THE CIVIL WAR WAS ABOUT SLAVERY
By Steve Beren, originally written September 6, 2004; (edited and re-posted April 28, 2005)
"That is what the Republican Party does best when we are at our best, we extend freedom." - Rudy Giuliani, Republican Convention, New York City, August 30, 2004
“Free Speech, Free Press, Free Soil, Free Men, Fremont, and Victory!” – campaign slogan of John Fremont, first Republican presidential candidate, 1856
THE TRUTH ABOUT THE CIVIL WAR IS AN IMPORTANT ISSUE
The main subject I write and speak about is the U.S.‑led war against terrorism. Sometimes I have made comparisons between the current war and past wars, and naturally I've had plenty of debates with leftist
antiwar activists.
However, I have also received several strongly critical and very angry letters from some right wingers. (see footnote #1, below)
In some of my articles ‑‑ for example at http://members.aol.com/sberen2000/racism.htm ‑‑ I have pointed out the legacy of slavery, and have claimed that President Lincoln's leadership in winning the Civil War and defeating the Confederacy was a great victory in American history. I've compared this to President Roosevelt's leadership in World War II, President Reagan's leadership in the Cold War, and President Bush's leadership in the war against Islamic fascism.
The letters of complaint are not identical, and of course they vary in detail. But the general line of argument is as follows:
*** the writers put forward a revisionist view of the Civil War and claim it was "not about slavery"
*** they have a very negative view of President Lincoln, considering him a tyrant
*** they have a very favorable and nostalgic view of the Confederacy, still sympathizing with "Dixie"
*** some of the letters contain extremist rhetoric, including white supremacist rhetoric and vicious anti‑Semitic comments
In my opinion, a correct understanding of past U.S. history is indispensable to a correct understanding of current U.S. history. Ignoring the claims of modern-day apologists for the Confederacy would be a mistake. It is important to challenge them, answer them, and clarify the truth.
SLAVERY
When the United States won its independence, defeating the British monarchy, and breaking free from colonialism, a strong system of slavery was in place. The constitution of the new republic even recognized slavery, and codified its existence in the constitution.
Well into the 19th century, most major political parties and political leaders either supported slavery, or avoided taking a clear position on it. There was a small abolitionist movement, but it was marginalized.
In the presidential elections of 1840, 1844, 1848, and 1852, the two major political parties were the Democrats and the Whigs. The Democrats for the most part were pro‑slavery, while the Whigs were divided on the issue. During this period, the slavery issue was the dominant issue in American politics, and it became moreso with each passing year.
The Whigs, divided into pro‑slavery “Cotton Whigs” and anti‑slavery “Conscience Whigs,” were unable to present a clear, united alternative to the Democrats, and they decreased significantly as a political force. (see footnote #2, below)
THE PARTY OF LINCOLN
The decline of the Whigs left the Democrats as the dominant political party. However, the decline of the Whigs coincided with an increase in opposition to the institution of slavery. This led to the formation of a third party, the Republican Party, in 1856. Unlike today’s Greens or Libertarians, however, this new party quickly became an important political force, encouraging anti-slavery advocates.
At the Republican party’s June 1856 founding convention in Philadelphia, John Fremont of California, known for his strong anti-slavery views, was selected as the presidential candidate. The Democrats charged that the anti-slavery Republicans were too radical for the times, and the Democratic candidate, James Buchanan, was elected.
Future president Abraham Lincoln, also well known for his anti-slavery views, was one of several politicians considered to be Fremont’s running mate, but Lincoln did not win the Vice-Presidential nomination. Lincoln remained an important anti-slavery politician, and in particular made his mark in the famous 1858 Lincoln-Douglas debates, in which he said:
“A house divided against itself cannot stand. I believe this government cannot endure permanently half slave and half free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved; I do not expect the house to fall; but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all one things, or all the other. Either the opponents of slavery will arrest the further spread of it, and place it where the public mind shall rest in the belief that it is in the course of ultimate extinction, or its advocates will push it forward till it shall become alike lawful in all the States, old as well as new, North as well as South.” (see footnote #3, below)
Lincoln knew that the constitution provided for, and recognized slavery, but nevertheless hoped for slavery’s “ultimate extinction.” This could only happen over time, probably through the constitutional amendment process, as economics modernized, and as the increasing U.S. population changed its mind on slavery.
When Lincoln was elected president in 1860, it was clear to most people on both sides of the slavery issue that the tide had turned.
SOUTHERN STATES SECEDE
After Lincoln’s election, in the weeks leading up to his inauguration, Southern states began to secede from the Union, publishing and distributing lengthy statements in defense of slavery and identifying slavery as the central issue.
The secession statements themselves are much too long for me to reprint in their entirety, but here are some key excerpts. (see footnote #4 below)
On Christmas Eve 1860, only weeks after Lincoln’s election, the state of South Carolina declared:
“Those [Northern] States have assume[d] the right of deciding upon the propriety of our domestic institutions; and have denied the rights of property established in fifteen of the States and recognized by the Constitution; they have denounced as sinful the institution of slavery; they have permitted open establishment among them of societies, whose avowed object is to disturb the peace and to eloign the property of the citizens of other States. They have encouraged and assisted thousands of our slaves to leave their homes; and those who remain, have been incited by emissaries, books and pictures to servile insurrection….
“A geographical line has been drawn across the Union, and all the States north of that line have united in the election of a man to the high office of President of the United States, whose opinions and purposes are hostile to slavery. He is to be entrusted with the administration of the common Government, because he has declared that that "Government cannot endure permanently half slave, half free," and that the public mind must rest in the belief that slavery is in the course of ultimate extinction.
“This sectional combination for the submersion of the Constitution, has been aided in some of the States by elevating to citizenship, persons who, by the supreme law of the land, are incapable of becoming citizens; and their votes have been used to inaugurate a new policy, hostile to the South, and destructive of its beliefs and safety.
“On the 4th day of March next, this party will take possession of the Government. It has announced that the South shall be excluded from the common territory, that the judicial tribunals shall be made sectional, and that a war must be waged against slavery until it shall cease throughout the United States.”
The state of Georgia declared, on January 29, 1861:
“The people of Georgia having dissolved their political connection with the Government of the United States of America, present to their confederates and the world the causes which have led to the separation. For the last ten years we have had numerous and serious causes of complaint against our non-slave-holding confederate States with reference to the subject of African slavery. They have endeavored to weaken our security, to disturb our domestic peace and tranquility, and persistently refused to comply with their express constitutional obligations to us in reference to that property, and by the use of their power in the Federal Government have striven to deprive us of an equal enjoyment of the common Territories of the Republic….
“A brief history of the rise, progress, and policy of anti-slavery and the political organization into whose hands the administration of the Federal Government has been committed will fully justify the pronounced verdict of the people of Georgia. The party of Lincoln, called the Republican party, under its present name and organization, is of recent origin. It is admitted to be an anti-slavery party. While it attracts to itself by its creed the scattered advocates of exploded political heresies, of condemned theories in political economy, the advocates of commercial restrictions, of protection, of special privileges, of waste and corruption in the administration of Government, anti-slavery is its mission and its purpose. By anti-slavery it is made a power in the state….
“The North demanded the application of the principle of prohibition of slavery to all of the territory acquired from Mexico and all other parts of the public domain then and in all future time. It was the announcement of her purpose to appropriate to herself all the public domain then owned and thereafter to be acquired by the United States. The claim itself was less arrogant and insulting than the reason with which she supported it. That reason was her fixed purpose to limit, restrain, and finally abolish slavery in the States where it exists. The South with great unanimity declared her purpose to resist the principle of prohibition to the last extremity….
“The Presidential election of 1852 resulted in the total overthrow of the advocates of restriction and their party friends. Immediately after this result the anti-slavery portion of the defeated party resolved to unite all the elements in the North opposed to slavery an to stake their future political fortunes upon their hostility to slavery everywhere. This is the party two whom the people of the North have committed the Government. They raised their standard in 1856 and were barely defeated. They entered the Presidential contest again in 1860 and succeeded.
“The prohibition of slavery in the Territories, hostility to it everywhere, the equality of the black and white races, disregard of all constitutional guarantees in its favor, were boldly proclaimed by its leaders and applauded by its followers. With these principles on their banners and these utterances on their lips the majority of the people of the North demand that we shall receive them as our rulers. The prohibition of slavery in the Territories is the cardinal principle of this organization.”
Around the same time, the state of Mississippi declared:
“Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery -- the greatest material interest of the world. Its labor supplies the product which constitutes by far the largest and most important portions of commerce of the earth. These products are peculiar to the climate verging on the tropical regions, and by an imperious law of nature, none but the black race can bear exposure to the tropical sun. These products have become necessities of the world, and a blow at slavery is a blow at commerce and civilization. That blow has been long aimed at the institution, and was at the point of reaching its consummation. There was no choice left us but submission to the mandates of abolition, or a dissolution of the Union, whose principles had been subverted to work out our ruin….
“It [the Republican Party] has made combinations and formed associations to carry out its schemes of emancipation in the States and wherever else slavery exists.”
On February 2, 1861, the state of Texas, referring to the “imbecility” of the Federal government, was particularly adamant in their pro-slavery declaration:
“[Texas] was received [into the Union] as a commonwealth holding, maintaining and protecting the institution known as negro slavery -- the servitude of the African to the white race within her limits -- a relation that had existed from the first settlement of her wilderness by the white race, and which her people intended should exist in all future time. Her institutions and geographical position established the strongest ties between her and other slave-holding States of the confederacy. Those ties have been strengthened by association. But what has been the course of the government of the United States, and of the people and authorities of the non-slave-holding States, since our connection with them?
“The controlling majority of the Federal Government, under various pretences and disguises, has so administered the same as to exclude the citizens of the Southern States, unless under odious and unconstitutional restrictions, from all the immense territory owned in common by all the States on the Pacific Ocean, for the avowed purpose of acquiring sufficient power in the common government to use it as a means of destroying the institutions of Texas and her sister slaveholding States….
“[O]ther wrongs we have patiently borne in the vain hope that a returning sense of justice and humanity would induce a different course of administration.
“When we advert to the course of individual non-slave-holding States, and that a majority of their citizens, our grievances assume far greater magnitude….
“In all the non-slave-holding States, in violation of that good faith and comity which should exist between entirely distinct nations, the people have formed themselves into a great sectional party, now strong enough in numbers to control the affairs of each of those States, based upon an unnatural feeling of hostility to these Southern States and their beneficent and patriarchal system of African slavery, proclaiming the debasing doctrine of equality of all men, irrespective of race or color -- a doctrine at war with nature, in opposition to the experience of mankind, and in violation of the plainest revelations of Divine Law. They demand the abolition of negro slavery throughout the confederacy, the recognition of political equality between the white and negro races, and avow their determination to press on their crusade against us, so long as a negro slave remains in these States….
“For years past this abolition organization has been actively sowing the seeds of discord through the Union, and has rendered the federal congress the arena for spreading firebrands and hatred between the slave-holding and non-slave-holding States.
“By consolidating their strength, they have placed the slave-holding States in a hopeless minority in the federal congress, and rendered representation of no avail in protecting Southern rights against their exactions and encroachments….
“They have, through the mails and hired emissaries, sent seditious pamphlets and papers among us to stir up servile insurrection and bring blood and carnage to our firesides.
“They have sent hired emissaries among us to burn our towns and distribute arms and poison to our slaves for the same purpose.
“We hold as undeniable truths that the governments of the various States, and of the confederacy itself, were established exclusively by the white race, for themselves and their posterity; that the African race had no agency in their establishment; that they were rightfully held and regarded as an inferior and dependent race, and in that condition only could their existence in this country be rendered beneficial or tolerable.
“That in this free government *all white men are and of right ought to be entitled to equal civil and political rights* [emphasis in the original]; that the servitude of the African race, as existing in these States, is mutually beneficial to both bond and free, and is abundantly authorized and justified by the experience of mankind, and the revealed will of the Almighty Creator, as recognized by all Christian nations; while the destruction of the existing relations between the two races, as advocated by our sectional enemies, would bring inevitable calamities upon both and desolation upon the fifteen slave-holding states.”
PRESIDENT LINCOLN’S 1861 INAUGURAL ADDRESS
In his 1861 inaugural address (March 4, 1861), Lincoln responded to the pro-slavery secessionists. He recognized that under the constitution he could not move to abolish slavery, but he urged the South not to secede, and to allow the future of slavery to be determined by the people of a united nation, perhaps through the constitutional amendment process. It is understandable that supporters of slavery would be suspicious of the outcome of such a process, since the U.S. population was more and more supportive of the anti-slavery position advocated by Lincoln’s Republican Party. (see footnote #5, below)
Lincoln said:
“[N]o State upon its own mere motion can lawfully get out of the Union; that Resolves and Ordinances to that effect are legally void; and that acts of violence, within any State or States, against the authority of the United States, are insurrectionary or revolutionary, according to circumstances….
”In doing this there needs to be no bloodshed or violence; and there shall be none, unless it be forced upon the national authority….
“Shall fugitives from labor be surrendered by national or State authority? The Constitution does not expressly say. May Congress prohibit slavery in the Territories? The Constitution does not expressly say. MUST Congress protect slavery in the Territories? The Constitution does not expressly say….
“If a minority in such case will secede rather than acquiesce, they make a precedent which in turn will divide and ruin them; for a minority of their own will secede from them whenever a majority refuses to be controlled by such minority. For instance, why may not any portion of a new confederacy a year or two hence arbitrarily secede again, precisely as portions of the present Union now claim to secede from it? All who cherish disunion sentiments are now being educated to the exact temper of doing this.
“Is there such perfect identity of interests among the States to compose a new Union, as to produce harmony only, and prevent renewed secession?
“Plainly, the central idea of secession is the essence of anarchy….
“One section of our country believes slavery is RIGHT, and ought to be extended, while the other believes it is WRONG, and ought not to be extended. This is the only substantial dispute….
“I cannot be ignorant of the fact that many worthy and patriotic citizens are desirous of having the national Constitution amended. While I make no recommendation of amendments, I fully recognize the rightful authority of the people over the whole subject….
“Why should there not be a patient confidence in the ultimate justice of the people? Is there any better or equal hope in the world? In our present differences is either party without faith of being in the right? If the Almighty Ruler of Nations, with his eternal truth and justice, be on your side of the North, or on yours of the South, that truth and that justice will surely prevail, by the judgment of this great tribunal, the American people.
”Intelligence, patriotism, Christianity, and a firm reliance on him who has never yet forsaken this favored land, are still competent to adjust in the best way all our present difficulty.”
JEFFERSON DAVIS LAYS OUT THE PRO-SLAVERY CASE FOR THE SECESSION OF THE CONFEDERACY
Despite Lincoln’s plea that the South remain in the Union and adhere to the eventual future wishes of the united people as expressed through the constitutional process, eleven states did secede from the Union. And on April 29, 1861, only weeks after Lincoln’s inauguration, Jefferson Davis, the leader of the Confederacy, addressed the provisional congress of the secessionists (see footnote #6, below):
“As soon, however, as the Northern States that prohibited African slavery within their limits had reached a number sufficient to give their representation a controlling voice in Congress, a persistent and organized system of hostile measures against the rights of the owners of slaves in the Southern States was inaugurated and gradually extended. A continuous series of measures was devised and prosecuted for the purpose of rendering insecure the tenure of property in slaves. Fanatical organizations, supplied with money by voluntary subscriptions, were assiduously engaged in exciting amongst the slaves a spirit of discontent and revolt; means were furnished for their escape from their owners.…
“Finally a great party was organized for the purpose of obtaining the administration of the Government, with the avowed object of using its power for the total exclusion of the slave States from all participation in the benefits of the public domain acquired by all the States in common, whether by conquest or purchase; of surrounding them entirely by States in which slavery should be prohibited; of thus rendering the property in slaves so insecure as to be comparatively worthless, and thereby annihilating in effect property worth thousands of millions of dollars. This party, thus organized, succeeded in the month of November last in the election of its candidate for the Presidency of the United States.
“In the meantime, under the mild and genial climate of the Southern States and the increasing care and attention for the well-being and comfort of the laboring class, dictated alike by interest and humanity, the African slaves had augmented in number from about 600,000, at the date of the adoption of the constitutional compact, to upward of 4,000,000. In moral and social condition they had been elevated from brutal savages into docile, intelligent, and civilized agricultural laborers, and supplied not only with bodily comforts but with careful religious instruction. Under the supervision of a superior race their labor had been so directed as not only to allow a gradual and marked amelioration of their own condition, but to convert hundreds of thousands of square miles of wilderness into cultivated lands covered with a prosperous people; towns and cities had sprung into existence, and had rapidly increased in wealth and population under the social system of the South; the white population of the Southern slaveholding States had augmented form about 1,250,000 at the date of the adoption of the Constitution to more than 8,500,000 in 1860; and the productions of the South in cotton, rice, sugar, and tobacco, for the full development and continuance of which the labor of African slaves was and is indispensable, had swollen to an amount which formed nearly three-fourths of the exports of the whole United States and had become absolutely necessary to the wants of civilized man.”
Under the leadership of Jefferson Davis, the South seceded and fought to defend the slave system as “indispensable” and “absolutely necessary.” And under the leadership of Abraham Lincoln, the United States of America was determined to defeat the Confederacy.
LINCOLN’S SECOND INAUGURAL ADDRESS
Lincoln was re-elected in 1864, and when Lincoln took the stage for his second inaugural address on March 4, 1865, it was becoming clear that the Union would be preserved and that the Dixie slavocracy would be defeated. He was both mournful and conciliatory in his brief speech, in which he once again makes clear his view that the war was about slavery (see footnote #7, below):
“On the occasion corresponding to this four years ago all thoughts were anxiously directed to an impending civil war. All dreaded it, all sought to avert it. While the inaugural address was being delivered from this place, devoted altogether to saving the Union without war, urgent agents were in the city seeking to destroy it without war—seeking to dissolve the Union and divide effects by negotiation. Both parties deprecated war, but one of them would make war rather than let the nation survive, and the other would accept war rather than let it perish, and the war came.
“One-eighth of the whole population were colored slaves, not distributed generally over the Union, but localized in the southern part of it. These slaves constituted a peculiar and powerful interest. All knew that this interest was somehow the cause of the war. To strengthen, perpetuate, and extend this interest was the object for which the insurgents would rend the Union even by war, while the Government claimed no right to do more than to restrict the territorial enlargement of it. Neither party expected for the war the magnitude or the duration which it has already attained. Neither anticipated that the cause of the conflict might cease with or even before the conflict itself should cease. Each looked for an easier triumph, and a result less fundamental and astounding. Both read the same Bible and pray to the same God, and each invokes His aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God's assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men's faces, but let us judge not, that we be not judged. The prayers of both could not be answered. That of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has His own purposes. ‘Woe unto the world because of offenses; for it must needs be that offenses come, but woe to that man by whom the offense cometh.’ If we shall suppose that American slavery is one of those offenses which, in the providence of God, must needs come, but which, having continued through His appointed time, He now wills to remove, and that He gives to both North and South this terrible war as the woe due to those by whom the offense came, shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a living God always ascribe to Him? Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said "the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.
“With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.”
SUMMING IT UP
In the first half of the 19th century, the issue of slavery came to a head in the United States. For centuries, European colonists had exploited the wealth and humanity of Africa, bringing millions of the sons and daughters of Africa to the Americas against their will, and throwing them and their descendants into slavery.
With the American Revolution in 1776, the colonists threw off all ties to the British monarchy and set up a republic. This was a historic blow for freedom, democracy, and equality.
For over seventy years, however, the old slave system put in place by the colonizers remained in place. The existence of slavery, an inhumane and exploitative system, stood in stark and obvious contradiction to the values of the 1776 revolution. Slavery became the most important political issue, dividing families, dividing churches, and dividing the USA itself.
Under the leadership of President Abraham Lincoln, perhaps the greatest man of the 19th century, the bold idea was put forward that the USA could not exist “half slave and half free.” But the racist slave‑owners, intent on preserving their immoral and unjust oppression of the black people, split away from the United States. They valued the racist slave system more than patriotism, formed a separate enemy nation, and Dixie fought against America for four bloody years.
The opponents of Lincoln called him a “tyrant,” mocked his “imbecility,” accused him of tearing up the constitution, and claimed that he was taking away civil liberties. But the Union, the United States of America, led by Lincoln, persisted. They “stayed the course.”
In the end, Dixie and slavery were defeated. Shortly after the defeat of the Confederacy and the restoration of the Union, the nation moved towards constitutional abolition of slavery. To be sure, this did not end all mistreatment of and discrimination against blacks, but it represented a break with the past and an important step forward towards a more just, more democratic, more perfect system.
(1)See “Southern Heritage and Views,” post by Yakima Porter on 8/30/04 http://lists.topica.com/lists/SouthernHeritage/read/message.html?mid=1717443938&sort=d&start=2228
(2)See article on Whig Party in online Nationmaster Encyclopedia http://www.nationmaster.com/encyclopedia/United‑States‑Whig‑Party
(3)See “The Complete Book of U.S. Presidents,” by William A. DeGregorio, fifth edition, pages 216-217, pages 230-231
(4)See entire texts of secession statements http://sunsite.utk.edu/civil‑war/reasons.html
(5)See entire text of President Lincoln’s 1861 inaugural address http://www.bartleby.com/124/pres31.html
(6)See entire text of Jefferson Davis’ first message to the provisional congress of the Confederacy http://www.bartleby.com/124/pres31.html
(7)See entire text of President Lincoln’s 1865 inaugural address http://www.bartleby.com/124/pres32.html
