by Paul Craig Roberts
When I read Professor Thomas DiLorenzo’s article the question that lept to mind was, “How come the South is said to have fought for slavery when the North wasn’t fighting against slavery?”
Two days before Lincoln’s inauguration as the 16th President, Congress, consisting only of the Northern states, passed overwhelmingly on March 2, 1861, the Corwin Amendment that gave constitutional protection to slavery. Lincoln endorsed the amendment in his inaugural address, saying “I have no objection to its being made express and irrevocable.”
Quite clearly, the North was not prepared to go to war in order to end slavery when on the very eve of war the US Congress and incoming president were in the process of making it unconstitutional to abolish slavery.
Here we have absolute total proof that the North wanted the South kept in the Union far more than the North wanted to abolish slavery.
If the South’s real concern was maintaining slavery, the South would not have turned down the constitutional protection of slavery offered them on a silver platter by Congress and the President. Clearly, also for the South the issue was not slavery.
The real issue between North and South could not be reconciled on the basis of accommodating slavery. The real issue was economic as DiLorenzo, Charles Beard and other historians have documented. The North offered to preserve slavery irrevocably, but the North did not offer to give up the high tariffs and economic policies that the South saw as inimical to its interests.
Blaming the war on slavery was the way the northern court historians used morality to cover up Lincoln’s naked aggression and the war crimes of his generals. Demonizing the enemy with moral language works for the victor. And it is still ongoing. We see in the destruction of statues the determination to shove remaining symbols of the Confederacy down the Memory Hole.
Today the ignorant morons, thoroughly brainwashed by Identity Politics, are demanding removal of memorials to Robert E. Lee, an alleged racist toward whom they express violent hatred. This presents a massive paradox. Robert E. Lee was the first person offered command of the Union armies. How can it be that a “Southern racist” was offered command of the Union Army if the union was going to war to free black slaves?
Virginia did not secede until April 17, 1861, two days after Lincoln called up troops for the invasion of the South.
Surely there must be some hook somewhere that the dishonest court historians can use on which to hang an explanation that the war was about slavery. It is not an easy task. Only a small minority of southerners owned slaves. Slaves were brought to the New World by Europeans as a labor force long prior to the existence of the US and the Southern states in order that the abundant land could be exploited. For the South slavery was an inherited institution that pre-dated the South. Diaries and letters of soldiers fighting for the Confederacy and those fighting for the Union provide no evidence that the soldiers were fighting for or against slavery. Princeton historian, Pulitzer Prize winner, Lincoln Prize winner, president of the American Historical Association, and member of the editorial board of Encyclopedia Britannica, James M. McPherson, in his book based on the correspondence of one thousand soldiers from both sides, What They Fought For, 1861-1865, reports that they fought for two different understandings of the Constitution.
As for the Emancipation Proclamation, on the Union side, military officers were concerned that the Union troops would desert if the Emancipation Proclamation gave them the impression that they were being killed and maimed for the sake of blacks. That is why Lincoln stressed that the proclamation was a “war measure” to provoke an internal slave rebellion that would draw Southern troops off the front lines.
If we look carefully we can find a phony hook in the South Carolina Declaration of Causes of Secession (December 20, 1860) as long as we ignore the reasoning of the document. Lincoln’s election caused South Carolina to secede. During his campaign for president Lincoln used rhetoric aimed at the abolitionist vote. (Abolitionists did want slavery abolished for moral reasons, though it is sometimes hard to see their morality through their hate, but they never controlled the government.)
South Carolina saw in Lincoln’s election rhetoric intent to violate the US Constitution, which was a voluntary agreement, and which recognized each state as a free and independent state. After providing a history that supported South Carolina’s position, the document says that to remove all doubt about the sovereignty of states “an amendment was added, which declared that the powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States, respectively, or to the people.”
South Carolina saw slavery as the issue being used by the North to violate the sovereignty of states and to further centralize power in Washington. The secession document makes the case that the North, which controlled the US government, had broken the compact on which the Union rested and, therefore, had made the Union null and void. For example, South Carolina pointed to Article 4 of the US Constitution, which reads: “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.” Northern states had passed laws that nullified federal laws that upheld this article of the compact. Thus, the northern states had deliberately broken the compact on which the union was formed.
The obvious implication was that every aspect of states’ rights protected by the 10th Amendment could now be violated. And as time passed they were, so South Carolina’s reading of the situation was correct.
The secession document reads as a defense of the powers of states and not as a defense of slavery. Here is the document: http://teachingamericanhistory
Read it and see what you decide.
A court historian, who is determined to focus attention away from the North’s destruction of the US Constitution and the war crimes that accompanied the Constitution’s destruction, will seize on South Carolina’s use of slavery as the example of the issue the North used to subvert the Constitution. The court historian’s reasoning is that as South Carolina makes a to-do about slavery, slavery must have been the cause of the war.
As South Carolina was the first to secede, its secession document probably was the model for other states. If so, this is the avenue by which court historians, that is, those who replace real history with fake history, turn the war into a war over slavery.
Once people become brainwashed, especially if it is by propaganda that serves power, they are more or less lost forever. It is extremely difficult to bring them to truth. Just look at the pain and suffering inflicted on historian David Irving for documenting the truth about the war crimes committed by the allies against the Germans. There is no doubt that he is correct, but the truth is unacceptable.
The same is the case with the War of Northern Aggression. Lies masquerading as history have been institutionalized for 150 years. An institutionalized lie is highly resistant to truth.
Education has so deteriorated in the US that many people can no longer tell the difference between an explanation and an excuse or justification. In the US denunciation of an orchestrated hate object is a safer path for a writer than explanation. Truth is the casualty.
That truth is so rare everywhere in the Western World is why the West is doomed. The United States, for example, has an entire population that is completely ignorant of its own history.
As George Orwell said, the best way to destroy a people is to destroy their history.
I agree with PCR only halfway. What he’s saying is both more and less important than how the debate is being framed by most of the media.
1860 America did not see itself as egalitarian. These were two white leaderships, fighting for white causes. As he wrote, “military officers were concerned that the Union troops would desert if the Emancipation Proclamation gave them the impression that they were being killed and maimed for the sake of blacks.” This is true.
This is why, as Russian TV pointed out, it’s dangerous that American history is becoming foreign to Americans and viewed through a moral lens. It’s correct that by the logic of protesters, statues of Union soldiers should also be pulled down, as well as statues of Jefferson, Washington, Christopher Columbus etc.
BUT!!!!!
American history has ALWAYS been foreign to Americans — black Americans!!!
Because perpetual slavery was part of the creation of EMPIRE which still enslaves America today! Both the North and the South were roped into independence by a small cabal of Anglo profiteers, the names of whom are mostly forgotten besides Alexander Hamilton. You can read about this in amazing books like “Founding Finance” by William Hogeland.
As even Roman Catholics realize, the Empire does not care whether slavery is moral or not. They do not care whether divorce is moral, homosexualism is moral. All that mattered after 1865 was that slavery couldn’t bring in the profits like industrialization, sharecropping, and robbery of the poor does.
If we wish to defeat the current princelings of the Anglo-Zionist Empire, statues must keep coming down until they realize that we mean business!
The Russian TV points out it is a bad thing to remove statues. But as to your other point. You seem to be shocked or disapproving ,that the US had a European-American power structure. African-Americans (by far the only other racial group in the US with any numbers at that time) made up 14% of the US population (around 90% of them slaves). I don’t know who else except the 85% majority of European-Americans you would imagine would be in power at the time. Even today European-Americans are 65-79% of the US population. In most countries a majority that large assures the rule of the country. So why would anyone be surprised or disapproving that they would in the US. As to the “current princelings” of the Anglo-Zionist Empire. Do you think those Wall Street Bankers,neo-cons, and .California Silicon Valley billionaires, care one bit about Confederate War Memorials,they couldn’t care less.That doesn’t affect their power in the slightest.And lastly,who is the “we”,in the “we mean business” part.Are you talking about racial minorities that might want to take power themselves from the majority? Why would I,a member of the racial majority think that seeing myself replaced by another, would somehow be a good thing. Would I be foolish enough to think that the minorities in power would be somehow “better”. We already have the zionists running the country.That is “more” than enough minority rule for me as it is. And I think you could ask the Russians about how much better that worked for them when the Bolsheviks,made up of mostly ethnic minorities, came to power over the Russians.
Touche!
Clear thinking, clear thrust.
I only identify with the human race and its multiple skin colors, as ONE species of “We”.
Those that identify with only their color, as either biggest victims (therefore now deserving “our turn to get even”) or “best qualified” to rule, whatever shade that might be, veer off rather quickly into an animal species vector that cannot be trusted, IMHO.
Why is it that Russians today build statues of Stalin?
That’s all I’ll say…
Always with the apologia for zionism UB.
The zionist power structure in the United States is not reflective of demographics, nor has it ever been.
The zionist power structure of the United States is reflective of the interests of parasites and profiteers, and of their dutiful minions.
They are a class UB, not a race.
The vast majority of Americans of European decent are slaves as much as anyone else. To intentionally confuse these issues is the hallmark of a zionist psyop. An ever growing number of people have deleloped immunity to these tactics UB, which is why the CIA organized race riots in Charlotteville needed to both transport by bus, and pay for the participants, on both sides of a manufactured confrontation.
Reminds me of the saying… you can’t fool all of the people all of the time, but nice try anyway, although having your gender confused collaborator chime in was a little over the top.
The more I read your posts (and some others sometime). The more certain I am that you have no factual idea of what a zionist is. And just jumble your hatred of people together, and then label them “zionist”. Let me help you a little to correct that error.Be aware though these are the PC descriptions found on the web. I would be a bit more “colorful” if I was describing them.But I think you will be able to grasp the point (hopefully):
“Zionist: a supporter of Zionism; a person who believes in the development and protection of a Jewish nation in what is now Israel.”
“Zionism:a movement for (originally) the re-establishment and (now) the development and protection of a Jewish nation in what is now Israel. It was established as a political organization in 1897 under Theodor Herzl, and was later led by Chaim Weizmann.”
Basically,someone that puts Israel before anything else. Can be Jewish ,a large number are ,but not always. There are also Christian zionists ,too many of those fools,I’d say. Especially in the US and Europe mostly.
So there you have it. I never do that. I despise the very idea of Israel. I see it as an apartheid state. Far worse in most ways than South Africa ever was. That oppresses without mercy the Palestinian peoples,both Muslim and Christian. So no,I’m not a zionist. When you want to insult me. I’d appreciate it if you at least try to get your terms for insult correct. That really doesn’t help your insulting prowess when you don’t even know which correct lying insult to use.Please correct that flaw that and stop embarrassing yourself more.
The first sign of an inherent zionism is attempting to police the use of language by others with reference to the recieved interpretations of zionist orthodoxy.
But I dunno bob, maybe you don’t know you’re a zionist. I’ve considered the possibility. Goodness knows, if so, you’re not the only one. In another epoch I might describe this tendency of yours, for instance several long winded lectures on the proper way to perceive Jews or trolls, as a character trait demonstrative of an individual suffering from profound normalcy bias,
i.e. zionism.
Unfortunately, as once noted by a sage whose name I forget, it is no great accomplishment to be well adjusted to a society that is sick.
Or as another specifically zionist sage noted, although I’m sure Einstein stole it from someone else, you can not fix a problem with the same consciousness that created it.
If we are ever to escape the trap of degeneration and infantalization made for us by zionists, the very first step is that we stop giving over our power to create language — and therefore let some zionist committee of the politically correct define our reality.
Everyone who reads my posts knows exactly what I mean by zionist, or else struggles to discern it, a valuable thing all by itself.
And notice I don’t harp on about da Jews or even of Israel, ultimate scapegoats for zionism.
The reason I began visiting this site more than 7 years ago, and stuck with it even as the invasion of Sunstein Sayanim turned it into a shadow of it’s former self, is because the Saker was in the habit of using the term Anglo-Zionist, a term that drove zionist policiers absolutely crazy. Lol, it still makes me laugh.
The creation of language is a power possessed by only free people, and that my zionist cohabitator of the Vineyard, is a high ideal and likely why we are tolerated on this site, Sayanim or Party of No.
Lumpentroll … yours being one of the best sequence of comments in years.
Yes, Orwell was correct about destroying a nation through the destruction of it’s history. However, what is now happening in the US with the destruction of memorials which depict the Confederacy has nothing to do with destroying a nation. Analysts have for years been warning about a possibility of a second civil war occurring in the US if the right conditions appear. The elite in the US knows this. That’s why Confederate memorials are being removed, to make people forget that the Confederacy existed. Not a wise move. What this will do is remind people that the Confederacy really did exist.
Personally, I think that if there are deep state provocateurs on the white-nationalist side, it’s actually their intention to do this. Keep in mind that the Charlottesville protest so widely covered in the media was actually the THIRD such protest — the first two involved local right-wingers only and did not get such media coverage. Someone engineered this third one as a national event. Their objective can’t be anything other than to make the Confederacy go nationwide.
Recently I read a story—I believe it was a link off of the Before It’s News website–that noted a small town in Kentucky was offering to receive all of the statues from the War between the States that are being taken down. Sounds like a fair enough offer. Folks who prefer not to look at such statues could make a detour around that town, and those who respect these statues could pay them all a visit –and besides,, someone could be making money off of this. Michael Hoffman, in his On the Contrary blog site, makes some interesting comments on certain people (who were in favor of slavery) whose statues appear not to have any demonstrations occurring around them at all. Interesting stuff, there. Friends: I hope that the purpose of a war monument, or a statue of a person who served in a war, would cause people for decades and even centuries into the future to pause and ponder how truly awful war is, and perhaps inspire them to realize at last that the only “good” war is the one that was avoided—and when that happens, the human race will have finally fought its last war.
Decades ago, Ernest Becker (in his book Beyond Alienation, I believe) suggested, in addition or in lieu of church-going, people go to slaughterhouses where cattle and pigs are butchered en masse, we could thereby experience the raw reality of what our major food sources eendure on our behalf. Wake us up a little to how dependent we are on others, esp others who must suffer so that we can live in the fashion to which we are addicted.
We already are experiencing war daily in our inner cities. We peaceable “innocent”s , esp white folks, should be required, esp if we are church goers and our churches are given tax exempt status, could be required to participate once a year in a ritual recognition of the butchery our tax dollars and gun lobbies contribute to around the world. For starters, we could be taken to darkened rooms supplied with a one-way mirror viewing into hospital ERs where near-daily gunshot wound victims are received for treatment; citizens could be escorted through to witness how horrible is the damage and harm guns do to people; starting around age ten, perhaps with texts and photos from recent wars to help draw the lessons of what refusal to use diplomacy tends to lead to…..
Dear Mr Roberts,
Thank you for this very interesting paper. You are right to say that the causes of this war were of economic origin. High tariffs and protectionist/industrialist policies of the North were a deadly threat to the agricultural low-intensive export-based south economy.
Lincoln/Carey economic policies would have been of great benefit to the southern states, thought. But the ideological wall was too thick for them.
Anyway, I think you are wrong in saying that the North broke the constitutional pact first. Above all Articles and Amendments of the Constitution, there is the Preamble, which set the general frame and goals of the Constitution, in hierarchic order :
“We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”
The Articles and Amendments must provide for these frame and goals, or be changed, which sometimes happen.
Note that the first of these goals is “to form a more perfect Union”. Whatever clever the defense of South Carolina was, it basically took pretext of the positivist legalist concept that what is not explicitly written in the constitution in not constitutional, which a fallacy, to break free of the Union in order to preserve – not the General Welfare or a more perfect Union – but its own South Carolina economic interests.
As for the Northern states nullifying the Art. 4, it was no cause for claiming that the constitutional pact was broken, since this nullification was having no negative effect at all towards the goals of the Preamble.
How is it possible to accept that runaway slaves are the responsibility of all the states, for the benefit of a few, and that non-slavery states must pay and organize for the capture and return of those ? The economic contribution of the slave system to the Union could not justify so many efforts from the community, and the industrial revolution was proof enough that an industrial, intensive, free laborers system was much more economically efficient. The moral aspect of the question is even more compelling, of course.
For the idealist Lincoln, If the Articles and Amendments do not provide a solution to uphold the frame and goals of the Preamble in the pre-secession situation, then start from the Preamble and develop solution that are fitted to the correction of the situation, in the common interest.
This is the two cents of a French citizen :-)
Our supreme court has ruled that preambles carry no legal weight unless that which is stated in the preamble is specifically enumerated in the actual document.
Our union has been referred to, especially by our founders, as a compact. James Madison, the ‘father’ of the constitution, oft used the term.
Under compact theory, if either party to an agreement fails to honor said agreement, that agreement may be considered null and void.
It was the south’s view, that northern agitation over slavery and the government’s expenditures of tariffs largely to the benefit of northern interests amounted to breaking the compact among the states.
Since secession was not directly addressed by the constitution, the south was quite within its rights to end the compact that united these free and sovereign states.
Hello Woogs,
since the Preamble defines the principles from which the Constitution is developed, this ruling is quite frankly an attempt to destroy the Constitution, IMHO. Thats what positivistic legalism will do to ya
As for Madison, he expresses here the contract theory of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, his opinion on the Constitution is not the best one. As you know, there was many philosophical schools of thought involved in the pre-constitutional debate, and the school oft thought that set the axiomatic support of the Constitution was the optimistic idealism of Leibniz, mainly.
If you try to interpret the Constitution with the wrong set of principle, you are bound to be wrong and to rip apart, on the long term, the legal fabric of the country.
From the Leibnizian idealist point of view, the Preamble is above and define the Constitution, as a cause is above and define its consequences. Further, the Preamble define the nature of the Unity on which the Variety of the Constitution is built, it is a hypothesis on the relation between the One and the Many, a proposition of Harmony.
If you support the idea that the One has no value, then how do you define the Many ? How does a state define its universal rights if it reject the value of the Preamble ?
And so, South Carolina did really expressed only the interests of its oligarchy when arguing its case for secession. Since it had no constitutional ground, they used positivistic legalism sophistry to defend their case. “State Right” lost a lot because of this fallacy, as history tells us.
Lincoln did exactly what was necessary in regard to the Preamble, and the US became a model for the world because of the universal standpoint he choose and win with.
Au revoir
Jean, i would disagree with you on a couple of points.
First, with Madison being the primary author of the constitution, it’s hard to downplay his importance. He also wrote many of the federalist papers, which explained the logic behind and ideas brought forth in the constitution. He also went to great length (in federalist 39) in explaining the power structure between the states and central government.
Secondly, the supreme court is the final arbiter in matters relating to the constitution. Agree with it or not, its ruling on preambles is clear.
Thank you Woogs,
I think I am not downplaying Madison view on the Constitution, I am saying his way of thinking it did not define it axiomatic roots. The role of Hamilton, Washington and Ben Franklin into defining it was much more dominant, and quite Leibnizian of origin. “The Law of Nations” by Emer de Vattel – of Leibnizian influence – was a very much used book at the time, George Washington did borrow it at the Congress Library and famously forgot to bring it back.
The supreme court is the final arbiter in matters relating to the constitution, it is a fact. Only it can go back on its own decisions and correct past mistakes, that why I think the debate on these matters should never be over.
Thank you for this dialogue.
thank you, jean, for the reminder, that our constitutional form of representative democratic republican confederated government is an evolving experiment whose sovereign agents are the living people to whom its representative public officials are subservient and accountable, or in principle should be. But in fact this is NOT the case, because the Zionist-subservient Senate will never impeach its members, even though they, all 100, routinely violate their oath of office by passing resolution after resolution supporting Israel’s horrible crimes against the people of Palestine. Nelson Mandela had it right when in 1997 he told the UN General Assembly, “Our freedom is incomplete without the freedom of the Palestinian people.” But tell that to the U.S. Congress with its groveling before the Zionist billionaires’ lobby AIPAC and Israel’s war criminal prime ministers, and you’ll be talking to dead matter.
The Constitution was a compromise arrangement between the Northern and Southern states. Of course it accepted slavery, because that would have been a deal-breaker for the Southern states. Their economies were dependent on slavery. Especially in the upper-classes who sent delegates to the Constitutional convention. There was no way possible for the post-revolutionary war states to agree on a Constitution that would have abolished slavery.
Plus, the Abolitionists movement that opposed slavery didn’t even really exist at that time. I’m sure there were some northerners who opposed slavery. But the Abolitionists didn’t get going until the 1830’s or so. And then they were a tiny minority and largely scorned as wacky radicals even in the North. It was only in the 1850’s that this movement really began to grow and take hold, even in the North.
So much that could be said, but I’ll just note that the south’s position was probably best expressed in South Carolina’s “address to the slaveholding states”.
Also, the south was well aware of the republican party’s efforts at agitation as they had heard/read William Seward’s speech, “the irrepressible conflict”. Seward was the favorite to win the republican nomination, but Lincoln supporters shut many Seward supporters out of the convention and packed the hall with Lincoln men by printing counterfeit tickets.
As for the declarations of causes, which many people refer to in denigrating the south, conveniently overlooked is the Cherokee declaration of causes. That declaration has nothing to so with slavery, so no surprise that it is ignored.
The war benefited some…”sutler” is the term for men who supply the army….with whatever…crooked contracts, bribes, kickbacks, intrigue…all the glorious ways to get rich quick at the expense of the powerless “fodder units” .
They say Seward was fantastically corrupt…
There were those who would make a pile…and they wanted the war…
People say the war ended…I’d say that the “ending” looks more like a stratagem – and the South is still occupied…that’s where many military bases are…
And that the original sin, the fundamental “fissures in our tapestry” (Clapper’s phrase) having to do with the federal relationships and economies long predates the USC…and remains.
I. Panarin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Igor_Panarin may well prove to have been correct when he predicted dissolution of the USA….
The New York Bankers got rich during the war as well. The Civil War marks the first time the Yankee government went deep into debt to the bankers. Samual Chase served as Sec of Treasury in Lincoln’s cabinet, and his connections to the New York bankers furnished the money the North spent on the war. “Chase” is of course the name of one of the ‘big four’ banks that have dominated America after the Clinton’s got rid of the Glass-Segal reforms.
As long as slavery existed, all states that allowed it were violating the Constitution. The end. We don’t need to excuse one evil because there was a second evil committed. The South doesn’t get off the hook because the North behaved badly.
Slavery existed in the colonies since their inception. There would have been no united States without slavery. The constitution not only allowed slavery, but allowed the continued importation of slaves until l807.
None of this speaks to morality, especially in the modern context. To say that slavery violated the constitution, however, is just incorrect.
Some may have difficulty following the legal logic Mataman has made. I do.
So, Friend and Comrade M, what specific detail in the USC, what clauses, what paragraphs, what features in the USC as it was in, say, 1800, prohibit slavery?
Please, walk us through the logic, we are not so gifted as to understand without your help…
And I would ask, when did slavery end? Comrade M says there is no slavery? I had not heard! Rather, I understand that the price of slaves is quite low, and that pretty white ones are available, so they say, in most big cities in Europe and USA, etc.
(For whatever it is worth, my family, Quakers, at risk of hanging, lynching, ran a station on the Ohio River….risking their lives to smuggle slaves out of slavery, and they bought slaves and freed them (at great cost to their fortunes, which were modest. So you will understand that I am skeptical about the claim that slavery has ended, and also claims about USC prohibiting it.)
LZ
The most famous mention of slavery in the Constitution is the part where it said slaves should be counted as “3/5ths of a person” in terms of determining how many Representatives and Electors each state would have. Thus, rather obviously, the Constitution did not oppose slavery nor outlaw slavery, but instead accepted slavery and dealt with it.
It took the amendments to the Consititution after the Civil War to outlaw slavery.
If you get your history from watching hollywood movies, this is what the movie “Lincoln” was all about. The debate in Congress over the amendment that outlawed slavery. Note of course that there is considerable opposition, and its quite dramatic coming down to a close vote. And that was during the Civil War when the southern states were not even represented in Congress.
This does not satisfy the requirement, of course, we wait for Comrade M and his explanation as to the specific prohibitions in the USC as it then was.
However Comrade “anonymous” does seem to be grounded in the facts.
LZ (who is on pins and needles) expecting to learn new constitutional law from Comrade M, thinks the fairy-tales about the us-civil war are risible….
And essentially bs…
Actually, slavery wasn’t outlawed at the Civil War’s end. The 13th Amendment allows slavery if a person is convicted of a crime. Hence,the post-war “black codes” arresting blacks for vagrancy then putting them in chains to work for privateer corporations who ran postwar South just like antebellum plantation South.
“As George Orwell said, the best way to destroy a people is to destroy their history.’
On point. Islamic State and Bolsheviks both did that.
Same did your American historians enveloped in their pretenses of exclusiveness and independence of so-called American Way.
Few of you know from history books fed to you in your schools that the only real, convinced abolitionist in all this messy and senseless slaughter you call a Civil War was Russian Emperor Alexander the Second, who decided to expand his own Emancipation policy on his vassal-to-be The USA. (Due to his untimely death this plan was abandon by his son who was more isolationist and traditional Straigths-Seeker in his policies). He, and only he made it possible for North to conquer South by sending fleets to effectively blockade Dixy States. Your Civil War was, speaking with modern terms, a proxy war of Russian Empire against its historic rivals in expanding Colonialism, The Great Britain and France.
Your country view on American Civil War as some kind of monumental historic event is one of your fundamental delusions that deeply embedded in your minds by your very superficial culture that can only be created by a bunch of people from different corners of the world who decided that they can become a nation only because they pledge an oath of loyalty to an outdated political document created two and a half centuries ago. Nations and cultures can not be born like that. It take centuries and thousands years of coexistence of people speaking relative languages exchanging goods at local markets and praying same Gods. Political documents and Revolutions come and go, but Real Nations stay where they always have been developing during centuries. Historically speaking the US is a fantom, the point of compromise between real history-making powers who act behind the scenes. Get real. iPhone is not such a big step forward in long and complex development of Human Civilization. Besides most of crucial cultural, technological and scientific advances were made outside the USA. Consider rocket technologies. Consider French couple who started nuclear science . Einstein. Tolstoy. Mendeleev table. Picasso.
Learn, Americans: humility is a Virtue
I just re-read Michael Sharra’s “The Killer Angels”. Its the story of the battle of Gettysburg, told as a novel. And its not the usual ‘historical novel’ where some fictional girl character manages to be in both Army HQs. Instead, Mr. Sharra researched the major characters, then tells the story from their point of view. So, he invents specific dialogs around a campfire between Lee and Longstreet, but he says their words are similar to what they said in researched letters and other statements recorded by history.
What struck me about this is that its the Southerners who say the fight is not about slavery. To them, its a fight against an over-reaching federal government that is destroying the rights that the states had upon the nation’s founding. Its the Northerners who say the fight is all about slavery. And they seem very puzzled that the captured rebels with whom they speak say the fight is not at all about slavery.
Of course, history is written by the victors, so nowadays the Yankee point of view that the fight was only about slavery prevails. To the point where now anyone who disagrees is tarred as a ‘racist’ and told to sit down and shut up because ‘racist’ points of view are not acceptable and can not be spoken today in America. Thus, the argument is now very one-sided, as only one side can be spoken or heard in today’s climate.
But, this is what I was thinking about while reading Mr. Roberts’ excellent piece above. That during the war, the Southerner’s didn’t think they were fighting about slavery. Since the statues of Robert E Lee are being torn down, we of course can not hear that he left the US Army when Virginia suceeded, and he was very clear in his reasons …. that he would not fight against his native Virginia, but that he would join Virginia in its fight. I don’t believe he mentioned slavery at all in his statements about why he was resigning his commission in the US Army and volunteering his services to the CSA.
Here’s one bit of history that would stun most people today.
Many ‘white’ Americans who are descended from those who came from Europe, are descended from slaves.
‘Slavery’ existed in Europe before the New World. European culture was ‘feudalism’. Of course, modern movies focus on the Lords and the Ladies in the castles. But notice all those servants, people who work in the fields to produce their food, fight and die in their wars. Those were called ‘serfs’. These people weren’t unionized and getting weekly paychecks. This was essentially slavery.
Serfs were tied to the land. So if the Lord in the castle lost his castle in a card game, all the ‘serfs’ went with them. Serfs were not allowed to leave. If they ran away, they were hunted down by men on horseback and frequently subjected to horrible punishments as an ‘example’ to keep the other serfs in line.
Serfs were subject to arbitrary justice of the Lord in the castle. He could whip them. He could kill them. He could do anything he wanted to them.
The life of a Serf in the Old World was little different from the life of a Slave in the New World.
And of course, most Europeans were serfs, and only a small few, (the original 1 per-centers) were lords in the castle. So, it naturally follows that most who immigrated from Europe were former Serfs. Especially because it would be the lower classes who would risk a life in the New World, where the owners of the castles would likely stay home. There’s a long-running con where people research a ‘family history’ and magically say they are descended from nobility. But that’s of course a fiction. Many ‘whites’ are descended from serfs.
English history is a bit different here. The workers had won some rights in revolutions in about the 17th century of so. But, for instance, my family comes from Germany, and there it is Napoleon and the Napoleonic code which is credited with ending Serfdom when he conquered the region in the first decade of the 19th century. As far as I know, my ancestors were only freed from their serfdom about half a century before the American slaves were freed.
The rich Europeans did not invent a new thing called slavery when they reached the New World. They just transplanted what had been the European norm for centuries if not millennia. And of course, one can find references to everyone from the Romans to the Vikings having slaves in their culture.
Fun fact, Anon: Tsar Alexander II ended serfdom in Russia. He later supported Lincoln in the American Civil War while the British, long-time serf soldiers, supported the Confederacy. And like Lincoln, Alexander II, his son, and his grandson were eventually all assassinated. Look up the article, “U.S. Civil War: The US-Russian Alliance that Saved the Union.”
“Serfs were tied to the land.” Indeed! They were generally burned and slaughtered, sometimes pillaged, by passing armies, along with the lord’s cattle, crops, and other properties.
“The rich Europeans did not invent a new thing called slavery when they reached the New World.” They brought their favourite goods and chatels with them, including their bondservants. And they went down to the wharves to bid when prisonships docked.
Here in Johannesburg we get RT, including the Keiser Report, where we enjoy seeing PCR from time to time. Tonight Max was saying that USA stands for “United States of Amnesia,” but Stacey Herbert was saying that now that the empire is declining, Americans are forced to ask themselves, what were we doing in the last few hundred years, actually? She reminded me of Marx and Engels’ Communist Manifesto – the line that says: “All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned, and man is at last compelled to face with sober senses his real condition of life and his relations with his kind.”
Tracey said that only now did she realise that the places she knew when she was growing up in Mystic, Connecticut, were the sites of genocidal massacres such as that of the Pequot people.
Karl Marx was not particularly sentimental and he was certainly not a “court” intellectual. He was well aware of the complicity of the new capitalist economies in the equally recently booming slave economy of the Southern United States, and was surely not surprised at the far greater brutalities of industrialised warfare that capitalism was able to muster and maintain on an upward trajectory from then on and right up until today.
Marx’s conclusion that it was about slavery is not based on emotion but on the cold hard facts of the matter, which were that the 300,000 slaveholders of the southern states (his count) had to prevail over the “20 million men” of the north, as well as over the poorer whites of the south, in order to stay in their lucrative business. The method of their cultivation required a constant supply of new territory, which had to be to the west, or south to Mexico and Central and South America, and these options were bones of contention. Marx followed the politics of the day and analysed these politics, and economics, not after, but before the open hostilities.
It’s very clear and helpful for the understanding of the world as it is now. Marx thought that the American Civil War was a capitalist revolution. Surely, PCR, you can’t disagree with that? Not only was it a capitalist revolution but it was the decisive capitalist revolution, that drove in the last major historical key and made capitalism an overwhelming inevitability for the whole world.
Now we have the degeneration of that same capitalist ascendency, its loss of its wits and its descent into irrationality. Max Keiser, without a glimmer of Marxism, relates the irrationality of it: Markets “without price discovery”. Fiat currency. Zero and negative interest rates. Et cetera. We are once again compelled to face with sober senses our real condition. I would personally like to thank you all: PCR, Max, Stacey and all the gang, for a riveting ringside seat at this great event.
While the causes of war are often complex the American Civil War was on some level about slavery. While slavery was part of the then American oligarchy’s business plan there was a growing populous movement against slavery such that individual states were passing legislation banning what southern politicians called “our peculiar institution.” Europeans when they first arrived in the “New World” had tried using the natives as slaves but they wouldn’t work and died in captivity. Then fellow Europeans were tried but they died of diseases they had little immunity to. They finally tired using Africans and found the answer to their problem. Amazing Grace anyone?
To prove my point, in the run up to this war southern politicians made a back channel proposal that if the US Federal government agreed to invade Cuba and some unnamed South American nation(s) and allow slavery to be practiced there they would give up practicing slavery within the USA. To say this war was not about slavery at all is a false premise.Often the back channels are more revealing as to the true nature of a conflicted situation than what is seen in the public arena.
Another overlooked finger in this pie was the threat by Europeans, which includes Britain, that had financial interest in the Second Bank of America, the then central bank as the Fed is today. They threatened that if the bank’s charter was not renewed disaster would befall the nation. Political cartoons of the day showed a ‘John Bull’ type character driving a wedge with a large mallet into the middle of the eastern seaboard of continental USA. Andrew Jackson as President “Killed the Bank” in September of 1833. Oddly, during the war the French occupied Mexico. Seen as a threat they had to be pushed out after the war by an American expeditionary force of 50,000 troops that was assembled to do the job and the French advisably withdrew their forces..
Well, I don’t think PCR is correct in this case.
A contrary argument is very articulately and clearly stated by Matthew Karp, the author of The Vast Southern Empire.
Here is an interview with him in which he IMO quite decisively refutes and demolishes PCR’s contention:
https://www.dissentmagazine.org/blog/booked-slaveholders-controlled-government-matthew-karp
The question is still open: What are we going to do about it **today**? Maybe we really should pull down all the statues and face the most unpleasant facts of the fundamental ideas that have driven the creation of the USA and its accretion of planetary power.
Katherine
Katherine
I found that interview very interesting and measured, Thanks.
(I’m not an American, no dog in this fight, so not particularly interested in arguing the nuances of this controversy).
Perhaps an alternative to pulling down the statues, which are still cultural and historical artefacts, warts and all, is to add some kind of explanatory educational plaque giving a more truthful account, as has been mentioned here before.
But perhaps the US is sadly not yet at the point where that is acceptable to all reasonable people?
Yes! Allow the ancestors of those victimized by the enshrined to speak their piece, present their evidence. Knowledge is beneficial, right? It helps all of us to bring the historical perspective into a greater light. Most of these statues are in parks or other places that can accommodate displays such as posters and information tables. Some of the statues are considered works of art; don’t destroy the art. What PCR mentions here and in his previous column should be understood by everyone. So, keep the statue of Gen. Sherman, but at the same time, allow the public to learn what a bastard he was, and what a demon he married.
“Perhaps an alternative to pulling down the statues, which are still cultural and historical artefacts, warts and all, is to add some kind of explanatory educational plaque giving a more truthful account, as has been mentioned here before.”
THis is also my (current) position.
I do feel that pulling statues down could have a cathartic effect for those doing the pulling. But ti would be a short-lived therapy.
Far better, IMO, would be
(1) Use the existence of these statues in central locations where people like to gather anyhow to provide explanatory plaques or boards (as in a history museum). These could include the history of the statue itself. Removing these statues will not teach anyone anything. The Lee statue could offer a genuine teaching moment if anyone had any imagination. Lee was a very good example of the issue of divided loyalties that has always been a cetnral theme of not only the American Civil War, but really, most wars. From Wiki:
“A son of Revolutionary War officer Henry “Light Horse Harry” Lee III, Lee was a top graduate of the United States Military Academy and an exceptional officer and military engineer in the United States Army for 32 years. During this time, he served throughout the United States, distinguished himself during the Mexican–American War, and served as Superintendent of the United States Military Academy.
When Virginia declared its secession from the Union in April 1861, Lee chose to follow his home state, despite his desire for the country to remain intact and an offer of a senior Union command.[1] ”
Note that last. Many of the great classics of literature deal with this issue of divided loyalty, in both a military and a personal setting (cf. Antigone, El Cid, Romeo and Juliet).
(2) Add statues. Add a statue of Harriet Tubman, of Nat Turner (and a historical account of his rebellion, not the movie BS), of Black infantrymen, the “unknown soldiers” on both sides, the nurses who nursed them.
Obviously, not all in one place!
But my point is that the reactions we are currently seeing on both sides are pretty immature, are missing teh opportunity for a real teaching moment, and lead to a dead-end of increasing diviseness and digging in of heels—also more PR for rather unedifying groups and their activities. IMO.
Katherine
Slavery is abhorrent, but it was widely practiced in the 1600’s and 1700’s. The constitution of the United States allowed slavery only because it was extant, and the new country took steps to limit slavery as the nation expanded. What other nation can say that?
To have been a slave was less than ideal, but ask this question: What person came to the US free and became a slave? With the exception of freemen who were wrongly accused, none. All slaves were slaves in their own countries beforehand. Thus, the collective guilt needs to be shared by all.
People came to this country with the status they had held in their former country.
Descendants of slaves, descendants of indentured servants, descendants of manual laborers, descendants of skilled laborers, descendants of speculators and descendants of landed gentry have all had the opportunity to seek a better life. Although not even close to equal opportunities across the board, unequal in great measure, all were more or less better opportunities than existed in the old country.
I’m suffering from guilt fatigue. Believe we should never have allowed slaves in.
“All slaves were slaves in their own countries beforehand. Thus, the collective guilt needs to be shared by all.”
Exactly right, James. Slavery was (and is!) a huge multinational institution, so even the US had to accommodate it. President John Adams personally refused to own slaves, and he said that “it has cost me thousands of dollars for the labor and subsistence of free men.” Foregoing slavery was expensive and would take large pushes to abolish, particularly when you consider the “gangsters for capitalism,” as Major General Butler called them, who fought to keep slavery.
Compare that to today’s debt and wage slavery. Are all the people who, for instance, shop at Wal-Mart evil monsters taking advantage of what is essentially slave labor? No, most are ignorant and/or lack the finances to do otherwise. And of course, if people build enough momentum to kill Wal-Mart, Wal-Mart will try to kill them first. Remember what happened to Occupy…?
The difference between chattel slavery and wage slavery may appear to be small, but it was a sufficient difference to cause a war.
If the word “economic” retains any special meaning, then both of these conditions, chattel slavery and wage slavery, must be called “economic”.
Therefore let us say that the American Civil War was about slavery, for economic reasons. Or, if you prefer, that it was an economic struggle, occasioned by the institution of slavery. Either will do very well, but what will not do is to say, like PCR says, “It was not over slavery.”
Well argued. I might suggest though that we are conflating two separate events. The first is the reason for the Secession. I think it’s fair to say that the reason for this was a divergence of economic interests due to the nature of the respective economies of the North and the South.
The second event is the actual decision by President Lincoln and the US government to prosecute a large scale war in response. Based on the statements of the President, the primary reason for this appears to be concern over the ability of the US government to service the national debt.
Paual Craig Roberts sees clearly the problems, but does he see clearly the solutions ?a
Fair question, Ann. But it raises another question of a sort…
This is the “question” of assumptions in statements and logic.
Ann, by her question tells us that she assumes that “problem” and “solution” exist as a pair in nature – that there is at least one “solution” for every “problem”. Most people make such assumptions – because quite often it seems to be valid. But, alas, it is also often true that there is no “solution”.
This leads me to ask another question – what is a “problem” and what is “solution”?
An Nth “problem” might be this: Bob ardently desires to live, but he bleeds to death. Evidently his problem did not have a solution…
This suggests to me that “problem” occurs when we can’t have our own way, and “solution” is what happens when we get it anyway – more or less.
In specific instance of PCR and his views – and as Clapper very helpfully pointed out – the “fissures in our tapestry” …. Well! All empires come to an end. Is this a problem? For whom?
PCR, Ann, does not see solutions because there are none…just as it was for good old Bob…
LZ
My favourite part of the American Civil war is the graveyard scene from the Good, the bad and the ugly. Pure magic.
“Those without guns do the digging”
yup still the same today……
I didn’t realise that it was so plainly black and white that it was all about slavery. Thanks for pointing to the document.Having read it all I can’t see anything other than slavery motivating South Carolina’s secession in there.
DE
“Having read it all I can’t see anything other than slavery motivating South Carolina’s secession in there.”
Exactly. If you are further interested in the subject, the following is a useful treatise:
The Confederate and Neo-Confederate Reader
The “Great Truth” about the “Lost Cause”
http://www.upress.state.ms.us/books/1338
“When South Carolina seceded, it published “Declaration of the Immediate Causes Which Induce and Justify the Secession of South Carolina from the Federal Union.” The document actually opposes states’ rights. Its authors argue that Northern states were ignoring the rights of slave owners as identified by Congress and in the Constitution. Similarly, Mississippi’s “Declaration of the Immediate Causes . . .” says, “Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery–the greatest material interest of the world.”
Later documents in this collection show how neo-Confederates obfuscated this truth, starting around 1890. The evidence also points to the centrality of race in neo-Confederate thought even today and to the continuing importance of neo-Confederate ideas in American political life.”
One can read several chapters of the work here:
https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Confederate_and_Neo_Confederate_Read.html?id=QWKzf8j2yPoC
During my first year on the internet, back in 1993, a friend of mine, who used the nick BitsyF a distinguished lady from Charleston SC, told me a family story. She said that she was the great great great (not sure how many) grand daughter of the Treasurer of South Carolina, before the US Civil war.
When forced to sell the old family plantation house… having lost the rest of the land to taxes over decades, a locked strong box was found secreted in a far corner of the attic. In it, were love letters between the Treasurer and his wife in Charleston, while he was in Washington DC just before the shelling of Ft Sumter started the US Civil War.
The treasurer was writing his wife from Washington, D.C.. He had been provided a blank check from the South Carolina Treasury, duly authorized by the South Carolina legislature, whose members had unanimously fulfilled all the necessary requirements to secede from the Union. However, there was just one last step to be done for a legal secession per the Georgia Constitution which stated “Reimburse the Federal government for the cost of any facilities it owned or built in the state”
Seems he was getting the run around. He was getting shuffled around from State Dept, to the Department of the Interior, to Treasury, then to Congress, and the White House and NO ONE WOULD TELL HIM HOW MUCH TO WRITE THE AMOUNT FOR ON THE CHECK! After months of this run around, seems an ash, fell from a cigar on a cannon fuse, firing the first shot at Ft Sumter, starting the 1st American Civil War.
From: https://arnielerma.wordpress.com/2017/08/16/the-charlottesville-theatrical/
The confederates did send a delegation to Washington, attempting to reimburse the government for properties seized, but no one would meet with them.
As for the cigar ash, well, that’s not what happened. Beauregard informed major Anderson well in advance as to when the shelling on Sumter would begin if Anderson didn’t agree to leave the fort. Anderson didn’t leave and the shelling commenced precisely when Beauregard said it would.
This is documented in the official records.
“The real issue was economic as DiLorenzo, Charles Beard and other historians have documented.”
Small problem: Economic issues, monetary policy can also create slavery. That’s why Lincoln never focused on chattel slavery specifically; debt slavery was the more pertinent menace.
“I have no hesitation to say if they can re-charter the bank with this hydra of corruption, they will rule the nation, and its charter will be perpetual, and its corrupting influence [will] destroy the liberty of our country.”
~ President Andrew Jackson, 1833; in reference to the 2nd Bank of the US, one of the Federal Reserve’s predecessors
After Jackson killed the 2nd Bank (and became our first president with an assassination attempt), he predicted that the banksters would retaliate through the South’s succession: “This great and glorious Republic would soon be broken into a multitude of petty States… trampled upon by the nations of Europe.” The divided States were easier for Europe’s hired goons to recolonize, so reuniting the country after the fact was the better option. Note that when the banksters had Lincoln assassinated, continuing the debt slavery he opposed kept conditions more or less the same.
“We have stricken the shackles from four million human beings and brought all laborers to a common level, not so much by the elevation of the former slaves as by practically reducing the whole working population, White and Black, to a condition of serfdom. While boasting of our noble deeds, we are careful to conceal the ugly fact that by our iniquitous money system we have nationalized a system of oppression which, though more refined, is not less cruel than the old system of chattel slavery.”
~ Horace Greely, 1872; seven years after the American Civil War
Mr. Roberts ignores the actual words used by the leaders of the Confederacy:
The Confederate vice-president, Alexander H. Stephens, had said in a speech at Savannah on March 21, 1861, that slavery was “the immediate cause of the late rupture and the present revolution’ of Southern independence. The United States, said Stephens, had been founded in 1776 on the false idea that all men are created equal. The Confederacy, by contrast,
“is founded upon exactly the opposite idea; its foundations are laid, its cornerstone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery, subordination to the superior race, is his natural and moral condition. This, our new Government, is the first, in the history of the world, based on this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth.”
In its declaration of session, Texas mentioned slavery 21 times. How does Mr. Roberts square these words:
“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.”
Paul Craig Roberts: Were you an undergrad with us at Georgia Tech in the late 1950’s? Please advise.
RD Gotsch
The American Civil War was about Slavery; however, it was not about the human rights of slaves. The war was fought at the request of northern manufacturers and industrialists to eliminate a system of labor (slavery) that, if allowed to persist as the South began to industrialize in the 1830s — 1850s, would have resulted in Southern industrial corporations under-pricing and therefore eliminating northern industrial corporations.
Northern manufacturers, paying high wages because of the dearth of available labor, were not about to see everything they had worked to establish over the previous century be reduced to nothing as Southern, newer, manufacturers using slaves as labor undercut their bottom lines and forced them into business failure.
This was an issue for which one fought a war.
The Corwin Amendment did not commit the nation to Slavery; it was propaganda designed to divide Southern opinion. Just as the 21st Amendment repealed the 18th Amendment, any succeeding Amendment that conflicted with the Corwin Amendment would have de facto repealed it.
The American Civil War was fought over the issue of wage labor vs slave labor, and it was part of a global movement (lead by Great Britain) to establish wage labor everywhere so Great Britain could win free trade competitions wherever they flared up.