Secession

[bill_torrens]

Dear Neil,

Thanks for your detailed responses. You have covered so much ground in them that I am going to struggle to keep up. Will you forgive me if I concentrate on just a couple of issues? Otherwise my wife – who already drops heavy hints about the time I spend on this computer – will give up on me completely and elope with the milkman.

The first issue is the fanaticism of secessionists. Could you please clarify what you mean? Do you mean that it is inherently fanatical to ever seek to secede from any country? Or that it is always fanatical to seek to secede from the United States? Or that it is fanatical to seek to secede from the United States under the circumstances prevailing in 1861? These three statements vary enormously in their meaning, and I’d like to know which represents your thoughts most exactly.

With regard to abolitionists, we clearly agree that they held no conventional political power before the war. Don’t let’s waste any more time on this point: it is common ground between us. With regard to their influence on Northern public opinion, I think it important to recognise that people who would have said – if asked - that they were opposed to abolitionists could nevertheless have unconsciously absorbed some of their attitudes through exposure to their propaganda. I don’t think that this is too deep a descent into psychobabble. I really don’t think that it is. What we need to ask ourselves is this: would the view of the South held by the average “Northern man in the street” in 1860 have been closer to the abolitionist view than it had been in 1830? Certainly, the historian Avery Craven had no doubts as to the effectiveness of abolitionist propaganda:

With the new growth and new importance of the movement, the technique of its propaganda also reached new efficiency. Never before or since has a cause been urged upon the American people with such consummate skill and such lasting effects. Every agency possible in that day was brought into use; even now the predominating opinions of most of the American people regarding the ante-bellum South and its ways are the product of that campaign of education.

The above passage is taken from Craven’s fascinating chapter, “The Northern Attack On Slavery” in his book “The Coming Of The Civil War”. I’m going to quote extensively from that chapter in my response to you, because it corresponds so closely to my own views on the subject. Craven starts his chapter with the dry observation that “removing motes from a brother’s eye is an ancient practice.” He then observes that

The old assumptions that the movements against slavery arose entirely from a disinterested hatred of injustice and that their results were good beyond question can no longer be accepted without reservations. Those who force the settlement of human problems by war can expect only an unsympathetic hearing from the future. Mere desire to do ‘right’ is no defense at the bar of history.

One of the things which has always fascinated me is the motivation behind Northern hostility to slavery. I have often wondered why people who, by the standards of today, would certainly be called racists could have got so hot under the collar about the abstract rights and wrongs of Negro slavery. On the face of it, it really doesn’t make much sense. Craven sheds light on the subject:

As economic rivalry between North and South increased, the anti-slavery movement gained strength and began to emerge as the dominant reform effort of the period. The motives underlying this development are partly revealed by a letter written by Joshua Leavitt to his friend Joshua Giddings in October, 1841. Leavitt spoke of Giddings’ belief that the best policy for action was to aim ‘at specific points…which you deem beneficial to free labor or rather to the North, as a bank, tariff, etc.’ and then declared that his own purpose was to make opposition to slavery the leading object of public policy. ‘We must have a leading object,’ he continued, ‘in which we can all harmonize, and to which we shall agree to defer all other favorite objects. It is vain to think of harmonizing the North in favor of a restrictive policy or an artificial credit system…There is no object but slavery that can serve our turn…

“There is no object but slavery that can serve our turn.” This has nothing to do with morality. It has nothing to do with ensuring that the sentiment behind the Declaration of Independence should be unsullied by hypocrisy. It is a simple and cynical political ploy. Keeping this in mind, let’s look again at Lincoln’s statement that “A house divided against itself cannot stand. I believe this government cannot endure, permanently half slave and half free.” And let’s look again at Seward’s reference to an “irrepressible conflict”. What could these two consumate politicians have had in mind? “There is no object but slavery that can serve our turn.”

Craven concludes with the observation that

The slaveholder began to do scapegoat service for all aristocrats and all sinners. To him were transferred resentments and fears born out of local conditions. Because it combined in itself both the moral and the democratic appeal, and because it coincided with sectional rivalry, the abolition movement gradually swallowed up all other reforms. The South became the great object of all efforts to remake American society. Against early indifference and later persecution, a handful of deadly-in-earnest men and women slowly built into a section’s consciousness the belief in a Slave Power. To the normal strength of sectional ignorance and distrust they added all the force of Calvinistic morality and American democracy and thereby surrounded every Northern interest and contention with holy sanction and reduced all opposition to abject depravity. When the politician, playing his risky game, linked expansion and slavery, Christian common folk by the thousands, with no great personal urge for reforming, accepted the Abolition attitudes toward both the South and slavery. Civil war was then in the making.

Bill


(Message edited by Bill_torrens on July 19, 2004)

[unionblue]

Bill,

Again, an excellent response, well thought out and well argued. Let me try to reply.

Fanatic n. (Lat. fanaticus, inspired by a god<fanum, temple.] One having excessive zeal for and irrational attachment to a cause or position.

Fanaticism n. Excessive, irrational zeal.

Fanaticize n. To make fanatical or act as a fanatic.

From the paper Appomattox: One Hundred Years Later, by Stephen Z. Starr, presented to the Cincinnati Civil War Round Table in 1965.

"But for every antislavery fanatic in the North, there were dozens of proslavery fanatics in the South. And if we must make the choice between fanatics for freedom and fanatics for slavery, the choice, I think, is simple. The abolitionist fanatics, never more than a tiny minority, did not control the politics or even the public opinion of the North. The proslavery fanatics, on the other hand, did control both public opinion and politics in the South..."

In addressing your first concern about the fanaticism of secessionists, I would be more in line with your question 'Or that it is fanatical to seek to secede from the United States under the circumstances prevailing in 1861,' but with some additional comments and views of my own. I will state those comments a bit later in this post.

You have agreed that abolitionists had no conventional political power before the war. But then you state that these self-same politically powerless abolitionists had influence of some kind over Northern public opinion. I don't believe this to be true either, due mainly to your concession that they had no power politically. The reality of the politics of the time should convince you of that. What does an elected official primarily want to do? Keep his office, of course. How does he do that? By keeping his ear tuned to what the 'hot button' issues are with his electorate and keeping them happy about it. What's the old saying, 'I must find out where my people are going so I can lead them' or some such? Don't you think politicians of the era would know this issue was a hot/important one with their people and 'lead' them on it? So again, no power politically, no large swelling of public opinion either.

Furthermore, are you trying to tell me that abolitionists had no political power but yet that could extend some type of influence over public opinion to the point of preparing millions of Northerners to accept anti-slavery feelings in some unconscious manner? 'Psychobabble' is the polite word that I would use for this theory. As for the idea that the self-same abolitionists had techniques of propaganda so efficient that it effected the millions of the North with some kind of subliminal message or motivation doesn't wash either. Again, before the firing on Ft. Sumter, what was the attitude of most in the North? 'Let the erring sisters go' and other such sentiments. What major newspapers or telegraph companies were controlled by abolitionists? How vast was the circulation of their goals and objectives? How effective was their campaign when their meeting places are mobbed and burned down, their presses destroyed and their speakers lives in constant danger in ANY major city in the North?

Bill, why DID the North go to war with the South? From all I have heard on this board who oppose the idea the North went to war with the South over the issue of slavery (and I am one who agrees with this point of view, by the way) the North went to war to preserve the Union. Before the Emancipation Proclamation, how many Union soldiers said they were fighting against slavery? How many said they were after its issue? Not many, in fact, you would have been hard pressed to find any soldier outside of New England that would have given the abolition of slavery as his primary reason for putting himself in harms way.

You mention Mr. Avery Craven and his book The Coming of the Civil War, and his chapter The Northern Attack On Slavery, as support for your theory. I refer you to my good friend, William Torrens, and his statement that, "When a historian publishes his interpretation of certain events everyone understands that they are reading his or her personal opinions." And is that a loaded comment I hear when I read the following line "Those who force the settlement of human problems by war can expect only an unsympathetic hearing from the future. Mere desire to do 'right' is no defense at the bar of history." It is my assumption that Mr. Craven is blaming Northern abolitionists with stirring up hate and strife against slavery in an effort to do 'right' and causing all of this trouble is no defense at the bar of history. Well, I suppose Mr. Craven is entitled to his opinion also, no matter how much I disagree with it. But let us look at the flip side of the coin. What about those who force the settlement of human problems in the mere desire to do 'wrong?' Is there a defense for them at the bar of history?

Again, the economic 'rivalry' between the North and the South is seen as some sort of 'engine' that fueled the anti-slavery movement in the North, even when economics as a reason for the rift between the North and the South is denied by the very men who led their states out of the Union. Bill, you have to keep coming back to slavery as the issue, but you must begin to look SOUTH for the region that kept hammering away at that single issue at the expense of every other issue.

Joshua Giddings might have wanted to make slavery his leading object for the North, but he simply did not have to do much work on his own or have a dazzling propaganda effort to make that happen. And now Lincoln and Seward have fallen under this mysterious influence somehow? The President these self-same abolitionist men despaired of? And Seward, the man who spoke for them on some level, NOT elected to the office? Where is this influence you speak of? I can't see it, Bill.

The South did that all on its own with practically no help from the North at all. The men who led the charge were fanatics about the institution of slavery and feared any challenge to it, even the results of a legal and properly conducted election. THEY were the ones who would not compromise, who would not back down, who saw no other solution than disunion and certain war. States Rights, not for those states in the North who did not want slavery but a plank demanded by the Deep South as part of their platform for their party. Slavery MUST be protected in ALL the States and territories and be protected by the Federal Government? That does not smack of a type of fanaticism? Yes, I would call that fanatical behavior.

And I do NOT consider it rational behavior to wall yourself off from the rest of the country and permit NO debate on the issue, to hear of no other view, to threaten, jail or run off any of your citizens who might question the prevailing view. I do NOT consider it rational behavior to destroy the rights of ALL of your citizens by taking away one of your rights guaranteed under the Constitution because you and your region 'don't want to hear about it, it threatens your institutions, etc.' THAT is fanatical behavior in defense of your peculiar institution. That any comment against your view of slavery is wrong and your position is the only 'right' one, strikes me as fanatical behavior.

And to be willing to drag the entire nation to war over that institution and that issue alone, is simply not logical to me, but a form of fanaticism that pales to anything the North did during this time.

Can't think any more on this tonight. I'll get back to you on it soon.

Sincerely,
Unionblue
PS: Bill, found two sites you might be interested in.

The first is a site where students are writting reviews on one of Craven's books.

http://enterprise.is.tcu.edu/~swoodworth/Craven.htm

The second has to do with the Post Master General and his report concerning the mailing of abolitionist material throgh the US Mails before the coming of the Civil War.

http://history.furman.edu/~benson/docs/postal35.htm

Enjoy,
Unionblue





(Message edited by Unionblue on July 20, 2004)

(Message edited by Unionblue on July 20, 2004)

(Message edited by Unionblue on July 20, 2004)

[unionblue]

Bill,

I would like you to comment on a review of Professor Avery Craven's book, The Coming Of The Civil War that I found on Amazon.com.

*****Civil War as rabble-rousing run amok, January 22, 2003
Reviewer: {Grayson, GA USA)

"This book is interesting in that it not only examines the key political issues of the antebellum period but also delves into the culture of the time, especially that of the South. But the author's views are tilted toward those of the antebellum South. He goes to great length in describing the Southern plantation system with its incorporation of slave labor and compares it somewhat favorably with the industrialization and the "so-called" free labor of the North. In addition, the exaggerated Southern claims of social superiority seem to strike a cord with the author. A great deal of the book is consumed with describing the reactions and views of leading spokesmen and of various publications in the North and the South concerning major antebellum political developments. The question of the Mexican Cession and the Wilmont Proviso in 1846 moved the question of slavery squarely into the political system resulting in the formation of the Free Soil Party and talk of secession in the South. The Compromise of 1850 quieted some voices, but only until the next expansion of slavery.

Interestingly, of all of the political crises of mid-1850s where slavery was front and center, that is, the Kansas-Nebraska bill, the bleeding Kansas crisis, and the Dred Scott decision, the author claims that the Southern response was relatively moderate compared to the extremists of the North. Yet that moderation seemed to have evaporated with the John Brown raid at Harpers Ferry. And the Southern reaction to Lincoln's election the next year was beyond shrill and ultimately self-destructive.

I think it is fairly obvious that this author regards the Civil War as occurring as a result of emotionalism and opportunism run amok. And depite the fact that the South was unwilling to honor the untainted election of a President and failed to comprehend that all of the conservative candidates together far outpolled the Republican, I believe that the author holds that Northern forces largely provoked the Southern secession and then were unwilling to accept that fact by offering some kind of compromise.

The author fails to grasp, or at least state, that slavery and its ramifications were the great moral issues of the day. Of course, tremendous emotionalism was evoked by the issues. And those issues could not be simply managed or downplayed in the Second American Party system. Slavery was conceptually wrong for America and produced an unsustainable divide between two sections of the country. Emotionalism may have obscured that fact then and now, but it is superficial as an explanation for the Civil War."

Comments?

Unionblue

[bill_torrens]

Dear Neil,

Thanks for such a full reply, and for the various attachments.

Let’s start with Avery Craven. Let me stress that he cannot be labelled a Southern partisan. Stephen Z. Starr, in the article you brought to my attention, identifies Craven as one of the “revisionist school” who blamed the war on a “blundering generation”. This seems fair. Don’t pay too much attention to internet reviews…track down one or two of his books for yourself, and I promise you that you’ll find them rewarding reading. Annoying, but rewarding.

Now let’s move on to the abolitionists. Here I confess that your line of argument baffles me. And it rarely does that: sometimes I agree with you; rather more frequently I don’t, but I am rarely baffled. But you seem to be arguing that public opinion is only influenced by people who hold political office or seem likely to acquire it. Er, what about the media? I would be prepared to argue that the editors of newspapers and television news programmes have a greater power to influence the likes of you and me than almost any politician. And it wasn’t so different 140 years ago. The abolitionists were exceptionally imaginative and energetic in their use of every then available medium to promote their apocalyptic world vision. In “The Freedom-Of-Thought Struggle In The Old South”, Clement Eaton shows how the initial Southern effort to censor the mails was a direct response to the abolitionists’ concerted effort in 1835 to swamp the South with their propaganda:

Accordingly, tons of antislavery pamphlets, magazines, and newspapers were sent through the mails to prominent Southerners – justices of the peace, ministers, editors, members of Congress, state officials – in other words, the leaders of public opinion. The impact of this deluge of fervid publications on the Southern mind produced a wave of excitement and of anger.

Not all of the output of the abolitionist propaganda machine was aimed at Southerners. They produced pamphlets which were aimed at teaching children the alphabet, publications which must surely have been aimed at the Northern market:

A is an Abolitionist
A man who wants to free
The wretched slave, and give to all
An equal liberty

Z is a zealous man, sincere,
Faithful, and just, and true;
An earnest pleader for the slave –
Will you not be so too?


They also published juvenile story books, hymn books offering abolition songs set to familiar tunes, almanacs carrying the usual information about weather and crops but with the rest of the pages crammed with abolition propaganda, and so on and so on. In the year 1837-1838 alone the American Anti-Slavery Society published 7, 877 bound volumes, 47, 256 tracts and pamphlets, 4,100 circulars and 10,490 prints. Its quarterly Anti-Slavery Magazine had an annual circulation of 9,000; the Slave Friend, for children, had 131,050; the monthly Human Rights 189,400, and the weekly Emancipator 217,000.

And we haven’t even considered the impact of the single most important piece of abolitionist propaganda, Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Craven writes that “a generation and more formed its ideas of Southern life and labor from the pages of this novel.” Neil, are you seriously suggesting that Northern public opinion was not influenced in any way at all by this book?

The campaign was not restricted to the printed word. We also need to consider the personal appearances and lectures given by “reformed” slaveholders and escaped slaves. Here I can offer an insight into just how extensive this campaign became. I live in a small town in the heart of the English countryside. It is way off the beaten track now, and the same was true in the 19th century. Even so, in the mid-1850s an escaped slave from Georgia gave a lecture in our Methodist chapel about the evils of the Peculiar Institution. A propaganda campaign which can reach as distant and obscure a target as Winslow, Buckinghamshire, is one of quite extraordinary energy and intensity. And yet you insist that it had no impact at all on the northern United States.

Now let’s turn to the Republican Party. I just want to make one simple point: if the two sections of the country had managed to come to a peaceful accomodation over the slavery issue in the second half of the 1850s it would have been an absolute disaster for the Republicans. Any such solution would have ensured a Democrat victory in the 1860 election. And so everything which leading Republicans said and did during this period needs to be viewed in this light. It would be an insult to the rationality and intelligence of men like Seward and Lincoln to suppose that they did not do everything they could to agitate the slavery issue, to stand in the way of any peaceful solution, to push events along so as to ensure a fission in the Democratic Party. To use the modern phrase, they hyped the slavery issue for all they were worth. Craven has some very interesting things to say about the crisis in the Republican party

when Douglas’s squatter sovereignty, in practice, yielded only free territory. The danger of slave extension, on which the party was founded, was over. And by 1858 even Republican leaders understood this fact. Some said the party had fulfilled its mission and should join with Stephen A. Douglas in the formation of a new party for wider sectional and national ends. Some talked of a “broad base” by which the Republicans could attack the old Southern Whigs. But Abraham Lincoln, in his “House Divided” speech, prevented himself and his party from being thrust aside by a desperate appeal to old moral foundations.Though his own policy and that of “Judge” Douglas gave identical results, the latter was not born of moral conviction. And until the issue was conceived in terms of “the eternal struggle between two principles – right and wrong – throughout the world”, the fight must go on. That is why a man who was willing to save the Union at the cost of a bloody civil war, even with slavery untouched, would not save it by a compromise which yielded party principle but which did not sacrifice a single material thing.

And so it was that two key elements in Northern society – one numerically small but disproportionately influential – stood to lose everything if the sectional discord over slavery was ever allowed to heal. Before you talk about the stubbornness and selfishness of the Slave Power leading the country into civil war, I think you need to look rather closer to home. And what could be more topical for us in 2004 – in both our countries – than the notion of politicians deliberately exaggerating dangers and so bringing on war?

Bill










(Message edited by Bill_torrens on July 23, 2004)

[unionblue]

Bill,

An excellent and well presented post! I think you are going to be surprised with just how much of it I agree with you on!

I'm afraid though, I have just about come to the end of my shift here at the US Post Office and you will have to wait for my detailed response.

Well done, Bill, well done indeed!

Sincerely,
Unionblue
PS How did you manage to 'ditch' your wife and get so much computer time for yourself? Take care, old friend, or you'll be placed on restriction!

[unionblue]

Bill,

Ahhh! Back at work with excellent, speedy inter net access! Now let me reply to your excellent post above.

You miss my point. What I was saying is that politicians are influenced by their constitutes, NOT that politicians influence public opinion. I was trying to say that politicians tend to want to get reelected and to do that they must find issues that the public find important to them and get on board that particular band wagon. I agree with you that the news media of today and the editors of newspapers have a great power to influence you and me.

What I am arguing is the influence the abolitionist press, messages and speakers had on Northern public opinion and that influence equating into political power and influence. It simply is not there to the point to where you think it had any direct impact on the South.

I agree with you that initial abolitionist efforts to swamp the South with their message was met with censorship, effective censorship that would not let that message circulate freely in that region.

I also agree that not all abolition efforts were directed at the South, but also in the North. I do not doubt your figures or sources that you list. What I argue is what was the impact? How did the abolitionist cause benefit? In what dramatic way did this 'clic' gain any power or influence that creates any kind of measurable impact on the South being threatened? There are just too many instances of their meetings being broken up, their leaders killed or threatened with harm, their printing presses being destroyed. Before the war, where is their power? Where are the millions that they have influenced up in arms over their message?

And your turning to the Republican Party and advancing the theory that slavery was picked out as 'the' issue to deliberately exaggerate in order to keep the party on track, smacks of those conspiracy theories you tend to abhor. Your attention remains riveted on the North and ignores the South and its issues to keep slavery as the 'cause' of political and social unrest in the nation at the expense of the safety of the entire country.

It is a considerable stretch to imagine that slavery was going to come to any peaceful accommodation with the attitude of the South who was hell-bent on expanding it, protecting it and preserving it after YEARS of accommodation by others to keep it from being an issue that would tear the country apart.

As for Uncle Tom's Cabin, I also agree with you there, the book had an enormous impact, in the North and around the world. And in the South I think it caused numerous books to be written in reply to it. I wonder how many folks read those books too? But did the book impact so greatly on public opinion in the North as to significantly advance abolitionist goals? Maybe the majority of those in the North who read the book accepted the idea that this was what slavery and Southern society was truly like in the South, but what was the result, the practical, observable result? Did public opinion so drastically change as a result of the reading of this book to change social attitudes in the North? Was there a sudden outbreak of enlightenment concerning the Negro and his plight in both the North and the South?

I'm sorry Bill, but in my opinion, your man there that you quote from, is definitely leaning a bit South in his opinions, but we both realize that is what we are reading, right? I don't think he takes into account the closed society the South had become and just how far it was willing to go to protect the institution.

Sincerely,
Unionblue

[bill_torrens]

Dear Neil,

I was just about to answer your post when a thought occurred to me. I remembered reading the biography of someone (I forget who it was, although he was British) whose school debates were run along the lines that you had to argue the opposite of what you actually believed. As an intellectual exercise this was deemed to be more useful than arguing what you believed, when a good deal of largely useless emotion gets in the way of clear thinking.

This gave me pause for thought. What about, just for one post each, taking the opposite point of view? If I promise to put heart and soul into arguing for the Union in my next post, can you find it in you to respond by listening to your "Inner Rebel"? (Do I hear Tommy and Thea pulling their chairs forward and listening with strangely increased interest?) Who knows, it might set a trend. We might be able to enjoy Shane's views on "Edmund Ruffin - My Role Model".

Let me know what you think.

Bill

[unionblue]

Bill,

A wonderful idea and one that Tommy, Thea and I had considered before.

Any topic concerning the war you would like to start with? And should we begin a new thread or continue on this one?

Jolly Good, Mr. Torrens! I look forward to this one!

Sincerely,
Unionblue

[bill_torrens]

Neil,

I guess it would be appropriate to start a new thread. Otherwise people are going to get very confused.

I'll start a thread called "Roles Reversed" and post a pro-Union argument, just dealing with the war in general terms. Let's see how it goes from there.

Bill

[unionblue]

Bill,

Excellent, but let me suggest you put up the following instruction on your first post. Anyone wishing to participate in this thread, MUST take the opposite side of the one they normally have or support.

What do you think?

Unionblue