enlist him as "white", enlisting him as an Indian would have been better - CSA units were not forbidden to enlist American Indians. Maybe I could have enlisted him as a teamster - might not have been authorized horses or wagons but we might need teamsters if we captured a Yankee supply train. There's all kinds of ways of doing things like that, limited only by the imagination of those needing men in the lines!

It was fairly easy for Lee, Davis and the whole CSA congress to not see something they really didn't WANT to see. Lee was a good CO, records DO make it plain he was loved by his men, and one of the traits of a good CO is knowing when to not officially see things! A trait of good NCOs is to conduct officers on inspections in such a manner they do not see anything they would object to and have to notice officially!

Now they have a bunch of bean counters posing as historians, who only accept physical records and ignore all anecdotal evidence (reports of people who saw something not shown to be true by the records)

However a rational person faced with anecdotal evidence of things contrary to that documentation merely figures that that is the tip of an iceberg and there are a whole lot more which are undocumented and unseen as well!

Bean counters are easy to get around by pencil whipping forms!
Yankees are dumb enough to believe that Southerners would DOCUMENT when they were violating regulations!
310 posted on 01/08/2004 4:58:14 AM PST by CAScot
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To: WhiskeyPapa
The poor men of the South are the holders of one to five slaves, and it would be equally consistent with truth and justice to say that they represent, in reality, its slaveholding interest.

Just using a currency converter you have to realize that someone who owned 5 slaves would have a capital net worth of $300,000 minimum, however many sources I've seen claim it would be $100,000 per slave in today's money.

I'd sure like to be poor by THOSE standards!
311 posted on 01/08/2004 5:39:55 AM PST by CAScot
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To: exmarine
Well I can't let that one go! Lincoln in 1864 was even more inept a war leader than Johnson was in 1964!
Lincoln and Davis BOTH micromanaged the war to extreme, the only difference was that Davis was a West Point graduate and at least knew a little about such things, and Lincoln didn't have a clue about what he was doing!
To put Lincoln in a class with Washington as a war leader is shear idiocy, and proves a total lack of knowledge in military leadership principles! It wasn't until Teddy Roosevelt that we had another war leader who was in a class with Washington!
Granted there were men like Taylor who might have been competent in that area, but they were not leaders during wartime!
312 posted on 01/08/2004 6:25:01 AM PST by CAScot
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To: LenS
I wouldn't go NEAR Harlem (which in in NYC) and Detroit, or Chicago either, they're all north of Virginia!
I wouldn't even go into those cities and talk about Southern beliefs to people in the Mayors office! Black or white, it is in the best economic interests of 'those people' to keep the Lincolnian version sacred - It is curious that all the current issue over things Southern started when the rust belt begin bleeding taxpayers, and found it advantageous to try an portray the South as being racked with racial hostility and a bad place to live.


However I do live in the South, and I do talk to lot of black people in the South about such beliefs, and the amount of negative reaction I get is well below 25%.
313 posted on 01/08/2004 7:15:21 AM PST by CAScot
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To: CAScot
It would have helped if you had posted what I said. This thread took place 2 years ago.

In any case, it is a subjective judgment as to whether or not Lincoln was a great wartime leader, isn't it. Most historians would say that he was. You disagree. You have that right. There is zero doubt that he was a very clever politician, and zero doubt that he had the correct perspective on the conduct of the war - and his generals were WRONG most of the time. McClellan, Hooker, Meade - all failed to go after Lee's Army at crucial junctures and/or fell back after they got a bloody nose. Lincoln understood (CORRECTLY!) that the real object was Lee's Army, not Richmond. Lincoln's strategy was vindicated in the prosecution of the war by U.S. Grant. Lincoln repeatedly told his generals that their object of attack was Lee, and Grant was the ONLY general who carried out this aim in the East - and it worked. The war was not won until Lee surrendered his Army. So, how was it that those "West Point graduates" were WRONG about the correct way to prosecute the war, but dumb lanky ole Abe was right? I think you got some 'splainin' to do.

314 posted on 01/09/2004 7:21:26 AM PST by exmarine ( sic semper tyrannis)
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To: shuckmaster

ping


315 posted on 10/31/2005 6:15:55 AM PST by southland (New Orleans was an incident waiting to happen.)
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