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As faithful readers of this blog know, I am not a fan of Neo-Confederates. These are individuals who are still fighting the Civil War on behalf of the Confederacy. They are to be distinguished from those who honor the Confederates who fought an uphill gallant struggle for a cause they believed right. Here follow helpful tips on discerning who the Neo-Confederates are. If you believe most of these you are probably a Neo-Confederate:
1. You deny that the Civil War was caused by slavery in the face of statements by virtually all the civilian leaders of the secession movement and the Confederacy at the beginning of the War that secession was undertaken to protect slavery.
2. You claim that the Union was fighting because Northerners were greedy for tariffs on the South, thereby showing ignorance that at the time of the secession movement of 1860-61 tariffs were at a historic low for the Nineteenth Century, and that tariffs were a relative non-issue North and South.
3. Your favorite Civil War “historian” is Thomas Dilorenzo.
4. The first thing that comes into your mind when you hear “Abraham Lincoln” is “dictator”.
5. You are absolutely certain that the Constitution grants an explicit right to secede if it is held up to a light and has lemon juice smeared over it.
6. You are pretty certain that Lincoln was a Marxist just like Lenin or Stalin.
7. It comes as complete news to you that Lincoln was in favor of compensated emancipation to end slavery both before and during the War and that the slave holders simply were not interested.
8. You regard John C. Calhoun as a moderate on the slavery question.
9. You believe that the massive Federal government we have today is all the fault of Old Abe.
10. You have always thought that D. W. Griffith’s Birth of a Nation was a documentary.
Now wait a minute! Abe Lincoln acted dictatorially.
I must be a neo-confederate.
Or perhaps a neo-federalist….
One of the two.
“5. You are absolutely certain that the Constitution grants an explicit right to secede if it is held up to a light and has lemon juice smeared over it.”
That’s clearly false. To truly see that right you have to look at the Constitution at midnight under a full moon.
Ah, so secession is kind of like abortion that way; it’s only there in the right light with the right chemicals, but even then, only on magic days.
“That’s clearly false. To truly see that right you have to look at the Constitution at midnight under a full moon.”
I appreciate the correction Phillip. 🙂
Interesting that a Yankee is telling southerners who are and aren’t neo-Confederates.
😉
Clearly, meeting none of these qualifications, I am not a neo-Confederate. However, I do believe that it is imperative that Texas should secede from the Union in the 21st century, in order to protect its own prosperity and to escape from unjust federal mandates such as Roe v. Wade.
And yes, I’m making arrangements now to move back there.
Yes, Phillip – moon letters indeed.
I tried getting the secret out of the Supreme Court using the word “Mellon”, but I am clearly no friend of separation.
Well, part of the issue entwined with slavery was the right of states to a certain degree of self-determination. Slavery was the horrible poster-boy for that issue.
In fact, Scalia would be a neo-confederate on abortion – whether or not he agrees with its morality on a personal level, from a constitutional perspective his position is that each state should decide the legality of it.
from a constitutional perspective his position is that each state should decide the legality of it.
That was Abraham Lincoln’s position as well with regards to slavery. I don’t think Lincoln was a neo-Confederate. Or to put it a little more accurately, he didn’t believe that the federal government could interfere with the institution in states where it already existed.
Whew, guess I pass the test and am NOT a “neo-Confederate.”
1) Slavery was the “but for” cause of the War, i.e., without that issue to force the matter, secession and state’s rights would not have been in and of themselves cause for war. But it’s also not as simple as “slavery caused the war” or “the war was about slavery.” Virginia did not fight to defend slavery, in fact had voted against secession, only fighting when lincoln made clear his intention to compel other states to invade the deep south, a crusade Virginia had no desire to cooperate in.
2) The Yankees did not invade because of tariffs, but the economic inequities between north and south certainly did not increase understanding and good will between the sections.
3) No, Douglas Southall Freeman reigns supreme.
4) No, “tragic,” “misguided,” “cynical” (re: slavery/ emancipation), “heedless of the constitution” (invading states, suspension of habeas corpus, suppression of democratic assemblies in MD and KY, etc), “racist,” but not a “dictator.” He still had to deal with the black Republicans within his party and Democrat opponents without.
5) There is no express “right to secede” in the constitution. But there is no express mention of a thousand other rights the states retain under the constitution, which is simply a declaration of the express powers of the federal government, not a treatise on the retained powers of the states. No one who understands the constitution looks to it for a grant of rights to the states, when its entire purpose was to delimit federal power. So the absence of a “right of secession” in the constitution is meaningless.
6) Lincoln was no Marxist. Not every tyrant is a Marxist.
7) True, Lincoln favored comensated emancipation and shipping blacks off to Africa. I wish the slave holders had agreed to free their slaves, but I can’t agree with Lincoln that an entire race of people should be forcibly banished from America. But free them or not, Lincoln had no constitutional authority to free a single slave by force of arms.
8) Calhoun, excepting the issue of slavery, had no worse views on the state of blacks in this country than Lincoln or the vast majority of white Northerners. So yes, he was I suppose slightly more evil than the evil Northerners who held blacks equally in contempt.
9) Not the fault of Abe, but certainly Lincoln was the first president to assert on a massive scale Federal authority utterly out of bounds with the express authority granted by the constitution. His breezy disregard for the constitution when it got in the way was surely a roadmap for subsequent do-gooders who also trashed the constitution for some perceived “greater good.” The post-war amendments, the creation of West Virginia, and reconstruction itself, are good examples of how Lincoln’s contempt for the constitution survived his assasination.
10) It’s the same type of history that others use to turn the Civil War into an anti-slavery crusade by virtuous northerners against uniformly racist and slave-embracing southerners. I don’t think the South has a corner on the abuse of history market. After all, Lincoln is the one with a holiday and a shrine in D.C.
Anyway, I’m relieved I’ve escaped the infamous badge of “neo-Confederate.” I could hardly imagine a worse fate.
6)
Lincoln favored comensated emancipation and shipping blacks off to Africa.
This was true up until around the mid-point of his presidency. After meeting regularly with black leaders, especially Frederick Douglass, he changed his mind. In fact the last speech he ever gave was about Louisiana’s reconstruction efforts and his hopes that blacks would achieve full, equal rights. That comment angered one of the audience members – some guy named Booth.
Now that we’ve covered the “neo-Cons”, we’ll need to come up with a term for Yankees who ONLY want to talk about slavery and who focus on whether the Constitution explicitly allows for secession (as if it would even matter anyway, since secession is a natural right based on self-determination) in their ex post facto justifications for making war on people who just didn’t want to be associated with them anymore.
And small wonder the South wanted to disassociate themselves, if the Yankees of that time were in any way as insufferable as their modern-day descendants who keep lording their superiority over Southerners in these Civil War threads.
😉
who focus on whether the Constitution explicitly allows for secession
It’s not whether the Constitution specifically allows secession. Sure there are things that the Constitution does not specifically state but which can be reasonably inferred. It’s a matter of deciding whether states have the right to disassociate from the Union for other than light and transient causes, and it’s hard to see the constitutional justification for the Confederate states to have seceded from the Union before Lincoln had taken office.
At any rate, I’ll just defer to James Madison on the question. He knew a thing or two about the Constitution.
Neo-Yanks?
“Neo-Yanks?”
Nah, there’s nothing new about Yankee obnoxiousness and moralizing sanctimony.
😉
Again, Paul, the question is not whether secession was legally justified – from the standpoint of the jilted, secession is NEVER legal, whereas from the stanpoint of those doing the jilting the legality is a non-sequitur, since they no longer recognize the legal authority of the jilted in the first place. It wasn’t strictly “legal” for the colonies to break away from Great Britain, and the leaders of that insurrection would have been hanged had the venture turned out differently.
Instead, the question is one of moral justification. Was the South morally justified in seceding? I think the clear answer is a resounding NO. Then the question becomes was the North morally justified in making war on the population of the Southern states for some Manifest Destiny view of the U.S. as one and undivided in perpetuity.
Here is where the REAL disagreement resides. From my standpoint, the answer is a clear and resounding NO, as well (just because the South was morally wrong doesn’t make the North morally right in invading their states and killing them). But I can understand why Yankees might have a different (although clearly wrong 😉 ) perspective.
But if the answer to the first question is “no,” then what is the remedy? If states – morally justified or no – declare secession and the federal government lets the state or states walk without lifting a finger, then the federal government is essentially giving the green light for the states to secede at will.
Nah, there’s nothing new about Yankee obnoxiousness and moralizing sanctimony.
You got a point there.
Memo to self: Don McClarey likes throwing bottles of nitroglycerin to see what will happen.
History is a narrative of the “crimes, follies and misfortunes of mankind”, Gibbon. And, it’s a record of relentless devolutions from republic to centralized, collectivist, command-and-control misery.
Secession previously was contemplated on at least two, maybe three, occasions by Massachussets and other Northrn states. Too bad MA didn’t.
The Embargo Act of 1807 was seen as a threat to the MA economy (so with the prohibition of slavery: a total threat to the South’s cotton/tobacco economy). Did anyone have a plan on how, or with what, to replace the South’s economy? Same same today with obamonomics – how will he replace the evil, unjust private sector after he’s killed it?
The War of 1812 and the Hartford Convention. Conventioneers cited the over-representation of Southern whites in Congress. The South saw developing overwhelming northern legislative power and control over the Executive after Lincoln (with 42% of the vote) seized control over federal power.
And, abolitionist/secessionist nutjob W. L. Garrison: “Henceforth, the watchword of every uncompromising abolitionist, of every friend of God and liberty, must be, both in a religious and political sense—‘NO UNION WITH SLAVEHOLDERS’”
Your black-robed masters unilaterally decided secession is unconstitutional. That despite the fact that “sovereign states” did voluntarily form and did comprise the Union.
Did black leaders oppose returning to Africa?
“Memo to self: Don McClarey likes throwing bottles of nitroglycerin to see what will happen.”
Only when I am in an especially festive mood Dale which I am today. My June vacation begins on Friday at 5:00 PM. The Pride of Nations strategic computer game was released today. (I think I will use it to craft a scenario of The Late Unpleasantness.) My son is home for the summer after completing his freshman year at the U of I. God is in His Heaven and all is right in my world. On such occasions of peace and joy I deeply prize a bit of combox mayhem. 🙂
“But if the answer to the first question is “no,” then what is the remedy?”
I’m not sure there is a remedy. Let’s liken it to a divorce. Is a wife justified in walking away from her husband after years of marriage for no other reason than that she wants to feel liberated and engage in casual sex with others? NO. But that doesn’t mean the husband is justified in bursting into her apartment, breaking her stuff, beating her up, and dragging her back home either.
T.Shaw:
Contrary to myth the Hartford Convention did not endorse secession. At the time it was suspected that might have been the hidden motivation of the participants, and the very idea of secession was reviled as treason in the ensuing furor over the convention. Opinion in the South was especially vociferous in reviling the participants of the Hartford Convention as being traitors.
William Lloyd Garrison indeed denounced the Constitution as a Covenant With Death and called for the Free states leaving the Union. Needless to say Garrison did not support Abraham Lincoln in 1860.
No “black robed masters” decided that secession was unconstitutional. That question was decided by the Union Army and Navy winning the Civil War. As to whether the Constitution allowed for secession, I will defer to Robert E. Lee:
“Secession is nothing but revolution. The framers of our Constitution never exhausted so much labor, wisdom, and forbearance in its formation, and surrounded it with so many guards and securities, if it was intended to be broken by every member of the Confederacy at will. It was intended for “perpetual union,” so expressed in the preamble, and for the establishment of a government, not a compact, which can only be dissolved by revolution or the consent of all the people in convention assembled. It is idle to talk of secession. Anarchy would have been established, and not a government, by Washington, Hamilton, Jefferson, Madison, and the other patriots of the Revolution. . . . Still, a Union that can only be maintained by swords and bayonets, and in which strife and civil war are to take the place of brotherly love and kindness, has no charm for me. I shall mourn for my country and for the welfare and progress of mankind. If the Union is dissolved, and the government disrupted, I shall return to my native state and share the miseries of my people; and, save in defense, will draw my sword on none.”
“Did black leaders oppose returning to Africa?”
Overwhelmingly, which is one reason Lincoln dropped his colonization idea, which was going to be voluntary in nature in any case.
The problem, Jay, is that there really is no such thing as a federal government under that scenario. It is a constitutional nullity.
All analogies creak, but I don’t know that marriage works. At a minimum, I think your analogy would describe the situation better if the woman in question not only quit the marriage, but expected to keep the house, the children and the car while all along expecting the husband to smile meekly and sign whatever her attorney puts in front of him.
No, he isn’t authorized to slap her around, but there would be legal consequences even so, and he’d fight her like hell, figuratively. And be just to do so.
Garrison was an outlier, to be sure. He was John Brown without the violence. I’m sure he (Garrison) was a charismatic and decent man in person, but he comes across on the dry pages of history as a grim fanatic. Frederick Douglass, who was a Garrison protege’ at the beginning of his abolitionist career, broke with him on the “No Union With Slaveholders” plank. Douglass was convinced that the Constitution was a reformable document which could be supportive of liberty for all. Garrison was flabbergasted and their relationship soured.
As an aside, there are limits to understanding people through history. It’s worth keeping in mind that even a voluminously documented person can not be fully known through even his correspondence and actions. Their interactions with others–including audiences–are important facets which are hard for the most thorough and eloquent of historians to fully capture. Reading excertps of McClellan’s correspondence and dispatches, I kept thinking “What a passive-aggressive carping little twink.” But the mention of his name instantly rallied the Army of the Potomac after the disaster of Second Manassas. He had a personal–and real–charisma that electrified in person, a facet which did NOT come out during his whiny woe-is-me correspondence.
“… if the woman in question not only quit the marriage, but expected to keep the house, the children and the car while all along expecting the husband to smile meekly and sign whatever her attorney puts in front of him.”
Happens all the time. And he still wouldn’t be justified in bursting into her apartment, breaking her stuff, beating her up, and dragging her back home.
“… there really is no such thing as a federal government under that scenario.”
When one group wants to sever that bond and acts on it, then, in fact, there is no longer a federal government, at least not for those who no longer wish to be a part of it. I’m not arguing for the legality (which is irrelevant) or morality (it was not morally justified) of Southern secession. I’m just saying that, in fact, it happened, and I’m arguing that violence on the scale of 600,000 dead was not morally justified to force people to stay a part of something of which they no longer wished to be a part.
“He had a personal–and real–charisma that electrified in person, a facet which did NOT come out during his whiny woe-is-me correspondence.”
The same could be said of George Washington, in fact.
Happens all the time. And he still wouldn’t be justified in bursting into her apartment, breaking her stuff, beating her up, and dragging her back home.
Except that I conceded that. You are arguing that there is no recourse whatsoever–which is manifestly not the case in a divorce. Having witnessed some war-to-the-knife divorces in my time, there are ways to fight. Not to save the marriage, but to preserve interests–in children and property.
Your analogy says the federal authorities can’t assert itself in any manner whatsoever. Not even if the wife is beating the kids.
“Not even if the wife is beating the kids.
Ah, but the wife beating the kids wasn’t the justification for the husband’s actions. It was the sanctity of the union.
Here’s all I’m saying: sometimes there is no moral recourse to preserving a union when one of the parties no longer wishes to be united.
When it comes to secession, the only recourse for the party wishing to preserve the status quo ex ante is, when diplomacy fails, war. But, as with all wars, to be moral, it must meet just war standards. The stated Manifest Destiny justification of preserving the Union as one and undivided in perpetuity just doesn’t cut it for me. Not when the result was 600,000 dead and large swaths of the country laid waste (especially in Virginia, which only seceded after Northern agression forced her hand). Which is why Northern apologists ALWAYS bring slavery into the mix, as if they can bootstrap the 13th Amendment (the Emancipation Proclamation was legally quite limited) into an ex post facto justification for invading and killing people who no longer wished to be associated with them.
Now, given that war is almost inevitable when one secedes, I believe it was also manifest upon the seceding states to meet just war standards in justifying their decision to withdraw. Clearly, they did not. Which is why neo-Confederate apologists ALWAYS ignore slavery as the root cause behind secession and try to focus attention on alleged grievances against the North that were actually quite minor, if not virtually nonexistent.
Hmmm, reasons as slim, perhaps, as the colonists had against the English…
Not seeing the inherent right of an ex ante sovereign state to withdraw from the union among those powers *expressly* ceded to the federal government, I hold that secession is in fact lawful, whatever its wisdom in this or that case might be.
That Lincoln slaughtered 600,000 to overcome that premise does not make it incorrect, only impracticable.
That Lincoln slaughtered 600,000 to overcome that premise does not make it incorrect, only impracticable.
Somehow I suspect that Confederate troops did have ammunition.
an ex post facto justification for invading and killing people who no longer wished to be associated with them.
Keeping in mind, of course, that about a third of those resident in the South were not in any degree participants in civic life and that sentiment for secession was not unanimous among those who were.
Actually I think I would assess the blame of the deaths in the war, approximately 260,000 Confederate and 340,000 Union, on those secessionists who attempted to destroy the Union due to the fact that they lost one election, and, in reaction to a purely phantom threat to their Peculiar Institution, embarked on as mad a piece of folly as can be seen in the annals of American history. One would have thought that the warlike reaction of two Southern Presidents, Andrew Jackson and Zachary Taylor, to earlier threats of secession would have convinced them where secession would inevitably lead.
“… I hold that secession is in fact lawful …”
And my argument is that lawfulness is irrelevant. Even if the Constitution were to expressly state “Thou shalt not secede”, what is to stop a successful secession from taking place? In that instance, once one party decides they no longer wish to be bound by the law that makes the secession unlawful, and they back that up with a successful secession, whether the secession was “legal” or “illegal” has no bearing on the fact that a new and separate nation, in fact, exists.
In other words, there is no such thing as a “legal” or “illegal” secession; only a successful or unsuccessful one.
Art of course raises a good point. 100K of white troops in regiments raised in Confederate States fought for the Union and some 180k black troops, most of them raised in the Confederate States, also fought for the Union. A larger point is that the proper way for the secession movement to have proceeded would have been to bring the issue of dissolving the Union before Congress where representatives of the entire nation could decide. However, that was not what the secessionists wanted. The past history of secession fever in this country is that it tended to burn out upon reflection and compromise, as it did when the Compromise of 1850 was hammered together. Secession could only succeed if it took place rapidly and in a crisis atmosphere.
At a minimum, I think your analogy would describe the situation better if the woman in question not only quit the marriage, but expected to keep the house, the children and the car while all along expecting the husband to smile meekly and sign whatever her attorney puts in front of him.
That is a description of the modal divorce plaintiff.
“Keeping in mind, of course, that about a third of those resident in the South were not in any degree participants in civic life and that sentiment for secession was not unanimous among those who were.”
Keep that in mind all you want, but I don’t see how that changes the point I was making, although it is a rather nifty way to once again bootstrap the slavery issue as part of the justification for making war against the populations of the Southern states. In fact, the comment is completely irrelevant to the point I was making. The fact that the minority viewpoint in those states didn’t carry the day didn’t make those holding that viewpoint any less dead or their property any less destroyed as a result of war being made against their homelands.
Don, again, it’s completely irrelevant to the point I made that Art was purportedly addressing.
I do find it ironic, however, that you appeal to majority rule in one comment, and then dismiss it in the very next. Unless, that is, majority rules in national elections, but not state ones.
And, once again, Don, I do not believe secession was morally justified in this instance. The Southern states were wrong from a moral standpoint to secede without justification.
The only point of disagreement between myself and others commenting here is whether the actions taken to force the seceding populations back into the Union were morally justified. I do not believe they were.
Sometimes there is no moral remedy, and you just say “To hell with them” and shake the dust from your sandals and move one.
Jay Anderson, these are your words:
When one group wants to sever that bond and acts on it, then, in fact, there is no longer a federal government, at least not for those who no longer wish to be a part of it.
It is not irrelevant to point out that most people living in South Carolina and Mississippi had interests not being considered in wishing exercise.
Jay Anderson, these are your words:
When one group wants to sever that bond and acts on it, then, in fact, there is no longer a federal government, at least not for those who no longer wish to be a part of it.
It is not irrelevant to point out that most people living in South Carolina and Mississippi had interests not being considered in this wishing exercise.
Whether we like it or not, historically, it is irrelevant. The majority of those who had the franchise and were able to legally exercise that right, decided they no longer wished to be bound by the bonds that united the country. ONCE AGAIN, I’m saying that they had no moral justification for doing so, but the fact is that they did it. They had the political power in their states to do so – power legally obtained – and they exercised that power in order to secede. I disagree with what they did, but they did it.
By referring to those who had, whether we like it or not, no political power to affect that outcome, any way you slice it, you are once again trying to bootstrap the post-Civil War amendments as an ex post facto justification for making war against the Southern populations.
“I do find it ironic, however, that you appeal to majority rule in one comment, and then dismiss it in the very next. Unless, that is, majority rules in national elections, but not state ones.”
That goes perhaps to one of the great issues of the Civil War Jay. I see the United States of America as one country, not a confederacy of independent states. Breaking up the Union was not a matter for majorities in one state, or several states, but for the people of the Union to decide as a whole. On a practical basis I do not see how you can have a country like the US if portions can simply break off whenever they feel like it. If secession had succeeded in the 1860s, I doubt seriously that it would have been a “remedy” reached for only once in either the Union or the Confederacy. The fact that the Confederates left out any mention of a right of secession in their own Constitution, but indicated rather that a “permanent federal government” was being formed, demonstrates that they understood the risk of future secession movements within the Confederacy. The delegates from South Carolina, who else, proposed that a right to secede be inserted in the Constitution at the Confederate constitutional convention, but only they voted for it.
you are once again trying to bootstrap the post-Civil War amendments as an ex post facto justification for making war against the Southern populations.
No, I am not.
Mr. McClarey raises a point on political geography that needs to be re-iterated. So long as we have a working political society truly bound by law, salient units within that society cannot have full discretion over the applicability of that law, which is to say the cannot unilaterally abrogate that law in favor of a code of their own design. There is inherent tension between freedom and community. Advocates of a right of secession have one of two challenges:
1. Constructing a normative theory that offers a tolerably persuasive answer as to which unit of society should have free rein to secede from a larger political configuration; or
2. Constructing an argument that the positive law in effect in 1860 conceded free rein to a particular conventionally and historically defined unit (and still does).
For an example of the result of liberality in the practice secession, one might look at the evolution of the German states during the late medieval and early modern periods. Liechtenstein is an agreeable museum piece.
A question.
Yes the constitution nowhere discusses secession.
But in 1860-61 several states did succeed. A few years later they were required to reapply for admission to the union.
The constitution requires the permission af a sate to have another state created out of it. In 1863 West Virginia was created out of Virginia. Does the Commonwealth of Virginia recognize acts of the pro union rump Virginia legislature that OK’d it?
The constitution requires a two thirds of the states to ratify an amendment. I gather that the 13th and 14th amendments would have been considered passed even if the southern states did not apply for readmission and approve them as a condition for readmission.
Not being a lawyer I defer to the excelent legal minds gathered here, but could one not say there is a working precedent for secession.
“But in 1860-61 several states did secede.”
They attempted to secede. Under Lincoln’s theory they were never out of the Union.
“A few years later they were required to reapply for admission to the union.”
After the murder of Lincoln and after Andrew Johnson came within one vote in the Senate of being removed from the Senate. One of the many tragedies caused by John Wilkes Booth.
” In 1863 West Virginia was created out of Virginia. Does the Commonwealth of Virginia recognize acts of the pro union rump Virginia legislature that OK’d it?”
I don’t know. The Supreme Court ruled in favor of the constitutionality of the creation of West Virginia in the fascinating case of Virginia v. West Virginia in 1870:
http://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=17678181839429381566&hl=en&as_sdt=2&as_vis=1&oi=scholarr
“The constitution requires a two thirds of the states to ratify an amendment. I gather that the 13th and 14th amendments would have been considered passed even if the southern states did not apply for readmission and approve them as a condition for readmission.”
I have never heard that. In any case neither of the amendments were deemed part of the Constitution until ratified by two-thirds of the states.
Don
Thank you
Jay, the thing is that “the kids” are a part of the Constitutional marriage analogy. It’s not just the relationship between the States and the Federal authority, there’s also the matter of the rights inherent in “the People.” The People have rights no State can trample upon. Thus, at a minimum, Southern Unionists and their rights as members of the People, are definitely part of the equation.
It’s an unholy mess, but that’s something I think we can agree is undisputed.
That is a description of the modal divorce plaintiff.
Heh–yeah, a lot to that. I remember a divorce where the parties heatedly squabbled over trimmers that had been used to groom the nose hairs of one of the couple.
My late criminal law professor said he’d much rather have a murderer as a client than the party to a divorce. The former had a more developed sense of mercy.