Politically Correct History

The political left in America has apparently decided that American history must be rewritten so that it can be used in the political campaign for reparations for slavery. Congressman Jesse Jackson, Jr., of Chicago inserted language in a Department of Interior appropriations bill for 2000 that instructed the National Park Service to propagandize about slavery as the sole cause of the war at all Civil War park sites. The Marxist historian Eric Foner has joined forces with Jackson and will assist the National Park Service in its efforts at rewriting history so that it better serves the political agenda of the far left. Congressman Jackson has candidly described this whole effort as "a down payment on reparations." (Foner ought to be quite familiar with the "art" of rewriting politically-correct history. He was the chairman of the committee at Columbia University that awarded the "prestigious" Bancroft Prize in history to Emory University’s Michael A. Bellesiles, author of the anti-Second Amendment book, "Arming America," that turned out to be fraudulent. Bellesiles was forced to resign from Emory and his publisher has ceased publishing the book.)

In order to accommodate the political agenda of the far left, the National Park Service will be required in effect to teach visitors to the national parks that Abraham Lincoln was a liar. Neither Lincoln nor the US Congress at the time ever said that slavery was a cause – let alone the sole cause – of their invasion of the Southern states in 1861. Both Lincoln and the Congress made it perfectly clear to the whole world that they would do all they could to protect Southern slavery as long as the secession movement could be defeated.

On March 2, 1861, the U.S. Senate passed a proposed Thirteenth Amendment to the US Constitution (which passed the House of Representatives on February 28) that would have prohibited the federal government from ever interfering with slavery in the Southern states. (See U.S. House of Representatives, 106th Congress, 2nd Session, The Constitution of the United States of America: Unratified Amendments, Document No. 106-214, presented by Congressman Henry Hyde (Washington, D.C. U.S. Government Printing Office, January 31, 2000). The proposed amendment read as follows:

Two days later, in his First Inaugural Address, Abraham Lincoln promised to support the amendment even though he believed that the Constitution already prohibited the federal government from interfering with Southern slavery. As he stated:

This of course was consistent with one of the opening statements of the First Inaugural, where Lincoln quoted himself as saying: "I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so."

That’s what Lincoln said his invasion of the Southern states was not about. In an August 22, 1862, letter to New York Tribune editor Horace Greeley he explained to the world what the war was about:

Of course, many Americans at the time, North and South, believed that a military invasion of the Southern states would destroy the union by destroying its voluntary nature. To Lincoln, "saving the Union" meant destroying the secession movement and with it the Jeffersonian political tradition of states’ rights as a check on the tyrannical proclivities of the central government. His war might have "saved" the union geographically, but it destroyed it philosophically as the country became a consolidated empire as opposed to a constitutional republic of sovereign states.

On July 22, 1861, the US Congress issued a "Joint Resolution on the War" that echoed Lincoln’s reasons for the invasion of the Southern states:

By "the established institutions of those states" the Congress was referring to slavery. As with Lincoln, destroying the secession movement took precedence over doing anything about slavery.

On March 2, 1861 – the same day the "first Thirteenth Amendment" passed the U.S. Senate – another constitutional amendment was proposed that would have outlawed secession (See H. Newcomb Morse, "The Foundations and Meaning of Secession," Stetson Law Review, vol. 15, 1986, pp. 419–36). This is very telling, for it proves that Congress believed that secession was in fact constitutional under the Tenth Amendment. It would not have proposed an amendment outlawing secession if the Constitution already prohibited it.

Nor would the Republican Party, which enjoyed a political monopoly after the war, have insisted that the Southern states rewrite their state constitutions to outlaw secession as a condition of being readmitted to the Union. If secession was really unconstitutional there would have been no need to do so.

These facts will never be presented by the National Park Service or by the Lincoln cultists at the Claremont Institute, the Declaration Foundation, and elsewhere. This latter group consists of people who have spent their careers spreading lies about Lincoln and his war in order to support the political agenda of the Republican Party. They are not about to let the truth stand in their way and are hard at work producing "educational" materials that are filled with false but politically correct history.

Some of his facts differ from information I have:

Under International law, a legal distinction is made between an insurrection, rebellion and international war.

(Source: Alfred H. Kelly & Winfred A. Harbison, The American Constitution, Its Origins and Development, Fourth Edition, W.W. Norton & Co., Inc. c1970.)

"An insurrection is legally construed to be an organized and armed uprising for public political purposes; it may seek to overthrow the government, or it may seek merely to surpress certain laws or alter administrative practice. A rebellion in general is considered to have a much more highly developed political and military organization than an insurrection; in international law it conveys belligerent status. Generally such belligerent status implies that the belligerent government is attempting by war to free itself from the jurisdiction of a parent state, that it has an orgainzed de facto government, that it is in control of at least some territory, and that it has sufficient proportions to render the issue of the conflict in doubt. An international war, on the other hand, is one between two or more independent states who are recognized members of the family of nations.

"In international law the rights of parties to an armed conflict vary greatly with their status. Insurgents have very limited status; they are not mere pirates or bandits, but their activities do not constitute "war" in the de jure sense, and they cannot claim against neutrals the privileges of the laws of war. A full rebellion, on the other hand, is a "war" so far as international law is concerned and the rebel government possesses all the belligerent rights of a fully recognized international state, toward both neutrals and the parent state. Needless to say, a parent state may attempt by force to surpress either an insurrection or a rebellion. In domestic law rebels may be criminals in the eyes of the parent state, and answerable to its courts if their movement fails. Thus under the United States Constitution insurrection and rebellion constitute treason, for which the laws provide severe penalties.

"The Southern secessionists took the position that the armed conflict was an international war between the United States and the Confederate States of America. The Confederates believed that secession had been constitutional and that they had not only a de facto government entitled to full belligerent rights but also a de jure government whose independence and sovereignty should be recognized by foreign powers. In their hope of winning the war the Southerners counted heavily upon the aid and the intervention of foreign nations and they were bitterly disappointed when little aid was forthcoming. Even after the collapse of the Confederacy all true Southerners held that the struggle had been a 'War between the States.'

"The official position of the Union government was that secession was a constitutional impossibility and a nullity, and hence that the so-called Confederates were engaged in an insurrection against their lawful government. When the Confederates fired upon Fort Sumner, President Lincoln proclaimed on April 15, 1861, that the execution of federal laws was being obstructed 'by combinations too powerful to be suppressed by the ordinary course of judicial proceedings.' Therefore he called for the militia to suppress the insurrection, in much the same way that Washington had done in the Whisky Rebellion of 1794. Both Congress and the Supreme Court later supported Lincoln's theory of the war, even though the war attained enormous proportions.

"In harmony with this insurrection theory the Union government throughout the was was meticulously careful to avoid any act that even suggested official recognition of the Confederacy as a de jure independent state. At first the United States attempted to deny the Confederacy possessed even belligerent status. Thus in 1861, the State Department objected strongly to foreign powers granting belligerent rights to the Confederacy. Throughout the war the Lincoln administration invariably maintained that no peace terms could be considered unless they were premised upon the legal nonexistence of the Confederacy and the complete submission of the 'rebels' to Union authority. In theory Union spokesmen commonly insisted that they were dealing only with the 'pretended government' of the 'so-called Confederate States of America.'"

The United States never declared war. Lincoln believed that the States were legally incapable of seceding from the Union; that the Union was sovereign and indivisable.

In accordance with this legal position, it was impossible for the rebel states to form a new nation, rather they were states in which an insurrection was taking place. Abraham Lincoln issued a Proclamation that an insurrection existed in the states of South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana and Texas on April 15, 1861, ("Messages & Papers of the Presidents," vol. V, p.3214). He also proclaimed a blockade of Southern harbors on April 19, 1861. The date of this proclamation was taken by the Supreme Court in several cases to be the official beginning of the insurrection.

The Confederate States, on the other hand, passed "An Act recognizing the existence of war between the United States and the Confederate States" on May 6, 1861. This act exempted Maryland, North Carolina, Kentucky, Arkansas, Mousouri, Delaware and the territories of Arizona and New Mexico, and the Indian Territory south of Kansas. The Confederacy proceeded upon the legal basis that the Union was a voluntary association of States that had joined together to create a federal government, leaving the State free to withdraw from it or secede at any time.

Under the "insurrectionist" theory, Moderate Congressmen of both the Republican and Democratic parties took the view that the very existence of the Confederacy had been officially illegitimate. Hence, at the war's end there had been no peace treaty - the Confederacy just dissolved. The Southern states would just revert to the Union unconditionally.

Accordingly, after Union armies had gained control of several Southern States, Lincoln initiated a system of provisional military governors, instructing them to establish governments loyal to the Union. Considering restoration of the Union to be a Presidential function, on December 8, 1863, Lincoln issued a "Proclamation of Amnesty and Reconstruction" setting forth a plan by which an occupied state could become politically restored to the Union. At least ten percent of those who had voted in the State in the 1860 election would be required to take an oath of allegiance to the United States. After that, the state could organized its own government and resume its old place as a full and equal partner in the Union. Lincoln viewed the seceding southern states as "out of their proper relation" to the Union, the object being to restore them to proper relationship.

Before the war's end, new governments were formed in Arkansas, Louisiana and Tennessee under this plan. With the exception of Tennessee, these governments had been created largely by the military governors and lacked support of the people. Congress refused to seat the elected representatives of these new governments.

Some in Congress took another view that the southern states had been in rebellion by separating from the Union and establishing an independent government and that upon occupancy, they should be treated as a conquered territory. Following this line of reasoning, some, such as Charles Sumner, asserted the "state suicide" theory that the southern States had destroyed their original standing as States and would have to start all over again to seek admission as a State in the Union. As the admission of new States was solely a Congressional power under the Constitution, this theory held that the President had no authority to "restore" the Union.

From 1861-1865 (both during and after the war,) Congress persisted in treating the South as a conquered territory under martial law. Under international law, parties at war or in rebellion were entitled to the privileges of war, including confiscation of property. Lands confiscated by the North were granted to blacks under General Sherman's Field Order No. 15, which allowed twenty thousand black families to farm hundreds of thousands of acres of confiscated plantation land on the Georgia and South Carolina coast. Under captured property law, federal treasury agents seized pieces of real estate, including Arlington, General Lee's home.

In July of 1864, Congress passed the Wade-Davis Bill to formalize the treatment of the Southern states as conquered territory under martial law. It provided for the appointment of a military commander for each Confederate state who would be responsible for enrolling white male citizens. Following an oath of allegiance of all enrolees, qualified voters would chose delegates to a State constitutional convention. Provided that it first repudiated secession and abolished slavery, the convention would establish a new State government. In order to attend the convention, delegates had to take an "iron-clad" oath swearing that they had never voluntarily served or supported the Confederacy.

After Congress adjourned, Lincoln offered the Southerners the choice of following the Wade-Davis formula if they wished. None of the states wanted to embrace the formula, so Lincoln awarded the bill a pocket veto.

There were several plans subsequently advanced for the South. Thaddeus Stevens' plan for reconstruction called for the confiscation of land belonging to about seventy thousand leading Confederates and redistribution of this land to every black family desiring land. Any remaining land would be sold to pay the war debt, provide military pensions and compensate Southern Unionists for damages incurred in the war.

President Johnson continued the policies of Lincoln, believing that "reunion" was a presidential affair the main objective of which was to "restore" the proper relationship among the States. On June 13, 1865, he proclaimed the insurrection in Tennessee at an end, ("Messages and Papers of the Presidents," V, p. 3515;) and on Apr. 2, 1866, he proclaimed the insurrection ended in all the former Confederate States except Texas. On August 20, 1866, Pres. Johnson proclaimed that Texas had complied with the conditions of his Reconstruction proclamation and declared the insurrection in Texas at an end, (Mess. & Pap. V, p. 3632.)

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