1. Southern secession was philosophically sound, legal, and Constitutionally defensible.
2. Abraham Lincoln was a racist, tyrant, traitor, warmonger, and war criminal.
3. The North was not much better than the South when it came to the race question.
Southern secession was philosophically sound, legal, and Constitutionally defensible
This determination was made through a reading of the 10th Amendment, which specifically states:
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The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.
Even today, there is still no clause in the Constitution forbidding secession nor is there a clause granting the federal government the authority to prevent secession.
The idea that Southern secession was justified was supported by many:
a) William Rawe, author of A View of the Constituion which, until 1861, was the constitutional law textbook used by West Point. In chapter 32, Rawe expressly recognized the right of secession. In other words, on the eve of the outbreak of the War Between the States, the federal government itself was teaching its military officers that the right of secession was legitimate.
cool.gif St. George Tucker in 1803 published an American edition of the famous legal scholar William Gladstone’s Commentaries. In that edition, Tucker argued that the right of secession can be derived from 2 standpoints:
i) The states first seceded from Britain. Therefore, according to historical precedent, states have the right to secede from the Union.
ii) States have the obligation to secede from the Union should the Union violate the Constitution. Doing so would be demonstrating the utmost respect for the Constitution.
c) Thomas Jefferson, 3rd president of the US, author of the Declaration of Independence which read in part: "government rests upon the consent of the governed", responded to the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798 by authoring the Kentucky and Virginia resolutions proclaiming the right of secession from tyrannical governments.
d) John Quincy Adams, 6th president of the US, supported the secessionist movement of the New England states during the War of 1812. The argument of the New England states was that the federal government had failed in its obligation to defend the country from foreign aggression. (as represented by British attack on Washington D.C.) That failure signified that the federal government was no longer competent in abiding by its obligations as specified by the Constitution.
e) Former Supreme Court Chief Justice Joseph Story, who also supported the right of New England states to secede during the War of 1812.
f) Franklin Pierce, 14th president of the US, was almost arrested when he argued that Lincoln’s waging of the Civil War was unconstitutional.
g) James Buchanan, 15th president of the US, faulted Lincoln for provoking the South into war.
h) John Tyler, 10th president of the US, signaled his disapproval of Lincoln’s policies most dramatically by serving in the Confederate House of Representatives.
i) Lord Acton, the British and Catholic intellectual, once wrote to Confederate General Robert E. Lee:
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I saw in States Rights the only availing check upon the absolutism of the sovereign will, and secession filled me with hope, not as the destruction but as the redemption of Democracy.... I deemed that you were fighting the battles of our liberty, our progress, and our civilization; and I mourn for the stake which was lost at Richmond more deeply than I rejoice over that which was saved at Waterloo.
j) John C. Calhoun, former Vice President of the US, supported South Carolina’s proclamation of its right of secession during the Nullification crisis.
Indeed, isn’t it an irony that Lincoln decided to accept West Virginia’s secession from Virginia? And how did Lincoln explain this irony:
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[T]here is still difference enough between secession against the constitution, and secession in favor of the constitution.
A far cry from his statement in his First Inaugural Address where he stated that:
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,,,the central idea of secession, is the essence of anarchy.
Instead of condemning secession as a rule, Lincoln chose to condemn only a certain kind of secession.
During the phase of Reconstruction, Congress asserted that the South should be treated like conquered enemy territory. But to do so, the assumption must be that the South successfully seceded. If so, then Lincoln's reasoning for the war, namely that it was an attempt by the central government to put down a rebellion, does not hold. If Lincoln's reasoning holds, then the Congressional Reconstruction plan would be unreasonable.
Abraham Lincoln was a racist, tyrant, traitor, warmonger, and war criminal
1. On 4/27/1861, Lincoln suspended habeas corpus. Later that year, the Supreme Court ruled, in Ex Parte Merryman that Lincoln’s suspension of habeas corpus was illegal, consistent with former Chief Justice John Marshall’s (who ruled in Marbury v. Maryland in 1803 establishing judicial review) 1807 ruling in Ex Parte Bollman and Swartwout that suspension of habeas corpus was a power vested only in the Congress.
St. George Tucker already wrote years earlier in support of the Supreme Court’s interpretation:
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In England the benefit of this important writ can only be suspended by authority of parliament. It has been done several times of late years, both in England and in Ireland, to the great oppression of the subject…In the United States, it can be suspended, only, by the authority of congress; but not whenever congress may think proper; for it cannot be suspended, unless in cases of actual rebellion, or invasion. A suspension under any other circumstances, whatever might be the pretext, would be unconstitutional, and consequently must be disregarded by those whose duty it is to grant the writ.
And how did Lincoln respond to this ruling? Not well. He ordered the US Army not to release Merryman in violation of the order of the Supreme Court. Contrast that with United States v. Nixon when President Nixon turned over the White House tapes once ordered to do so by the Supreme Court.
30,000 Northern Union citizens were tried by military courts.
2. Wrongful imprisonment of 2 US Congressmen.
Congressman Clement Valladingham of Ohio was arrested and later exiled over anti-war remarks he made during his campaign for the governorship of Ohio.
To preempt a possible secession by Maryland, Lincoln arrested 31 of its state legislators, the mayor of Baltimore (then 3rd largest city in the country), and one of its Congressman along with a number of newspaper publishers and editors.
3. On 4/19/1861, Lincoln ordered a blockade of Southern ports, an act of war without an explicit declaration of war from Congress.
4. On 4/20/1861, Lincoln ordered the Secretary of the Treasury to spend money for defense without Congressional authorization, a violation of Article I, Section IX of the Constitution.
5. On 5/3/1861, Lincoln enlarged the army and navy by calling for volunteers, thus violating Constitutional separation of powers which explicitly stated that it is Congress that reserves the power to raise and maintain the military.
Considering all the above, is it surprising that the Georgia legislature passed a resolution in 1864 referring to Lincoln’s actions as:
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the usurpations and tyrannies, which characterize the Government of our enemy, under the ever-recurring and ever-false plea of the necessities of war
6. In a speech given in 1858 during the Lincoln-Douglass debates, Lincoln stated:
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I will say then that I am not, nor ever have been in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races [the crowd applauds] – that I am not nor ever have been in favor of making voters or jurors of negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people, and I will say in addition to this that there is a physical difference between the black and white races which I believe will forever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality. And inasmuch as they cannot so live, while they do remain together there must be the position of superior and inferior, and I as much as any other man am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race….
I am not in favor of Negro citizenship.
Answering a question about whether individual states have the Constitutional power to confer citizenship upon blacks, Lincoln replied:
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If the state of Illinois had that power I should be opposed to the exercise of it.
Not once during the debates did Lincoln show his disapproval of Illinois’s black codes, which forbade free blacks to vote, hold public office, serve as jurors, or intermarry with whites.
In his 1862 letter to the New York Daily Tribune. Lincoln wrote:
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My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and it is not either to save or destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone, I would also do that. What I do about slavery and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save the Union.
As a member of the Illinois legislature in 1837, Lincoln stated:
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[T]he institution of slavery is founded on both injustice and bad policy; but that the promulgation of abolitionist doctrines tends rather to increase than to abate its evils.
Hmm...abolition is worse than slavery. Saith Lincoln.
Lincoln had this to say about the radical segregationist John Brown:
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An enthusiast broods over the oppression of a people till he fancies himself commissioned by Heaven to liberate them.
Hardly a ringing endorsement.
Indeed, the Emancipation Proclamation itself was a brilliant piece of realist calculation. It freed slaves from the South, something that the Union was unable to enforce fully at the time. It made no mention of slavery in the border states, whose loyalty Lincoln needed. It even allowed for the Union armies to retain freed slaves to work for the Union army.
Lincoln supported Illinois’s harsh Jim Crow laws, opposed civil rights for blacks, advocated the colonization of blacks abroad, fought and frustrated abolitionists, endorsed the Fugitive Slave Act, pandered to voters’ anti-black prejudices, privately ridiculed blacks, freely used racial epithets, delayed taking steps against slavery, put consideration for slaveowners ahead of justice for slaves, and actually tried, at crucial points, to save slavery.
While he was a lawyer, Lincoln attempted to help a slaveholder recover his runaway slave. (For the record, Lincoln lost the case.) Lincoln never represented a runaway slave.
The case was Matson v. Rutherford (1847). It involved a slave owner named Robert Matson claiming return of fugitive slaves. Matson was from Kentucky and brought slaves to Coles County, Illinois, for part of the year. Jane Bryant escaped with her four children from the Coles County plantation and found refuge with local abolitionists. They were soon after found and jailed as fugitive slaves.
Given Lincoln’s 1837 description of slavery as "founded on both injustice and bad policy" and his 1841 advocacy, one would guess he came to aid of the runaways. In fact, Lincoln represented Matson in his desire to re-enslave Bryant and her children. He predicated his argument upon Illinois law that allowed ownership in slaves to be maintained if they were brought into the state in transit. The Illinois circuit court was unconvinced.
As further irony, the attorney who defended Matson with Lincoln was Usher F. Linder, who as Illinois Attorney General had encouraged the mob that murdered abolitionist Elijah Lovejoy in 1837.
Oh, and let’s not forget that Lincoln was most certainly not compelled to represent Matson.
Being consistent with his racist views, in 1862, Lincoln requested Congress to pass a Constitutional amendment encouraging black emigration from the US. In his request, he stated:
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I cannot make it better known than it already is, that I strongly favor colonization.
Lincoln’s record is of a person who staunchly believed in the superiority of the white race above the black race, that the 2 can never coexist peacefully, and that the best solution is to transfer blacks out of the US:
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The enterprise is a difficult one, but ‘where there is a will there is a way,’ and what colonization needs most is a hearty will.
In his eulogy for Henry Clay, Lincoln suggested that if blacks could be completely transported from the US, it would be Clay’s greatest legacy.
7. The number of battlefield fatalities during the Civil War was 620,000 dead. That doesn’t include 50,000 Southern civilians killed. By the end of the war, 25% of all Southern males between ages 20 – 40 were killed.
Lincoln orchestrated a war that was incredibly brutal. The purpose, as stated by General Sherman during his "march to the sea" was to cause such suffering on the part of Southern civilians that would break their spirit.
Northern tactics violated the Geneva Convention of 1863 and Lincoln’s own military code of conduct, the Lieber Code. (named after Columbia University law professor Francis Lieber). During the war, federal troops plundered and pillaged the South, inaugurating modern warfare, when the civilian population, traditionally ignored by professional armies, becomes the target.
Beginning in 1861, Southern civilians were taken as hostage and shot in retaliation for guerilla attacks. As Colonel John Beatty warned the residents of Paint Rock, Alabama:
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Every time the telegraph wire is cut we would burn a house; every time a train was fired upon we would hang a man; and we would continue to do this until every house was burned and every man hanged between Decatur and Bridgeport.
The town of Paint Rock was burned to the ground.
In 1862 General John Pope declared that all Southern men who remained within the federal army’s lines (mostly elderly men) and who wished to remain in their homes must take a loyalty oath to the federal government (i.e., to the Lincoln administration). Anyone taking such an oath who was later suspected of being "disloyal" would be shot. (Remember, habeas corpus was no longer there to protect them.) In New Orleans, General Benjamin Butler hanged a man for taking down a US flag. Butler was also one of Lincoln’s favorite generals.
Early in the war the towns of Randolph, Tennessee, and Jackson and Meridian, Mississippi, were burned to the ground by General William T. Sherman, who declared that to all secessionists, women and children included, "death is mercy." The bombardment of cities was considered beyond the bounds of international law and morality in the 1860s, but Lincoln paid no attention to such restrictions. Sherman, of course, was his second favorite general next to Grant.
During the bombardment of Atlanta, Sherman’s chief engineer, Captain O.M. Poe, implored Sherman to stop the bombing of the undefended city because of the grotesque spectacle of the corpses of women and children in the streets. Sherman coldly told him that such scenes were exactly what he wanted. After destroying 90 percent of the city the federal army evicted all the remaining residents from their homes just as winter was settling in.
Sherman’s (and Lincoln’s) strategy was to terrorize the civilian population. For example, in 1864 Sherman wrote to a subordinate, General Louis D. Watkins: "Send over about Fairmount and Adairsville [Georgia], burn ten or twelve houses of known secessionists, kill a few at random, and let it be known that it will be repeated every time a train is fired upon ...."
After Sherman completed his "March to the Sea" he met with Lincoln and Grant on the James River in Virginia. "Lincoln wanted to know about Sherman’s marches," writes Sherman biographer John F. Marzalek, "particularly enjoying stories about the bummers," as Sherman’s plundering and pillaging soldiers were called.
When one contrasts Northern actions during the war v. Southern actions, one can reach no other conclusion other than that the South acted with remarkable restraint, considering the vicious Northern invasion being launched against their country.
The Civil War began on May 27, 1861, when Lincoln ordered the federal army to invade Virginia. I deliberately neglected to mention the Southern seizure of Fort Sumter because the fort was within Confederate territory. Indeed, not only was there no fatalities from the seizure of Fort Sumter, the South even allowed their POWs to leave in peace.
8. Lincoln deliberately rejected all efforts to avoid war.
a) Even before Fort Sumter, the Confederate government dispatched commissioners to Washington to negotiate for the purchase, by the Confederacy, of federal property in the South. Lincoln rejected the proposal.
cool.gif Lincoln also rejected an attempt by Emperor Napoleon III of France to mediate.
The North was not much better than the South when it comes to the race question.
According to professor of history at Yale, C. Vann Woodward:
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By 1830 slavery was virtually abolished by one means or another throughout the North, with only about 3500 Negroes remaining in bondage in the nominally free states...For all that, the Northern Negro was made painfully and constantly aware that he lived in a society dedicated to the doctrine of white supremacy and Negro inferiority. The major political parties...made sure in numerous ways that the Negro understood his ‘place’ and that he was severely confined to it. One of these ways was segregation, and with the backing of legal and extra-legal codes, the system permeated all aspects of Negro life in the free states by 1860.
Perhaps it can be said that the South was looking at an example set by its brothers up North when it imposed its Jim Crow laws after the Civil War.
Woodward continued:
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Generally speaking, the farther west the Negro went in the free states the harsher he found the proscription and segregation. Indiana, Illinois, and Oregon incorporated in their constitutions provisions restricting the admission of Negroes to their borders, and most states carved from the old Northwest Territory either barred Negroes in some degree or required that they post bond guaranteeing good behavior. Alexis de Tocqueville was amazed at the depth of racial bias he encountered in the North. ‘The prejudice of race,’ he wrote, ‘appears to be stronger in the states that have abolished slavery than in those where it still exists; and nowhere is it so intolerant as in those states where servitude has never been known.’... [Emphasis mine]
Only 6 percent of the Northern Negroes lived in the five states – Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Vermont, Maine, and Rhode Island – that by 1860 permitted them to vote. The Negro’s rights were curtailed in the courts as well as at the polls. By custom or by law Negroes were excluded from jury service throughout the North. Only in Massachusetts, and there not until 1855, were they admitted as jurors. Five Western states prohibited Negro testimony in cases where a white man was a party. The ban against Negro jurors, witnesses, and judges, as well as the economic degradation of the race, help to explain the disproportionate numbers of Negroes in Northern prisons and the heavy limitations on the protection of Negro life, liberty, and property.
[snip]
It is clear that when its victory was complete and the time came, the North was not in the best possible position to instruct the South, either by precedent and example, or by force of conviction, on the implementation of what eventually became one of the professed war aims of the Union cause – racial equality.
Indeed, the scholar Jeffrey Rogers Hummel, noted that soon after the war, 5 Northern states voted to deny blacks suffrage.
Conclusion
A presidential inauguration requires the would-be president to swear an oath to defend the Constitution. Far from defending the Constitution, Lincoln trashed it. The Constitution, for Lincoln, was a piece of paper to be tossed aside when it did not suit him. If the Constitution had been scrupulously observed, perhaps the entire tragedy could've been avoided.
One might ask: Suppose if the Confederacy seceded without incident, what about the African-Americans?
To which I answer: Slavery might be abolished, not as soon as 1865, perhaps. Later, but with much less bloodshed and animosity.
A few years ago, I was reading a book on the Civil War. One of its passages will never fade from my memory:
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On July 4th, 1863, the Confederate garrison at Vicksburg surrendered to the Union army under General Grant.
Vicksburg did not celebrate the 4th of July for the next 78 years.
Other than the heavy casualties, the war embittered relations between North and South for decades to come. The war was a serious disruption to people's lives. Just as consequential is the massive expansion of federal power.
One aspect of the cost of the war is perhaps, in the context of all the above, the most inconsequential. Perhaps because of that, it is also most easily gauged. Federal loans and taxes to finance the war reached $3 billion. Interest on the war debt was $2.8 billion. The South borrowed more than $2 billion and lost far more in terms of property damage. Estimated total cost of the war is $20 billion, 5 times more than federal expenditures since its creation until 1861. (Remember, we're talking about 1861 dollars. In today's currency, that would equal about $400 billion.)
The consequences of the Civil War were dreadful, to put it lightly. For perhaps the first time in the history of warfare, the idea that a civilian population should be tortured in order to press them to surrender has been introduced as an acceptable doctrine of the conduct of warfare. The following 20th century saw that doctrine in full swing, with terrible consequences for all to see. No longer do professional armies confine their targets to their counterparts on the other side. Now civilians are regarded as fair game. It is no wonder that some historians suggested that the Civil War is the real dress rehearsal for WWI.
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