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The controversy between "high-tariff" and "low-tariff" groups has remained constant in American history.⁽¹⁾ Following the Civil War, the protective tariff became a cardinal doctrine of the triumphant Republican party.⁽²⁾ Abraham Lincoln, the Republicans' patron saint, recognized that "the tariff question must be as durable as the government itself," that sharp differences of opinion would prevail among Americans "as to whether and how far the duties on imports shall be adjusted to favor home production."⁽³⁾ It is of historical relevance to trace the tariff struggle as it affected Lincoln's career.
         Lincoln as a young man was originally attracted to the Whig party by his admiration for Henry Clay.⁽⁴⁾ At this time Clay united East and West on his "American System" — a program championing internal improvements and a protective tariff.⁽⁵⁾ As Lincoln grew to manhood in a pro-Clay region of Indiana,⁽⁶⁾ Clay's creed of internal improvements and protectionism constituted the basis of the anti-Jacksonian cause.⁽⁷⁾ When Lincoln left the Hoosier state for Illinois in 1830, he was a Whig at heart. In 1832 he case his first presidential vote for Clay.⁽⁸⁾ In this same year, as a candidate for the state legislature, he told the electorate: "My politics can be briefly stated. I am in favor of the internal improvement system, and a high protective tariff. These are my sentiments and political principles."⁽⁹⁾
         During the presidential campaign of 1840 the Illinois party brethren, led by Lincoln, declared for a protective tariff. On the stump for William Henry Harrison he called for a rise in import rates.⁽¹⁰⁾
         Throughout the 1840's, as an ardent Whig on the Illinois hustings, Lincoln fought against free-trade influences.⁽¹¹⁾ In 1844, on speaking tours advocating the election of Clay to the presidency, he emphasized the benefits of a high tariff.⁽¹²⁾ As a member of Congress from 1847 to 1849, he supported measures to raise the rates of the low Walker Act, which had meanwhile been passed by the Democratic-controlled Congress.⁽¹³⁾ Ending his term in Congress, Lincoln returned to his profession of the law, intermittently dabbling in Illinois politics. In 1856 he forsook the anemic Whig party and belatedly entered the Republican ranks.⁽¹⁴⁾
         During Lincoln's first years as a Republican there was little to indicate his party's future role as the champion of home industry. In his region of Illinois, hostility to the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854, which had precipitated the organization of the Republican party, was grounded deeply in resistance to the threat involved in that measure to the common man's interest in "free land": the tradition of a land free from competing Negro slave labor and the hope of land free in price.⁽¹⁵⁾ The Kansas-Nebraska legislation was more likely to affect a Jacksonian Democrat than an erstwhile Clay Whig like Lincoln. Economic conditions under the existing low Walker schedules were generally good. Lincoln and other champions of the American System, who had claimed a close relationship between the superseded high tariff of 1842 and prosperity, were silenced. The trend toward "free trade" was reflected in the enactment of the "low" tariff of 1857,⁽¹⁶⁾ a measure made possible by a coalition of Democrats, woolen manufacturers who wanted raw wool placed on the free list, and railroad interests who wanted tariff-free iron from abroad.⁽¹⁷⁾ The Republicans in Congress, imbued with Whig doctrines and anxious to combat the Democrats, voted against the tariff. But it was futile. Northern Democrats joined their Southern brethren in passing the measure, and President Franklin Pierce approved it before turning over the presidential office to James Buchanan.⁽¹⁸⁾
         No sooner had Buchanan been installed in the executive mansion than the Panic of 1857 cast its shadow over the land.⁽¹⁹⁾ Immediately Republican editors and orators, particularly in Pennsylvania, blamed the existing tariff for the nation's economic distress. In the election of 1858 the Republicans combined with other opponents of the Democrats to carry Pennsylvania on a protectionist issue.⁽²⁰⁾
         During this same year, 1858, Lincoln campaigned against Stephen A. Douglas for United States Senator. Since Illinois was not yet a manufacturing state, the Republicans deemed it expedient not to stress the tariff issue. To have done so would have offended free-soil Democrats who were deserting to the Republican ranks. Lincoln made no mention of the tariff in his historic verbal tilts with Douglas.⁽²¹⁾ "For the present," writes Lincoln's biographer Albert J. Beveridge, "the protective tariff appeal was left to the East."⁽²²⁾
         The elections of 1858 were a prologue to the presidential campaign of 1860. Sagacious Republican leaders recognized that antislavery as an exclusive issue could not assure national victory. The defeat of John C. Fremont by Buchanan in 1856 had demonstrated to the leaders of Lincoln's party that hostility to slavery extension was insufficient.⁽²³⁾ Pennsylvanians, knowing their own power, impressed upon influential Republicans that their state, second in electoral votes to New York, could be carried in 1860 only on a protectionist platform.⁽²⁴⁾
         In August, 1859, therefore, Representative Justin S. Morrill, Republican of Vermont, sponsored a bill raising the tariff rates in order to "force the [Democratic-controlled] Senate to accept or defeat it."⁽²⁵⁾ Morrill's bill was sponsored by the Republicans in order to attract votes in Pennsylvania and New Jersey.⁽²⁶⁾ The wool rates were to be raised n order to lure the West. Western Republicans, realizing the necessity of carrying Pennsylvania, were impressing upon their agrarian constituents the expediency of accepting a protective tariff plank in the national platform. Moreover, isolated Western sections with mineral deposits would be benefited by excluding European products.⁽²⁷⁾ An Indiana Republican leader assured his audience that a high tariff would "afford just encouragement and protection to the agricultural and manufacturing interests."⁽²⁸⁾ The talented Illinois editor Joseph Medill preached the same gospel in his Chicago Press and Tribune.⁽²⁹⁾ This journal was confident that the coming national convention would adopt a tariff plank that would be "satisfactory alike to Pennsylvania and Illinois, to Massachusetts and Minnesota."⁽³⁰⁾
         There was good reason for Medill to emphasize the tariff issue: he realized only too well that the Republicans could not win the presidency in 1860 without the electoral vote of Pennsylvania.⁽³¹⁾ In October, 1859, the Chicago Press and Tribune editor became interested in Lincoln as presidential timber;⁽³²⁾ he preached that Lincoln "was an old Clay Whig, is right on the tariff and he is exactly right on all other issues. Is there any man who would suit Pennsylvania better?"⁽³³⁾ In this same month Lincoln's relative by marriage, Dr. Edward Wallace of Pennsylvania, desiring to sound the Illinoisan on the tariff issue in anticipation of offering him an endorsement for vice president, wrote Lincoln a letter. Lincoln replied:

Clinton, October 11, 1859.

My dear Sir: I am here just now attending court. Yesterday, before I left Springfield, your brother, Dr. William S. Wallace, showed me a letter of yours, in which you kindly mention my name, inquire for my tariff views, and suggest the propriety of my writing a letter upon the subject. I was an old Henry Clay-Tariif-Whig. In old times I made more speeches on that subject than any other.
         I have not since changed my views. I believe yet, if we could have a moderate, carefully adjusted protective tariff, so far acquiesced in as not to be a perpetual subject of political strife, squabbles, changes, and uncertainties, it would be better for us. Still it is my opinion that just now the revival of that question will not advance the cause itself, or the man who revives it.
         I have not thought much on the subject recently, but my general impression is that the necessity for a protective tariff will ere long force its old opponents to take it up; and then its old friends can join in and establish it on a more firm and durable basis. We, the Old Whigs, have been entirely beaten out of the tariff question, and we shall not be able to reestablish the policy until the absence of its shall have demonstrated the necessity for it in the minds of men heretofore opposed to it. With this view, I should prefer to not now write a public letter on the subject. I therefore wish this to be considered confidential. I shall be very glad to receive a letter from you.⁽³⁴⁾

That Lincoln was indeed interested in Pennsylvania was indicated by his correspondence with Jesse W. Fell. A Pennsylvania-born journalist of Illinois, and soon to become secretary of the Republican State Central Committee of Illinois, Fell in 1858 had toured the East, where he discovered an interest in the Springfield lawyer who was then so effectively opposing Stephen A. Douglas for the Senate. In December, 1859, Lincoln furnished Fell a short autobiography, which the latter forwarded to his friend Joseph J. Lewis of West Chester, Pennsylvania. Lewis expanded this material into a lengthy article for the Chester County Times of February 11, 1860. Lewis wrote that Lincoln had been Clay's friend and master of "the principles of political economy that underlie the tariff.... Mr. Lincoln had been a consistent and earnest tariff man from the first hour of his entering public life."⁽³⁵⁾
         Meanwhile, protectionist sentiment mounted to fever heat in Pennsylvania. And no individual contributed so much to make the state tariff-minded as the renowned political economist Henry C.Carey of Pennsylvania. Carey flooded the Republican press — particularly Morton McMichael's Philadelphia North American and Horace Greeley's New York Tribune — with articles detailing how the low tariff had been responsible for the Panic of 1857.⁽³⁶⁾ A critic correctly termed him the "Ajax of Protection."⁽³⁷⁾ In mid-April, 1860, Carey wrote Morrill, "Nothing less than a dictator is required for making a really good tariff. Would to heaven you or I could fill the place for a week."⁽³⁸⁾ Carey was likewise active in lobbying for Morrill's bill. On April 30 he received a letter from George W. Scranton, congressman from Pennsylvania, founder of the city of Scranton, and a prosperous coal and iron producer:

We hope to get the [Morrill] Tariff Bill to a vote this week.... I have written to one of my friends, a delegate to Chicago from Pa. stating to him in substance the views you expressed when here [in Washington] in relation to the proposed conference between the N.J. and Pa. delegations before they meet in Chicago. He is personally acquainted with two or three of the N.J. delegates and will be likely to meet some or all of them several times before Convention.
         ...Coal stocks and estates well located are improving in value and have touched the lowest points; if we can carry the Tariff Bill through, you may safely mark up your coal interests.⁽³⁹⁾

The tariff did indeed loom large at the Republican National Convention, which assembled in Chicago on May 16, 1860. The party leaders clearly foresaw that antislavery as an exclusive issue was not enough to assure victory in November. Horace Greeley, who as proxy from Oregon severed on the committee on resolutions at the Chicago conclave, had only recently confided to an associate: associate: "Now about the Presidency: I want to succeed this time, yet I know the country is not Anti-Slavery. It will only swallow a little Anti-Slavery in a great deal of sweetening. An Anti-Slavery man per se cannot be elected; but a Tariff, River and Harbor, Pacific Railroad, Free Homestead man may succeed although he is Anti-Slavery."⁽⁴⁰⁾
         Indeed, what river and harbor improvement was to the Great Lakes region, what a proposed Pacific railroad and a daily overland mail were to California and Oregon, and what homestead was to the Northwest, the tariff was to Pennsylvania⁽⁴¹⁾ and, in a lesser degree, to New Jersey.⁽⁴²⁾ A Harrisburg correspondent had recently written: "The opposition [anti-Democratic] politicians here say you may cry nigger, nigger, as much as you please, only give us a chance to carry Pennsylvania by crying tariff. Without this state you can not elect your President."⁽⁴³⁾ Now, from the Chicago gathering, one delegate wrote home: "Penn. demands a tariff plank in the platform. Her delegation is active and urgent."⁽⁴⁴⁾ Delaware Republicans, with growing industrial interests, supported Pennsylvanians in their demands.⁽⁴⁵⁾ So, too, did the delegates from western Virginia, a wool-growing region with vast mineral deposits;⁽⁴⁶⁾ Republicans of Wheeling assailed the Democrats as a "Southern-British-Antitariff-Disunion" party."⁽⁴⁷⁾ Republicans of Lincoln's own Illinois and of distant Oregon, eager to conciliate Pennsylvania, agreed to accept higher import duties as the price of national Republican victory.⁽⁴⁸⁾
         The platform makers at Chicago, however, faced the dilemma of catering to Pennsylvania while recognizing free-trade sentiment among the former Democratic members in their ranks.⁽⁴⁹⁾ Thus the out-and-out protectionists found it impossible to obtain a frank endorsement of their principle. The most militant fighters for a high-tariff declaration on the Committee on Resolutions were the New Jersey member, Thomas H. Dudley, who hailed from the industrial center of Camden, directly across the Delaware River from Philadelphia,⁽⁵⁰⁾ and Horace Greeley, sitting as proxy member from Oregon. But the former Democrats had to be considered, and the tariff declaration ultimately adopted was mild. According to Gustave Koerner, the Illinois member of the platform committee at the Chicago convention:

The only trouble was given us by Greeley, who insisted upon a strong protective plank. We did not consider the tariff question at this particular time as one of primary importance, and we humored him by declaring that "while providing revenue for the support of the general government by duties upon imports, sound policy requires such an adjustment as to encourage the development of the industrial interests of the whole country." This amounted to no more than the establishment of a revenue tariff bill with incidental protection, and did not differ essentially from former Democratic declarations on the same subject.⁽⁵¹⁾

The tariff resolution constituted the twelfth plank of the platform. Political expediency prevented an unequivocal protectionist declaration, since the Democratic element of the Republican party leaned toward free trade or "tariff-for-revenue only." But the Pennsylvanians and other protectionists considered what they received as the best obtainable under the circumstances.⁽⁵²⁾ A Democratic journal commented critically: "A protective tariff is cautiously advocated."⁽⁵³⁾ The twelfth plank was enthusiastically acclaimed at Chicago. One observer reported: "The Pennsylvania and New Jersey delegations were terrific in their applause over the tariff resolution, and their hilarity was contagious, finally pervading the whole vast auditorium."⁽⁵⁴⁾ Another eyewitness confided to his diary: "The scene this evening upon the reading of the 'Protection to Home Industries' plank in the platform was beyond precedent. One thousand tongues yelled, ten thousand hats, caps, and handkerchiefs waving with the wildest fervor. Frantic jubilation."⁽⁵⁵⁾
         The day following the adoption of the platform the convention proceeded to ballot for a presidential candidate. Pennsylvania, casting fifty-four convention votes and second only to New York in delegate strength, became the prize for which the managers of all candidates contended. Lincoln's strategists conceded that the Empire State was unbendingly behind Senator William H. Seward. Pennsylvania's favorite son, Senator Simon Cameron, did not have united support in his own state; moreover, Cameron's main stock in trade, the tariff, was a paramount issue only in the Keystone State and in New Jersey.⁽⁵⁶⁾ In courting Pennsylvania, Lincoln's floor strategists stressed his devotion to the ancient Clay doctrine. Joseph Medill had long hammered away on the theme that "Lincoln was safe on protection, homesteads, rivers and harbors, and the Pacific railroad."⁽⁵⁷⁾ And only four days before the Chicago convention assembled, Lincoln was again in correspondence with Dr. Edward Wallace of Pennsylvania. Lincoln wrote Wallace:

Springfield, Illinois, May 12, 1860.

My dear Sir: Your brother, Dr. W.S. Wallace, shows me a letter of yours in which you request him to inquire if you may use a letter of mine to you in which something is said upon the tariff question. I do not precisely remember what I did say in that letter, but I presume I said nothing substantially different from what I shall say now.
         In the days of Henry Clay, I was a Henry-Clay-tariff man, and my views have undergone no material change upon that subject. I now think the tariff question ought not to be agitated in the Chicago convention, but that all should be satisfied on that point with a presidential candidate whose antecedents give assurance that he would neither seek to force a tariff law by executive influence, nor yet to arrest a reasonable one by a veto or otherwise. Just such a candidate I desire shall be put in nomination. I really have no objection to these views being publicly known, but I do wish to thrust no letter before the public now upon any subject. Save me from the appearance of obtrusion, and I do not care who sees this or my former letter.⁽⁵⁸⁾

In this second letter to Wallace, Lincoln, while reiterating his soundness on the tariff, made certain not to make himself too obnoxious to the Democratic "free-trade" element within the Republican ranks; therefore, "the tariff question ought not to be agitated in the Chicago convention," and a candidate should be nominated whose antecedents indicated that he would support a "reasonable" tariff.
         Finally Lincoln received the support of almost the entire Pennsylvania delegation — partly through the efforts of doctrinaire protectionists such as Morton McMichael, Henry C. Carey's friend and publisher of Philadelphia's Bible of protectionism, the North American, who was a delegate at Chicago.⁽⁵⁹⁾
         It is difficult to conceive of the Illinois man being nominated Republican standard-bearer without Pennsylvania support.⁽⁶⁰⁾ It is equally difficult to imagine the Keystone State agreeing to accept Lincoln without becoming convinced that he was sound on the tariff. Indeed, McMichael emphasized, "Mr. Lincoln was, throughout, well known for his firm and unwavering fidelity to Henry Clay, and the great policy of protection to American industry."⁽⁶¹⁾ A colleague of McMichael portrayed Lincoln in Pennsylvania as "the great champion of protection in the Northwest."⁽⁶²⁾
         Lincoln, in accepting the presidential nomination, endorsed the Chicago platform and, in effect, went on record as favoring a rise in tariff rates.⁽⁶³⁾ Later in the campaign, in answer to a query, he wrote confidentially:

Springfield, Illinois, September 22, 1860

My dear Sir: Your letter asking me "Are you in favor of a tariff and protection to American industry?" is received. The convention which nominated me, by the twelfth plank of their platform, selected their position on this question; and I have declared my approval of the platform, and accepted the nomination. Now, if I were to publicly shift the position by adding or subtracting anything, the convention would have the right, and probably would be inclined, to displace me as their candidate. And I feel confident that you, on reflection, would not wish me to give private assurances to be seen by some and kept secret from others. I enjoin that this shall by no means be made public.⁽⁶⁴⁾

In the Republicans' campaign to elect Lincoln President over Stephen A. Douglas, John C. Breckinridge, and John Bell, the tariff figured as a minor issue in Northwestern regions. Greeley strove valiantly to demonstrate how the agrarian Northwest's interests were tied to the industrial East, even circulating a Tribune tract entitled American Agriculture and Its Interest in the Protective Policy.⁽⁶⁵⁾
         Western Republicans' acceptance of the tariff plank in the Chicago platform on which Lincoln stood was a compound of several ingredients. There was much of staunch old Whiggery, rejoicing in the revival of the former party dogmas. There were interests which had suffered under the downward revision of 1857, such as the iron groups in Ohio and those in the lead districts of Wisconsin, who now saw a chance to regain their protected position. There were regions in the upper Mississippi Valley where, in a period of depression, the tariff was looked to for the stimulus of manufactures to balance an agricultural economy. Also, there was a widespread disposition to accept the tariff as a dose which must be swallowed to obtain the reward of homestead legislation. Most of all, there was a belief, steadily urged upon all loyal Republicans, that Pennsylvania could be won, and with it the presidency, by a gesture toward upward tariff revision.⁽⁶⁶⁾ True, the West made a gesture toward protectionism. When Lincoln made a brief appearance at a Republican rally in his home town of Springfield, a local woolen mill took part in the procession, with an immense wagon containing a power loom driven by a steam engine. Several yards of jeans cloth, from which a garment was fashioned for Lincoln, were publicly made. The wagon bore the significant motto "Protection to Home Industry."⁽⁶⁷⁾
         Some Republicans in the East, like those in the Northwest, acquiesced in the tariff plank of the Chicago convention primarily because Pennsylvania politicians demanded it — and Lincoln needed that state's electoral vote. New England woolen manufacturers were generally satisfied with the existing tariff of 1857, inasmuch as it provided them with low duties on imported raw wool.⁽⁶⁸⁾ A New England delegate to the Chicago convention, alluding to the Pennsylvania delegates at Chicago, exclaimed, "Dam[n] their iron and coal."⁽⁶⁹⁾
         With the woolen manufacturing interests apathetic toward the Republican creed of a higher tariff, the party strategists, concerned with electing Lincoln, sought to persuade them that the Morrill bill, passed by a Republican-controlled House of Representatives and awaiting action by the Senate, was beneficial to Massachusetts interests. The pro-Lincoln Boston Daily Advertiser explained that the duty would be raised on incoming woolen manufactures.⁽⁷⁰⁾ Toward the end of the campaign Andrew G. Curtin, governor-elect of Pennsylvania and an ardent protectionist, was brought to Boston to speak. Action on the Morrill bill having meanwhile been blocked by the Democratic-dominated Senate, Curtin maintained that this was a blow at the interests of the laboring man.⁽⁷¹⁾
         Regardless of the popularity or unpopularity of the Morrill bill in the Northwest and New England, the tariff proved a decisive issue in Pennsylvania.
         Not only did Pennsylvania cast twenty-seven electoral votes — second only to New York — but it was long considered "doubtful." The state had been carried by the Democrat James Buchanan over Fremont in 1856 and had decided the presidential contest in favor of the former. Moreover, it was an "October" state, holding its gubernatorial contest one month before the presidential election. Republicans and Democrats strained every nerve to carry the 1860 Pennsylvania state election.⁽⁷²⁾
         McMichael's Philadelphia North American made protectionism the paramount issue in the Keystone State. Between September 1 and November 6, it printed only six editorials of consequence relating to slavery, whereas between September 3 and October 11, sixteen lengthy editorials relevant to the tariff appeared.⁽⁷³⁾ Republican journals in other regions of the state also portrayed Lincoln as a stout champion of protection.⁽⁷⁴⁾ Lincoln, remaining in Springfield, Illinois, confidentially referred his correspondents to the national platform and pointed to the Whig papers of 1844 to prove his adherence to Clay's policy. To one he wrote on October 2:

To comply with your request to furnish extracts from my tariff speeches is simply impossible, because none of those speeches were published. It was not fashionable here in those days to report one's public speeches. In 1844 I was on Clay's electoral ticket in this State (i.e., Illinois) and, to the best of my ability, sustained, together, the tariff of 1842 and the tariff plank of the Clay platform. This could be proven by hundreds — perhaps thousands — of living witnesses; still it is not in print, except by inference. The Whig papers of those years all show that I was upon the electoral ticket; even though I made speeches, among other things about the tariff, but they do not show what I said about it. The papers show that I was one of the committee which reported, among others, a resolution in these words: "That we are in favor of an adequate revenue on duties from imports so levied as to afford ample protection to American industry."
         But, after all, was it really any more than the tariff plank of our present platform? And does not my acceptance pledge me on that? And am I at liberty to do more, if I were inclined?⁽⁷⁵⁾

As the election drew near, the fight to carry Pennsylvania became keener. Republicans in Congress, with an eye to the Keystone State vote, kept the tariff to the fore. On May 10 they succeeded in jamming the Morrill bill through the House. Their efforts were partially blocked, however, when Robert M.T. Hunter, Democrat of Virginia and chairman of the Senate finance committee, succeeded in having the Democratic-controlled Senate pass his amendment calling for postponement of the bill's consideration until the next session of Congress — after the election!⁽⁷⁶⁾ Meanwhile, throughout Pennsylvania, Lincoln orators hammered away at the Democrats' hostility to the state's interests. Curtin, Republican gubernatorial candidate, gave a greater portion of his time to the discussion of the tariff and financial issues than to all others combined.⁽⁷⁷⁾ One Democratic leader complained to Senator Douglas: "The Republicans, in their speeches, say nothing of the nigger question, but all is made to turn on the Tariff";⁽⁷⁸⁾ later he appealed to Douglas to say kind words for protection to home industry when the latter took the stump in Pennsylvania.⁽⁷⁹⁾ At Harrisburg in September, Douglas, an erstwhile low-tariff advocate, supported protection.⁽⁸⁰⁾ The Republicans assailed the Little Giant's insincerity and, in their final election manifesto, appealed: "Every voter in Pennsylvania who desires to-day to emphasize his vote in favor of protection to American industry and to the best interests of this State, should give it to Abraham Lincoln."⁽⁸¹⁾
         The Lincolnites' strategy proved fruitful. Aided by the low-tariff record of most Democrats and by the split in the Democratic party, they elected Curtin governor in October and won the state's twenty-seven electoral votes for Lincoln in November. Republican and Democratic campaign managers agreed that the tariff issue enabled Lincoln to carry pivotal Pennsylvania.⁽⁸²⁾
         As in Pennsylvania, so, too, in New Jersey did the Republicans present Lincoln as the champion of American industry. They assured the voters, "Mr. Lincoln is in favor of a Protective Tariff, because he earnestly desires to see all our mills and factories in successful operation, making music along our rivers and booming amid the hills." As in the Keystone State, the Republicans, in their effort to carry New Jersey for Lincoln, made the most of the Democrats' pigeonholing of the Morrill bill in the Senate, contrasting it with their party's pledge to pass it in the House.⁽⁸³⁾ Lincoln's "high-tariff" past proved a strong attraction to erstwhile Whigs. One Republican leader reported from Bergen County: "Mr. [Joseph] Hoxie commenced [the rally] by reviewing the acts of the present [Buchanan] administration... and closed with an appeal to those who had fought with him under the banner of 'Protection to American Industry,' to come forth and battle for one of Clay's noblest friends, 'Honest Abe' of Illinois."⁽⁸⁴⁾ Dr. Thomas M. Pitkin has concluded: "It is certain that the issue of protection, ably presented and persistently urged, helped materially in winning four of the votes of a state which had, in 1856, gone solidly Democratic."⁽⁸⁵⁾
         In estimating the role of the tariff in the election of Lincoln, it must be recognized that any serious study of political events and party organization in the United States from 1854 to 1860 will reveal the wide variety of issues involved and the divergent emphases placed on them by Republican strategists in different regions of the North. Opposition to the leaders and policies of the Democratic party, national, state, and local, was the common ground on which Lincoln's party stood. The Republicans also reaped the rewards from the split within the Democratic ranks into Buchanan and Douglas factions — a split over personalities, patronage, and "Bleeding" Kansas.⁽⁸⁶⁾ In New York⁽⁸⁷⁾ and Massachusetts⁽⁸⁸⁾ the major issues were Know-Nothingism, temperance, and opposition to slavery extension; the pope, John Barleycorn, and the "slavocrats" Franklin Pierce, James Buchanan, and Stephen A. Douglas were the main targets of the anti-Democratic attack started by the declining Whig party and then carried on by the Republicans. In winning the Northwest, Lincoln was aided not only by the Democratic split but also by his party's promise to give free land — homestead — to actual settlers.⁽⁸⁹⁾ In sweeping the Great Lakes region he was helped by the plank in the Chicago platform calling for Federal funds for the improvement of rivers and harbors.⁽⁹⁰⁾ In carrying California and Oregon by a small margin, the Democratic schism and Republican demand for construction of a railroad to the Pacific and a daily overland mail combined to tip the scales in his favor.⁽⁹¹⁾ In achieving success for Lincoln in Pennsylvania and New Jersey, the foregoing pages indicate that the promise of a protective tariff and the Democratic rupture were the decisive factors. Pennsylvania's twenty-seven electoral votes, given to any other candidate, would have reduced Lincoln's majority to three. The additional loss of New Jersey's four electoral votes would have thrown the election into Congress with unpredictable results.⁽⁹²⁾ The forces, economic, political, and moral, which elected Lincoln were summarized by McMichael's protectionist Philadelphia North American:

The people have elected Abraham Lincoln President of the United States. This result was clearly foreshadowed when Pennsylvania decided by her great majority.... Pennsylvania, particularly, demanded that the principle of protecting American industries should be recognized and avowed.... Economy in the conduct of the government, homesteads for settlers on the public domain, retrenchment and accountability in the public expenditures, appropriations for rivers and harbors, a Pacific Railroad, the admission of Kansas, and a radical reform in the government, all entered into the canvass and contributed to the election of Lincoln. No one issue controlled it.... We have thus seen that slavery was not the dominating idea of the Presidential contest, as has been assumed, but that various national influences co-operated to produce the result which has been witnessed.⁽⁹³⁾

Following Lincoln's triumph, certain elements within the Republican ranks — particularly the former Democrats who had gone over to Lincoln on the antislavery and "free land" issues — resented their new party's tendencies toward protectionism. Now that victory had come, they did not remain seduced by the beauties of the "Whiggish" American System.⁽⁹⁴⁾ But President-elect Lincoln did not flinch. Endeavoring to live up to the platform on which he had campaigned, he considered his election a mandate to shield the home market from competition of European goods. In an address at Pittsburgh in mid-February, 1861, while en route to Washington for his inauguration, he read the twelfth plank of the Chicago platform. Then he continued:

As with all general propositions, doubtless there will be shades of difference in construing this. I have by no means a thoroughly matured judgment upon this subject, especially as to details: some general ideas are about all. I have long thought to produce any necessary article at home which can be made of as good quality and with as little labor at home as abroad would be better made at home, at least by the difference of the carrying from abroad. In such a case the carrying is demonstrably a dead loss of labor. For instance, labor being the true standard of value, is it not plain that if equal labor gets a bar of railroad iron out of a mine in England and another out of a mine in Pennsylvania each can be laid down in a track at home cheaper than they could exchange countries, at least by the cost of carriage.
         If there be a present cause why one can be both made and carried cheaper in money price than the other can be made without carrying, that cause is an unnatural and injurious one, and ought gradually, if not rapidly, be removed. The condition of the treasury at this time would seem to render an early revision of the tariff indispensable. The Morrill tariff bill now pending before Congress may or may not become a law. I am not posted as to its particular provisions, but if they are generally satisfactory, and the bill shall now pass, there will be an end of the matter for the present.⁽⁹⁵⁾

Meanwhile, as Lincoln prepared for his inaugural, South Carolina had led several Southern states out of the Union. Pennsylvania's Democratic senator, William Bigler, appealed to the South: "The most potent influence that caused many Northern men to aid the Republican party was the tariff question. Manufacturers and miners believed the Democratic party prejudiced to their protection; and therefore had gone over to the Republicans. No man is warranted in saying that the State of Pennsylvania will adhere to the [antislavery] doctrine of the Republican party."⁽⁹⁶⁾
         Bigler's hopes that his state might forsake Lincoln were not to be realized. For influential Republicans, subordinating the slavery extension issue, were determined to hold the Keystone State in line by paying the campaign debt. Morrill, wanting the raw wool of his own Vermont protected, had revived his bill raising the import duties.⁽⁹⁷⁾ The Pennsylvania appeal went to Republican congressmen: "Pass it [the Morrill bill] and we can permanently hold the State.... 'Protection' as a principle of Republicanism is worth to us 100,000 votes at least any day."⁽⁹⁸⁾ And Henry C. Carey exhorted: "Without it, Mr. Lincoln's administration will be dead before the day of inauguration."⁽⁹⁹⁾
         Lincoln had no opportunity to act on the Morrill bill. Before he took the oath of office as President, Congress passed the measure on a party vote. Democratic "low-tariff" senators having withdrawn to follow the road of secession, the Democratic majority was transformed into a Republican majority in the upper branch of Congress; the House was already Republican.⁽¹⁰⁰⁾ Morrill, John Sherman of Ohio, and Thaddeus Stevens of Pennsylvania steered the bill through the House;⁽¹⁰¹⁾ Simon Cameron of Pennsylvania and James F. Simmons of Rhode Island, a wealthy textile millowner,⁽¹⁰²⁾ guided it through the Senate.⁽¹⁰³⁾ On March 2, 1861 — two days before Lincoln's inauguration — President Buchanan, himself a Pennsylvanian, signed the bill.
         Historians are not unanimous as to the relative importance which Southern fear and hatred of a high tariff had in causing the secession of the slave states, but there has been a growing tendency to lay more emphasis on it than formerly.⁽¹⁰⁴⁾ This much seems evident: except among a minority of Pennsylvania manufacturers,⁽¹⁰⁵⁾ there was little widespread demand for the Morrill act, first important legislative milepost marking the journey of industrial and financial capitalism to a dominant position in the nation. Morrill himself admitted that his measure "was not asked for, and but coldly received by manufacturers, who always and just fear instability."⁽¹⁰⁶⁾ Rather, the demand for protection had been incorporated into the Chicago platform almost exclusively to cater to Pennsylvania.⁽¹⁰⁷⁾ And even the Keystone State coal and iron producers did not work too energetically to aid the passage of the Morrill bill. While it was pending in Congress, the Washington correspondent of McMichael's Philadelphia North American, James E. Harvey, diligently lobbying for its passage, complained: "Iron gentlemen stay at home, & saddle us who are toiling for bread day & night, as is my case, with the care of their interests. They make periodical excursions here & talk, but expect us to drum up votes, button-hole members, and argue their cases for patriotic considerations.... I will try & see the Morrill bill through."⁽¹⁰⁸⁾
         That certain elements within Lincoln's party harbored "low-tariff" views was all to well known to that renowned "high-tariff" doctrinaire Henry C.Carey, who had eulogized the Morrill act as "the most important measure ever adopted by Congress."⁽¹⁰⁹⁾ In alarm Carey concluded that the Treasury Department, charged with administering tariff legislation, was filled with "free traders" who were unsympathetic toward the new tariff.⁽¹¹⁰⁾ Lincoln was a reader of Carey's works on political economy, and evidently Carey was aware of this.⁽¹¹¹⁾ Accordingly, it was not surprising that the President should be visited by Carey. Lincoln agreed to appoint Carey's friend and fellow warrior in the protectionist crusade, Dr. William Elder, to an important post in the "Tariff Region" of the Treasury Department, which was charged with administering the Morrill act.⁽¹¹²⁾ Dr. Elder was "the man to teach them,"⁽¹¹³⁾ Carey commented. Carey now attempted to persuade Lincoln to lean farther toward the protectionist side. In June, 1861, he wrote the President: "Had the policy advocated by Mr. Clay, as embodied in the tariff of 1842, been maintained, there could have been no secession, and for the reason, that the southern mineral region would long since have obtained control of the planting one."⁽¹¹⁴⁾
         Just how far under normal conditions Lincoln would have gone along with Carey's views cannot be said. The necessity of financing the war against the Confederacy forced the President to favor a rise in import duties as a source of revenue. In a message to Congress shortly after the firing on Fort Sumter, he pointed to the reports of the Secretaries of the Treasury, War, and Navy, as giving the information necessary for deliberation and action.⁽¹¹⁵⁾ Lincoln's Secretary of the Treasury, Salmon P. Chase, a low-tariff man throughout his career,⁽¹¹⁶⁾ reluctantly recommended a rise in import duties as part of his program to finance the war.⁽¹¹⁷⁾ Soon he was consulting with Morrill, who, in league with Carey, had plans afoot to boost the tariff rates still higher.⁽¹¹⁸⁾ Congress accordingly passed the tariff act of August 5, 1861, which raised the Morrill levels. Lincoln signed the measure.⁽¹¹⁹⁾ Morrill's tariff legislation of March 2 and August 5, 1861, nearly doubled the rates of import duties that were exacted by the tariff of 1857.⁽¹²⁰⁾
         Under the stress of war, high tariffs were easily passed by successive Republican majorities in Congress and approved by Lincoln. The President's call on July 1 for three hundred thousand additional troops was a harbinger of the increased demands which in the future would be made upon the Treasury. Moreover, the Pacific Railway Act, with its Federal land grant and loan to aid the construction of a line between the Missouri River and California, and the Agricultural College Act (also sponsored by Morrill) further burdened the Federal Treasury at this time. Ostensibly to meet some of these additional needs, the Tariff Act of July 14, 1862, was passed — and approved by Lincoln. Designed to increase duties to offset the previously enacted internal taxes, the measure aided the home manufacturer. Customs duties were raised to an average of 37 per cent, and the free list established by Morrill's act of 1861 was cut down by nearly one half. These upward changes became the basis for the even higher duties of the 1864 tariff.⁽¹²¹⁾
         Congress supported Lincoln in his insistence on means for finishing the war. In June, 1864, a new tariff bill was passed by both houses of Congress. Lincoln approved it on June 30, and it went into effect at once. Under it duties rose from the 37 per cent of the bill of 1862 to over 47 per cent, which added its quota to an appalling high cost of living. But the majority of the public endured it, grimly convinced that there was no other way to end the war.⁽¹²²⁾
         The wartime tariff acts did indeed enable Lincoln to raise funds with which to vanquish the Confederacy.⁽¹²³⁾ In the process, however, manufacturers, desirous of shielding their products from foreign competition, found their opportunity in the financial needs of the government. They secured a high degree of protection.⁽¹²⁴⁾ While the main reasons for the war tariffs, which Lincoln approved, were the need of revenue for the government and the desire to compensate the various interests imposed upon by the internal imposts,⁽¹²⁵⁾ the final shape of the tariffs enacted during the war was largely owing to the endeavors of protected manufacturers to gain each for himself the greatest possible advantage irrespective of the other's interests. Above all, the habits engendered during this period of comprehensive protection to almost everything led to a crystallization of the sentiment in favor of national economic exclusion and isolation. For many decades American commercial policy was molded by the feelings and habits generated during Lincoln's wartime administration.⁽¹²⁶⁾
         After he reached Washington to assume the presidency in 1861, Lincoln rarely considered the tariff other than as a method to raise money.⁽¹²⁷⁾ Certain it was that Henry C. Carey, who had repeated consultations with Lincoln during the war,⁽¹²⁸⁾ was keenly disappointed at the lack of attention manifested toward the question by the President, who was always so deeply absorbed in the political and military aspects of the war. And early in February, 1865, Carey gave vent to his feelings: "Protection made Mr. Lincoln president. Protection has given him all the success he has achieved, yet has he never, so far as I can recollect, bestowed upon her a single word of thanks. When he and she part company, he will go to the wall."⁽¹²⁹⁾
         What Lincoln's course would have been toward the tariff had he lived cannot be determined. For decades following his death, however, protectionists, in summoning testimony from "the Fathers," made full use of Lincoln's high-tariff record to bolster their claims that huge duties on imports were economically sound and socially desirable; at times the more zealous, in combating free trade, misquoted Lincoln and even concocted orations which they attributed to him.⁽¹³⁰⁾ Nevertheless, under him the American nation went definitely on a high-tariff program, and to Lincoln's party Henry C. Carey's principles became an act of faith.

---

Endnotes

1. Orrin L. Elliott, The Tariff Controversy in the United States, 1789-1833 (Palo Alto, 1892); Carl W. Kaiser, Jr., History of the Academic Protectionist-Free Trade Controversy Before 1860 (Philadelphia, 1939); Robert R. Russel, Economic Aspects of Southern Sectionalism, 1840-1861 (Urbana, 1924), pages 37-40, 65-66, 151-56; John G. Van Deusen, Economic Bases of Disunion in South Carolina (New York, 1928), pages 19-21, 59-103, 328; Jesse T. Carpenter, The South as a Conscious Minority, 1789-1861 (New York, 1930), pages 19, 29-30, 56; Ulrich B. Phillips, The Life of Robert Toombs (New York, 1913), page 148; Avery Craven, The Coming of the Civil War (New York, 1942), pages 215-216, 224, 321, 401; James C. Ballagh, "Southern Economic History: Tariff and Public Lands," American Historical Association, Annual Report, 1898 (Washington, 1899), pages 223ff.

2. George E. Hunsberger, "The Development of Tariff Policy in the Republican Party," Ph.D. dissertation in manuscript form, submitted to the University of Virgini in 1934.

3. Lincoln's speech at Pittsburgh, Feb. 15, 1861, New York Daily Tribune, Feb. 16, 1861.

4. Louis A. Warren, "The Lone Whig of Illinois," Lincoln Lore, No. 580 (May 20, 1940); Reinhard H. Luthin, "Abraham Lincoln and the Massachusetts Whigs in 1848," New England Quarterly, XIV (Dec., 1941), page 619 n.; Henry B. Rankin, Personal Recollections of Abrham Lincoln (New York and London, 1916), pages 363-64.

5. Glyndon G. Van Deusen, The Life of Henry Clay (Boston, 1937), pages 57-60, 164-66, 215-16; E. Malcolm Carroll, Origins of the Whig Party (Durham, 1925), pages 24-25, 37, 47, 173; Harold U. Faulkner, "The Development of the American System," Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, CXLI (Jan., 1929), page 12; E. Merton Coulter, "The Genesis of Henry Clay's American System," South Atlantic Quarterly, XXV (Jan., 1926), pages 45-54.

6. Albert J. Beveridge, Abraham Lincoln, 1809-1858 (Boston and New York, 1928), Volume I, pages 96-99.

7. J. Brown Ray to Dr. David G. Mitchell, Mar. 28, 1827, William H. English Papers, William Henry Smith Memorial Library, Indianapolis.

8. Beveridge, Abraham Lincoln, Volume I, pages 115ff.

9. Osborn H. Oldroyd, The Lincoln Memorial (New York, 1882), page 76; William H. Herndon and Jesse W. Weik, Herndon's Lincoln (Chicago, 1889), Volume I, page 102.

10. Emanuel Hertz, The Hidden Lincoln (New York, 1938), page 383. Cf. Charles M. Thompson, The Illinois Whigs Before 1846 (Urbana, 1915), pages 73-74; Harry E. Pratt, "Lincoln — Campaign Manager and Orator in 1840," Bulletin of the Abraham Lincoln Association, No. 50 (Dec., 1937), pages 3-8. For a summary of tariff legislation in the ante-bellum decades, see F.W. Taussig, "The Tariff, 1830-1860," Quarterly Journal of Economics, II (Apr., 1888), pages 314-46.

11. Arthur B. Lapsley, ed., The Writings of Abraham Lincoln (Constitutional ed., New York and London, 1905), Volume I, pages 301-305; John G. Nicolay and John Hay, eds., Complete Works of Abraham Lincoln (Gettysburg ed., New York, 1894), Volume I, pages 300-15; Volume II, pages 55-56.

12. Harry E. Pratt, Lincoln, 1840-1846 (Springfield, 1939), pages 220-21, 232; Rockport (Indiana) Herald, Nov. 1, 1844, in Bess V. Ehrmann, The Missing Chapter in the Life of Abraham Lincoln (Chicago, 1938), facsimile opposite page 104; Hertz, page 79; Illinois State Register (Springfield), Mar. 22, 29, 1844; Springfield (Ill.) Sangamo Journal, Aug. 7, 1844, in New York Herald, Oct. 20, 1860.

13. Congressional Globe, 30 Cong., 2 sess., Appendix, page 26; D.W. Bartlett, The Life and Public Services of Hon. Abraham Lincoln ("Authorized ed.," New York, 1860), pages 36, 42.

14. Reinhard H. Luthin, "Abraham Lincoln Becomes a Republican," to be published in a forthcoming issue of the Political Science Quarterly.

15. Madison Kuhn, "Economic Issues and the Rise of the Republican Party in the Northwest," Ph.D. dissertation in manuscript form, submitted to the University of Chicago in 1940, pages 101-106, 108, 111-18, 136-44; Mildred C. Stoler, "Influence of the Democratic Element in the Republican Party of Illinois and Indiana, 1854-1860," Ph.D dissertation in manuscript form, submitted to Indiana University in 1938, page 26; Floyd B. Streeter, Political Parties in Michigan, 1837-1860 (Lansing, 1918), page 20

HAMILTON'S CURSE

 For decades America's philosophical battles were between Thomas Jefferson's ideas and Alexander Hamilton's. Listen to this 12 minute clip to find out who won and how we got in this mess.

It’s Time To End Hamilton’s Curse

by Thomas J. DiLorenzo

For more than a century now, Americans have lived in what pundit George Will once called "Hamilton’s Nation." Will was referring to the fact that government policy has long been primarily guided by the Big Government, interventionist political philosophy of Alexander Hamilton. Liberal writer Michael Lind edited an entire book of essays celebrating this fact entitled Hamilton’s Republic. About every other month or so, neoconservative pundit David Brooks authors another New York Times or Wall Street Journal op-ed urging a "revival" of the Hamiltonian political agenda, as though it needs reviving.

To repudiate Hamilton’s political legacy is, according to Hamilton biographer Ron Chernow, "to repudiate the modern world" itself. Brooks and William Kristol began their crusade for "national greatness conservatism" with a September 15, 1997 Wall Street Journal article that urged Americans to "reinvigorate the nationalism of Alexander Hamilton, Henry Clay and Teddy Roosevelt."

In his book, Alexander Hamilton and the Persistence of Myth, historian Stephen F. Knott informs us that Hamilton should be given ALL the credit for "the America that explored the outer reaches of space, welcomed millions of immigrants, led the effort to defeat communism, produced countless technological advances, and abolished slavery and Jim Crow . . ." When Time magazine asked him who his heroes were shortly after the Republican takeover of Congress in 1994, House Speaker Newt Gingrich named Hamilton first (followed by John Wayne, Kemal Ataturk, and Father Flanagan).

What most Americans probably know about Hamilton is that he was a founding father, one of the authors of The Federalist Papers, and that his picture is on the ten-dollar bill. But he was much more than that, as the above-mentioned writers surely know. As Jeff Taylor remarked in Where Did the Party Go? William Jennings Bryan, Hubert Humphrey, and the Jeffersonian Legacy, "Hamilton, under the influence of the two political theorists most distasteful to Jefferson, Hobbes and Hume, was frankly the champion of the leviathan state." This is why in my forthcoming book, Hamilton’s Curse, I discard Ron Chernow’s advice about "repudiating the modern world" and explain why Hamilton’s political and economic legacy must be repudiated if America is to ever again be known as the land of the free.

Hamilton’s Curse

Hamilton worshipped government power for its own sake, and sought a government that would seek "imperial glory" (his words). He disrespected people like Jefferson who believed the primary purpose of government should be the protection of natural rights to life, liberty and property. He frequently complained of "an excessive concern for liberty in public men" and called for a government of "more energy." As Clinton Rossiter wrote in Alexander Hamilton and the Constitution, "Hamilton . . . had perhaps the highest respect for government of any important American political thinker who ever lived." His "overriding purpose" was "to build the foundations of a new empire" that could "reach out forcefully and benevolently to every person." (Forcefully, yes; but government is never "benevolent.")

Hamilton was the founder of the American nationalist tradition. As Clyde Wilson has pointed out, there is a sharp difference between nationalism and patriotism. Patriotism is "the wholesome love of one’s land and people," says Professor Wilson. Nationalism, on the other hand, is an "unhealthy love of one’s government, accompanied by the aggressive desire to put down others – which becomes in deracinated modern men a substitute for religious faith." Patriotism is necessary for people who wish to preserve their freedom; nationalism is not. In fact, it is always a great enemy of freedom. There is little wonder why so many contemporary statists, from "liberal" historians to the neocon establishment, idolize Alexander Hamilton.

And what does "Hamilton’s Republic" look like, from a government policy perspective? It is one that is run by a dictatorial chief executive with king-like powers, for one thing. At the Constitutional convention Hamilton presented his real agenda: a "permanent" president who would appoint all the governors, and who would have veto power over all state legislation. "A king!" is what his Jeffersonian detractors accused him of asking for, and they were right. He failed at the convention, but few could deny that modern American presidents are every bit as king-like as Hamilton wanted them to be – and more. How else could one describe a president who can bomb any country in the world at will, and without the least bit of congressional approval?

Hamilton lied through his teeth in The Federalist Papers when he spoke favorably about states’ rights and federalism, for his proposal for a "permanent president" would have all but destroyed any semblance of true federalism or "divided sovereignty," as James Madison labeled it. That destruction was essentially accomplished in 1865, after which the states became mere appendages of the central government. The final nails in the Jeffersonian, states’ rights coffin were pounded into place in 1913, with the advent of the Federal Reserve, the income tax, and the Seventeenth Amendment providing for the direct election of U.S. senators. In Hamilton’s Curse I call this the "Hamiltonian Revolution of 1913."

Hamilton was a frenetic tax increaser as the nation’s first Treasury Secretary. He championed a standing army as well, not so much to defend against foreign invaders as to intimidate Americans into paying all those burdensome taxes he had in mind for them. He proved this when he accompanied George Washington and 10,000 conscripts into Western Pennsylvania during the Whiskey Rebellion, a tax revolt over Hamilton’s federal whiskey tax by Pennsylvania farmers. Hamilton wanted to hang the two dozen or so tax protesters that were rounded up, but George Washington pardoned them all, infuriating the nation’s first Tax Collector-in-Chief.

The relentless crusades for the imposition of heavier and heavier taxes on everything and anything by all levels of government that curse America today are part and parcel of the Hamiltonian tradition. Hamilton never supported the idea of income taxation per se, but the centralization of political and economic power in Washington, D.C. that the federal income tax accomplished in 1913 can be considered to be the very pinnacle of Hamiltonianism.

Hamilton was an advocate of military adventurism in pursuit of what he called "imperial glory." Jefferson, Madison, and other founders thought this was the surest route to destroy American liberty, and they were right. Today, Hamilton’s agenda of the pursuit of "imperial glory" is called "national greatness conservatism."

It was Hamilton who fathered the idea of a central bank run by politicians in the nation’s capitol. As such he is America’s founding father of central banking and all the economic miseries it has created, from the Great Depression to stagflation to the bursting of the latest housing price bubble.

With regard to economic policy, Hamilton was a British-style mercantilist who wanted to use the coercive powers of the state to subsidize selected businesses, who would in turn support the state and its growth. He was the founding father of "crony capitalism." Americans had just fought a revolution against such a system, and Hamilton wanted to turn around and adopt that very system in America. His political heirs finally succeeded during the Lincoln administration, and have been building on that "success" ever since.

Hamilton was also a protectionist who believed in some of the most bizarre theories used to justify government interference with free trade, such as his complete discounting of any value at all being attached to transportation costs. (His political disciple Lincoln would later repeat these hoary superstitions.)

Hamilton championed the creation of a large national debt for the sake of having a large national debt. The reason he gave for this was that the owners of the debt would be the more affluent people of the country, who would then be tied to the government and always be supportive of it, just as welfare recipients are today. They would be sure to support future tax increases, he reasoned, to ensure that they would not be shortchanged on their principal and interest. "A national debt, if it is not excessive, will be to us a public blessing," he said.

Thanks a lot, Al. Today’s national debt exceeds $9 trillion, and that figure does not count the additional tens of trillions of dollars in unfunded Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, and government pension liabilities. Every baby born is already thousands of dollars in debt.

A man as politically astute as Hamilton was most certainly had to be aware that the nature of politics would guarantee that a national debt would quickly become "excessive." (And it did.) He spent his entire adult life lobbying for "excessive" government and demeaning and scheming against those, like Jefferson, who opposed it. (Jefferson, in contrast, once said: "I consider the fortunes of our republic as depending, in an eminent degree, on the extinguishment of the public debt").

Hamilton was also the founding father of constitutional subversion. In contrast to Jefferson’s strict constructionist views, which sought to use the Constitution as a limitation on governmental powers, Hamilton thought of the Constitution as a document that could be "reinterpreted" by clever lawyers like himself and his political compatriot, Chief Justice John Marshall, to provide a "rubber stamp" on almost any governmental activity. He was the inventor of the subversive notion of "implied" powers of the Constitution. As Rossiter explained (approvingly): "It seems certain that Hamilton would have affixed a certain certificate of constitutionality to every last tax . . . . Hamilton took a large view of the power to tax because he took a large view of the power to spend."

Having failed to create a "national" government at the Constitutional convention, Hamilton and his colleagues set out to pervert the document and "remold the Constitution into an instrument of national supremacy," wrote Rossiter. Hamiltonian judicial activists have succeeded beyond anything Hamilton could have imagined.

Hamilton did not lobby for the notorious Sedition Act that was enacted by his own Federalist Party (and which essentially made it illegal to criticize the government), but he did support it once it became law. Thus, he can also be considered to be one of the founding fathers of governmental assaults on free speech.

Hamilton’s Republic is a republic of excessive public debt; inflationary finance fueled by a central bank that is the cause of perpetual boom-and-bust cycles; a dictatorial executive branch aided and abetted by "black-robed deities" who have "reinterpreted" the Constitution so much that the founders would not even recognize what is called "constitutional law"; a tax burden that is even more excessive than that borne by medieval serfs; a standing army that is misused at the expense of genuine defense of America; an arrogant, imperialistic, and monopolistic government in Washington that rarely pays any attention at all to the citizens of the once-sovereign states; government policy that routinely benefits big, politically-connected businesses and wealthy individuals at the expense of the rest of society (neo-mercantilism); and protectionism.

Every one of these policies has been a curse on America. That is why every one of them, from central banking to public debt to judicial activism, was vigorously opposed by Hamilton’s nemesis, Thomas Jefferson, and his political heirs, until they were finally snuffed out for good by the Lincoln regime and the near total monopoly of power that the Republican Party enjoyed for the ensuing six decades.

The next time you hear Congressman Ron Paul, Republican candidate for president, calling for the abolition of the Fed and the income tax; a defense policy that defends America; drastic reductions in executive power; free trade and free markets; and a return to Constitutional principles, including the principle of states’ rights, you are being given a chance to finally put an end to Hamilton’s curse. Ron Paul is our Jefferson. Every other presidential candidate, Democrat and Republican, is a Big Government Hamiltonian, through and through.

http://www.lewrockwell.com/dilorenzo/dilorenzo136.html

 

A great interview with Lincoln scholar Tom Dilorenzo (approx 15 min)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kwRtja6qcX4

His speech approx 1 hr 35 min

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=He2R6_2hysk

 

Why the Cherokee Nation Allied Themselves With the Confederate States of America in 1861

by Leonard M. Scruggs
by Leonard M. Scruggs

  Many have no doubt heard of the valor of the Cherokee warriors under the command of Brigadier General Stand Watie in the West and of Thomas’ famous North Carolina Legion in the East during the War for Southern Independence from 1861 to 1865. But why did the Cherokees and their brethren, the Creeks, Seminoles, Choctaws, and Chickasaws determine to make common cause with the Confederate South against the Northern Union? To know their reasons is very instructive as to the issues underlying that tragic war. Most Americans have been propagandized rather than educated in the causes of the war, all this to justify the perpetrators and victors. Considering the Cherokee view uncovers much truth buried by decades of politically correct propaganda and allows a broader and truer perspective.

On August 21, 1861, the Cherokee Nation by a General Convention at Tahlequah (in Oklahoma) declared its common cause with the Confederate States against the Northern Union. A treaty was concluded on October 7th between the Confederate States and the Cherokee Nation, and on October 9^th, John Ross, the Principal Chief of the Cherokee Nation called into session the Cherokee National Committee and National Council to approve and implement that treaty and a future course of action.

The Cherokees had at first considerable consternation over the growing conflict and desired to remain neutral. They had much common economy and contact with their Confederate neighbors, but their treaties were with the government of the United States.

The Northern conduct of the war against their neighbors, strong repression of Northern political dissent, and the roughshod trampling of the U. S Constitution under the new regime and political powers in Washington soon changed their thinking.

The Cherokee were perhaps the best educated and literate of the American Indian Tribes. They were also among the most Christian. Learning and wisdom were highly esteemed. They revered the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution as particularly important guarantors of their rights and freedoms. It is not surprising then that on October 28, 1861, the National Council issued a Declaration by the People of the Cherokee Nation of the Causes Which Have Impelled them to Unite Their Fortunes With Those of the Confederate States of America.

The introductory words of this declaration strongly resembled the 1776 Declaration of Independence:

"When circumstances beyond their control compel one people to sever the ties which have long existed between them and another state or confederacy, and to contract new alliances and establish new relations for the security of their rights and liberties, it is fit that they should publicly declare the reasons by which their action is justified."

In the next paragraphs of their declaration the Cherokee Council noted their faithful adherence to their treaties with the United States in the past and how they had faithfully attempted neutrality until the present. But the seventh paragraph begins to delineate their alarm with Northern aggression and sympathy with the South:

"But Providence rules the destinies of nations, and events, by inexorable necessity, overrule human resolutions."

Comparing the relatively limited objectives and defensive nature of the Southern cause in contrast to the aggressive actions of the North they remarked of the Confederate States:

"Disclaiming any intention to invade the Northern States, they sought only to repel the invaders from their own soil and to secure the right of governing themselves. They claimed only the privilege asserted in the Declaration of American Independence, and on which the right of Northern States themselves to self-government is formed, and altering their form of government when it became no longer tolerable and establishing new forms for the security of their liberties."

The next paragraph noted the orderly and democratic process by which each of the Confederate States seceded. This was without violence or coercion and nowhere were liberties abridged or civilian courts and authorities made subordinate to the military. Also noted was the growing unity and success of the South against Northern aggression. The following or ninth paragraph contrasts this with ruthless and totalitarian trends in the North:

"But in the Northern States the Cherokee people saw with alarm a violated constitution, all civil liberty put in peril, and all rules of civilized warfare and the dictates of common humanity and decency unhesitatingly disregarded. In the states which still adhered to the Union a military despotism had displaced civilian power and the laws became silent with arms. Free speech and almost free thought became a crime. The right of habeas corpus, guaranteed by the constitution, disappeared at the nod of a Secretary of State or a general of the lowest grade. The mandate of the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court was at naught by the military power and this outrage on common right approved by a President sworn to support the constitution. War on the largest scale was waged, and the immense bodies of troops called into the field in the absence of any warranting it under the pretense of suppressing unlawful combination of men."

The tenth paragraph continues the indictment of the Northern political party in power and the conduct of the Union Armies:

"The humanities of war, which even barbarians respect, were no longer thought worthy to be observed. Foreign mercenaries and the scum of the cities and the inmates of prisons were enlisted and organized into brigades and sent into Southern States to aid in subjugating a people struggling for freedom, to burn, to plunder, and to commit the basest of outrages on the women; while the heels of armed tyranny trod upon the necks of Maryland and Missouri, and men of the highest character and position were incarcerated upon suspicion without process of law, in jails, forts, and prison ships, and even women were imprisoned by the arbitrary order of a President and Cabinet Ministers; while the press ceased to be free, and the publication of newspapers was suspended and their issues seized and destroyed; the officers and men taken prisoners in the battles were allowed to remain in captivity by the refusal of the Government to consent to an exchange of prisoners; as they had left their dead on more than one field of battle that had witnessed their defeat, to be buried and their wounded to be cared for by southern hands."

The eleventh paragraph of the Cherokee declaration is a fairly concise summary of their grievances against the political powers now presiding over a new U. S. Government:

"Whatever causes the Cherokee people may have had in the past to complain of some of the southern states, they cannot but feel that their interests and destiny are inseparably connected to those of the south. The war now waging is a war of Northern cupidity and fanaticism against the institution of African servitude; against the commercial freedom of the south, and against the political freedom of the states, and its objects are to annihilate the sovereignty of those states and utterly change the nature of the general government."

The Cherokees felt they had been faithful and loyal to their treaties with the United States, but now perceived that the relationship was not reciprocal and that their very existence as a people was threatened. They had also witnessed the recent exploitation of the properties and rights of Indian tribes in Kansas, Nebraska, and Oregon, and feared that they, too, might soon become victims of Northern rapacity. Therefore, they were compelled to abrogate those treaties in defense of their people, lands, and rights. They felt the Union had already made war on them by their actions.

Finally, appealing to their inalienable right to self-defense and self-determination as a free people, they concluded their declaration with the following words:

"Obeying the dictates of prudence and providing for the general safety and welfare, confident of the rectitude of their intentions and true to their obligations to duty and honor, they accept the issue thus forced upon them, unite their fortunes now and forever with the Confederate States, and take up arms for the common cause, and with entire confidence of the justice of that cause and with a firm reliance upon Divine Providence, will resolutely abide the consequences.

The Cherokees were true to their words. The last shot fired in the war east of the Mississippi was May 6, 1865. This was in an engagement at White Sulphur Springs, near Waynesville, North Carolina, of part of Thomas’ Legion against Kirk’s infamous Union raiders that had wreaked a murderous terrorism and destruction on the civilian population of Western North Carolina. Col. William H. Thomas’ Legion was originally predominantly Cherokee, but had also accrued a large number of North Carolina mountain men. On June 23, 1865, in what was the last land battle of the war, Confederate Brigadier General and Cherokee Chief, Stand Watie, finally surrendered his predominantly Cherokee, Oklahoma Indian force to the Union.

The issues as the Cherokees saw them were 1) self-defense against Northern aggression, both for themselves and their fellow Confederates, 2) the right of self-determination by a free people, 3) protection of their heritage, 4) preservation of their political rights under a constitutional government of law 5) a strong desire to retain the principles of limited government and decentralized power guaranteed by the Constitution, 6) protection of their economic rights and welfare, 7) dismay at the despotism of the party and leaders now in command of the U. S. Government, 8) dismay at the ruthless disregard of commonly accepted rules of warfare by the Union, especially their treatment of civilians and non-combatants, 9) a fear of economic exploitation by corrupt politicians and their supporters based on observed past experience, and 10) alarm at the self-righteous and extreme, punitive, and vengeful pronouncements on the slavery issue voiced by the radical abolitionists and supported by many Northern politicians, journalists, social, and religious (mostly Unitarian) leaders. It should be noted here that some of the Cherokees owned slaves, but the practice was not extensive.

The Cherokee Declaration of October 1861 uncovers a far more complex set of "Civil War" issues than most Americans have been taught. Rediscovered truth is not always welcome. Indeed some of the issues here are so distressing that the general academic, media, and public reaction is to rebury them or shout them down as politically incorrect.

The notion that slavery was the only real or even principal cause of the war is very politically correct and widely held, but historically ignorant. It has served, however, as a convenient ex post facto justification for the war and its conduct. Slavery was an issue, and it was related to many other issues, but it was by no means the only issue, or even the most important underlying issue. It was not even an issue in the way most people think of it. Only about 25% of Southern households owned slaves. For most people, North and South, the slavery issue was not so much whether to keep it or not, but how to phase it out without causing economic and social disruption and disaster. Unfortunately the Southern and Cherokee fear of the radical abolitionists turned out to be well founded.

After the Reconstruction Act was passed in 1867 the radical abolitionists and radical Republicans were able to issue in a shameful era of politically punitive and economically exploitive oppression in the South, the results of which lasted many years, and even today are not yet completely erased.

The Cherokee were and are a remarkable people who have impacted the American heritage far beyond their numbers. We can be especially grateful that they made a well thought out and articulate declaration for supporting and joining the Confederate cause in 1861.

PRINCIPAL REFERENCES:

• Emmett Starr, History of the Cherokee Indians, published by the Warden Company, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, 1921. Reprinted by Kraus Reprint Company, Millwood, New York, 1977.
• Hattie Caldwell Davis, Civil War Letters and Memories from the Great Smoky Mountains, Second Edition published by the author, Maggie Valley, NC, 1999.

Unpleasant Truths

by David Dieteman

For whatever reason, it strikes a nerve when esteemed politicians like Abe Lincoln and FDR are criticized.

Why is that?

I suppose that people do not like to see their heros tarnished. I understand that inclination perfectly well. I myself grew very tired of hearing athletes and great leaders attacked and smeared.

I admit to liking Daryl Strawberry. He has the greatest left-handed home run swing I think I have ever seen. Watching him play was a great joy for me. When he continued to run afoul of the law, this saddened me deeply. It also saddened me to hear people tear him apart like garbage. The man, after all, is a human being, and a very talented athlete. It is certainly not a good thing to see him fall. As a matter of human decency, you have to hope that he can turn his life around – if for no one else's sake than for himself and his family.

At some point, however, I realized that some criticisms of public figures may be justified. I stopped worshiping Ronald Reagan and Abe Lincoln like heros. For that matter, I stopped worshiping baseball players like heros.

The annoyance which people feel as a result of criticisms of their heros appears to stem not from the belief that these heros – whether Lincoln, FDR, or Magic Johnson – are perfect and sinless, but from the realization that it will require thought and investigation to find out whether the criticisms are really true.

It is so much easier to sit at home, happily reflecting that all is right with the world. The world is populated with good, honest people, and we can all sleep peacefully at night.

It is easier to think that, but it is sadly not the truth. There are evil men in the world, and they often try to hide what they do.

Free persons have an obligation to themselves to find out what is what about the topics that concern them. This takes work, but there is no getting around it. "Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty." Although we would rather think that athletes or politicians are blameless and good, somebody to cheer for, that is not always the case.

Of course, there are genuine criticisms, and then there are smears.

But we will never be able to distinguish between a smear and a justified criticism without doing a little homework, a little digging around in books or magazines at the library, and bouncing our thoughts and concerns off of our friends. Without a little hard work, we will never be more than sheep. Just as it is easier to sit at home and think that all is right with the world, it is easier to dismiss all criticisms of public figures out of hand. This relieves one of the burden of independent thought.

Perhaps you are a Christian, and you are thinking "Hey, Jesus talks about sheep all the time. And he is the Shepherd." That's right, but the point of that image is that Christ shepherds his flock, i.e. that God loves and protects his creatures.

It is an entirely different usage of "sheep" that I employ. If we are sheep in the realm of politics, this is because we are allowing ourselves to be led and manipulated – and sometimes slaughtered – instead of standing up like men and women made in the image and likeness of God. God made men and women with minds that think. Despite what the animal rights crowd claims, human beings are different than sheep. If we do not use our minds to think for ourselves, we are not living up to our God-given potential.

This is not to sanction Cartesian skepticism, doubting everything in the world and accepting nothing on authority. Some knowledge can only, as a matter of practical reality, come from authority. For example, I believe that the Yankees beat the Mets in the World Series, although I was not there and did not see it happen, because other people who were there tell me the Yankees won. I believe that based upon authority.

Even so, authority can be examined. Some authorities are better, because more accurate and correct, than others. You listen to your doctor for advice on medicine. You do not listen to your TV repair man for advice on medicine. That is not to criticize those who repair televisions. It is only to point out that they are not doctors.

In a democracy, all persons are in theory able to figure out the truth about politicians and politics, such that they can vote and thereby govern themselves. It is easier to simply hop on the bandwagon, but that path leads straight to tyranny.

Cartesian skepticism is not a problem with the American body politic today. If there were more hard-boiled skeptics in America, it would be hard for politicians to sucker people into believing their promises. As it is, many Americans appear to be so far to the opposite of skepticism – let us say that they are credulous, and willing to believe almost anything – that they cannot listen to any criticism of their idols without launching into personal attacks on those critics.

If you disagree with criticisms of Abe Lincoln, state the reasons why. By arguing, the truth can be found. Calling those who attack Lincoln obscene names advances the cause of Lincoln not one bit. In fact, if that is all that can be said in Mr. Lincoln's defense, then the critics of Lincoln have made their case.

I suppose that some truths are hard to accept. Those who enjoy fantasy novels may have encountered the works of Robert Jordan. In one novel, a character gouges out his own eyes and eats them after learning the true history of his nation. The man, from a race of warriors, was unable to accept the truth that his people were once pacifists. And so he killed himself.

Americans, one hopes, are not so wimpy as to be unable to face unpleasant facts.

Nonetheless, many persons appear either unwilling or unable to hear or read anything about Lincoln or FDR which does not fit with the ideas they already hold.

Assuming that they already know all that there is to know about such historical figures, such persons do not wish to be exposed to thoughts which might force them to change their minds.

Why? What do you have to lose? The worst thing that might happen if the truth about Lincoln becomes generally accepted is that we take him off our money, convert the Lincoln memorial into something else (or leave it as a cautionary warning against Caesar worship), and we recognize that he was a human being with faults and sins like everybody else. In short, we take him off of a pedestal.

Some athletes, like Charles Barkley, attempt to avoid being put on a pedestal as a role model – perhaps because they can thus avoid later being thrown from the pedestal in disgrace. By the way, I like Barkley.

Politicians, however, proudly place themselves in the public eye, promising to save America and do wonderful things for us. They put themselves in the public eye.

If it is somehow immoral to criticize such politicians, then we are finished as a free society. If politicians are immune from criticism, we are living in a slavish society such as the USSR, the Roman Empire, Cuba, North Korea and China.

It's your choice. What kind of world do you want to inhabit?

February 20, 2001

Mr. Dieteman is an attorney in Erie, Pennsylvania, and a PhD candidate in philosophy at The Catholic University of America.

Contra Claremont

by David Dieteman

Lincoln becomes the American solar myth, the chief butt of American credulity and sentimentality...the varnishers and veneerers have been busily converting Abe into a plaster saint...Worse, there is an obvious effort to pump all his human weaknesses out of him, and so leave him a mere moral apparition, a sort of amalgam of John Wesley and the Holy Ghost. What could be more absurd? Lincoln, in point of fact, was a practical politician of long experience and high talents, and by no means cursed with idealistic superstitions...his career in the State Legislature was indistinguishable from that of a Tammany Nietzsche.

~ H.L. Mencken, "Abraham Lincoln," The Smart Set, May 1920.
Reprinted in A Mencken Chrestomathy, pp 221-23.

Ken Masugi, director of the Claremont Institute’s Center for Local Government, writes in Claremont Institute Precepts No. 267 that "Long-time fans of Rush Limbaugh’s provocative radio show experienced a shock in a recent program that focused on Abraham Lincoln."

It turns out that Limbaugh was surprised to hear his callers criticize Abe Lincoln as responsible for the growth of federal power, a racist, and indifferent to the plight of the slaves.

The discussion, Masugi notes, grew out of advance qualms over Steven "fundraiser to the Clintons" Spielberg’s forthcoming movie on Lincoln. As Masugi observes, the film will allegedly "portray [Lincoln] as a weakling, a racist, and a failure at the presidency."

Limbaugh and Spielberg aside, what’s the truth about Abraham Lincoln? And what’s the truth about the Confederate States of America and the South?

Allow me to suggest that the truth is quite far from the conventional wisdom. Allow me also to suggest, as indicated by Masugi’s article, that the otherwise praiseworthy Claremont Institute goes too far in its adulation of Lincoln.

The Claremont Institute is "otherwise praiseworthy" because, for example, Doctors for Responsible Gun Ownership and the Claremont’s Center for the Study of the Natural Law appear to do good things. Also, Mark Helprin (a very good contemporary novelist, and therefore a rare breed; A Soldier of the Great War is well worth reading) and Hadley Arkes (a natural law theorist whose works I have found insightful) are at Claremont. This article should not be interpreted as anything other that what it is: a criticism of the Claremont Institute’s treatment of Abraham Lincoln and the issue of secession.

The Claremont Institute’s devotion to Lincoln appears deep and widespread. The Institute provides "Abraham Lincoln Fellowships in Constitutional Government" and the Institute’s Salvatori Center for the American Constitution has published a plethora of essays praising Lincoln and attacking the right of secession.

As a preliminary matter, it is a general problem with the Claremont writers – including not only Masugi, but Harry Jaffa – that they assume as a given the conclusion which they purport to prove. If the question of the day is whether Abe Lincoln is justified or unjustified, praiseworthy or blameworthy, for his actions from 1860-1865, then Lincoln’s own words are not sufficient evidence to acquit Lincoln.

If, in defense of Lincoln, one can call no witnesses but Lincoln, the case for the prosecution looks very strong indeed.

Additionally, in order to judge Lincoln, one needs a standard by which to judge the praiseworthy or blameworthy nature of his actions.

One possible standard by which to judge Lincoln’s actions is provided by a great theorist of republican government well-known to Americans in 1861 and 2001: Montesquieu.

Considerations on the Causes of the Greatness of the Romans and their Decline, is noted by its translator, David Lowenthal, as perhaps the least well known of Montesquieu’s three works. Despite this fact, Lowenthal adds, the book "may have been the first (and certainly was one of the first) of all efforts to comprehend the whole span of Roman history, and among such efforts it still has few if any peers." (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Co., 1999; originally published by The Free Press, 1965. p 1). Lowenthal also writes that

It was probably one of the works Gibbon had in mind in his Memoirs when he wrote: "but my delight was in the frequent perusal of Montesquieu, whose energy of style, and boldness of hypothesis, were powerful to awaken and stimulate the genius of his age...it is one of the few instances when a philosopher has undertaken an extended analysis of any particular society, let alone of its entire history. The only comparable thing on Rome is Machiavelli’s Discourses, to which it bears a deep inner kinship." (p 1)

In other words, Montesquieu’s Considerations is an important work by an important political thinker.

What standard may one find in Montesquieu in order to judge the actions of Abraham Lincoln? In particular, Montesquieu makes the following observation about the nature of free states:

What makes free states last a shorter time than others is that both the misfortunes and the successes they encounter almost always cause them to lose their freedom. In a state where the people are held in subjection, however, successes and misfortunes alike confirm their servitude. A wise republic should hazard nothing that exposes it to either good or bad fortune. The only good to which it should aspire is the perpetuation of its condition [i.e., its condition as a free state, i.e. its freedom]. (p 92)

The reason for the limited life spans of free republics is the fact that crises and governmental actions – most especially wars – tend to grow the state at the expense of society. Calls for government action are necessarily calls for government power, and governments are not known for their fondness for giving up acquired powers.

The standard by which to judge Lincoln’s actions, then, if one is concerned with the nature of America as a free state, is not whether Lincoln abolished slavery or fulfilled the meaning of the Declaration of Independence, but whether he preserved the free condition of the United States.

Two claims made by Ken Masugi, in his various pieces on Lincoln, stand out as problematic:

• "Confederate heritage groups and civil rights groups, who disagree so bitterly about which monument should stand or who was...a hero, actually share major premises about the Civil War...Both sides agree on the prevalent view of American history, debunking Lincoln."
• "The freedom to secede from the Union was equivalent to either anarchy or tyranny, both denials of government by consent."

First, someone should tell the League of the South (of which I am proud to be a member) that a) they’re now in the mainstream and b) unnamed civil rights groups agree with them about the causes of the War Between the States. To be blunt, I do not believe that Masugi is correct in his appraisal of the prevalent views of Abraham Lincoln. On the other hand, if he is correct – great!

Second, with respect to the notion that the South denied "government by consent," the great H.L. Mencken ably shredded this notion in his famous critique of Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address:

it is poetry, not logic; beauty, not sense. Think of the argument in it. Put it into the cold words of everyday. The doctrine is simply this: that the Union soldiers who died at Gettysburg sacrificed their lives to the cause of self-determination – that government of the people, by the people, for the people, should not perish from the earth. It is difficult to imagine anything more untrue. The Union soldiers in the battle actually fought against self-determination; it was the Confederates who fought for the right of their people to govern themselves. The Confederates went into battle free; they came out with their freedom subject to the supervision of the rest of the country – and for nearly twenty years that veto was so efficient that they enjoyed scarcely more liberty, in the political sense, than so many convicts in the penitentiary.

Mencken’s piece was originally published in The Smart Set, May 1920. This was a mere 55 years after the end of the War Between the States. Think of it like a book published today discussing the Korean War. The war was still that recent when Mencken wrote. Reconstruction was even more recent. It had ended only 40 years before Mencken wrote. Think of it like a writer today discussing the Cuban missile crisis.

Worse, as Charles Adams notes in When in the Course of Human Events, Lincoln improperly dated American history in the Gettysburg Address:

To be accurate, Lincoln should have said "four score and two years ago," or better still, "three score and fourteen years ago." Even the Northern newspapers winced. The New York World sharply criticized this historical folly. "This United States" was not created by the Declaration of Independence but "the result of the ratification of a compact known as the Constitution." (194)

Lincoln simply spoke as if the Articles of Confederation had never existed.

Masugi, like Harry Jaffa, contends that "the Civil War was fought over the American proposition first proclaimed in the Declaration of Independence – that all men are created equal." As a necessary corollary of this claim, Masugi contends that

the Confederate view holds that the Declaration of Independence did not include slaves or their descendants and that it provides no guidance for how we Americans were supposed to govern ourselves. The phrase "all men are created equal" was not intended to affirm universal freedom and rights; the whole document was simply a good-bye to Great Britain. Therefore, the Civil War could not have been fundamentally about slavery.

Similarly, in "A Lincoln for all Time – and Our Time," Masugi writes that

"the central idea of secession" involved a rejection of the eternal higher law of the Declaration of Independence, "the laws of nature and of nature’s God" and the equality of rights that underlies the Constitution....The true heirs of the Confederacy no longer wear gray – unless in a suit – but they share the Confederates’ rejection of a moral truth transcending historical evolution. These latter-day rebels now dominate our universities, foundation boards, and other unelected positions of power. For these post-modern elites the very idea of constitutional government is an unwanted encumbrance on their appetites.

Masgui and Jaffa, then, contend that one part of the Declaration of Independence – "all men are created equal" – absolutely trumps another part – "governments derive their authority from the consent of the governed." Masugi attempts to eliminate the turning of the Declaration against itself by arguing that the South really sought to destroy government by consent. As Mencken noted, however, this claim is false: it was the South which fought for self-determination.

It also must be noted that someone forgot to tell Ven. Pope Pius IX about the Southern rejection of "the eternal higher law," as the Pope thought enough of the post-war persecution of Jefferson Davis to send the imprisoned Davis a crown of thorns – made by the Pope himself. As Gary Potter wonders,

Why did this pope who is a Venerable of the Church – the very one who promulgated the dogma of the Immaculate Conception, published to the world the famous Syllabus of Errors, and presided over the Vatican Council that solemnly defined the dogma of papal infallibility – seek to comfort Davis, who was not a Catholic?

Potter speculates that Pius IX may have taken an interest in Davis because of the many prominent Catholic families in the South, and because of the receptivity to Catholicism which characterized Southern culture. Perhaps more significantly, Pius IX himself had experienced the opposition of secessionist and nationalist movements as leader of the Papal States.

Pius IX, you see, was pope from 1846-78 (the longest pontificate in the history of the papacy), during which time Italy underwent the political transformation from disunited states to a centralized, national government. In 1848, because the Pope would not bring the Papal States to war with Catholic Austria, the Catholic Encyclopedia notes that

the pope was denounced as a traitor to his country, his prime minister Rossi was stabbed to death while ascending the steps of the Cancelleria, whither he had gone to open the parliament, and on the following day the pope himself was besieged in the Quirinal. Palma, a papal prelate, who was standing at a window, was shot, and the pope was forced to promise a democratic ministry. With the assistance of the Bavarian ambassador, Count Spaur, and the French ambassador, Duc d’Harcourt, Pius IX escaped from the Quirinal in disguise, 24 November, and flet to Gaeta where he was joined by many of the cardinals. Meanwhile Rome was ruled by traitors and adventurers who abolished the temporal power of the pope, 9 February, 1849, and under the name of a democratic republic terrorized the people and committed untold outrages.

The Catholic Encyclopedia also notes that

the doom of [Pius IX’s] temporal power was sealed, when [in 1858] Cavour and Napoleon III met at Plombieres, concerting plans for a combined war against Austria and the subsequent territorial extension of the Sardinian Kingdom. They sent their agents into various cities of the Papal States to propogate the idea of a politically united Italy. The defeat of Austria at Magenta on 4 July, 1859, and the subsequent withdrawal of the Austrian troops from the papal legations, inaugurated the dissolution of the Papal States. The insurrection in some of the cities of the Romagna was put forth as a plea for annexing the provinces to the Piedmont in September, 1859. On 6 February, 1860, Victor Emmanuel demanded the annexation of Umbria and the Marches and, when Pius IX resisted this unjust demand, made ready to annex them by force.

Sound familiar? Perhaps Pope Pius IX sympathized with Jefferson Davis as a fellow victim of nationalist fervor.

(In 1853, by the way, Pius IX established my diocese – the Roman Catholic Diocese of Erie, Pennsylvania. During his pontificate, he also established nearly 20 other American dioceses, including Albany, Buffalo, Cleveland, Savannah, Brooklyn, Newark, Green Bay, Rochester, Scranton, San Antonio, and Providence).

Returning to Masugi’s contentions, someone also forgot to tell the great Roman Catholic scholar, Lord Acton, about the South’s "rejection of the eternal higher law." Acton famously wrote to Robert E. Lee:

"I saw in States Rights the only availing check upon the absolutism of the sovereign will, and secession filled me with hope, not as the destruction but as the redemption of Democracy.... I deemed that you were fighting the battles of our liberty, our progress, and our civilization; and I mourn for the stake which was lost at Richmond more deeply than I rejoice over that which was saved at Waterloo."

(As an aside, Acton did not agree with Pius IX on the issue of Papal infallibility. Acton, however, dutifully shut his mouth and did not defy the Pope after the dogma was promulgated. Yet Acton and Pius IX agreed on their support for the CSA).

Someone also forgot to tell Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson about the evil of his cause. As related by James I. Robertson, Jr., after the battle of First Manassas (Bull Run to the Yankees), Jackson sent a letter home:

A crowd eager for news of the battle thronged the town post office when the mail arrived. Dr. William S. White immediately recognized Jackson’s scrawl on the letter handed him. The minister cried out, "Now we shall know all the facts!" A hush settled over the townspeople. White then read the letter. "My dear pastor, in my tent last night, after a fatiguing day’s service, I remembered that I had failed to send you my contribution for our colored Sunday school. Enclosed you will find a check for that object, which please acknowledge at your earliest convenience, and oblige yours faithfully, T.J. Jackson." (Stonewall Jackson: The Man, The Soldier, The Legend, p 271)

Also, if Masugi is correct, how does one explain the presence of "Deo Vindice" (Latin for "God as our Defender" on the Great Seal of the Confederacy?

Additionally, Masugi assumes that "the equality of rights that underlies the Constitution" which exists in 2001 is the same "equality of rights" underlying the Constitution as seen in 1861. Not so. This is not to argue that the Constitution is a "living document;" such a view, as I have previously written, is indefensible. This is to argue, however, that Masugi’s view of the Constitution is very much a product of the way things happened to turn out in the 140 years since the Civil War began; his view of the Constitution was not in play at the time of the war.

Further, Masugi is incorrect in characterizing those persons who "dominate our universities, foundation boards, and other unelected positions of power" as inheritors of the Confederate tradition. Rather, these Marxist and post-modernist types are precisely those types whom the Confederacy opposed. There is nothing post-modern about the League of the South, for example, while the Ford Foundation, Rockefeller Foundation, Public Welfare, and other such groups have long lobbied for the expansion of the central state.

The Ford Foundation (1952-53) and Rockefeller Foundation (1956-57), it must be noted, sponsored Harry Jaffa’s research for Crisis of the House Divided; Jaffa thanks them for their funding in the book. One is forced to wonder what foundations Masugi has in mind, unless the Ford and Rockefeller Foundations have changed radically since the 1950s.

If these foundations have changed since that time, they’re keeping it a secret. The Rockefeller Foundation, for example, bills its "Louder than Words" report as follows: "Racial justice work is a central component of the Rockefeller Foundation’s efforts to broaden economic and social opportunity in the United States." The Ford Foundation report "Common Needs, Common Ground" also does not appear to be the work of people who deny any higher laws about equality.

Indeed, attributing the insight to his reading of Jaffa’s new book (ably criticized by Joseph Sobran and Myles Kantor), Masugi goes so far as to explicitly label Bill Clinton as a "true heir of the Confederacy:"

It is plain from Jaffa’s New Birth of Freedom that today’s most prominent representative of the abiding message of the Confederacy is not some Civil War re-enactor and certainly not Attorney General John Ashcroft but rather the sort who dispute "what the meaning of is is."

Civil War re-enactors and the readers of Southern Partisan, which famously interviewed John Ashcroft, might be surprised to learn that Clinton is their true role model.

Ignored by Masugi is Ashcroft’s praise for the Southern cause; the lecherous Clinton has no such respect for the South. Of course, if you are out to demonize the South, it is better to ignore Ashcroft than confront his actual views. It is also better to ignore the fact that, like Bill Clinton’s top contributors, Lincoln was a trial lawyer, and that, like Clinton, Lincoln demonized opponents of his policies. As Clinton once blamed "right wing talk radio" for Timothy McVeigh’s act of mass murder,

To doubt the president’s wisdom – to question his decision for war – was treason. Lincoln’s logic became holy writ on stone tablets for the faithful. There were only two classes of citizens – those who followed the president’s line and traitors. (When in the Course of Human Events, p 211)

Thus, under Lincoln, the alleged defender of American liberty,

military authorities soon began imprisoning prominent secessionists without trial. The writ of habeas corpus was a constitutional safeguard to prevent such imprisonments without sufficient legal cause, and one of the incarcerated Marylanders, John Merryman, attempted an appeal on that basis. Chief Justice Roger B. Taney, sitting as a circuit judge, ordered Merryman released, but federal officials, acting under Lincoln’s orders, refused. The aging Chief Justice, just three years from death’s door, thereupon issued a blistering opinion holding that only Congress had the constitutional right to suspend habeas corpus. The President "certainly does not faithfully execute the laws, if he takes upon himself legislative power, by suspending the writ of habeas corpus, and the judicial power also, by arresting and imprisoning a person without due process of law," declared Taney. If Lincoln’s action was allowed to stand, then "the people of the United States are no longer living under a Government of laws, but every citizen holds life, liberty and property at the will and pleasure of the army officer in whose military district he may happen to be found."

Lincoln simply ignored Taney’s opinion. He also wrote out standing orders for the Chief Justice’s arrest, although these were never served. (Jeffrey Rogers Hummel, Emancipating Slaves, Enslaving Free Men, p 142)

Shortly after Taney’s opinion was issued, Lincoln arrested 31 Maryland legislators, the mayor of Baltimore (the nation’s 3^rd largest city at the time), a U.S. Congressman from Maryland, and anti-war publishers and editors. (Hummel 143).

It may be recalled that the Clinton administration exhibited a Lincolnian contempt for the law by instructing federal agencies to ignore rulings from the U.S. Courts of Appeals, as if only the United States Supreme Court were competent to declare the meaning of federal law.

It should be noted at this point that it is no defense for Lincoln that the CSA also violated civil liberties during the war. Mark Neely, who has documented Lincoln’s abuse of civil liberties in The Fate of Liberty, treats this fact not only as a shocking revelation, but as a vindication of Lincoln’s acts in his later book, Southern Rights: Political Prisoners and the Myth of Confederate Constitutionalism. If the CSA also violated civil liberties, the argument goes, then those who justify secession cannot hold similar violations against Lincoln, nor can they claim that the CSA stood for constitutional government.

This argument completely misses the point of bringing Lincoln’s record to light: the South is already demonized, while Lincoln is lionized in part because his abuse of civil liberties is not widely known.

Tibor Machan, in "Rethinking the Civil War," describes how he changed his view of the civl war over time. As part of this account, Machan mentions his surprise at learning of Lincoln’s disregard for civil liberties. The reason this surprised Machan, he states, is that this fact of Lincoln’s reign did not fit with the established mythology he had been fed in the public schools.

More significantly, Hummel points out that the restrictions of civil liberties in the CSA contributed to the failure of the southern drive for independence. Contrary to Neely’s provocative subtitle, it is precisely because Southerners were fighting to defend constitutional government that abuses of civil liberties by the CSA so demoralized the South.

The Southern military situation in 1865, Hummel contends, was far from being an unequivocal Union victory. In fact, it was closer to the situation facing George Washington’s Continental Army at Valley Forge in 1778, when the British held the American capital of Philadelphia (p 282). Rather than persevere like George Washington, the "never surrender" South surrendered in part because the centralization of power in Richmond subverted the war aim of preserving constitutional order. Hummel adds another little discussed explanation for the surrender: the deeply religious South began to believe that their sufferings were the result of the sin of slavery. "By the war’s second year, a significant movement within southern churches was agitating for such reforms as prohibiting the separation of slave children from their mothers, admitting slave testimony in courts, and permitting slave religious assemblies." (p 283)

Pace Ken Masugi and the Claremont Institute, Sheldon Vanauken – a noted Catholic scholar, and a friend and student of another noted denier of "higher laws," C.S. Lewis – points out the true cause of the war while laying the blame for the moral degeneracy of contemporary civilization at the feet of Honest Abe:

The states of the deep South dissolved their connection with the voluntary union of the United States with marked legality at the beginning of 1861. For a quarter of a year no one knew that there was to be a war. Then Lincoln (unauthorised by the Constitution) called for troops; and the upper South, led by Virginia, seceded. War was Lincoln’s choice. The point is, Lincoln could have chosen to let the South go in peace on the grounds that just government depends on the consent of the governed, and the Southern states had withdrawn that consent. But, said the North, the majority do consent, since there are more people in the North. Even if most of the people in the South do not consent, we in the North are the majority of the whole nation...This is precisely what de Tocqueville warned against: the tyranny of the majority.

The America of today is the America that won that immense triumph in the war – the triumph of unlimited, equalitarian democracy. And its leaders have blurred the distinction between freedom and equality to the point where many people use those words as virtually interchangeable terms. ‘Freedom from want’ implying every man’s equal right to food may indeed be a right but it is not freedom; it is his freedom, though, to take action to improve his needy state. What most people are unaware of is that freedom and equality, though revolutionaries may shout of both, are uneasy bedfellows and, in fact, often opposed, each tending to limit the other. Nearly every law designed to bring about greater equality, as so many of the laws of the late-twentieth century do intend, limits freedom. The freedom of the bright student to learn swiftly is limited by equalitarian schools for the average.

The Southern nation, after a brief, intense, and heroic existence, was defeated, and then, as a conquered province, was subjected to the demeaning brutalities of ‘Reconstruction’ and subsequently to economic discrimination. (The Glittering Illusion: English Sympathy for the Southern Confederacy, pp 142-43)

But there is no need to take Sheldon Vanauken’s word for it: Lincoln’s own Attorney General agrees:

The long war had contributed to a breakdown everywhere both in prevailing ehtical norms and in the distinction between public and private spheres. "The demoralising effect of this civil war," wrote Edward Bates, Lincoln’s first Attorney General, "is plainly visible in every department of life. The abuse of official powers and the thirst for dishonest gain are now so common that they cease to shock." The same Congress that passed the Fourteenth Amendment also, without a second thought, voted itself a hefty pay raise, and the flagrancy of a subsequent salary grab in 1873 shamed Congress into repealing it. The Grant era became so notorious for its political bribery that it has gone down in history as the Great Barbecue. In the words of a Carpetbag governor of Louisiana: "I don’t pretend to be honest. I only pretend to be as honest as anybody in politics....Why, damn it, everybody is demoralizing down here. Corruption is the fashion." (Hummel 314)

Lincoln, then, and not the Confederate States of America, has a greater guilt for the ensuing moral degeneracy of American culture, if guilt is to be apportioned between them (one must be careful not to venture into determinism).

Noted Civil War historian James McPherson also contends that Abe Lincoln is properly seen as having expanded the government: "This astonishing blitz of laws...did more to reshape the relation of the government to the economy than any comparable effort except perhaps the first hundred days of the New Deal." (Abraham Lincoln and the Second American Revolution, p. 40, cited in James Ostrowski, "Was the Union Army’s Invasion of the Confederate States A Lawful Act?," Chapter 8 of Secession, State and Liberty, ed. David Gordon, p. 156).

Finally, Masugi simply cannot come up with high enough praise for Harry Jaffa’s most recent book, A New Birth of Freedom:

Amidst the changes following a bitter, disputed election, Americans must wonder whether there is any truth besides cynical truth in politics....Fortunately, this Lincoln’s birthday we have a means of assessing all the partisan claims in light of our greatest political figure. Harry V. Jaffa’s long-awaited A New Birth of Freedom enables us to separate superficialities from the substance and rediscover who we are as Americans.

First, there is no truth besides cynical truth in politics. The emperor has no clothes. You are better off not deceiving yourself. Second, even if Jaffa’s book is the greatest book written since the Bible, Masugi’s claim is untenable. The notion of "who we are as Americans" is not likely to be contained in any single book, let alone an extended reflection on the Gettysburg Address.

Worse, Jaffa and Masugi’s view of "who we are as Americans" appears to be defined by reference to the victorious Northern view of the war and what it means to be an American. Such a view is necessarily skewed.

In Conversations with Shelby Foote, the esteemed novelist and historian makes the point that the Confederates were just as much Americans as the Northerners, a point which appears too frequently lost on Yankees. As Foote relates in an interview with William C. Carter,

[Carter:] Some of the French critics say that you are persuaded of the long-term failure of the American adventure. Would you elaborate on that interpretation, if you agree with it?

[Foote:] I do agree with it, and I think it’s an advantage that the Southern artist has, whether it’s in music or sculpture or painting or writing. I’m often amazed to hear the frequent quote, "We Americans have never lost a war." You hear it all the time: "Never lost a war" – at least you heard it before Vietnam. I know some Americans who certainly lost a war – lost it about as thoroughly as a war can be lost, and afterwards got ground into the dirt harder than most any losers I know – and they lived in the South. That gave us, by inheritance, a true sense of tragedy. We do not believe that all noble experiments are bound to succeed. We know at least one noble experiment that failed miserably. We don’t have the bright outlook that everything is for the best in this best of all possible worlds, because our history taught us differently.

And while the war was not always in the forefront of our consciousness, it operated very strongly in our unconscious and on our manners and our morals. For instance, Vicksburg fell on the fourth day of July. The Fourth of July throughout my childhood and young manhood was never celebrated in Mississippi. One year a couple was there from Ohio – why they were there I do not know – and they drove their car up on the levee, spread out their blanket, and had a picnic on the levee to celebrate the Fourth. They forgot to set the brakes of the car properly and it rolled down the levee and into the river; everybody said it served them right for celebrating the Fourth.

But this true sense of tragedy on a large scale is a very Southern heritage, whereas for a Northerner it’s a true sense of triumph. Northerners believe that all the virtues conquered because they are now the virtues, but Southerners don’t believe that virtue necessarily conquers because we believe strongly in the virtues of our forbears. We don’t believe that government of and by and for the people would have perished from the earth if the South had won the war, although we are required to memorize those very words in school. It’s very strange what power there is in literary skill. We memorize Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address because he phrased it so well; we don’t even hear what it’s saying. (261-62)

Realistically, what would the North have the South do? Forget the grandfathers, fathers, husbands, brothers, and sons who died, or the mothers, daughters, wives, and sisters who were raped by the invading forces of the United States?

Is that realistic, or is it just downright offensive? For the record, Adams contends that "The slaughter of Confederate men only matched, on a proportional basis, the losses incurred by the Russians and the Germans in World War II." (When in the Course of Human Events, p 195). Hummel notes that the losses of the CSA are close to those suffered by the French in World War I, but slightly less than suffered by the Germans in World War II (p 282). For the sake of perspective, it should be noted that half of the male babies born in France in 1900 died in World War I.

Ultimately, Foote may be correct about the failure of the American adventure. Forrest McDonald notes in States’ Rights and the Union that

Patriots of all stripes accepted the primacy of the states as a fact of political life, but they were far from unanimously happy about it...Nationally oriented groups in the middle states and lower South tended to be aristocrats (Hudson Valley patroons in New York, rice plantation families in the lower South) or wealthy merchants in Philadelphia who regarded states’ rights republicans as radical democrats posing a genuine threat to social and political stability...The two groups had hardened into factions in Congress before the end of 1776, and their enmity and mutual distrust continued after the war. (pp 11-12)

In fact, the "enmity and mutual distrust" continued into the Alien and Sedition Acts, then into the War of 1812, and ultimately into the War for Southern Independence; it continues to this day in the struggle between those who want "more freedom, less government" and those who thirst for unlimited government.

More importantly, it must be made explicit that within five months of the Declaration of Independence, those Americans, or, rather, those British subjects living in Britain’s American colonies, who had joined together to gain independence from Britain (i.e., to secede), were drifting toward disunion because they did not share substantive notions of political philosophy. Although the colonists were able to unite in their desire to be free of English oppression, they were not able to unite in their desires for shaping the new American nation.

As other writers have argued, the philosophical divide between the North and South may be traced to the divide between Massachusetts Puritans and Virginia planters, and back to the divisions in England between Cavaliers and Roundheads (Cromwell’s Puritans).

The history of American differences in political philosophy aside, the Northern view of the war glosses over or mishandles important questions about secession and the Northern conduct of the war.

First, the disenfranchisement of Southerners who had supported the Confederacy, and the attendant "loyalty oaths" which were imposed upon them, come very close to an inquisition. As the Northern abolitionist Lysander Spooner wrote of the oaths,

On general principles of law and reason, all the oaths which, since the war, have been given by Southern men, that they will obey the laws of Congress, support the Union, and the like, are of no validity. Such oaths are invalid, not only because they were extorted by military power, and threats of confiscation...they are in contravention of men’s natural right to do as they please about supporting the government

Loyalty oaths have become anathema in the United States, in part because they were used against Communists. And yet it is apparently laudable that the North imposed such oaths.

Second, despite Abraham Lincoln’s flaming lie that "the Union is older than the states" – which makes as much sense as the claim that "my marriage is older than my wife and I" – Article One of the Paris Peace Treaty of 1783, which ended the American War of Independence, states that

His Brittanic Majesty acknowledges the said United States, viz., New Hampshire, Massachusetts Bay, Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia, to be free sovereign and independent states, that he treats with them as such, and for himself, his heirs, and successors, relinquishes all claims to the government, propriety, and territorial rights of the same and every part thereof.

In international law, a "state" is an entity that has 1) a defined territory and 2) a permanent population, 3) under control of its own government, 4) that engages in, or has capacity to engage in, formal relations with such other entities. The American colonies, then, were "states," just like France is a "state."

Statehood is also founded on the recognition of a state by other sovereign states. Pope Pius IX, head of the Papal States, consistently addressed Jefferson Davis as the President of the CSA.

These standards of international law have been adopted by the United States. They are not standards which the United States refuses to recognize. Thus, the American states, for purposes of international law, even if they did not meet the four criteria already, came to be sovereign nations when they were recognized by England. And, as a matter of international law, the CSA was a "state" as well. It had 1) territory, 2) population, 3) control by its government, and 4) it engaged in formal relations with other states, e.g. the Papal States.

The federal courts took contradictory approaches to secession. James Ostrowski points out that:

In Coleman v. Tennessee, the Supreme Court held military occupation lawful, not on constitutional grounds, but by resorting to international law principles...Thus, to justify the otherwise unconstitutional military occupation of a state, the Supreme Court treats that state as if it were an independent nation, implicitly recognizing the validity of its secession. (174).

And yet in Virginia v. West Virginia (1870), the syllabus preceding the case declares that

A convention professing to represent the State of Virginia, which assembled in Richmond in February, 1861, attempted by a so-called ‘ordinance of secession’ to separate that State from the Union, and combined with certain other Southern States to accomplish that separation by arms. The people of the northwestern part of the State, who were separated from the eastern part by a succession of mountain ranges and had never received the heresy of secession, refused to acquiesce in what had been thus done, and organized themselves to defend and maintain the Federal Union. The idea of a separate State government soon developed itself; and an organic convention of the State of Virginia, which in June, 1861, organized the State on loyal principles-‘the Pierpont government’- and which new organization was acknowledged by the President and Congress of the United States as the true State government of Virginia-passed August 20^th, 1861, an ordinance by which they ordained that a new State be formed and erected out of the territory included within certain boundaries...

On this view, the state of Virginia didn’t really secede, and the state legislature wasn’t really the state legislature – it was just a convention "professing to represent" Virginia. Those guys! And it was the South which started the war. And so, the loyal state of Virginia (which had never left the Union), decided to make West Virginia out of itself. On this view, secession, it must be noted, was not merely an incorrect legal theory but a "heresy."

Northern political philosophy dances back and forth in an incoherent daze. Had the Southern states actually left the union, such that they had to be readmitted, or had the Southern states only attempted to leave the union? As Hummel observes,

because most Northerners agreed that the seceding states had not legally left the Union, these states counted toward the total for ratifying the [13^th] Amendment. Only their ratifications, coupled with those from the North, provided the necessary three-fourths...The reconstructed governments were...in the anomalous position of being recognized by the President but not by Congress, of being legitimate for the purpose of ratifying the Thirteenth Amendment but not for the purpose of having representation within the national government. (Hummel, 297, 299)

Both claims, however, cannot be true. Either the Southern states left, and were re-admitted to the Union they had left, or the Southern states did not leave, in which case they did not need to be re-admitted.

The consequences of the Northern inability to take a consistent view of the Southern secession are overwhelming. Justice George Comstock, a member of the New York Court of Appeals (the highest court in the state, despite the name) and a founder of Syracuse University, observed that

If Mr. Davis is right as to all the circumstances and results flowing from separation, then the seceded states are the rightful possession of a perfect sovereignty...[the Civil War then] was a war of invasion and conquest, for which there is no warrant in the Constitution, but which is condemned by the rules of Christianity, and the law of the civilized world. (When in the Course of Human Events, 182).

And yet the federal courts do not consistently decide whether the Southern states did or did not leave the union, nor do they adopt a consistent theory to explain either side of the question.

Third, although at least four Southern states make legal arguments in their Declarations of Secession (which were issued after the states had seceded, by way of explanation and legal justification) which mention slavery, they do not do so to incite popular support for secession. For one, secession was already desired by the populace. Second, if the intention were to engender popular support for secession by reference to slavery, this was a manifest failure; as Tom DiLorenzo notes in "Libertarians and the Confederate Battle Flag," the evidence of thousands upon thousands of letters written by Confederate soldiers fails to disclose mention of slavery as a reason for fighting. Instead, the soldiers professed to be fighting for liberty and independence.

Instead, the declarations mention slavery as proof of the fact that the federal government, as well as the northern states, already had destroyed the constitution, therefore relieving the southern states of any obligation to remain in the union; indeed, the declarations go so far as to declare it a duty to secede to escape such abuses. The South Carolina declaration, for example, argues that

The people of the State of South Carolina, in Convention assembled, on the 26^th day of April, A.D., 1852, declared that the frequent violations of the Constitution of the United States, by the Federal Government, and its encroachments on the reserved rights of the States, fully justified this State in then withdrawing from the Federal Union; but in deference to the opinions and wishes of the other slaveholding States, she forbore at that time to exercise this right. Since that time, these encroachments have continued to increase, and further forbearance ceases to be a virtue.

The declarations of secession issued by South Carolina, Mississippi, Georgia and Texas are explicitly legalistic, and read like complaints for breach of contract. The documents mention slavery in reference to the federal government’s selective enforcement of the laws, as well as its unconstitutional support for Northern manufacturing interest by means of tariffs upon imports (which were paid by Southern planters).

These four states, then, can be said to have seceded over the failure of federal authorities to protect slavery and the federal tariffs, both of which were seen as failures to uphold the Constitution.

(By the way, as Thomas DiLorenzo notes in "Yankee Confederates: New England Secession Movements Prior to the War Between the States" (Chapter 7 of Secession, State and Liberty), these are exactly the same sort of arguments made by Northern Federalists such as John Quincy Adams (the 6^th president) in 1803 over the Louisiana Purchase, in 1809 over the embargo, and at the Hartford Convention in 1814 over the War of 1812).

It must be noted, however, that the entire South did not secede at the same time. Virginia, Arkansas, Tennessee and North Carolina seceded only after Lincoln’s unconstitutional call for troops to invade the states who had already seceded. Thus, Jeffrey Rogers Hummel (p 8) argues that slavery and secession must be viewed as separate issues; even if some states seceded over slavery, this does not automatically justify a war to prevent such secession.

Fourth, the Union Army’s treatment of the South was criminal. Sherman’s march to the sea was the very definition of barbarism. As Charles Adams notes (Chapter 8), at the same time as the war was going on, the first Geneva Convention (1863) formalized the laws of war which nations had recognized for nearly 300 years. Included among war crimes under international law were: 1) attacking defenseless cities and towns, 2) plundering and destroying civilian property, and 3) confiscating non-necessities from civilians, or not paying for necessities which were taken. Sherman’s march to the sea violated all three norms of international law.

The disregard for international law in the destruction of the South is instructive. Stalin famously wondered how many divisions the Pope had at his disposal. In this case, Lincoln had more troops than Jeff Davis. As is often remarked, the only thing proved by the war was that an industrial nation with a population of 20 million could militarily defeat an agricultural nation with a population of 9 million.

This brings to mind the trial and execution of Charles I. At his trial, Charles demanded to know "by whose authority" he was being tried, since it is "the authority of the King in Parliament" which was held to empower Parliament to act. Of course, the Parliament never answered his question, because the only answer was that Parliament had no authority over the king. And so Charles I was executed. (For two great accounts of the reign and death of Charles I, see Charles I: The Personal Monarch, 2^nd Ed., by Charles Carlton, and Charles I, part of the British History in Perspective series, by Michael B. Young). It is a hard truth to accept, but sometimes human beings act as if might makes right, and the law be damned.

No wonder Robert E. Lee, in 1870, told the former Confederate governor of Texas, Fletcher Stockdale: "Governor, if I had foreseen the use those people [Yankees] designed to make of their victory, there would have been no surrender at Appomattox Courthouse; no sir, not by me. Had I foreseen these results of subjugation, I would have preferred to die at Appomattox with my brave men, my sword in my right hand." (When in the Course of Human Events, 219-20).

The cases of the CSA and Charles I are not isolated events. Bonnie Prince Charlie, for example, is acknowledged to have had the legal right to the English throne – and yet he died trying to enforce his right. The USA systematically broke nu