Was the Civil War necessary?

Robert Kagan has an oped piece in the Washington Post today on the subject of the categorization of wars as "necessary" or of "choice."  He is correct in thinking that this is rhetorical trivia.  He is correct n writing that nearly all wars represent choice.  After all, surrender is always a possibility.

In the course of his essay he writes -

"There have been few if any clear-cut wars of necessity in America's history. Not the Revolution, where both the colonists and the British had other and, in the British case, better choices. Not the Civil War, which some historians still believe was an unnecessary and catastrophic spilling of American blood. (Slavery, they wrongly argue, would eventually have died of natural causes.) And never mind the war with Mexico, the Spanish-American War, the many interventions in Central America and the Caribbean, or, in the view of many, World War I. "

Kagan's essential argument seems to be that the essential question is not whether or not wars were "necessary" but if they were a good idea.

"They wrongly argue?"  Sorry, but I think the word "wrongly" in this sentence is merely the product of the "received wisdom" passed down to and among the physical and/or spiritual descendants of the winning side.  The carnage of the Civil War and the devastated and impoverished lives of all the people of the American South necessitated a life there of diminished chances and opportunities that lasted a hundred years.  The demographic and economic wreckage in the South and the human losses in the North were so bad that a compelling argument had to be made that the moral imperative of the evil of slavery in the South had made this awful war an "irrepressible conflict."  The eternal and immutable nature of slavery as an institution in the south served that pupose well and still does.  The fact that nearly all the Northern states had at one time or another had been "slave" states seems to mean nothing to that propaganda theme.

Just for the sake of argument imagine that the seceded states had decided in 1861 (the year the war began) to collectively abolish slavery.  Would the North (the United States) have then allowed those states to depart from the union in peace?  If the answer is no, then slavery in the South was not the primary cause of the war. 

Nevertheless, Kagan chooses to characterize the cause of the war as slavery, and to imply that this moral evil could only have been expunged by mass violence.   Is that true?  Agribusiness in the South based on slave labor was quite profitable.  Agribusiness in Brazil based on slavery was also quite profitable.  Slavery in Brazil was abolished in the late nineteenth century on the basis of gradual compensated emancipation.

Slavery was an institution inconsistent with American political ideals and the developing collective consciousness of the Western world.  Economic determinists will argue that profits in business would have "trumped" any argument from "higher values" for a gradual emancipation in the South.  People who think that clearly believe that Southerners were simply evil, that they enjoyed the sadistic perquisites of domination of another people so much that the disapproval of all of Western civilization would not have moved them to free the blacks.  Is that true?  Try to imagine an alternative 1900 or 1950 in which millions of African-Americans would still have been held in conditions of chattel slavery.  Can you do that?  If you can't, then perhaps there is something wrongly argued in Kagan's statement.

This brings me to my point.  If Kagan's argument in his oped hinges on the centrality of judgment and wisdom in deciding on war or peace, and he believes that the American Civil War was an inevitable, indeed a desirable thing, then why should we accept his judgment about the virtue of wars like Iraq and Afghanistan?  pl

 

Comments

[crf]

Have you seen the Simpsons tv episode "Much Apu about nothing"? Well, millions of Americans have, and I hope they at least think about it, and question whether the "history" newspapers write about is usually just an easily digested product.

Apu is taking his citizenship test, he was taught American history by the cerebral Lisa:

Proctor: All right, here's your last question. What was the cause of
the Civil War?
Apu: Actually, there were numerous causes. Aside from the obvious
schism between the abolitionists and the anti-abolitionists,
there were economic factors, both domestic and inter--
Proctor: Wait, wait... just say slavery.
Apu: Slavery it is, sir.

[Fred]

crf, I would say that knowing the 'correct' answer when told always passes any academic test, not necessarily a moral one; nor does it provide one a foundation on which to make a decision when there is no proctor (or an honest one) around.

I believe Obama is not striving for 'moral purity' in international affairs, but inoculation against the inevitable barrage of ‘soft on terror’ vitriol from the ‘death panel’ wing of the radical right. “Obama and his top advisers apologize for America's past sins, implicitly suggesting they will commit no new ones.” Mr. Kagan infers something that was not implied, shame on him. “Never apologize, it’s a sign of weakness.” is a line from a John Wayne movie, not a code of conduct for adults or leaders of nations.

Mr. Kagan uses a broad brush to wash away both individual and cultural responsibility for many actions: “All the inevitable ancillary casualties of war -- from civilian deaths to the occasional misbehavior of the troops to the errors of commanders -- are more easily forgiven if one has no choice.” What does this say of the judgments at Nuremberg and the International Military Tribunal for the Far East? Perhaps the Battle Hymn of Lt. Calley was playing in the background while he wrote that line?

[Patrick Lang]

Fred

"except in a social matter" was the little quoted rest of the John Wayne statement. pl

[Steve]

Col,
This is one your best posts to date in my opinion. I was fortunate to take two upper division courses at SDSU from Professor William Hanchett. We discussed many of the important themes of your post during his office hours. Framing the war as a war to end the evils of slavery is a complete fraud as you have so well pointed out in this superb post.

All,
My own gleanings of this subject have shown me this horrible war was waged to destroy the rightful sovereignty of the states, and to set up the federal government as the unquestioned supreme ruler of the United States. Our constitution was set up in part to be a stumbling block to empire and the dreaded disease of nationalism. The fourteenth amendment changed all of that forever more. No other man has committed greater violence to the Constitution of the United States than old "Honest" Abe. Our states today are nothing more than administrative districts of the federal government. State political office has been reduced to positions akin to the farm system of baseball. Politicians enter state politics as a hope to get a crack at making it to the big league in DC where real power is held. The states are so weak that they higher lobbyists to represent them in DC.

I have long held that Lincoln is perhaps one of the most evil men in known history, a criminal murderer second to none in our history at the least. His name belongs in the same breath as Ivan the Terrible, Genghis Khan, Hitler, Stalin and Mao. The Lincoln Myth, Inc., perped by a corps of court scholars for profit, is possibly the greatest fraud in American academic history. These academic whores have no shame, none what so ever. The murderous and thieving record of this sadistic low life coward needs to be set straight once and for all. Another completely dishonest aspect of the Lincoln myth (There are so many its hard to pick them) is how he has been joined at the hip of President George Washington. Lincoln was not even worthy to clean Washington's chamber pot. We should be so fortunate for a president to do to Lincoln what Nikita Khrushchev did to Stalin. Of course this won't happen because presidents need and invoke the Lincoln myth in order to further the central government's agenda. Lincoln quotes are used like Bible scripture in the District of Columbia. Yes indeed, the gospel of Abe Lincoln. Argue with it and be labeled a heretic or worse, a nut case. Any writer that strays from the gospel of Abe gets the same treatment afforded to Boris Pasternak by the Soviet Writers Guild.

To all true believers who find my words hard to swallow. Go comfort yourselves on the apron adorned lap of Doris Kearns Goodwin, while she tells you one her Pulitzer famed bed time fables. I don't fly the stars and bars and carry no agenda of revenge for the Confederate cause.

[F B Ali]

Colonel,

I have studied the Civil War generally, and some of its campaigns and battles in detail, but not its causes in any great depth. My impression has always been that it was primarily waged to prevent the secession of the South.

You have discussed the slavery issue in detail. Would you like to comment on this cause in relation to the "necessity" or otherwise of the war?

[srv]

As we have seen in modern times, the south is greatly swayed by the general opinion of the rest of Western Civilization. Whatever is the fashion in Paris, will soon find root in Birmingham. No doubt, had Princess Isabel issued an edict to the South also, they would have abolished the slavery of 4M+, and that is comparable to enslavement of indigenous/African slavery in Brazil that never broke 5 figures.

As for imagining slavery in 1950, one only need look at South Africa to imagine a more enlightened form of virtual slavery lasting in the South. If someone more sophisticated in Western values finds that unbelievable, you should read up on the slaves found in "free" Brazil this very decade.

And that what portion of the North wasn't driven by abolition was driven by preservation of the Union does not negate that the South was primarily driven by preservation of an institution, and that institution was Slavery:

http://mason.gmu.edu/~rtownsen/Hist615_Maps/Final/Editorials/CharlestonMerc_10_11_60.htm

No doubt, this shows why "northerners" are so confused today. No abolition talk there. It's not like Sherman warned them, and if Abe hadn't held a gun to their head and made them do it.

It really is amazing, that even three offhand words of a thousand from a loser like Kagan will bring out the Southern Honor revisionist defense.

[Patrick Lang]

FB Ali

I have come to the conclusion that the English Civil War was continued in America after a couple of centuries. The patterns of immigration as portrayed in "Albion's Seed" would tend to support this I think.

After the union of the colonies under the federal constitution had ripened a bit, the North, which represented a very different tendency in British culture from the South, came to see that industrialization and greater immigration of potential factory workers would yield to it control of the federal government through control of the Congress and eventually of the presidency. This contest grew more and more severe as the focus came to be upon the senate. The issue flared up in Kansas in the late 1850s. The creation of the Republican Party and its electoral victory in 1860 on the basis of a plurality for Lincoln caused the hotheads in South Carolina to start the process of secession even though a Democratic majority had been elected in Congress and the Chief Justice (Taney)was not incline dto support the Republicans. People lost their heads and disaster followed. pl

[Fred]

Col, only the part in quotations is John Wayne, or more precisely the character he portrayed in "She wore a Yellow Ribbon".

[Patrick Lang]

srv

Ah, yes, always with the "romanticist" accusation.

I find it hard to understand your last couple of paragraphs. What are you talking about?

Ah, I see now. Nothing would sway you. pl

[Patrick Lang]

Fred

Watch some more movies more carefully. pl

[Patrick Lang]

srv

"Brazil obtained 35.4% of all African slaves traded in the Atlantic slave trade, more than 3 million slaves were sent to Brazil to work mainly on sugar cane plantations from the 16th to the 19th century. Starting around 1550, the Portuguese began to trade African slaves..." Wikipedia article on "slavery in Brazil"

"enslavement of indigenous/African slavery in Brazil that never broke 5 figures." srv

Are you claiming that the combined number of Indian and African slaves in Brazil never exceeded 99,999? pl

[WILL]

Pat Buchanan's thesis is that it was a customs and tariffs war. The Northern Industrialists could not tolerate a free trade South. That entity would import custom free French and British goods through the great port of New Orleans and distribute them to the MidWest and West. It would have simply sunk the native American industries. Hence A. Lincoln's determination to defend the customs regime. It was no accident that Gen. Pierre Gustave Toutant Beauregard fired the first shot of the Civil War at a fort protecting a custom post at the port of Charleston.

The Emancipation Proclamation came much, much, later in the War as a justification.

[David Habakkuk]

With regard to continuities between the American and English Civil Wars, it may be worth recalling the explanation given by W.C. Sellar and R.J. Yeatman in '1066 and All That' of what they called 'the utterly memorable Struggle between the Cavaliers (Wrong but Wromantic) and the Roundheads (Right and Repulsive).'

It opens:

'Charles I was a Cavalier King and therefore had a small pointed beard, long flowing curls, a large, flat, flowing hat, and gay attire. The Roundheads, on the other hand, were clean-shaven and wore tall, conical hats, white ties, and somber garments. Under these circumstances, a Civil War was inevitable.'

Here as elsewhere, Sellar and Yeatman's facetiousness was directed at accounts of British history as a simple story of progress, in which one could evaluate different actors by whether they were or not they were on the side of progress. Doubtless this had something to do with the fact that they studied history at Oxford as recently demobbed subalterns, after what they termed 'the Peace to End Peace' had ended 'the Great War to End War.'

[Eric Dönges]

Colonel,

considering that in the South African-Americans where officially less human than other Americans until the civil rights movement of the 1960s, chattel slavery might well have survived into the early 1900s (I'm not trying to pick on Southerners specifically; the rest of humanity certainly isn't much better in regards to bigotry and racism). Apartheid managed to survive decades of world-wide disapproval and economic sanctions. Most of Western civilization today regards capitol punishment as evil - any bets on how long until the U.S. gives in to "peer pressure" and officially abolishes it ?

Is preventing several more decades of grave injustice so important that it becomes necessary to wage war to stop it ? In the case of something as evil as slavery, I think it is.

Of course in the real world, wars (civil or not) are fought over resources and power, not moral principles.

[Patrick Lang]

ED

The post CW constitutional amendments (13, 14 and 15th) seem to have escaped your attention. Blacks were treated unfairly in the post-Reconstruction Jim Crow South (and in much of the rest of the country as well)but they were not "officially less human."

I find it difficult to believe that you do not perceive a difference between being owned by someone else and being treated as a second class citizen. I have an original sign in my office from a construction site in NY City that says "Jobs Available - No Irish need Apply." (date - 1912) I have another one that my father collected from the campus of a famous women's college in the 1930s. On it isprinted, "No dogs or soldiers allowed." Those who remember the era of desegregation of schools here also remember the riots and violence in Boston and other cities in the North that accompanied it. Was the continuation of such prejudice against blacks indicative of the kind of malevolence that you associate with the South?

Discrimination by category is a universal fault of mankind, but it is not slavery.

As for your assertion that "chattel slavery MIGHT WELL HAVE survived into the 20th Century," I suppose that you are entitled to your opinion, as am I. pl

[Patrick Lang]

DH

If your point was that history should not be understood as a "simple story of progress," then I heartily concur. pl

[Babak Makkinejad]

All:

The US Civil War could have been prevented if the Northerners had caused the creation of a Federal Government program to buy the slaves and then free them while compensating the owners - say at a 50% premium over the value of each individual slave. Sort of like the USAID programs for land reform in a number of other countries in 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s.

But human beings like war, specially polities that have not historically been subject to the selective effects of continuous war and invasions on the genetic makeup of its population.

By that I mean the following: British Isles have not been invaded since 1066. The population, unlike the Middle East or the European continent, has retained the high-testosterone fighting man’s gene. In many other parts of the world, the prevalence of this gene in the population has declined as continuous warfare has thinned out its carriers.

This population was the major source of the immigrants that settled North America until late in the 19-th Century - and the rest is history.

[Patrick Lang]

ED

"Of course in the real world, wars (civil or not) are fought over resources and power, not moral principles." Simplistic.

I suppose you are one of the people who would say that the 1st Crusade was a colonial venture aimed at seizing the wealth of the Muslims? pl

[VietnamVet]

Colonel,

Wars are way too easy to start. Each generation forgets the devastation visited on the previous. Men dream of glory but only find death.

The Civil War was started by hot heads that were defending their peculiar institutions and lifestyle which would have ended if the fundamentalist Northern abolitionists prevailed. Most of the men in the South continue to fight to defend their homes from Yankee Invaders.

The Emancipation became the Union goal because an overreaching purpose was need to justify the continuing bodies being piled high.

[Steve]

On March 2, 1861, the U.S. Senate passed a proposed Thirteenth Amendment to the US Constitution (which passed the House of Representatives on February 28) that would have prohibited the federal government from ever interfering with slavery in the Southern states. (See U.S. House of Representatives, 106th Congress, 2nd Session, The Constitution of the United States of America: Unratified Amendments, Document No. 106-214, presented by Congressman Henry Hyde (Washington, D.C. U.S. Government Printing Office, January 31, 2000). The proposed amendment read as follows:
ARTICLE THIRTEEN
No amendment shall be made to the Constitution which will authorize or give to Congress the power to abolish or interfere, within any State, with the domestic institutions thereof, including that of persons held to labor or service by the laws of said State.
Two days later, in his First Inaugural Address, Abraham Lincoln promised to support the amendment even though he believed that the Constitution already prohibited the federal government from interfering with Southern slavery. As he stated:
I understand a proposed amendment to the Constitution . . . has passed Congress, to the effect that the Federal Government shall never interfere with the domestic institutions of the States, including that of persons held to service. To avoid misconstruction of what I have said, I depart from my purpose, not to speak of particular amendments, so far as to say that, holding such a provision to now be implied constitutional law, I have no objection to its being made express and irrevocable (emphasis added).
This of course was consistent with one of the opening statements of the First Inaugural, where Lincoln quoted himself as saying: "I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so."
That's what Lincoln said his invasion of the Southern states was not about. In an August 22, 1862, letter to New York Tribune editor Horace Greeley he explained to the world what the war was about:
My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and it is not either to save or destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave, I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that. What I do about slavery, and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save the Union.
Of course, many Americans at the time, North and South, believed that a military invasion of the Southern states would destroy the union by destroying its voluntary nature. To Lincoln, "saving the Union" meant destroying the secession movement and with it the Jeffersonian political tradition of states' rights as a check on the tyrannical proclivities of the central government. His war might have "saved" the union geographically, but it destroyed it philosophically as the country became a consolidated empire as opposed to a constitutional republic of sovereign states.

Thomas J. DiLorenzo

[Eric Dönges]

Colonel,

"The post CW constitutional amendments (13, 14 and 15th) seem to have escaped your attention. Blacks were treated unfairly in the post-Reconstruction Jim Crow South (and in much of the rest of the country as well) but they were not 'officially less human.'"

Since at least the 13th amendment was ratified at a time when the Southern states had no say over the matter, I fail to see it's significance to the issue at hand, i.e. how long it would have taken the Southern states to abolish slavery by themselves. And I fail to see how treating blacks (and Irish, for that matter) as second class citizens by law in a country that prides itself on being founded on the ideal that "all men are created equal" can mean anything other than that the law considers them lesser humans.

"I find it difficult to believe that you do not perceive a difference between being owned by someone else and being treated as a second class citizen."

Of course I am aware that discrimination is not equal to slavery. But you argue that the Southern states would have eventually realized that what they where doing is wrong, and abolished slavery by themselves eventually. I agree, but think this "eventually" would have been measured in decades, since many Southerners had convinced themselves that blacks where inferior to whites, and thus holding them as slaves was somehow benevolent (just like Europeans convinced themselves that they where doing the native populations of their colonies a favor). The Jim Crow laws just show that this attitude used to justify slavery hadn't really changed, even after slavery itself was abolished. Note that I'm not trying to single out Southerners as particularly malevolent, just pointing out that slavery would have existed for quite some time after 1865 if the South hadn't been forced to stop it.

"I suppose you are one of the people who would say that the 1st Crusade was a colonial venture aimed at seizing the wealth of the Muslims?"

No, because I think that war, like most others, had many complicated reasons for it. I just don't believe a moral principle was the singular cause.

[F B Ali]

Colonel,

With the government of the United States having decided that it would not allow secession, it appears that the way events unfolded left it no choice but the military option. Thus the war was one of "necessity". Whether all of the means employed to achieve this aim were necessary or not will always remain debatable.

This kind of issue also often arises on the battlefield. For instance, while Sherman's march was strategically necessary to end the war, it is an open question whether the brutal tactics employed were necessary to achieve the strategic aim.

So much depends on point of view. I am reminded of the scene in the movie where Zhivago is remonstrating with the Red commander over the burning of a blameless village and Strelnikov says, "What does it matter whether they actually sold horses to the Whites? The point had to be made, and was". Zhivago's reply: "Your point. Their village".

[optimax]

DeBows Review was the most widely circulated southern periodical before the CW and, therfor highly influential. The following quote is frome DR vol.30, Issue:2, Feb. 1861, Editorial Notes and Miscellany, pg. 251, 2nd para.

S.C. had just seceded. The editorial says the rest of the "Cotton States" will follow and the reasons for doing so are not just about the election of Lincoln, "personal liberty bills" or "territorial questions." "The cause lies deeper. The Southern States could no more hope to remain in permanent union with a people who regard their institutions and domestic policy as a crime against high heaven, and wrong to universal humanity, than they could with a people unanimously inclined to the establishment of a monarchical government."

This is the wikipedia link. Go to bottom where it says external links and click on archived issues 1846--1869:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_Bow%27s_Review

It is ironic but the Southerners felt the North, through economic, political and moral pressure, was reducing them to slavery. Nobody wants to be told they are a morally bankrupt and uncivilized people who must change their way of life and their thinking. In other words that they are children, much like the plantation owners thought about their slaves.

[WILL]

the link to buchanan
http://buchanan.org/blog/pjb-mr-lincolns-war-an-irrepressible-conflict-1440

[jedermann]

I subscribe to James Ellis’s contention that the issue of Constitutional assent to the institution of slavery was a fault line that was well understood by the framers at the time the document was laid down to be an essential contradiction that would eventually have to be resolved for the country to achieve an enduring unity. I doubt that any serious person would try to argue that slavery was the proximate cause of the war, but the struggle over the issue of slavery amongst the Framers and the clear-if-oblique acceptance of it in the Constitution recognized and in some ways crystallized the divergent economic interests of northern states and southern states into the two great cultural spheres of North and South. The identity of the practice of slavery with the interests of the South became emblematic. This is not to say that the flaw in our Constitutional DNA made war necessary or inevitable. Americans did fail to negotiate the resolution of this foundational contradiction peacefully. The confluence of events, the personalities of the influential and miscalculations of relative advantage made the situation ripe for the hot heads to take action in one particular state that would lead down a path likely to end in war, but that ripeness is not the same as necessity or inevitability and it in no way made such a course desirable. You have suggested some ways in which the issue might have been peacefully resolved.

Even if a society has adopted the most conservative standard for starting a war, namely immanent existential threat, manipulation of the public perception of a threat makes it vulnerable to being misled (Remember the Maine!) Whatever the real reasons for a leadership’s desire to make war - fear, ambition, greed, manifest destiny, divine inspiration, preservation of internal integrity or real danger - an existential threat is usually conjured in order to condition the public to support the fighting. Kagan was at minimum complicit in shaping the public perception, a false perception by any objective measure, that Saddam Hussein posed an immanent existential threat to this country. In my view he has zero credibility in any discussion of the necessity or wisdom of any war, past, present or future.