Jul 21, 2004

Blog War on the Civil War Part II

by Liberty and Power

I note that the League of the South is circulating a petition supporting reparations for the South , thus further bolstering my comparison between leftwing and Confederate Multiculturalism:

On a related matter, in the last few days, I have been repeatedly asked why the South seceded even though Lincoln favored colonization of blacks and repeatedly stated that he would not interfere with slavery in those states where it currently existed.

It is a good question and deserves serious consideration. William W. Freehling's domino theory, as expressed in such works as The Reintegration of American History: Slavery and the Civil War , provides the best answer:

"Disunionists knew that Lincoln's anti-slavery methods were not Garrison's. They acknowledged that the President-elect sought slow emancipation by incremental advances in public opinion, perhaps taking a hundred years....The secessionists' reasoning: Border South residents, owning relatively few slaves and harboring great devotion to the Union, might consent to Lincoln's antislavery (and anti-black) overtures, might even vote for Lincoln's party in the next election.

Most borderites, the secessionists rightly saw, preferred to rid their region of blacks if they could rid their region of blacks; and Lincoln's program included national help to remove blacks from America. Lincoln's party might also help border fugitive slaves to escape. Such turmoil would lead insecure Border South masters to sell their slaves to the more secure Lower South. Because of the same fear for the security of slavery at the edges of the South, southern precipitators of the Texas, Kansas, and Fugitive Slave Controversies had considered these issues not at all absurd-had called these issues precisely the ones that must be raises. Despite the difficulties of safeguarding the border between slavery and freedom, protection of southern outposts was crucial, or slavery would sink down to the tropical fraction of the nation. Or to use the modern metaphor, the top tier of slave states would fall like a row of dominoes." (Freehling, The Reintegration of American History, p. 142-43).

Addendum: Of course, this does not fully answer the question of why the Upper South left. As Freehling and others argue, it had much to do with resentment against Lincoln for his invasion of the Lower South states which had already left before Fort Sumter. In this limited sense, I do think that those who stress the importance of states rights have a valid point.