We Can't Do Anything Right: The GOP and the Civil War

Mackubin Thomas Owens reviews a new book with the thesis that "The South Was Right and Historians Are Wrong" vis a vis what motivated the Southern States to secede from the Union and initiate the Civil War/War Between the States (trying to be ecumenical here). As we all learned in 4th Grade - and was understood back in 1860 - the Confederate States believed the election of Abraham Lincoln represented the end of the line for their efforts to preserve and extend the "peculiar institution." 

Post-war historians and commentators, however, while allowing that slavery was a factor in secession, have filled libraries with alternative explanations for the Civil War's origins. It has even become a leftist trope to denigrate Lincoln himself as a moral monster who had no interest in ending slavery, or protecting the rights of American blacks, except to the extent needed to further his own career. This, of course, is nonsense, but nonsense is never in short supply in America's public debate, especially when it's time to denigrate or diminish the achievements of the Republican Party. 

In his remarkable new book, Freedom National: The Destruction of Slavery in the United States, 1861-1865, James Oakes argues that the historians who deny the antislavery origins of the war are mistaken. He contends that from the outset, Republicans had slavery in their sights. Southerners understood that the antislavery threat to the South was real. Accordingly, secession was not an hysterical overreaction to Lincoln’s election but an understandable response to the fact that an antislavery majority in the North had elected an antislavery president. And indeed, Oakes contends, from the very beginning of the conflict, the Republicans worked assiduously to destroy slavery. The problem with the dominant narrative, he argues, is that too many historians have refused to take the Republicans at their word. 

Oakes expands the work of Allen Guelzo, who in Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation: The End of Slavery in America, argued that from the first day of his presidency, Lincoln had his eye firmly set on ending slavery. Oakes takes nothing away from Lincoln, but demonstrates that Lincoln’s approach was reflective of the Republican Party as a whole. While there were many differences between Lincoln and the Radicals within the Republican Party, they were of far less import than those between the Democrats and the Republicans. As Lincoln himself once remarked, the difference between Charles Sumner, the Radical Republican senator from Massachusetts, and himself was six weeks.

Yeah, God forbid anyone read the 1856 Republican Party platform:

Resolved: That, with our Republican fathers, we hold it to be a self-evident truth, that all men are endowed with the inalienable right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, and that the primary object and ulterior design of our Federal Government were to secure these rights to all persons under its exclusive jurisdiction; that, as our Republican fathers, when they had abolished Slavery in all our National Territory, ordained that no person shall be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law, it becomes our duty to maintain this provision of the Constitution against all attempts to violate it for the purpose of establishing Slavery in the Territories of the United States by positive legislation, prohibiting its existence or extension therein. That we deny the authority of Congress, of a Territorial Legislation, of any individual, or association of individuals, to give legal existence to Slavery in any Territory of the United States, while the present Constitution shall be maintained. 

Resolved: That the Constitution confers upon Congress sovereign powers over the Territories of the United States for their government; and that in the exercise of this power, it is both the right and the imperative duty of Congress to prohibit in the Territories those twin relics of barbarism — Polygamy, and Slavery.

Everyone in American political life can plausibly link themselves to the Founders, but only the GOP can claim credit for the hard-won achievements of the second founding, no doubt an intolerable truth for the left to abide. 

Happy Fourth of July From the Pennsylvania Memorial!

Actually, I'm not in Gettysburg, or in Pennsylvania. I haven't even left my apartment. But, I am at the Memorial in spirit.

I bring up the memorial because, while we celebrate the Independence Day today, the just-concluded 150th anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg deserves some note. That's because, while moderately educated Americans can be conversant about the Civil War, it's sometimes hard to understand what motivated the men who fought on the Union side and preserved the union. After all, they could have just as easily said, screw it, let the Southern slave masters keep their plantations and peons. There were plenty in the North who counseled peace, and could not abide the thought of a civil war against their countrymen.

Well, if you want to understand you should visit the Pennsylvania Memorial.

The Gettysburg Battlefield is famously covered in monuments, memorials, statuary, markers, etc. Most of them are dedicated to the exploits of the Union troops, although there are some Southern markers, including one at the top and one at the bottom of Cemetery Ridge. Most of the Gettysburg memorials were placed there by private subscription, rather than by gov't money. Often a regiment or company would get together, raise some funds, and plop something down on whatever scrap of hallowed ground they had fought over. This contributes to the hodge-podge quality of the battlefield, but it also gives you a sense of what the people at the time considered important. The memorials really do follow the lines of battle. There's no way the Park Service, or some academic board, would have managed to do better.

The bigger ones were installed by states to commemorate the veterans among their citizenry. And the biggest one of all of these is the Pennsylvania memorial.

The memorial itself is not some grand aesthetic masterwork. It is, as they say, "busy," covered in friezes depicting battle scenes, statutes of Union generals from PA (and the PA governor who valiantly signed the bill appropriating funds to construct the memorial), and all sorts of other gimcrackery. It's never really achieved national iconic status, but it should. Because the most important part of the memorial can be found wrapped around it: the names of every Pennsylvanian who was on active duty in the Army of the Potomac at the time of the battle. To look at those names, and then turn around and look down Cemetery Ridge is a moving moment for any American. These men fought and died in America, for America, to preserve America. Immortality doesn't get much better than that.

Best of all is a prominent plaque installed by the men of Pennsylvania and dedicated to the ladies of Pennsylvania. We're all familiar with the stories of Confederate gallantry - that was one of the few things we can all agree they had going for them - but the Union side had plenty of gallantry and bravery too, as this charming plaque testifies.

And, with all apologies to my Southern brethren, those gallant men didn't just win a war. They were on the right side of history and humanity. The Confederate armies were as brave and tough as they come. Many of the generals were brilliant, making more out of much less than their Northern counter-parts. The southern gentry were dashing and gallant. Etc. But, for all of that, they were fighting for the absolutely worst cause imaginable.

Slavery - a barbaric system that didn't even rise to the level of feudalism in terms of economic sophistication - was bad enough. The methods that the South used to enforce slavery spread its oppression beyond the plantations and into the wider world. It was against the law to teach blacks to read or write. It was illegal to even disparage slavery as an institution. An ounce of African blood would render one's relatives as little more than chattel. Sally Hemings, for example had less African blood that George Zimmerman. Imagine a system where your cousins or half-siblings - products of a randy relatives sexual exploits with concubines - could be bought and sold, and then worked to death.

Apologists who claim that slavery was "contained" to the South ignore the very real ways in which slavery reached North. There were the hated fugitive slave laws, which eventually cast such a wide net that free blacks could be dragged South against their will.

It wasn't just about slavery. The Antebellum Democrat Party was dedicated to not just preserving, but also spreading the "peculiar institution" throughout the territories, the Northern states, and beyond. Southern Democrats were, of course, up front about this, while Northern Dems like Stephen Douglas, Franklin Pierce and James Buchanan tried to accomplish this through stealth and silence. Many Republicans from Lincoln on down argued that the Democrat presidents of the 1850's had, through benign neglect, created the legal and political atmosphere in which the Missouri Compromise broke down and the Supreme Court rendered the notorious Dred Scott decision.

If you haven't read Dred Scott, you should. It's an amazing document from the authority with the supposed final word on interpreting the Constitution. For several years, in the United States, it was a matter of constitutional law that blacks were so inferior as to be literally inhuman, and not deserving of constitutional notice. Imagine being an 1850's-era Irish immigrant, freshly arrived from  a life as a serf on some English estate. Now, you're in the Land of the Free and the highest judicial authority in the land is making distinctions about who is or is not constitutionally inferior. That might make you more than a little nervous, maybe even send you off to fight in a war to resolve the question once and for all.

July 4th celebrates the birth of freedom in this country. Gettysburg and the Pennsylvania Memorial celebrate the new birth of freedom that came 87 years later. We would do well to remember both.

The Republican Party and Our Forgotten Second Founding Fathers

Georgetown law prof Randy Barnett has been doing a slow-rolling study of the abolitionists writers and lawyers who provided the intellectual and moral arguments in support of ending slavery and passing the 14th Amendment. First was his "Whence Comes Section One? The Abolitionist Origins of the Fourteenth Amendment." Now comes a paper remembering Salmon P. Chase. Here is the abstract and table of contents: 

The name Salmon P. Chase is barely known and his career is largely forgotten. In this Article, I seek to revive his memory by tracing the arc of his career from antislavery lawyer, to antislavery politician, to Chief Justice of the United States. In addition to explaining why his is a career worth both remembering and honoring, I offer some possible reasons why his remarkable achievements have generally unremembered today.

Contents

Introduction: Constitutional Abolitionism.............................654

I. Chase’s Rise to the Chief Justiceship ......................................656

A. Chase’s Early Years........................................................................ 656

B. Chase as an Antislavery Lawyer ...............................................659

C. Chase as an Antislavery Political Leader..............................668

II. The Chief Justiceship of Salmon P. Chase ..........................676

A. Chase’s Duties as Chief Justice..................................................676

B. Chase’s Opinions on Reconstruction.......................................677

1. In re Turner............................................................................................677

2. Texas v. White .......................................................................................679

C. Chase on the Enumerated Powers of Congress.....................683

1. United States v. Dewitt.........................................................................683

2. The Legal Tender Cases........................................................................687

D. Chase on the Privileges and Immunities of Citizens
of the United States..............................................................................694

III. Why Has Chase’s Career Been Forgotten? ..........................697

Conclusion ...............................................................................................701

Chase was a towering figure in his day: governor of Ohio, Treasury Secretary, and Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. He helped found no fewer than three national political parties: the Liberty Party, the Free Soil Party (even coining its slogan "Free Soil, Free Speech, Free Labor and Free Men"), and of course the Republican Party*. He was also an attorney who spent years refining abolitionist legal arguments. And, apparently, Chase Bank was (posthumously) named for him. It's a bit much to say he's "forgotten" - anyone who reads about the Civil War era will come across his name - but it is certainly true that Chase's accomplishments deserve more note than current historic understanding grants to him. 

As Barnett notes, Chase and his cohort, whom Barnett dubs "constitutional abolitionists," successfully found a middle ground between the competing sides of the slavery question. On the one hand, Democrats insisted that slavery was constitutional, and would eventually insist that, as a matter of constitutional law, blacks were mentally inferior and slavery should spread through the territories, and even into the northern states. On the other, full-mooners like William Henry Garrison insisted that disunion - and the rending of the Constitution - was the only proper "solution" to the slavery question. Great, but what if you just want to go to work and raise a family without worrying that the government will fall apart before lunch? Chase, et al.'s middle ground preserved the Constitution through the fire and brimstone of the Civil War.

The Constitutional Abolitionists relied on close readings of the Constitution to point out that (1) there was nothing in the Constitution specifically approving slavery (read the Confederate Constitution to see how that's done); and (2) other parts of the Constitution, especially the Fifth Amendment made involuntary servitude unconstitutional. Whatever Founding Father nods and winks southerners relied on to support their arguments were meaningless as they couldn't be found in the text. These might be obvious points now, but back then they were literally dynamite. When Abraham Lincoln - the greatest of the Constitutional Abolitionists - won the presidency, the South knew the jig was up, at least with regard to the slavery question. (No, the issue of state's rights was not "resolved" by the Civil War. Only children and Ivy League graduates could believe that).

Barnett rightly laments that the Constitutional Abolitionists, with the exception of Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass, are largely obscure as historic figures and rarely register in high or low culture. Well, join the club. Unless you are a progressive princeling or a member of an oppressed class, your would-be admirers have to actively work to seek out your biography. Plus, how can the likes of Lysander Spooner (google him) measure up to Beyonce'? 

Still, there is one group of Americans who should rectify their ignorance in this area: members of the Republican Party, who are often as ignorant of the noble origins of their party and philosophy as anyone else. Read Whence Comes Section One. It is literally inspiring (and ought to provide the basis for a very good book). On the most important political questions in American history, our guys were 100% right. Modern-era Democrats might claim their pursuit of "social justice" should take pride of place, but nothing can compare to the freeing of the slaves. Republicans seeking inspiration in these times would do well to learn more about their own founding fathers. 

* NB: Chase started and ended his political career as a Democrat, however, even running for the Democrat presidential nomination in 1868.