December 20, 1860 was the day, 150 years ago, when South Carolina voted to secede (I think they should go with “First in Treason” license plates.) As the 150th anniversary approaches, I think it’s interesting to look at what the national discussion looked like leading up to the war. Here is one gem I ran across from the Richmond Daily Dispatch in which the paper takes exception to a conservative journal in New York describing slavery as an evil.
No, no, says the Richmond Daily Dispatch:
As to the South, the time has long gone by when anybody considered it an evil. In what respects is it an evil — moral, social or political! Compare the people of the Southern States with those of any other community, and we challenge all history to produce a higher- toned population, more honest, honorable, humane, and just in all the relations of life. Take the single State of South Carolina, in which there has not been a divorce since the foundation of the government, and show what respect slavery has proved a moral and social evil to the whites on the one hand, or, on the other, to the blacks, who, under slavery, have become elevated from savage barbarians to civilized and Christian men, and are most of them far superior in character to the abolition senators, editors and orators of the country. . . . There is no community in the world more prosperous, nor in which everybody, high and low, great and small, have as much to eat and wear, and are as happy and contented, as in the Southern States of America. To admit that slavery is an evil is, of course, to justify efforts for its removal. The South makes no such admission.
But remember, secession was about limited government, not slavery – so say the apologists of today. I have no interest in blaming the people of 150 years ago for their sense of right and wrong. I am sure that our time and place will have plenty to apologize for in 150 years. But, I do have a lot of interest in blaming people of today who seek to embrace and whitewash the pre-war South with little interest in acknowledging the problems that made the Civil War necessary and make it a net positive that the South was the weaker side and, fortunately, lost decisively the war it started.
. . .
Another interesting tidbit – this letter from the hapless President Buchanan complaining about the do-gooder Northerners and their irresponsible inspiration of notions of freedom in Southern blacks.
The long-continued and intemperate interference of the Northern people with the question of Slavery in the Southern States has at length produced its natural effects. The different sections of the Union are now arrayed against each other, and the time has arrived, so much dreaded by the Father of his Country, when hostile geographical parties have been formed. I have long foreseen and often forewarned my countrymen of the now impending danger. This does not proceed solely from the claim on the part of Congress or the Territorial Legislatures to exclude Slavery from the Territories, nor from the efforts of different States to defeat the execution of the Fugitive Slave law. All or any of these evils might have been endured by the South without danger to the Union, (as others have been,) in the hope that time and reflection might apply the remedy. The immediate peril arises not so much from these causes as from the fact that the incessant and violent agitation of the Slavery question throughout the North for the last quarter of a century has at length produced its malign influence on the slaves, and inspired them with vague notions of freedom.
So, Doug…are you and I going to raise one of the first regiments when the neo-secessionists finally get serious? ;)
The southern states believed that our current constitution they entred into in 1789 was no different than the first constitution, the Articles of Confederation, they had entered into years earlier…and that they could withdraw if they wanted to. That’s not an outrageous position at all. In fact, people forget that there had been a northern secessionist movement during the War of 1812 that fell short. So the northern states’ hands weren’t exactly clean when it comes to making the argument that the Constitution was a pact states could enter into but couldn’t get out of.
While slavery was clearly the catalyst for what happened, southern states did view it as no business of the national government to come in and dictate their policies. Back then the role of the national government was much more limited.
Interesting little tidbit in the NYT’s Opinionator blog about President-elect Lincoln working behind the scenes to quash a compromise deal that would have essentially banned Congress from regulating slavery.
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/12/13/how-lincoln-undid-the-union/?ref=opinion
Not so much. One of the things the Southerners pissed off was the temerity of Northern states to exercise their own right not to recognize the property rights in slaves created by the Southern states. They didn’t like it that Northern states were passing “personal liberty laws” that effectively nullified the federal Fugitive Slave Act; and they didn’t feel like the federal government was doing enough to impose its will on the northern states with respect to the Fugitive Slave Act.
In any event, whether secession was a reasonable view by people at the time to have, the fact is that the South tried to make that argument by force of arms, and lost. It is no longer reasonable for modern day Southerners (or others) to embrace that view; particularly since slavery was the prime motivator for the citizens in the South to take up arms against the United States.
Now Doug, don’t go confusing these modern day states rats people with the facts, and quit trying to shove your elite attitudes about equality down their throats. We all know the blacks were far better off under slavery. :)
The letters you listed sound like the same arguments put forth by the current bunch of America haters (the republicants) concerning their anti-anything Obama or lower class Americans.
If my wife has been cheating on me over and over again after counseling, then I feel justified in a divorce.
If I divorce my wife because I’m tired of her & want to go find a new one, then I feel divorce is immoral & I’m being a dick.
The same is true about the right for a group of people to leave their country & start a new one. If the reason they are leaving is just, then I’ll support their move. If it is unjust, I’m going to call it that.
In other words, if a friend of mine wants a divorce for immoral reasons, I’m going point out what a dick he is being and not admire him for upholding his rights to a divorce.
I’m also not going to admire the south for upholding their right to secede when their reasons were wrong.
And, even if the rights of citizens to secede were assumed, there remain serious questions about the mechanisms. Does it require a Constitutional amendment? If not, why not. Does it require the consent of a majority of a state’s residents? Or is it enough that a majority of land-owning whites wanted to terminate *their* status as United States citizens. Or something in between?
It seems to me that what the Emancipation Proclamation did was outlaw slavery officially,but allowed a system of neo-feudalism to be set up where Blacks were still tied to the land by land owners who strove to have their crops harvested at the lowest overhead possible..
In Mississippi, Highway 61 was called over the decades the ‘Road to Chicago’ because that’s the road blacks took if they wanted to try a different economic system. It’s hard to say the South Side of Chicago was an improvement over Mississippi share cropping,but wages were certainly higher. Every black was officially free in the South.The North had a different set of problems to be sure. These are some anecdotal insights I got through catholic nuns working for Habitat in Mississippi.Highway 61 was traveled both north and south over the years.Also there was the IC railroad that connects Chicago with New Orleans,going the length of Mississippi.The beginning and end of segregation was Memphis..
From my own observations traveling , it’s not so much historic slavery that marks the modern South ,but the the de facto system that was set up afterwards to maintain the ‘Gone-with the-Wind’ economic system after the end of slavery.States like SC and MS still seem especially tied to an old feudalism..VA and NC on the other hand are progessing fast but unevenly into modern times.
What irks me personally is that modern Republican conservatism has the mark of the Old South.I can’t prove it,but the presentation seems so familiar.
Doug: It would seem silly to require an amendment for a state and the country to amicably terminate a relationship. I don’t pretend to argue that there is a right answer to this question, however, it would make logical sense that a secession require the same procedures as: (1) how the U.S. has historically acquired land such as he Louisiana Purchase and Seward’s Folly (Alaska); or (2) how we admit states to the Union. It would seem that these two activities are most similar in substance.
BTW: One complication of 20th (and 21st) century fiscal policy that did not exist in 1861: If a state were to attempt to secede today, there would be issues regarding amounts previously paid into federal Social Security by the citizens of the state, and how to determine the seceding state’s share of our national debt.
I’m reminded of a cartoon of a man sitting in a dark room in a bathrobe banging away at his computer, wife in door imploring him to come to be and get some sleep. “No!,” he exlaimed. “It’s important. Someone’s WRONG on the internet!”
I’m trying not to be that man. It’s apparently important to you to beat up on the south and draw analogies between the civil war and today’s secessionist fantasies. Blog in pacem.
Tipsy: http://xkcd.com/386/
I love that one, because I frequently am that guy.
Get into the present and jump on those treasonous kooks in Vermont!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secession_in_the_United_States#Vermont