I was once like you. History was only a story told by my teachers, and parents. The past was laid out neatly by those who told it, minus some of the more important details. Emphasis is placed where necessary, and anything that may suggest that history is in conflict with the unseen hand is simply discarded.
The winners recount history, some may say.
The winners of what?
In the case of the American Civil War the common understanding is that the Confederate troops fought on the side of the South because they were a bunch of racists, and were fighting only to keep their slaves. Seems reasonable, considering what we have been taught. But slavery is not the whole story. In fact, slavery was but one of many ingredients that led to the war between the states, and didn't become the goal of the war until it was declared to be in the political move called The Emancipation Proclamation.
Long before the American Civil War, before the United States was even a nation, General Stark's Revolutionary War cry was, "Live free or die!" But was it reasonable to demand freedom from Britain while enslaving a race of people in the New World?
The Declaration of Independence declares "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. . . "
Were some men more equal than others? With their cry for liberty, how could the men of that era live with their choice to enslave fellow members of humanity?
It is reasonable that these questions weighed heavily on the minds of the founders, and that the abolition movement found its roots in those very thoughts. Britain moved a little faster at abolishing slavery as both members of the Enlightenment movement criticized it for violating the rights of man, and Christian evangelicals considered slavery to be un-Christian. William Wilberforce led the cause of abolition in Britain in 1787, leading the Parliamentary campaign to abolish the slave trade in the British Empire with the Slave Trade Act 1807. The abolition of slavery throughout the British Empire followed with the Slavery Abolition Act in 1833.
Meanwhile, in America, though the Northern States moved away from slave holding, in eleven states in the American South slavery became a social and economic institution, and a valuable tool regarding the production of goods made available for trade with a number of European nations, and in fact, nations around the world.
Early American movements towards abolishing slavery came as early as 1688 when Quakers in Pennsylvania condemned the practice, and urged the leadership of the Quaker church to assist in the elimination of slavery. The Society of Friends did not bring about any action by the establishment, but the petition brought the sin of slavery to the forefront of politics, and initiated a process that eventually led to the banning of slavery in Pennsylvania in 1780.
During the American Revolution, while surely asking themselves the questions I posed earlier in this article, founders like Thomas Paine wrote about the importance of the United States abolishing slavery and freeing the slaves. The Quakers would once again lead the charge, while also joined by other evangelical Christian organizations, in the campaign against slavery, ramping up the effort after the Revolutionary War. With the help of Benjamin Franklin, a reorganized Society of Friends, led the charge. The movement eventually led to actions in all of the states toward the abolition of slavery. By 1804, as a result of the activism by the abolitionists, legislation had been passed that would eventually lead to the emancipation of slaves in every state north of the Ohio River and the Mason-Dixon Line. The importation of new slaves into the United States was officially banned on January 1, 1808.
Missouri petitioned to become a state in 1818 twice. By 1819 the debate over Missouri was in full swing. New York Representative James Tallmadge proposed an amendment to the Missouri statehood bill requiring Missouri to halt the further introduction of slaves to the territory and to provide for the gradual emancipation of the slaves already there. After much debate, Missouri rejected anti-slave rhetoric, and a compromise arose from the arguments. On March 3, 1820 Maine was admitted to the U.S. as a free state, and Missouri was then admitted to the U.S. as a slave state. A few months later, on July 1, 1820, at a convention in St. Louis, Missouri passed a pro-slave state constitution. Missouri was officially admitted to the Union on August 10, 1821.
In the 1830s the Postmaster General stopped allowing the delivery of pro-abolition literature to The South.
By the middle of the 19th century the abolition movement had grown to the point that Northern abolitionists controlled the House of Representatives. In 1850, California was admitted to the Union, and for the first time the number of free states (16) exceeded the number of slave states (15). Also, as a part of the Compromise of 1850, the District of Columbia banned slave trade.
The Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 was a part of the compromise of 1850, along with admission of California as a free state, the prohibition of slave trading in the District of Columbia, and concessions to slaveholding in Texas. The law was written to further enforce the Fugitive Slave Act of 1793, of which northern states had been ignoring. Northern states had been passing "personal liberty laws" which was not only designed to keep free blacks from being kidnapped into slavery, but to disallow escaped slaves from being returned to the South. In short, the Fugitive Slave Act was put into place to enforce Article 4, Section 2 of the United States Constitution that required the return of runaway slaves, forcing the authorities in free states to return fugitive slaves to their masters by making it illegal for law enforcement not to arrest escaped slaves and ensure their return to their masters. The need for the law was induced by a U.S. Supreme Court ruling in 1842, Prigg v. Pennsylvania, that stated states did not have to offer aid in the hunting or recapture of slaves.
The laws were seen by Northerners as making them, and their institutions, responsible for enforcing slavery. In 1854 the Wisconsin State Supreme Court went so far as to declare the law unconstitutional, of which the U.S. Supreme Court overturned in 1859. Those involved with the "underground railroad," and other activities to bring slaves to freedom, like Harriet Tubman, treated the Fugitive Slave Law as just another complication in their activities, and a complication that made them simply change the destination of the runaway slaves to the neighboring country of Canada.
In The South the federal government's unwillingness to enforce Article 4, Section 2 of the United States Constitution that required the return of runaway slaves was seen as a breach of contract. If Washington was unwilling to uphold the Constitution, while trampling on the sovereign rights of the states, the southern states saw no reason to remain in the Union. A broken nation seemed inevitable to Abraham Lincoln when he delivered his inaugural address in 1861. By the date of his inauguration on March 4, 1961 seven states had declared secession from the United States and had formed the Confederate States of America. Four more states were sure to follow. With his speech Lincoln hoped to allay the fears of the South, while also promising to "hold, occupy and possess the property and places belonging to the government," a direct reference to Fort Sumter. Despite his pledge, he was having a hard time making up his mind about Sumter. Most of his advisers were choosing to abandon Fort Sumter, rather than rearm and re-supply it. In fact, they voted five to two to abandon the Northern military instillation. The assumption was that even if it was possible to give provisions to Fort Sumter, it would take too many resources to protect it.
Lincoln decided not to abandon Sumter. Despite the fact that the Confederate congress voted to open the Mississippi River to Northern shipping in an act of friendship, they were expecting in return for the North to abandon Fort Sumter in South Carolina. Fort Sumter was seen as a real threat to the South, since the military facility was a Union bastion in the midst of southern territory. Abandoning Fort Sumter could lead to averting a war, a conflict many believed should be avoided at all cost. After all, abolition movements were underway in the South, and slavery was on its final leg. Within the next decade or two each state in the South would probably abolish slavery, on their own, without a shot ever being fired. The invention of the cotton gin, in addition to the growing abolition movements, almost guaranteed that slavery would be a thing of the past soon.
Abraham Lincoln could prevent war, or assure the South started it, by simply backing off, and protecting the state sovereignty of the Southern states, by not allowing the federal government to interfere with their affairs on the issue of slavery. However, Lincoln believed war might be the only resolution to the problem.
On April 6th of 1861 Lincoln made up his mind, deciding to sign the orders to proceed with the re-supply and defense of Fort Sumter. The reports coming in to Washington insisted Fort Sumter only had enough provisions to last until April 15, so if she was to be resupplied, it would need to be soon.
Lincoln ordered a fleet of ships to Charleston Harbor. On April 6, 1861 the first ships began to set sail for South Carolina. The first ship arrived just before midnight on April 11, 1861. Meanwhile, the Confederacy sent three men to Sumter to demand the surrender of the fort. The commanding officer declined, and it was decided that the South would take the fort by force.
Nearby Fort Johnson opened fire on Fort Sumter on April 12, 1861, and the American Civil War began. On April 13, the fort was surrendered and evacuated.
Although the desire to abolish slavery was an important ingredient to the events that transpired, the driving force behind the secession of the Southern States was the federal government's unwillingness to uphold the U.S. Constitution, and the federal disregard for state's rights.
The blood spilled in the Civil War was the result of the impatience of Lincoln, and the Northern politicians. Not all politicians in the North, however, sought war as the only solution. Clement Vallandigham of Ohio was a staunch opponent to war as the solution to settle the differences betwen the North and the South. He believed President Lincoln should allow the South to secede, and to wait patiently as the abolition movement in those states finished their course, and the states ultimately requested readmittance to the Union.
After the Union suffered the loss of Fort Sumter, Maryland walked the tightrope between the Union and the Confederacy. Evenly divided between sympathies to the North and the South, Maryland became a strategic piece of the puzzle because of her location. Should Maryland secede Washington DC would be surrounded by hostile states. On April 19, 1861, Union soldiers were attacked by a pro-Southern mob as they moved through Baltimore on their way to Washington. To avoid further riots, and to ensure Maryland remained loyal to the North, the Federal Government dispatched troops to Maryland. After Maryland's legislature protested the Union occupation of Maryland, on August 7 Federal troops and Baltimore police officers arrested the pro-Confederate members of Maryland's General Assembly. Once again, the federal government committed an unconstitutional action, further confirming the South's reasons for battling against the Union.
The excuse used to arrest the Maryland legislature was a move on April 27, 1861 that Lincoln made when ordering the head of the nation's military "to arrest anyone between Washington and Philadelphia suspected of subversive acts or speech." The order by Lincoln was specifically a suspension of Habeaa Corpus. The order was passed down the line, and eventually led to the arrest of Southern sympathizers in Maryland.
As the war progressed, the North found that Europe was helping the Confederacy because of the hopes that a Southern victory would allow the flow of cotton to continue. Britain, in fact, was blockading the Northern ships so that the Union vessels had no access to the Southern ports. Knowing that the war had been primarily about state's rights up to this point, Abraham Lincoln realized he needed a strategy to get Britain out of the way, and he knew exactly what to do.
If Lincoln could change the primary purpose of the war from the South's defense of state sovereignty to emancipation of the slaves, it would push Britain out of the war. After all, Britain had long since abolished slavery in her empire, and if the American Civil War became about freeing slaves, Britain would not wish to be seen as siding with slavery.
On January 1, 1863, President Abraham Lincoln politicized the slavery ingredient of the war by delivering The Emancipation Proclamation. Ironically enough, though many will claim Emancipation Proclamation freed the slaves, the document actually did nothing of the sort. It was only a proclamation, not a law or amendment. The soul purpose was to make the goal of the American Civil War primarily about the abolition of slavery so that Britain would retreat from the conflict. As expected, Britain returned across the Atlantic, exposing Southern ports, and the North moved in.
Despite the growing number of sea victories as a result of Britain removing their blockade, the Union army was finding itself in a situation of having a shortage of soldiers. On March 3, 1863, Lincoln signed another unconstitutional act. This one, The Enrollment Act, required the enrollment of every male citizen, and those immigrants who had filed for citizenship, between ages twenty and forty-five. In other words, Lincoln instituted the first federal military draft in American history.
By 1863 the Confederacy's northward advance was turned back after the Battle of Gettysburg and, in the west, the Union gained control of the Mississippi River at the Battle of Vicksburg, thereby splitting the Confederacy. Confederate resistance collapsed after Lee surrendered to Grant at Appomattox Court House on April 9, 1865.
620,000 soldiers, and an unknown number of civilians, died during the America Civil War. The result of the war did in fact end slavery, but more devastatingly, it strengthened the role of the federal government.
The saddest part of it all is had Abraham Lincoln acted Constitutionally, and recognized the secession of the Southern states as a constitutional act of state sovereignty, rather than rebellion, and had Lincoln allowed the abolition movements in the Southern states to take their course, though slavery may not have ended until a decade or two later, the more than half of a million American deaths during the American Civil War would not have occurred.
Though hailed as the president that held together the Union, Lincoln was also the president that died with the blood of hundreds of thousands of young American men on his hands.
So, when you see a confederate battle flag flying, or the stars and bars shown at the top of this piece, remember that they are not necessarily the symbol of slavery or racism as many assume. These flags are symbols of the heritage of the South, symbols of state sovereignty, and symbols of the willingness of states to stand up to the federal government when Washington is acting unconstitutional.
"Live Free or Die!" still resonates loud and clear.
-- Political Pistachio Conservative News and Commentary
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