Editorial: North Good, South Bad?

Editorial: North Good, South Bad?

Robert E. Lee - the focus of evil in the 19th Century?
    If only it were that simple we would be spared the painful task of thinking. Sadly, I believe "North Good, South Bad" is an all too common opinion. A typical K through 12 education (for that matter even a college education) barely touches on the war, so most people are never exposed to a meaningful analysis of this important time in American history. For that matter, teachers aren't encouraged to discuss controversial topics, especially when race could be at all involved. So if the average person thinks about the war at all, his opinion on this vital subject is often based entirely on ignorance.
   Confederate sympathizers must confront the issue of slavery, which forces them into one of two things. Firstly, they can admit that the Lost Cause was less than holy, or secondly they can deny the importance of slavery as a cause for the war or downplay its horrors. The Union side, on the other hand, has no obvious issue like slavery to tarnish their image, but should we assume that their cause was a holy crusade?

     Below, I do not argue that the Civil War had nothing to do with slavery or even that slavery wasn't the greatest single cause of the war. I do argue that the war was more complex than many people believe, and that the reunification of the country and end of slavery were probably the only good things to come from the war. As we will see below, the causes of neither side in the Civil War were wholly righteous. You might say that the war was not good versus evil, but rather good and evil versus good and evil. The evil side of the Confederacy - the protection of slavery - is obvious, and there is no need to bore you with the obvious. So since studying history without analysis and understanding is largely useless, let's wade into the controversy and see the other side of the story.

Ante-bellum Southerners are criticized for their unwillingness to give up slavery and for "destroying" the Union to save it. Most people from the beginning of time have been unwilling to put the interests of the greater good above their own. This is human nature, and it was true in the North also. For some time, Northern textile workers were hostile to abolitionists, seeing cheap Southern cotton as vital to their own interests. Many Northerners opposed the extension of slavery not for moral reasons, but out of fear of competing with slave labor, and although the abolitionist movement is undoubtedly responsible in part for the end of slavery in the North, perhaps the fact that slavery wasn't economically viable is a better explanation. For the South, an area much better suited to agriculture, slavery WAS economically viable. Since farming is an example of what economists call perfect competition, using slaves was the only way to run a profit and survive, so it became the one and only way to run the business of agriculture. For those slave owners who did have a conscience, how could they hope to survive by freeing their slaves when their neighbor didn't? A system of rationalizing of slavery with racism and a knee-jerk reaction to abolition was a predictable development.

Lincoln himself was a racist, having stated his belief that black people were inferior. He opposed inter-racial marriage and supported a constitutional amendment to ship black people to Africa, Central America, and the Caribbean. Most Northerners were also racist. Laws were passed prohibiting emigration of former slaves into several Northern states, and white Union troops regularly insulted their black comrades. The 1863 draft riot in New York City involved mobs of potential draftees murdering defenseless black people in order to demonstrate their unwillingness to fight for emancipation. The Emancipation Proclamation was issued well into the war with the main purpose being to prevent foreign intervention. The Proclamation freed slaves only in certain parts of the Confederacy, where Lincoln had no legal, and little real, authority, and slaves in the North, where the federal government had legitimate authority, were freed only after the war. Although they were supposedly liberators, Union forces were known to conscript "liberated" slaves into the army, essentially enslaving them for their own purposes. Many modern descendants of slaves have little or no interest in the war. Perhaps they would rather not face the pain of confronting these issues.

Robert E. Lee stated that a gradual emancipation was the best course. Stonewall Jackson taught black people to read in violation of state law, and Jubal Early had several mixed race children with his black common law wife. Both Lee and Patrick Cleburne advocated giving freedom to slaves in exchange for service in the Confederate army, and although it is the subject of some controversy, for various reasons some Southern blacks willingly supported the Confederacy. Does this mean that the Confederacy was a racial paradise? Of course not, but these are facts that you should know.

Lincoln's stated first goal of the war was to "save" the Union. Was it ever lost? Clearly the federal government continued to function, only with fewer states. Secession did not guarantee war. Many northerners wanted the southern states to leave in peace, but Fort Sumter changed this. Although southern hotheads indisputably fired the first shot, Lincoln's actions concerning supplying the fort are questionable in the minds of many people, and the resulting Union war of conquest was a reaction completely out of proportion to the actions of the Confederates at Fort Sumter.

The more northerly Confederate states were generally willing to stay in the Union and seceded only after Lincoln demanded that all states supply troops to put down the "rebellion". This action, and this wording, clearly demonstrates that Lincoln had no respect for the Constitution and was attempting to fundamentally redefine the nature of the federal government. (We'll get into that later.) My home state of Virginia had previously voted against secession, and many future Confederate officers had opposed secession, but Lincoln showed them that drastic action was required. Lee put it best when he said that a union that had to be maintained through force of arms held no charm. Lincoln's election, his decisions about Fort Sumter, his prosecution of an illegal war, his meddling in military affairs, and his selection of incompetent commanders, often for political reasons, are largely responsible for over 600,000 deaths.

Many people believe that Confederate officers who had sworn to protect and defend the Constitution upon joining the US Army became traitors to their nation. This ignores the nature of the pre-war system of government, which the war forever perverted from the intentions of the founding fathers. At the time, the American people were citizens of individual states which were members of the United States, so when a state seceded, the citizens of the state were no longer affiliated with the national government. The real villains of American history are the people who have ignored or destroyed the Constitution for their own purposes, and Abraham Lincoln is one such person.

Perhaps to reassure Americans of the justness of the Union cause, much has been made of the suffering of Union prisoners at Andersonville and other Confederate prisons. But Confederate prisoners were also treated shamefully. The people of the South were starving by the end of the war and couldn't feed their own troops, but the Union had no such excuse. Lincoln began the war with a policy to treat prisoners as traitors, but backed down when he discovered that the Confederates could, and would, retaliate in kind. Despite the suffering of prisoners on both sides, the Union ended large scale prisoner exchange - and did not reinstate it - at least in part because they believed that it benefited the Confederates. Despite the suffering of Confederate prisoners, Union prison officials failed to use funds allocated to them and actually returned money to the Treasury.

Draft riots, draft dodging, the Copperhead movement, and the importance of Congressional and Presidential elections demonstrate that the war was entirely winnable for the Confederacy. All wars are political events, and the Union was not united in its efforts. Either a serious setback or a simple lack of progress could have turned the northern people against the war.

The destruction of large Union forces was entirely possible. Some potentially decisive actions were Seven Pines, the Seven Days, Shiloh, Second Manassas, Stones River, Chancellorsville, Gettysburg, Chickamauga/Chattanooga, the Red River Campaign, North Anna, and Reams' Station. In these and other battles, part or all of a Union army was vulnerable to destruction. Although it is often implied, the Union did not have unlimited manpower. The draft was unconstitutional and very unpopular, and most Union troops were volunteers. Had the supply of volunteers run out, the overwhelming Union population advantage would have been useless. So a decisive Confederate victory was not even necessary to gain independence.

Most importantly, the Constitution does not prohibit secession. Arguments to the contrary are wishful thinking based on a loose interpretation of the Constitution and convoluted logic. Those who deny the legality of secession sometimes claim that the Union was created by the Declaration of Independence or amazingly enough, even before in the 1750s! They believe that the supremacy clause, which states that federal law trumps state law, prohibits secession. They claim that Article V, which deals only with amending the Constitution, prohibits secession. So to "find" the illegality of secession in the Constitution, you can't look in the obvious places, like where states are prohibited from coining money or creating nobility, you have to actively search it out and use creativity. The Founding Fathers agreed that secession was legal. After all, they formed the country through secession from Britain. So it is impossible to think that the states would have agreed to a Union if there was no way to leave it. Further, New England, not the South, was the first section to propose secession - during wartime - in response the economic hardship of the War of 1812. The Constitution of the Founding Fathers did not create an all-powerful national democracy like we have now, but rather a loose confederation of states in which the rights of the states and the people were protected. The existence of the electoral college, the Bill of Rights, and US Senate clearly shows this. Although it is frequently ignored, the 10th Amendment specifically states that the rights not given to the federal government are the rights of the states and of the people. That is as clear of an indication of the legality of secession as you will find. But if we pretend that states do not have the right to secede, then they have no rights at all, and they have no reason to exist. Checks and balances of government can be subverted over time by those determined to do so, and indeed, they have been. The size and intrusiveness of modern government would make it unrecognizable to the Founding Fathers, who never dreamed of things like involuntary entitlement programs. The possibility of secession is the best guarantee of maintaining a constitutional government.

Bottomline: The Civil War destroyed the government created by the Founding Fathers by the might makes right method, a method the Republicans of the time used to quash their Democratic opposition and the Confederate States of America. Although the Civil War freed the slaves, it ultimately enslaved us all by destroying the document that protects us.

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