Southern Secession Was Not “Rebellion.”

NOT A REBELLION

- Rev. J. William Jones, University of Virginia, July 18:

Let me add my earnest and hearty protest against calling our war the “Rebellion.” It was not a rebellion, and we were not rebels or traitors. George Washington was a rebel because he fought against properly constituted and legal authority and if he had failed he would probably have been tried as a rebel and executed as a traitor. But Jefferson Davis was no rebel when he led the great struggle to maintain proper authority, to uphold law and constitution; and when the Federal Government held him as a prisoner they never dared to bring him to trial, because they knew, under the advice of Chief Justice Chase and the ablest lawyers at the North, that they could never convict him of treason under the Constitution and laws of the United States.

I remember that one day down at Beauvoir, several years before his death, the grand old chief of the Confederacy said to me alluding to this question: “Rebellion indeed! How can a sovereign State rebel? You might as well say that Germany rebelled against France, or that France, who was overwhelmed in the conflict, rebelled against Germany, as to say that the sovereign States of the Confederacy rebelled against the North or the government. O that they had dared give me the trial I so much coveted, and for which I so earnestly begged, in order that I might have opportunities to vindicate my people and their cause before the world and at the bar of history! They knew that I would have been triumphantly acquitted, and our people purged of all taint of treason, and they never dared to bring my case to trial.”

Is it not time, then, for those people to cease talking about treason and rebellion, and to stop their insults in calling us rebels? If there were any rebels in that great contest, they were north of the Potomac and the Ohio—the men who trampled under foot the Constitution of our country and the liberties bequeath us by our fathers.

Gen. Lee always spoke of the war as the “great struggle for Constitutional freedom,” and that is a truthful and distinctive title which I prefer. The War Between the States” was the title given by A. H. Stephens, and is a good one. “Confederate War” would do, but that implies that we made the war, which, of course, we did not, our policy being peace. The “War of Coercion,” or the “War against State Sovereignty” would express it; but the “Rebellion,” never!

Confederate Veteran July 1894

Hat tip:  Carl Jones of FaceBook

How Lincoln “Saved” the Union

The Why of the Civil War

The Why of the War

By : Samuel Ashwood

As Woke education gains more and more of a foothold, it becomes nearly impossible to hold an intelligent conversation about the American Civil War. Many, maybe most Americans—especially those attending university—have been convinced that the war was about slavery, slavery, slavery.

Of course, those who have looked a little more deeply into the matter realize there are some fundamental flaws with this line of argumentation. If the war was about nothing but slavery, why were there more slave states in the Union than in the Confederacy when Fort Sumter was fired on? If the war was about nothing but the preservation of slavery, then why didn’t the seceding states rejoin the Union in early 1861 and ratify the original Lincoln-endorsed 13th amendment (Corwin amendment) which would have guaranteed the protection of slavery in perpetuity? If the war was over nothing but slavery, why did both the United States congress, and Abraham Lincoln himself, avow in public declarations that the war was not about slavery, but the preservation of the union?

But there is another question that far too seldom is asked, which should be at the root of every conversation of this great American calamity. Try to talk about the origins of the war today, and invariably somebody will begin citing the causes of secession put forth by the seven cotton states, all of which named the protection of slavery as a decisive factor for their departure from the union. For some reason, Americans have allowed themselves to be convinced that the act of secession is the same as a declaration of war.

Of course, it is not. There were, in fact, nearly four months between the first act of secession by South Carolina, and the firing on Fort Sumter, which precipitated the war. Even at that, the bloodless reduction of Sumter by Confederate forces under P.G.T. Beuaregard by no means need have started a war. After all, other nations engage in border skirmishes where people are killed frequently, without full-fledged war breaking out—North and South Korea, China and India, to name a couple.

“But American soldiers and the American flag were fired on!” Yes, and zero casualties were incurred. On January 3, 2020, President Donald Trump had Iranian leader Qassem Soleimani killed by drone strike. In retaliation, Iran fired missiles at a US base, and injured multiple American soldiers—in other words, far more damage was done than was done to US forces than at Fort Sumter. And yet, there was no invasion of Iran in response.

While it is important to know why the Southern states seceded, when we consider the war, the far more important question is this: Why did Lincoln choose coercion instead of negotiation and reconciliation? It is the question that no modern historians seem interested in asking or answering. Why? Doubtless, because the answer, if provided honestly, would reveal some truths that Americans weaned on the milk of righteous cause mythology would not want to hear.

Ask yourself the question: in what way would the North have been damaged if the seven cotton states had been allowed to depart in peace? We know, by the admission of Lincoln and the US Congress, that they waged war for union, not to end slavery, so we can rule out humanitarian motives. Why, then, did Lincoln call for 75,000 troops to invade and subjugate the South?

The answer is money. If the Southern states, whose cotton was a major staple of the world economy at that time, created a free trade zone, European trade would have fled Northern ports and their high tariffs for the South. The results for the economy of the United States would have been disastrous, without a drastic change in economic policy, that would have undermined everything the Republican Party stood for. Whether Lincoln ever cried out, when asked why he seemed intent on choosing war, “What about my tariff?” or not, it is clear that this was a primary factor in the Northern decision to go to war in 1861.

Wars are not fought over righteous moral indignation by one side against another, whether slavery or firing on the flag. These things may serve to galvanize the population behind a war, but governments go to war for money or power. Lincoln’s choice was based on the economic and political disaster facing the North if a free trade zone was created in the South to complete with the high tariff Northern ports. Instead of negotiating peacefully to restore the states to the union, or adjusting their economic policies to compete with the South, Lincoln chose a war that would take almost a million lives and do social and political damage we are still living with today.

Why the North Dared Not Try Jefferson Davis for Treason

The Boston Daily Adviser, July 25, 1865, stated exactly what was on the line:

“If Jefferson Davis is innocent, then it is the government of the United States which is guilty; if secession has not been rebellion, then the North in stifling it as such, has committed a crime.”

That the question was even asked tells us that the legality of secession was at minimum an open question. How then could Jeff Davis be convicted of treason? The North wanted legal vindication of its trial by battle in a trial by court, but recognized the stakes were high and vindication far from certain. The press in New York City was insisting that no treason had taken place and Jeff Davis was merely obeying an order of his rightful sovereign - the State of Mississippi. The New York World asserted, “To submit the secession question to a court is to imply that it is still open to doubt!” The paper then concluded that even if the court did “decide that secession is a constitutional right, Unionists would not yield their convictions on this subject.” Therefore the paper concluded “the trial of Mr. Davis is little better than a judicial farce.” (New York World, May 16, 1866.) Harpers Weekly noted the possibility of acquittal which if happened would mean the US Government had “waged war against those whom the courts would have justified in their actions.” (Harpers Weekly, May 26, 1866.)

The Chief Justice of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court G. W. Woodward wrote:

“But is secession treason? That’s a grand question. If it is not, war in support of it cannot be... It will have to be defined and made plain, unless indeed we continue to set aside all law and administer only drumbeat justice.” (G. W. Woodward to Jeremiah Black May 28, 1865)

Lincoln knew his claims about secession’s illegality were not certain, and therefore hoped Jeff Davis would escape. He told Gen. Sherman, “I’m bound to oppose the escape of Jeff Davis, but if you could manage to have him slip out unbeknownst-like, I guess it wouldn’t hurt me much!” (Sherman interview, New York Times, July 4, 1865). 

Jeff Davis believed a trial would vindicate the Confederate cause. For this reason he steadfastly refused to apply for a pardon. His private secretary wrote to his mother, “he has all along earnestly desired a trial, confident the world and posterity would see the thing in its right light...” (Burton Harrison to his mother, June 13, 1866.)

In light of the uncertainty regarding the illegality of secession, US Attorney General James Speed received pressure from all angles, including Sec of State Seward and Sec of War Stanton to try Davis in a way that would ensure his conviction at all costs.  Sen James Doolittle proposed a bill that would manipulate the qualifications of jurors to ensure they could be counted on to convict him. Representative William Lawrence introduced a bill that was a potential violation of the Constitution. When warned he declared himself “willing to go to the very verge of the Constitution...” (Congressional Globe, 39th Congress, 2nd sess, 12/11/1866). 

When an indictment was returned against Davis based on “thin” testimony, the New York Daily News protested that the prosecution had rigged the proceedings by selecting a grand jury predisposed against him. (The New York Daily News, May 12, 1866.) In charging the grand jury the Judge in the case, John C. Underwood, made it clear he thought Davis guilty prompting one courtroom observer to remark, “if he and his packed jury of ferrets and Yankees were to be permitted to have anything to do with Mr. Davis he would have but a slim chance for justice.” (New York Times, May 12, 1866; David Powell to Elizabeth Dabney Saunders, June 8, 1866.) When asked if he could pack a jury to convict Davis, Judge Underwood responded, “I could pack a jury to convict him: I know very earnest, ardent Union men in Virginia.” (Report of the Joint Committee on Reconstruction, 1866, testimony of John C. Underwood.)

Obviously the North was plagued by a culture of lawlessness. Is it any wonder the South sought to secede, and sought to do so not because of slavery, tariffs, internal spending, bounties, centralization, or any other numerous complaints they levied against the North? These were all symptoms of a more fundamental reason for secession - Northern infidelity to the legal compact that held the States in Union. The South simply sought independence from a section of States that had a long history of a culture of lawlessness. 

The North’s Involvement in Slavery

Complicity: How the North Promoted, Prolonged, and Profited From Slavery"

'Complicity' uncovers North's ties to slavery

Slavery in the South has been documented in volumes ranging from exhaustive histories to bestselling novels. But the North’s profit from–indeed, dependence on–slavery has mostly been a shameful and well-kept secret . . . until now.

In this startling and superbly researched new book, three veteran New England journalists de-mythologize the region of America known for tolerance and liberation, revealing a place where thousands of people were held in bondage and slavery was both an economic dynamo and a necessary way of life.

Complicity reveals the cruel truth about the Triangle Trade of molasses, rum, and slaves that lucratively linked the North to the West Indies and Africa; discloses the reality of Northern empires built on profits from rum, cotton, and ivory–and run, in some cases, by abolitionists; and exposes the thousand-acre plantations that existed in towns such as Salem, Connecticut.

Here, too, are eye-opening accounts of the individuals who profited directly from slavery far from the Mason-Dixon line–including Nathaniel Gordon of Maine, the only slave trader sentenced to die in the United States, who even as an inmate of New York’s infamous Tombs prison was supported by a shockingly large percentage of the city; Patty Cannon, whose brutal gang kidnapped free blacks from Northern states and sold them into slavery; and the Philadelphia doctor Samuel Morton, eminent in the nineteenth-century field of “race science,” which purported to prove the inferiority of African-born black people.

A startling new history exposes the plantations, slave ships, and rebellions in the North, upending the notion that slavery was a peculiarly Southern institution.

In 1641, Massachusetts became the first colony to recognize slavery by statute. Four years later, a Boston ship made one of the earliest known slave voyages from New England to Africa.

By the late 1700s, tens of thousands of blacks were living as slaves in the North. "Complicity" shows just how integral slavery was to the region's economy.

The scope of the North's involvement with slavery is staggering to anyone raised with the notion that slavery was limited to the South.

In the mid-1800s, Charles Sumner, a Bay State abolitionist, railed against the unholy alliance "between the cotton-planters and flesh-mongers of Louisiana and Mississippi and the cotton spinners and traffickers of New England -- between the lords of the lash and the lords of the loom." In 1861, the mayor of New York suggested the city -- long a hub of illegal slave trade -- secede from the Union in large part so cotton trade with the South could continue.

"Complicity" grew out of The Hartford Courant's investigation of slavery throughout Connecticut. The reporters discovered that more than 5,000 Africans were enslaved in Connecticut during the year before the American Revolution. Now three Courant veterans have produced a rich history of slavery in the North that adds new dimensions to what you might have learned in school.

The successful voyage of a slave ship was 10 times as profitable as an ordinary trading voyage from New England to the West Indies. Rhode Island entered the slave trade in a big way, shipping nearly 50,000 slaves in less than 20 years. By the mid-18th century, plantations in the Narragansett area matched the plantations of Virginia's Tidewater region in acreage and numbers of slaves.

For more than a century, Ivoryton and Deep River, Conn., were an international center for milling elephant tusks into piano keys. As many as 2 million enslaved Africans carried tusks hundreds of miles to the coast so the tusks could be shipped to America. Two industry leaders were abolitionists who ignored the contradiction between their business and their politics.

"Complicity" joins a number of books published over the past year that have taken a closer look at slavery. "Runaway America: Benjamin Franklin, Slavery, and the American Revolution" by David Waldstreicher analyzes Franklin's history as an indentured servant and, later in life, a slaveholder. "New York Burning: Liberty, Slavery, and Conspiracy in Eighteenth-Century Manhattan" by Jill Lepore examines the fires of New York City in 1741 to which "Complicity" devotes a chapter. The fires were thought to be a slave rebellion and 30 slaves were executed.

Unlike the tighter focus of those two books, "Complicity" ranges across a wide swath of territory and time. This is the book's weakness as well as its strength. Each chapter moves to a new place and another facet of the North's entanglement with slavery. A reader can be forgiven for feeling that this is history for the fast-paced MTV generation.

Yet the sheer volume of numbers and narratives from Northern states brings home the extent to which slavery was a part of everyday life in a region largely defined by its antipathy toward the institution. Much of what's in "Complicity" was gleaned from old newspapers and more than 100 period drawings, photos, and documents bring a sense of immediacy to the storytelling. This is history at its best, a story not only of the government officials who made front-page news, but a story of the fugitive slaves for whom a bounty was offered in the classified ads.

Most Americans learn that slavery was a southern institution, but in fact, many enslaved Africans were held and worked in the North.

Many northern industries and businesses–shipbuilding, ports, banks, insurance companies, textile mills–were dependent on slave labor in both the North and South. Northern consumers were dependent on the products of this slave labor for food, clothing, and amenities like ivory piano keys.

In this video below, you will learn about the significant complicity of the northern states in the slave trade, slave labor, and slave-made products in the history of the United States.

https://youtu.be/hAQnlpLaj30