It is at once surprising and to be expected that so many accepted exaggerations exist about Abraham Lincoln. It is surprising because these exaggerations are indeed so incredibly detached from history and proper constitutional exegesis. It is to be expected because, as the saying goes,
"to the victor belong the spoils." The north won the war, so Lincoln's one-sided interpretation of events, penned by his fawning devotes, is expected to trump all other interpretations. The South, with its distinct culture (some might add to that the original vision of the nation from the perspective of the Founders) wasn't just beaten, it was squashed, snuffed out. Here are some questions I've stringed together, quite basic ones actually, that might help put the subject in a better light. I have also, very briefly and without doing proper justice to the issue, proposed some answers, reflections and further questions.
1. Was the Civil War solely about slavery?
As I understand it, the Civil War very clearly did not
originally have anything to do with a desire on the part of the north to end slavery. Economic concerns were the paramount objective in terms of the north's desire to maintain political cohesion with the south. Culturally, politically and economically the two regions were growing more apart. The south viewed the north as power hungry, arrogant, ambitious and avaricious in its attempt to exploit and direct the southern economy and way of life. As self-described "black and proud" economist Walter Williams put it:
Contrary to conventional wisdom, books about Lincoln, and the lessons taught in schools and colleges – the War between the States was not fought to end slavery; Even if it were, a natural question arises: Why was a costly war fought to end it? African slavery existed in many parts of the Western world, but it did not take warfare to end it. Dozens of countries, including the territorial possessions of the British, French, Portuguese, and Spanish, ended slavery peacefully during the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Countries such as Venezuela and Colombia experienced conflict because slave emancipation was simply a ruse for revolutionaries who were seeking state power and were not motivated by emancipation per se.
2. Did Lincoln really care about "emancipating" the slaves?
As historical documentation demonstrates, Lincoln didn't care a wit about the abject racism festering in the south, or in the north for that matter. Originally, he went so far as to reassure the south that he had no intention of interfering with the south's lamentable and stubborn reliance on slavery. Only when he realized that emancipation could be wielded as a potent moral sword to achieve his end, that of lassoing the south back in the union, did he become outspoken on the issue from a moral standpoint. Lincoln saw it as the best way to rally sullen northern spirits. Historians favorable to Lincoln paint his transformation as a gradual realization, a spiritual awakening so to speak, to the just cause of erasing slavery but I'm not so convinced. After all, Lincoln himself doubted that the two races could ever coexist peacefully and, incredibly, even suggested sending African Americans back to Africa as the most efficacious way to deal with the sticky issue...hardly a courageous way to address such a serious problem. His main goal was to win the war, not so much to end slavery. If emancipation could be used to help with his goal, so be it. If not...
Again, to quote Williams:
Abraham Lincoln’s direct statements indicated his support for slavery; He defended slave owners’ right to own their property, saying that "when they remind us of their constitutional rights [to own slaves], I acknowledge them, not grudgingly but fully and fairly; and I would give them any legislation for the claiming of their fugitives" (in indicating support for the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850).
3. According to the framers of the Constitution, did individual states retain any right to secede from the union after having joined it?
I can't find anything in the writings of the founders that supports the notion that the union must,
at all costs, be perpetual. This is simply a fact. I have read that Madison himself, the "Father of the Constitution" (which Lincoln so egregiously disregarded over and over again) predicted that the union would amicably break apart according to regional loyalties at about the very time the Civil War commenced. How's that for prescience? (I'll have to do some research to find the exact quote though.) The point is that it is pure myth to suggest that the Founders uniformly intended that the union be eternal. Some, like Hamilton, and his great admirer John Marshall and probably even Washington, might have preferred that the union stay linked together.
"If you break this union, it will break my heart." So said the hyperactive romantic Alexander Hamilton. But this is hardly a legally binding statement, he is merely expressing his desire. An expression of preference is not necessarily a statement of law. Williams once again offers his insights in an analysis of Thomas DiLorenzo's book, The Real Lincoln:
DiLorenzo marshals numerous proofs that from the very founding of our nation the right of secession was seen as a natural right of the people and a last check on abuse by the central government. For example, at Virginia’s ratification convention, the delegates affirmed "that the powers granted under the Constitution being derived from the People of the United States may be resumed by them whensoever the same shall be perverted to injury or oppression." In Thomas Jefferson’s First Inaugural Address (1801), he declared, "If there be any among us who would wish to dissolve this Union or to change its republican form, let them stand undisturbed as monuments of the safety with which error of opinion may be tolerated where reason is left free to combat it." Jefferson was defending the rights of free speech and of secession. Alexis de Tocqueville observed in Democracy in America, "The Union was formed by the voluntary agreement of the States; in uniting together they have not forfeited their nationality, nor have they been reduced to the condition of one and the same people. If one of the states chooses to withdraw from the compact, it would be difficult to disapprove its right of doing so, and the Federal Government would have no means of maintaining its claims directly either by force or right."
4. How then to address the slavery issue in light of question 3?
This is the hardest question, for obvious reasons. Everyone with a working moral compass would have/should have sought to end slavery as quickly as possible. Failure to grapple with this issue at the genesis is the most conspicuous oversight of the Founders, who, as Joseph Ellis explains, were deeply frustrated with the question
and by their own inability to deal with it properly and as a consequence they decided to wash their hands of the whole messy affair, leaving it to the next generation. How determined was the south to cling to slavery? Would the Confederate States have sought to dilate the nefarious institution further westward and into the Caribbean, as some suggest? (The inner workings of the Missouri Compromise, enacted some forty years earlier, comes to mind.) One of my former professors, probably the most ardent Southern sympathizer I know, will concede in a New York Minute that the south was dead wrong about slavery. Well, of course it was. The big question then is: What could have done by those opposed to slavery in the
pre bellum era that might have both ended slavery definitively
and prevented the total war that was soon to descend upon the nation? This is a question for which I lack a clear-cut answer. That said, historical honesty is the first step when trying to seriously analyze a painful part of our nation's history. When studying the question of the Civil War however, I'd rather reside in an occasionally unpleasant reality than a Pollyannaish fantasy.
