Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Best Defense of Southern Secession I have ever read.

Lincoln's Inversion of the American Union
03/01/2013•Donald W. Livingston

https://mises.org/library/lincolns-inversion-american-union

Excerpt:

Slavery was more secure in 1860 than it had ever been. The Supreme Court, in the Dred Scott decision, had declared that Africans were not citizens; and Congress approved a constitutional amendment that would take the regulation of slavery forever out of the hands of the central government. Lincoln said that he had no authority and no inclination to interfere with slavery in the states where it was legal. He could tolerate slavery as a means of controlling what nearly everyone saw to be an exotic and alien population. What he could not tolerate was a dissolution of the Union, loss of revenue from the South, and a low-tariff zone on his southern border. This was the consistent thread running through Lincoln’s policy from 1860–1865. He would not recognize the conventions of the people of the southern states, and he would not negotiate with their commissioners. He would go to war immediately to coerce the states of the deep South back into the Union. And it was this act that Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Arkansas could not tolerate. They had been opposed to the radicalism of the deep South, and their legislatures had voted firmly to stay within the Union. But they would not answer Lincoln’s call for troops to coerce a state into the Union; this they considered not only unconstitutional, but immoral. And in this they were correct. But so strong is the Lincoln myth and so interwoven with American self-identity that Americans have never been able to confront the stark immorality and barbarism of Lincoln’s decision to invade the South and to pursue total war against its civilian population.

To this we may add that the modern prejudice against secession has also served to occlude the immorality of the invasion. Here was a union of sovereign states only seventy years old. These states had originally asserted their sovereignty in acts of secession from the British empire, and the Union itself had been formed by an act of secession from the Articles of Confederation. Virginia, New York, and Rhode Island reserved the right to secede in their ordinances ratifying the Constitution, and secession was a part of public discourse in all sections throughout the antebellum period. This union, through conquest, purchase, and annexation, had, in fifty years, swollen to some ten times its original size. The Republic of Texas, having seceded from Mexico, had been in the Union only fifteen years. Secession is destabilizing in that it suddenly produces new majorities and new minorities. But annexation is destabilizing in exactly the same way. Rapid expansion led to rapidly shifting majorities and minorities and to conflicts of great and important interests.

By 1860, a choice lay open between either re-negotiating the compact between the states in order to form more perfect unions, as John Quincy Adams counseled should happen, or a powerful section would have to conquer the whole and reconstruct it into its own image, subordinating all else to its own interests. Everything in the older American tradition of the self-government of peoples points to the former path. Lincoln chose the latter path, and in doing so was in step with the nineteenth- and twentieth-century trend of industrial society to consolidationism. Southerners, at great sacrifice, sought to defend that older American notion of self-government, a notion which was pushed to the margins of American consciousness after the Army of Northern Virginia surrendered at Appomattox. But it has not been extinguished, and has greater purchase in the world today than ever before as the consolidated leviathans of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries are being called into question. The Russian invasion of Chechenya is widely regarded as barbarous, but the Russians have a better title to rule Chechenya than Lincoln had to coerce eleven contiguous American states into the Union.

This broader experience enables us to take a fresh look at the morality of Lincoln’s decision. It has been said that, although the Union was originally conceived as a compact between sovereign states entailing a right to secession, it evolved into the notion of an indivisible, organic Union from which secession was impossible. This notion, however, was late in arriving, and was not universally received by 1860. Southerners obviously did not believe it, nor did many northerners. There was tremendous opposition to Lincoln’s invasion of the South. To maintain power, he was forced to suspend the writ of habeas corpus throughout the North for the duration of the war, netting tens of thousands of political prisoners. Some 300 opposition newspapers were closed down. Democratic candidates, critical of the war, were arrested by the military, and the military was used to secure Republican victories at the polls, including Lincoln’s election in 1864.3

Moot point, as there aren't any Mulligans in war, particularly 151 years after the war ended.

Winners write the history books.

The writer goes on about morality yet says nothing about the morality of slavery. Might be writing with a bias. Legal and moral aren't always the same thing.

Read "The South Was Right" by Ronald and Donald Kennedy. It's more excellent reading on this subject.

Another thing ignored is the sheer numbers of men fighting for the South that did not own, nor had ever owned a slave. miles

We look at things with different ideas and backgrounds than our ancestors did. I am not trying to say that slavery was right, but it was practiced in lots of the world at that time. It would have went away on it own, given time, simply because of equipment modernization. The cotton gin had already started it on that path. Before the gin, slaves picked the seeds out of cotton by hand during the winter months. The gin made it so there was not work to be done during that time, that could be done inside in bad weather. It would be financially better to have share croppers that they did not have to feed during times of slow work. It would not have been overnight, but it was coming. miles

There are plenty of people behind bars today who didn't actually commit a crime, but they were accessory to it and therefore just as guilty.

There was no crime, slavery was legal. My people defended Virginia just as the men of North Carolina fought to defend their state. For non natives of the south it's a concept many can't get their minds around.

So, wonder when "they" will take Lincoln's picture off money, and replace him with black women? Maybe start tearing down his statues?

Lincoln is the one guilty of a crime

Yep!

AMEN!

The wrong side won that war, for sure.

The Civil War essentially ended the concept of "states rights" as was originally intended in the formation of the Union.

It has progressively gotten more stifling & overwhelming to the point today where virtually no state's rights exist that cannot be, or have not been, completely erased via the federal law & government.

Under the current concept, there's really no reason to ahve states anymore as they have, essentially, become moot.

Under Lincoln's concept & (illegitimate) thought process, Great Britain could have never exited the European Union.

MM

+1

Would have been interested to see how it all turned out if the South hadn't started shooting.

When the North invaded Southern territory.

I've said it on this board many times, but it is like speaking to a brick wall, regardless of the reasons the other seven Confederate states cited as their reasons for secession, it is plainly evident by demonstrable historical fact that Arkansas, Tennessee, North Carolina, and Virginia did not secede because of slavery.

“...I therefore hate the corrupt, slaveholding, women-whipping, cradle-plundering, partial and hypocritical Christianity of the land... I look upon it as the climax of all misnomers, the boldest of all frauds, and the grossest of all libels. Never was there a clearer case of 'stealing the livery of the court of heaven to serve the devil in.' I am filled with unutterable loathing when I contemplate the religious pomp and show, together with the horrible inconsistencies, which every where surround me. We have men-stealers for ministers, women-whippers for missionaries, and cradle-plunderers for church members. The man who wields the blood-clotted cowskin during the week fills the pulpit on Sunday, and claims to be a minister of the meek and lowly Jesus. . . . The slave auctioneer’s bell and the church-going bell chime in with each other, and the bitter cries of the heart-broken slave are drowned in the religious shouts of his pious master. Revivals of religion and revivals in the slave-trade go hand in hand together. The slave prison and the church stand near each other. The clanking of fetters and the rattling of chains in the prison, and the pious psalm and solemn prayer in the church, may be heard at the same time. The dealers in the bodies of men erect their stand in the presence of the pulpit, and they mutually help each other. The dealer gives his blood-stained gold to support the pulpit, and the pulpit, in return, covers his infernal business with the garb of Christianity. Here we have religion and robbery the allies of each other—devils dressed in angels’ robes, and hell presenting the semblance of paradise.”
― Frederick Douglass, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass

Abortion is legal too. Does that mean it's OK...?

Sore ass losers.

We complain that many blacks in America haven't gotten over slavery and moved on and yet the south continues to bitch about a poor decision on their part from 150 years ago. The south got to live with the consequences of their actions.

My family is of southern heritage(GA, SC, NC, MS, TX, AR)and came to this country in the 1680's and fought with the CSA. I understand their cause but have zero sympathy for the way they went about resolving their grievances.

Complain all you want but as screwed up as we are as a country we would be a disaster for the last 150 years as a fractionalized groups of country states.

We would be infinitely better off.

+1

Bullshit

One thing's for sure.

We have to re-fight the War Between the States about every 3-4 months here. Whether we need to or not.

But, I have not seen anything change in the way our country is.

Maybe it's a good time to be looking forward rather than backward?

If you southerners had just picked your own cotton, we wouldn't have had the Civil War and America would not have most of the problems it has today.

Had the South won, you would be free to your opinion and we, ours. As it is, there is only one acceptable opinion. So buckle up, Comrade, because everything bad in this giant centralized and increasingly communistic super state is a direct result of "your side" winning that unfortunate fracas.

What are you doing to fight abortion?

South continues to bitch or the North continues to remind us? I think it is the latter quite frankly.

Not talking or taking sides... the simple obvious fact is the US did some amazing things as a country that would not likely have been possible as a bunch of realigned states with different issues. For one, WWI might have been quite different and so soon after the War of Northern Aggression it would be easy to visualize the southern states staying out of it.

Really?

I think the Rebel flags in every pickup give that argument away...

Substitute 2nd amendment argument and you'll have your answer

It's pretty evident it seems the federal gov't will let you live in peace as long as you do exactly what they command of you.

Otherwise they label you a criminal & take what they want

Agreed.
The descendants of slaves are supposed to just 'get over it' and get on with life, but it's OK for the descendants of Confederates to be bitter and butt hurt till the end of time.

Painting with a broad brush are you not? They don't fly rebel flags anywhere but the south you say? I hunt a very large plantation in Alabama and have not heard the landowners ever complain about slavery having been abolished. In fact this family has been in the area before the Civil war and never owned slaves. They do however complain about the Federal Government and their overreach .

Yes, WW I would have been different. Most likely, Germany would have won or the European powers would have exhausted themselves. But, the knowledge that America was coming in made the Allies refuse to consider peace and it made the Germans desperate. So desperate that they put a funny little guy named Lenin on a sealed train and sent him to Russia in hopes that he would foment a revolution that took Russia out of the war in time to free up their troops in the east for one last push in the west before the Americans arrived in numbers.

It is quite likely that had America not entered WW I that there would have been no Soviet Union and certainly no NAZI Germany. And even if you wish to argue that it is unknowable, there is nothing to be happy about with the result of that war and our intervention as that it did absolutely nothing but guarantee WW II and all of its horrors.

I think you are making my argument for me.

There are a lot of things that are legal that are immoral. The corporation I worked twenty years for took all the cash out of my retirement fund and filled it with worthless stock, but the court said it was legal.

Not hardly!

There ARE huge repercussions as 'hang overs' from Lincoln's War of Northern Aggression that we are witnessing today and if you can't draw the correlation as to some of our major problems today then you're denying the fact of the matter!!

Based on the uncertain equations of Heisenberg, had the South prevailed, there would have been a Hitler and he would have made good the genocide of European Jews and the nation of Israel would not have been created. Prophetically, the Middle East would still be a killing field like it has always been.

Looking forward, the voluntary re-alignment of the several States whose citizens agree with the Foundational principles of our Consitutional Republic, offers the best option for a peaceful resolution of our fundamental differences.

We don't need to "refight" the War of 1860 -intentional terminology to remove ideological arguments of form over substance- but we need to accept that the ideological differences between freedom and the concept of inelienable individual rights of citizens vs the collectivist view of the greater good of a society of subjects subordinating the individual's rights, is a gulf we can't bridge through negotiated political solutions.

Dissolution of a compact which has now produced a tyranical central government is the right of free citizens. So called 'secession' is one approach that can be considered.

Note that many such dissolutions have taken place over the last 50 years throughout the world, many with great attendant strife, yielding better alignment of their respective peoples.

Why? A secessionist started it, like always. Then you wannabe Johnny Rebs go through the same whine and pine until those living in reality can't take any more of it and pipe in. Maybe someday more will get their heads out of their azzes and realize the chit they've been smelling's been their own, but I don't figure it will be many or soon. If I couldn't get through the day without blaming something that happened 150 years ago for all the perceived injustice I could dream up and pile up, I'd leave for greener pastures or suck a glock. What a waste of energy and time. Truly.

Since 1776 it was obvious there was going to be a war. The elites of the time had too much money tied up in their "property" to ever give it up. Whether it was the South starting the shooting and the Civil War, or whether they had split off and later had a devastating internal war or simply a later war between the new southern states and the Union as anti-slavery forces smuggled weapons to the slaves, it was going to happen.

Blaming the North is silly.

Lots of "what ifs" here, but simple logic tells me a UNITED States of America was a better thing that two separate countries, one agrarian and the other industrialized. And how about the West? who would have laid claim to the remaining territories? All speculation, but as far as I am concerned, I wish the war had never happened.

The North made the bed, now everyone has to sleep in it. Isn't it wonderful.

Good point regarding Lenin and the aftermath, but frankly Germany lost that war the second the failed to take Paris and the Royal Navy strangled the country. After 1 August 1914, not a SINGLE merchant ship left or entered German ports and they were not self sufficient.

The only thing I'm butthurt about is how fu*king stupid and liberal Yankees are TODAY.

They are leading the charge to destroying the nation. Only now the Yankees have California on their side.

Well said and spot on.

I don't want to play the alternate universe theories about if Hitler would have killed jews regardless, but I hate to point out the obvious,

The slaves were given independence(and squandered it).

The Confederacy was essentially entangled, in perpetuity, in a crap federal government.

So why can't the 'south' complain about the consequence of 'their' actions, under those circumstances?

True, but if the US had been truly neutral, Britain and France would have exhausted themselves as well. They could not have kept it going for so long without US money and material.

The republic of sovereign states came to an end in 1865 and was replaced by a democracy....and a democracy is the stepping stone to socialism....that we are on the verge of today.

Explain to me, how the destruction of the republic, is considered "winning"?

Lincoln and Obama have been the two biggest destroyers of the constitution.....no doubt. Andy3

I have said that many times. You can't imagine the hell i catch from some. As soon as they are asked to defend their position slavery is the only answer they have. Taught in northern schools they have never been exposed to all the facts. Just one example of the sorry state of education. I was fortunate to have teachers who strayed off the reservation from time to time.

The Tenth Amendment died then. Slowly other parts of the Bill of Rights are being chipped away at, the Second is firmly in the crosshairs now.

Everyone wants to blame the civil war but in fact the industrial revolution was the implement that changed the way things were far more than anything in history had before it, worldwide. It made incredibly rich people and that upended both the Constitution and how power would be centered. But keep on fighting that war on here and elsewhere. It's what they want. Keep the little people bickering about nonsense of the past so they can't focus on the real enemy that lives among them now.

So if the South would have won, then Germany would have won WW1. If that happened we might not have had a Hitlary and so on. Not a bad thing.

RickyD, The "nonsense of the past", as you put it, got us to where we are today. Prime example of repeating ignored history. Just a crying shame to watch us follow the lead of Italy, Greece, Spain, and the rest of Europe.....eagerly. Andy3

Don't believe for a moment those countries aren't also wallowing in their history both flawed and magnificent, unable to move forward into the hard realities of the present, just as we are. And we can't learn from that, as we witness it but prefer to re-fight a war, every participant would have strongly preferred to avoid once involved. Communal insanity is still insane.

As the campfire norm Scott, you're making generalizations because it's easier than thinking through the problem. It is not north vs south, it is rural vs urban and has been the last 50 years.

Atlanta, Memphis and Miami are just as f'ed up as NY City, Chicago and Seattle. My experience is that those in the rural areas are much more on the conservative side than the urban. We're not in a north south war for our culture and our personal independence anymore this time it's much harder to define than a line on a map in southern PA. In fact, there are no lines and there of many of us that live far urban more than others that are on the side of independence and personal freedom.

I was about to say pretty much the same thing. Jefferson said "When we get piled upon one another in large cities, as in Europe, we shall become as corrupt as Europe." Boy was he right as usual.

Urbanization changes peoples outlook and I believe tends to make them tend less towards self reliance. Take the depression for instance. My Granddaddy raised a family during that time and never once had to stand in a bread line because he lived in the country. He could raise hogs, chickens, a big garden, hunt, fish, etc which allowed him to survive. A guy in a similar situation in a city at the time was pretty much screwed if he could not find work.

You are absolutely right about the effedupness of large Southern Cities such as the cancer in my home state that is Atlanta. The only difference is that they have not yet metastasized to critical mass but they are getting there. The reason for that could be that we lost the civil war and development of the south was set back probably 50-75 years.

It's interesting to speculate. Who knows what would have happened if WWI had not started in the first place. We can be reasonably certain had the US remained neutral, there would have been an Armistice, but what compromises? Alsace-Lorraine? The Balkans? And there is of course the issue of Palestine and the ME. The permutations are endless.

Well said!

If kidnapping a man away from his home and family and selling him aren't sins then nothing is.

If me and my ancestors for the last 150 years had been pandered to and handed as much free schitt as slaves and their descendants have, I wouldn't be butt hurt about anything......and they're still whining en masse in a pitch so high that, with any luck, soon only dogs will be able to hear it.

So all the Confederates did this?

The Arabs did most of the kidnapping and selling....why the indigenous peoples of Africa refused to fight against their would-be captors is beyond me. They basically allowed themselves to be enslaved...which is in line with the history of the world.

Some tribes were noticeably absent...you didn't see a Masai or Nandi enslaved....that would have resulted in Arab Kabob on their spears...

You'd like to think you wouldn't be, based on the work ethic and values you now hold, but being handed free chit and pandered to robs people of that ethic and values. That was the democrats choice and it's served them well, as it's gutted America.

Thank You. The truth of how slavery came about is lost on most Yankees.

Their captors had guns.

The Africans were a superior civilization, ax any black activist or the current president.

I'm almost tired of hearing the broad brush of slavery painted on every Confederate soldier.

Was freeing the slaves Lincoln's only reason for invading the south?

Was freeing the slaves the reason southern homes burned?


There's always - ALWAYS - more to the story, and the truth lies somewhere other than the story line.

And I'm afraid I can't accept that the whole country would have been worse off separated as I can that we are better off, right now, united.

Anyway, another academic discussion...

The buyers are complicit and as guilty as the sellers. Any court of law shows this to be the case.

It was an incredibly stupid war that destroyed the old order. From it came the Soviet Union and international communism, the NAZIs and everything after. Without that war, our world would be almost unrecognizable. I'm convinced that when future historians write the history of western civilization, they'll say WWI killed it. If I had to pick a period in history that today is like, I would say we are about 550 AD in Rome. The empire actually fell 80 years before, but there was still a barbarian who styled himself as emperor. There was still a Senate. There were still occasional games in the Colisseum. No one really realized that it was already finished. It wasn't until much later that historians looked back and said "470 was the end of the empire."

And as for America involvement in that stupid war, we did nothing but prolong it and cause its effects to be worse in the end.

Yup.

Lincoln's primary reason for the war was to prevent states from leaving the U.S., ie; exerting more federal control, no states rights............how's that federal control working for you today? everybody happy?

Slavery was just lip service reason of convenience & another excuse for justifying the war because of secession.

MM

You are simply another northern transplant that moved south that doesn't know our history or respect our culture. You look down your nose at us while proclaiming your moral superiority and wonder why we all hate you.

You mean this is the south? Every other person seems to be an Ohian. I was a Civil War reenactor. I might know a little about the circumstances leading up to the war.

You're a carpetbagger.

There goes that superior attitude, can't stop yourself.

Yep.

As has been said time and again, secession was a right reserved BY the states in their votes to joint the US and reserved TO the states by the Constitution. Slavery was Constitutional, and the way to change that is via an Amendment. The actions of the Southern states were Constitutional and legal. The actions by Lincoln and the Feds were neither.

All else fails against those facts.

Clearly not.

Winner winner chicken dinner!

Southerners just like downplaying slavery and uplifting states rights which is their favorite issue because when you get right down to it slavery is indefensible. I don't blame the south for trying to paint it out of the picture.
"The truth is not always palatable and should not always be told"

If you are so down on southerners why would you ever leave your northern utopia to live in the south?

The liberal mindset is one to foist your ideas and beliefs upon others, insist that they take them, and have no regards for their beliefs...

" If you don't think like me...then you're just plain wrong..."

Show me, EXACTLY, where in the Constitution circa 1861 that secession was barred to the states. You'll have to overcome the actually language in the states own votes to join the US to do that. If you can't, then you run up on the 10th Amendment.

After that, circa 1861 US Constitution, show me EXACTLY where slavery was prohibited. You'll run up on the actual Constitution and the 3/5 Compromise, too.

If you cannot show those things, then the facts remain that the actions by the Southern states were Constitutional and legal. Therefore, the actions by Lincoln and the Feds were neither.

Being a "re-enactor" doesn't give you any insight into actual history or facts. It'd be like claiming you were a scholar of the fall of Greece and Rome because your fraternity had toga parties. It's laughable, and even more so in the face of ACTUAL facts.

It happens all the time when they move down here, I try to just avoid them

The South had a Constitutional right to secede. I never said they did not.

This all reminds me very much of Capital Punishment. A select few consider it wrong, so the rest of society pays for it. In a perfect world those who decry Capital Punishment could have the perps get off the public payroll and stay in their basements.
Those who decry slavery could foot the bill for welfare, food stamps medical care etc. and let the rest of us feel OK about our beliefs...

But that would be in a perfect world....

If so, then the actions of Lincoln and the Feds were then unconstitutional.

Case closed.

Capitol punishment doesn't happen quick enough or often enough.

In my experience, most Northerners don't feel any particular attachment to the American Civil War and, if they do, it isn't nearly as strong an attachment as some Southerners continue to feel.

This the question I continually asked of the Northerners that move down here and immediately start in on how bad, backward, benighted, besotted, etc. we Southerners and The South are.

If the North is so great why in the world would you want to move away from utopia to dystopia?

The professor has joined the fray again.

Y'all pull up a chair.

Good to see around a bit, hbb.

If this is somehow about slavery..let me point out that George Washington was himself flustered about what to do about his slaves..to him they were a burden, not worth what little they produced.