We Should Be Lincoln Men (and Women)

Over the last few years a number of people on the “right”, mainly conservatives but a few libertarians too, have reflected on the Civil War and decided to come out against Abraham Lincoln and, at least by implication, somewhat for the southern Confederacy. There were several articles taking this revisionistic position on the occasion of the bicentennial of Lincoln’s birth. Without claiming perfection for Lincoln or any other president, I find even an implicit embracing of the Lost Cause to be wrong and, at least when coming from libertarians, perverse and bizarre.

The attacks on Lincoln generally focus on one or more of three broad claims – that the South left the Union not because of slavery but rather over questions of free trade and states’ rights, that Lincoln behaved despotically and hypocritically during the war, and that the Union’s victory somehow led to the federal government’s becoming the grotesque thing it is today.

The first is by far the most important and also the easiest to refute. Any notion that the South seceded over something other than slavery would have seemed strange to both Unionists and Confederates at the time. The Republican Party was founded in 1854. It held its first presidential nominating convention in 1856. Its first platform called slavery a relic of barbarism, demanded admission of Kansas into the Union as a free state, and called for banning slavery in the territories (and by extension new states as they joined the Union). The platform of 1860 repeated those planks. The southern secessionists took the Republicans at their word. The rebels left the Union over slavery. They often said so formally and explicitly as the exited. The declaration of secession of South Carolina states the following:

“On the 4th day of March next, this party will take possession of the Government. It has announced that the South shall be excluded from the common territory, that the judicial tribunals shall be made sectional, and that a war must be waged against slavery until it shall cease throughout the United States.
The guaranties of the Constitution will then no longer exist; the equal rights of the States will be lost. The slaveholding States will no longer have the power of self-government, or self-protection, and the Federal Government will have become their enemy. “

The declaration of Mississippi begins

“In the momentous step which our State has taken of dissolving its connection with the government of which we so long formed a part, it is but just that we should declare the prominent reasons which have induced our course.
Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery-- the greatest material interest of the world. Its labor supplies the product which constitutes by far the largest and most important portions of commerce of the earth. These products are peculiar to the climate verging on the tropical regions, and by an imperious law of nature, none but the black race can bear exposure to the tropical sun. These products have become necessities of the world, and a blow at slavery is a blow at commerce and civilization. That blow has been long aimed at the institution, and was at the point of reaching its consummation. There was no choice left us but submission to the mandates of abolition, or a dissolution of the Union, whose principles had been subverted to work out our ruin.”

The complete documents of these declarations and those of other confederate states as well as the statements of Southern leaders and politicians at the time leave no reasonable doubt about the true reason for secession.

(An interesting example of the popular sentiment in the South is given by the original opening lyrics of the popular confederate war song “The Bonnie Blue Flag”:

“We are a band of brothers and native to the soil
Fighting for the property we gained by honest toil.”

Of course, the only “property” that Lincoln and his Republicans threatened was property in slaves. )

The notion that the confederates left the union not to preserve slavery but rather for some combination of the various tangential issues that existed between north and south (tariffs, subsidies for industries and transportation interests in the north, and other relatively minor questions) is a later day invention of apologists for the Confederacy.

Complaints of Lincoln’s supposed despotism focus most frequently on his allegedly unconstitutional suspension of habeas corpus during the war. The actual statement in the Constitution forbids suspension of habeas corpus except “when in cases of rebellion or invasion the public safety may require it.” Lincoln faced both rebellion and invasion during his term in office. In considering the various harsh measures the Union took, it is important to remember the situation. The eleven states of the Confederacy were in open rebellion with powerful armies within a short march of Washington and Philadelphia. The four slave states that remained (sometimes tenuously) in the Union were full of Southern sympathizers and supporters of the rebellion. Copperhead Democrats in states such as New York opposed the war with schemes that approached and sometimes reached the level of treason. Lincoln may have gone too far in some cases, but seen in this context, his actions were far from despotic. The charge of hypocrisy is usually tied to claims that Lincoln was not consistent in opposing slavery and usually based on statements he made before the South fired on Fort Sumter that if he could preserve the Union with slavery still in it, he would and on the fact that the Emancipation Proclamation did not free slaves in the four border states that remained in the Union. However Lincoln’s record in both opposing slavery and desiring that the nation become wholly free is clear. The conciliatory remarks he made in early 1861 are best understood as a combination of political expediency and an honest effort to avoid war and to follow the Republicans’ notion of gradually and peacefully strangling slavery out of existence through blocking its spread and making all the new states and territories free. In the light of the rest of Lincoln’s life and opinions and of the principles of his party, it does not make sense to interpret them as indicating a willingness to tolerate slavery for the long term. As to the Emancipation Proclamation, it is again necessary to consider the context. At the time he issued the proclamation, the war was very much in doubt. The Union had just won its first important victory in the east, and a marginal one at that, at Antietam. The border states remained both shaky in their loyalty and important for victory. So he first freed only the slaves in the states of the Confederacy. However, it would not have taken a Machiavelli to figure out that, once that was done, maintaining slavery post-war in the border states alone would be impossible and that winning the war would have to lead to the end of slavery everywhere. It was not hypocrisy but strategy that led Lincoln to do as he did, and the course of action he selected worked. Slavery was abolished throughout the nation immediately after the war. It would take a real purist to argue that the only honest thing for him to have done would have been to move faster in the border states at the cost of possibly losing the war and leaving slavery solidly in place throughout the South.

The final charge is almost silly. Lincoln did not have a time machine. The Union he preserved was a constitutional republic with a very limited national government. It is not his fault that people who came after him transformed it into the monstrosity under which we labor today. He could not have foreseen it, and he had nothing to do with it.

The Confederates began the war to preserve slavery. In leading a divided and sometimes wavering Union to victory, Lincoln both showed greatness and advanced the cause of liberty. Libertarians (and conservatives who care about freedom and individual rights) should be Lincoln men. We can abhor the slaughter and wish there could have been a peaceful solution. We can agree that Jackson, Stuart, Mosby, the Army of Northern Virginia, and above all Lee were romantic figures both in their struggle and defeat (as were Rommel, Geronimo, and Napoleon in other times and at other places). We can admire the Confederates’ skill, daring, honor, and valor without accepting or excusing their beliefs and without becoming confused about who was right and who was wrong in 1861-1865.