The post at Pat Lang's Sic Semper Tyrannis 2006 blog that I referenced in a post yesterday sparked quite a few comments at the original post. [As of Thursday morning, the original post has been taken down. What is that about? A cached version of the post is here; it does not include the 32 comments the post received.]
Lang's comments were a bit testy, although I can't complain. I suppose this comment of his was partially directed at my comments there:
Well, I have learned what I wanted to learn from this post, and that is that a lot of you people who rail at Bush and the neocons are just like them.
You approach history and policy just like they do, on the basis of received wisdom, emotion and ideology.
(He also said in one comment that I should feel free not to quote him, but I just did anyway.) Actually, I didn't rail and Bush and the neocons in any of my comments there, although I do my share of it elsewhere.
When it comes to the Civil War, it's impossible to say anything much about it without at least being aware of the layers of ideology surrounding it.
But I'm not really a "postmodernist" when it comes to looking at history. At least I don't think that the "narrative" is all that counts. What people said and did prior to the Civil War is something that can be determined with some precision. There are lots of records from the time available. We're not talking about ancient Assyria here.
One of Lang's commenters suggested that the Confederate states seceded over taxation issues. Whether that's ideology or just loopiness, I don't know. But there's no need to treat frivolous ideas like that as on a level with serious ones.
The "states rights" issue addressed in the original post is certainly a serious one to consider. But you can't understand the issue without realizing that the Lost Cause ideology developed by Southern conservatives after the war promoted the idea that secession was over "states rights". Their reasons for doing so are understandable, though hardly admirable.
But the Lost Cause advocates engaged in outright falsification as well as ideological re-framing of antebellum history. The political battles between the Mexican War of 1846-48 and secession in 1860-61 that were critical to the split were all over the issue of slavery. And during the decade leading up to secession, the slave states repeatedly pressed for measures to override the "states rights" of free states in order to support the institution of slavery. That's not ideology, it's a statement of what went on that is fairly easy for anyone to verify if they approach it seriously.
There is a difference between facts and ideology. But ideology in the broadest sense doesn't have to be a barrier to looking at the facts of history. I certainly try to look at the Civil War and the events before and after from a democratic perspective.
But ideology should come into play mainly in terms of analysis and judgment. Within a democratic perspective, different people could agree on the fact that the Republican Party was opposed to slavery, and yet come to very different judgments about that. One person might argue that they were too aggressive; another that they were morally reprehensible because virtually none of them took a position that we would recognize today as egalitarian and non-racist; another might argue that the Republicans pursued the most sensible courses available to them, and so on.
The fact that people are able to make political or "ideological" judgments about historical events does not mean they are unable to look at what actually happened.
But just making stuff up, like claiming the South seceded over taxes, is just phony, whether its from ideology or illiteracy.
I have to wonder, though, what Lang was expecting to get in the way of reaction when he posted someone's statement of what is essentially a pro-Confederate analysis of the initial causes of the war. Really it's a neo-Confederate or Lost Cause approach, reflecting much more postwar claims than prewar realities.
The original analysis also omitted a fairly obvious point about the alleged right of secession, which one of the other commenters pointed out. The fight between Andrew Jackson's federal government and the South Carolina "fire-eaters" in the Nullification Controversy was settled by the Force Bill of 1833. And it established clearly that federal law superceded state law. Individual states didn't have the right to override a federal law, much less just decide to take themselves out of the Union.
One of his commenters even wondered about the right of secession today. That one's simple. It's not allowed in the Constitution. If a state wants to secede, it's legislature can pursue a federal Constitutional Amendment to be ratified just like any other Constitutional Amendment. If it passes, they can secede. Otherwise, forget it.
Addition: Why would you have a publicly-available blog if you're going to yank entire posts with no explanation when people have been actively commenting on it and linking to it? I don't recall ever having taken a post completely down. I have gone back and noted where I've found out that some of the material was erroneous in a post.
For my own reader's information, here is the original text from Arbogast that was the topic for this post and my previous one:
"The Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution abolishes slavery. It was proposed by the Thirty-Eighth Congress on January 31, 1865. It was ratified first on February 1st, 1865, by Illinois, which was not surprising, because the Amendment had been authored principally by Abraham Lincoln. The last state, of the states existing at that time, to ratify the Thirteenth Amendment was Mississippi in 1995.
Now, obviously, I could stop there. If Abraham Lincoln believed that the Constitution had to be amended to abolish slavery, then he must have believed that the Constitution without that amendment, at the very least, was sufficiently ambiguous on the subject as to require the amendment.
But the Constitution wasn't ambiguous. It acknowledged the existence of slavery in the United States and protected it in a variety of ways.
Fugitive slaves were to be returned to their owners.
Art. 4. Sec. 2:
"No person, held to service or labor in one State, under the laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in consequence of any law or regulation therein, be discharged from such service or labor; but shall be delivered up on claim of the party to whom such service or labor may be due."
Slaves were to be counted as "three fifths" of a free person.
Art. 1. Sec. 2:
"Representatives and direct taxes shall be apportioned among the several States, which may be included within this Union, according to their respective numbers, which shall be determined by adding to the whole number of free persons, including those bound to service for a term of years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three fifths of all other persons."
And, finally, the slave trade was to be protected until 1808:
Art. 1. Sec. 9:
"The migration or importation of such persons as any of the States now existing shall think proper to admit, shall not be prohibited by the Congress prior to the year one thousand eight hundred and eight, but a tax or duty may be imposed on such importation, not exceeding ten dollars for each person."
Now, the mechanism by which the Constitution could be amended was spelled out in exact detail in the Constitution. Both houses of Congress had to approve the amendment by a two-thirds majority and then three forths of the state legislatures must approve the amendment, all this within a period of seven years.
That's how you amend the Constitution.
And there is one provision in the Constitution that *cannot* be
amended: the right of each state to be equally represented in the Senate, a provision that increases the power of less heavily populated states. Rhode Island and California each have two Senators.
Article V:
"...no State, without its Consent, shall be deprived of its equal Suffrage in the Senate."
So, you have a Constitution that protects slavery, envisions a nation based upon some measure of equality between the states, and which Abraham Lincoln believed had to be amended toabolish slavery.
Did the abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison call the Constitution "a covenant with death and an agreement with Hell"? Did Patrick Henry "smell a rat" and refuse to attend the Constitutional Convention because he foresaw it would endorse slavery? Yes, and yes.
But that doesn't change the fact that in 1860, less than two generations after the War of Independence, the Constitution of the United States contemplated and protected slavery.
I know that there may be some who are dying to say, "But States were not allowed to secede under the Constitution." In the first place, that is not true. In the second place, I do not believe that the authors of the Constitution would have approved a war costing the lives of 600,000 young men on the subject of slavery. In the third place, the entire country was founded on the principle of secession.
No, when the Civil War began, the Constitution was clearly on the side of the South. The Union had to appeal to a higher law to prosecute the war, a war which I reiterate should never have been fought.
Arbogast
Arbogast's text was orginally posted at the Sic Semper Tyrannis 2006 blog 10/04/06.
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