As scathing as the criticism of Mr. Lincoln has been lately, I have great difficulty imagining how General Washington would have handled the act of Southern secession much differently.

The General during his term as President personally led troops to put down the Whiskey Rebellion. Why should we believe that, faced with a rebellion on a far larger scale, he would not have reacted in a like manner commensurate to the circumstance?

What does the Constitution mean by “rebellion” in the provision on suspending habeas corpus, mentioned alongside “invasion”?

That Washington took such pains in this address to gather Americans securely into the national fold must mean either that, already in his day when the ink of the Constitution had barely had time to dry, forces were building which were targeting American nationhood in their crosshairs, intending to strangle the infant in its cradle — either that, or he, Washington, was with astounding prescience warning his countrymen about what he foresaw for the future.

Notice the almost sublime cadences of the language of this excerpt. Washington and Lincoln did not employ speech writers. No modern U.S. president could compose, on his own, declamatory English prose in the same league as these two.

I think Unadorned is correct, particularly in the latter assumption.

Please forgive the cross-posting, but a good example of this comes from the Flexner biography:

“Washington felt that it was the Virginia institution [of slavery] that would in the end have to give way. ‘I clearly foresee,’ he told an English caller, ‘that nothing but the rooting out of slavery can perpetuate the existence of our union by consolidating it in a common bond of principle.’ To Randolph, he revealed a conclusion that tore at his most deeply seated habits and emotions. He stated that should the Union separate between North and South, ‘he had made up his mind to move and be of the northern.’”

This one issue, probably above all others, already threatened the national cohesion in his time.

Washington is certainly amazingly prescient; but he was also writing from bitter experience. During his presidency, especially the second term, the country (or at least the politically active part of it) had turned poisonously partisan. This was mainly due to the French Revolution and the subsequent war between France and England (commencing after the execution of Louis XVI in January 1793, at the beginning of Washington’s second term). The Jeffersonians wanted America to side with Revolutionary France, and saw Washington’s neutrality policy as part of a “secret plan” to turn America into a monarchy like England. As absurd as this was, many people believed it, showing as much contact with reality as today’s leftists who call any non-leftist a “fascist,” or who accuse Bush of “stealing” the 2000 election by “disenfranchising” black voters, or who charge Bush with lying about weapons to trick America into a war, etc. etc., etc. Indeed, even as Jefferson was persuading Washington, much against his desire, to stay for a second term as president, Jefferson was sending letters to his own followers attacking Washington as a crypto monarchist, attacks which found their way into the Jeffersonian press. When Washington found out about Jefferson’s role in this, in 1795 after Jefferson had left the government, it was the end of their friendship.

All this gives an idea of how, when Washington warned of the ever-present threat of disloyalty and disunity, he knew whereof he spoke. He understood the evil selfish passions in men that are ever ready to tear a country apart, and knew that it is the burden of patriots and statesmen always to be on guard against them.

On the question of speechwriters, Washington had extensive help from Hamilton, and to a lesser extent Madison, in the writing of the Farewell Address. He initially wrote a draft and sent it to Hamilton, who worked on it and send it back to Washington, who then made his own changes and sent it back to Hamilton, and so forth. The work extended over several years, as Washington had initially planned to retire at the end of his first term, but then put the address aside for four years and brought it out again to do further work on it as the end of his second term approached.

Men like Washington could write because they could think. Yet the quality of prose is still astounding when we reflect on the fact that these were men of action, who lived through very real privations in dedicating their “sacred honor” to the prosperity of our country. A similiar effect often strikes me when reading Burke: how is it that a politician managed to think and write so well and so profoundly in the course of the daily toil of his life?

Of course, modern people use their very busy-ness an an excuse from ever having to reflect.

Washington’s speech is very moving.

What we need now is to demonstrate the the Founders who believed: “Your national bond is not to be taken lightly or cast aside easily, as some schemers will try to persuade you to do”, also believed, “If you do not appreciate these national bonds as much as you ought to, and try to leave them, the rest of us are going to come and kill you.”

When the anti-Jeffersonian Federalists of New England debated secession for 15 years (1800-1814), did anyone propose or threaten invasion of New England?

Mr. Coleman’s comparison to New England proves nothing. New England debated secession, they didn’t do it. The South also debated and threatened secession for 15 years before 1860 (starting in 1846 with the Mexican War and the question of whether the newly conquered territories would be slave or free), and no one threatened invasion of the South over such discussions and threats. Even when seven Southern states actually seceded in 1860, the Union did not threaten invasion of the South. In fact, Lincoln offered a Constitutional amendment protecting slavery in perpetuity, in exchange for the seceding states’ return to the Union. It was only when the South made war on the United States, bombarding a United States fort and seizing various other U.S. forts and properties, that war began.

One gets tired of repeating these same basic historical facts over and over, but it seems to be necessary.

John Fonte dropped me this note, with permission to post it:

Excellent post on George Washington and the meaning of American national unity. This needs to be stressed over and again. Washington was not simply a “liberal” in the Enlightenment sense, but a republican-patriot liberal nationalist.

A “republican-patriot liberal nationalist”: now that is a mouthful!

How does the secession of the colonies from Great Britain fit into all of this? After all, Washington led the colonial troops…troops that were fighting for a secessionary movement.

Mr. Friedrich’s question makes it necessary for me rehearse, for the thousandth time, the most elementary facts about American history. When the colonies declared independence in July 1776, Great Britain had already been AT WAR with the colonies for 15 months. British ships were going up and down the Atlantic coast raiding and burning towns. As late as the summer of 1775, the colonies were still petitioning the king seeking a peaceful settlement. In response the king declared the rebels outside the law, meaning that anything could be done to them. If they were captured, they were liable to be brought to England, tried for treason, hanged, drawn and quartered.

That’s the background of American independence, which by the the way, the Americans did not claim as a legal right, but as a revolutionary act.

By contrast, what was the immediate background of the Southern secession? The lawful election of a U.S. president that the South didn’t like. That’s it. The South’s rights were not being threatened at all, though they fantasized (with all the rationality of blacks in Florida in the 2000 election crisis imagining a vast white conspiracy to keep blacks away from the voting booth) that Lincoln on assuming office would invade the South. So seven states seceded; and the national government did nothing. Then the secessionists attacked a federal fort, which their leaders consciously decided to do in order to bring on war, as the only way to hold the secessionists together. Wildly cheering for this attack on the United States, Virginia and several other Southern states then seceded. At that point the U.S. raised an army of 75,000 men and the Civil War began. The South itself thus brought on the invasion of the South that many of them had irrationally feared would come from Lincoln’s election alone.

Yet the South, refusing to admit they were engaging in a revolutionary act, insisted that their secession and attack on the United States was simply a legal act within the Constitution, and therefore that the North’s war on the South was an act of unmitigated, totally unjustified tyranny. And many Southern partisans continue to insist the same to this day.

Mr. Auster writes:

“Mr. Coleman’s comparison to New England proves nothing. New England debated secession, they didn’t do it.”

Yes, and when they debated it, Thomas Jefferson stated that if they wanted to go, they should be allowed to go. That constitutes at least one vote in favor of a right to secession by a Founding Father, doesn’t it?

Furthermore, if the federal government were to claim that it owned property in a seceding New England state, and made no effort to negotiate over that property (a fort, for example), and proclaimed that it was going to man that fort in perpetuity and collect taxes there, etc., then that would tend to contradict the statement that the New England state was being allowed to secede, would it not? Such claims would indicate that a right to secede is disputed.

Hence, I would conclude that Lincoln’s view of secession was at odds with Jefferson’s view, at the very least. At the beginning of this discussion, I don’t recall that anyone was even prepared to concede that small point.

Mr. Auster said, “Then the secessionists attacked a federal fort, which their leaders consciously decided to do in order to bring on war, as the only way to hold the secessionists together.”

Referring to the attack on Fort Sumter, I think this was based on a deliberate provocation by Mr. Lincoln designed to force the South’s hand, giving him the advantage of claiming that the South had fired the first shot.

The continued presence of the Federal outpost in Charleston already presented a dilemma for the South, challenging its sovereignty. But when Mr. Lincoln informed Gov. Pickens of South Carolina that he was sending a relief expedition to provide them with food, (but no arms,) the South faced the threat of force being used if they attempted to turn it back, or else incur damage to its cause and prestige as a government at home and abroad as Federal troops walked through its territory at will and a permanent Federal presence at the fort remained.

From a strategic standpoint, it was a master stroke on the part of Mr. Lincoln.

Mr. Auster,

Lincoln offered no such amendment. He referred to such an amendment in his first address, and claimed not to have read it.

A major factor for Lincoln going to war was to abolish slavery in the South. Preserving the Union was a justification for ending the evil of slavery more than the other way around. Which is one thing that makes the Civil War into our most just war. I do not know if I would have gone to war if I were in Lincoln’s shoes, but I know what the cost in life was and Lincoln could not guess what a modern war would be like. Besides, I am not assaulted by any such great evil in my country at this time. Perhaps my feelings would be different if I were face-to-face with it.

Here is what Mr. Lincoln wrote to Horace Greeley:

“If I could save the Union without freeing any slaves, I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves, I would do it, and if I could do it by freeing some and leaving others alone, I would also so that”

Lincoln may have skillfully drawn the South into firing the first shot, but to call his sending food and provisions, but not arms, to a beseiged federal fort a “provocation” is not accurate.

Thrasy is quite wrong about Lincoln’s motives, and sounds frankly as though he’s never read a general history of the Civil War. Indeed, it seems that most of my posts at VFR concerning the Civil War have dealt with correcting this basic ignorance of facts, as though this were a remedial college class. As everyone knows, or, rather, as everyone _used_ to know, the intention of ending slavery only developed gradually over the first two years of the war, it did not start out that way. And even when Lincoln did adopt that purpose, it was (at least at first) primarily as a means to assist the war effort than as an end in itself.

I think in the future I’m going to require that people at least read Battle Cry of Freedom, a superb one-volume history of the Civil War, and a good biograophy of Lincoln before they are permitted to post _anything_ about the Civil War. Then at least we’d have a common body of facts as the basis of our discussions.

I am very aware of the current historical opinion of the Civil War. I just disagree with it.

My main feeling is that to understand Lincoln’s character we have to look at what he said before becoming President. Once he became President, his actions and words were constrained by practical considerations. At first he hoped for reunion without war, and then he was concerned with the border states.

The main problem with the current historical opinion of the Civil War is its failure to recognize what a revolutionary document the Emancipation proclamation was. Viewing the document as a tactical maneuver in the war is profoundly wrong. Modern historians do this partly as a bow towards Southern revisionism on the subject, and also because one of the main tenants of the new historicism is that no former age of mankind was so noble as the modern age.

I agree with Thrasy that the E.P. was more than a military measure. But the E.P. developed in Lincoln’s mind over the course of 1862 in response to the unfolding events of the war, over a year AFTER the war began. Why do otherwise intelligent people have such difficulty grasping basic historical facts?

I understand what you are saying, Mr. Auster, but remember that Lincoln was limited by what was practical. The Emancipation Proclamation did not end slavery, but it did mean the end for slavery. Had he issued the Emancipation Proclamation at the beginning of the war, the border states would have seceded, and reconciliation short of war would have been impossible. I would prefer to say about Lincoln, that he took the first practical opportunity to make a large strike against slavery.

In one of his earlier posts, Thrasymachus says, speaking of chattel slavery, “I am not assaulted by any such great evil in my country at this time.” I cannot agree. Slavery was a great evil. Its evil consisted in denying people their liberty and forcing them to work involuntarily for the benefit of others. Great as that evil is, is it less evil than denying people their very lives at the caprice of others? That is what abortion is.

In the United States at this time, thanks to the U.S. Supreme Court’s unconstitutional usurpation of powers that are properly the state legislatures’, Americans are assaulted by a federal regime of unrestricted abortion. Any mother may abort her child for any reason (or none at all) at any time up until the completed delivery of her baby. No doctor or nurse who murders an unborn baby may be sanctioned. No accomplice father who urges a mother to abort their child may be penalized. Relatives who might argue for the child’s life are almost entirely forbidden to intercede.

That is the true extent of the abortion license the Court has legislated by fiat through Roe v. Wade, Doe v. Bolton, Planned Parenthood v. Casey and Stenberg v. Carhart. This is an evil at least as great as slavery. Perhaps because we never see or know its victims, abortion does not make so vivid an impression. HRS

I don’t generally defend the South’s slavery. In fact, it’s my belief that the slavery in the South was wrong…though perhaps not as incredibly evil as Mr. Sutherland seems to think it was. But the slavery in the South was life-long, and it was slavery of a race that was deemed, by many, to be sub-human.

With that said, though…

If Mr. Sutherland is a Christian, then I would like to hear him provide Biblical arguments against the idea of slavery (not against slavery as it was practiced in the South…I already agree that was wrong). Or, if Mr. Sutherland is not a Christian, I would like to hear Biblical arguments against slavery from Mr. Auster or any of Mr. Auster’s other readers.

As for the comparison to abortion, that is a common thing today. I’m a pro-life activist, and so I am familiar with, and have even used myself, the comparison of abortion to slavery (and to the Holocaust). But I might point out that while Scripture clearly forbids murder (the Sixth Commandment), it does not, to my knowledge, clearly condemn slavery.

Again, does anyone have Biblical arguments against slavery?

Mr. Friedrich wrote,

” … it’s my belief that the slavery in the South was wrong … though perhaps not as incredibly evil as Mr. Sutherland seems to think it was.”

WHAT??? Did I read that RIGHT???

Here’s a short reading list for Mr. Friedrich: the very LEAST he should read are the autobiographies of Frederick Douglass (either version is good but the second, longer version he wrote is of course better) and Booker T. Washington; “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” by Harriet Beecher Stowe; “Huckleberry Finn,” “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer,” and “Life on the Mississippi,” by Mark Twain; and any edition of the 1858 debates between Abraham Lincoln and Stephen A. Douglas where they touch on the subject of slavery.

Read those and if you’re still not sure it was the evil Mr. Sutherland said it was, I’ll give you a couple of web-sites to browse which contain a treasure-trove (a shocking, sobering treasure-trove) of the accounts of actual slaves, on what their life was like under slavery.

Then come back and write the same comment you wrote, above.

The purpose of my earlier post was not to open a debate about the degree of evil inherent in slavery. I believe slavery is an evil, although one that has existed in most societies at most times in human history. In Africa and parts of Moslem Arabia and Southeast Asia, it exists today.

I am a Southerner, and not inclined to revile the South for once having been a slaveholding section of the country - all European colonies in America, the New England colonies included, allowed slaveholding at some time or other. The African societies from which slaves came were slaveholding and, self-evidently, slave-trading. If the Bible condemns slavery per se, I am not aware of it. Nevertheless, there is much Biblical condemnation of the arrogance that might lead men to believe it is their due to hold others as slaves.

That said, slavery is not murder; abortion is. Slavery is no longer practiced in the United States; abortion is, and with a vengeance. I venture to guess that more Americans have been killed by abortionists since Roe v. Wade was imposed than Africans and their descendants were ever held as slaves in the Thirteen Colonies and the United States. My purpose was to dispute Thrasymachus’ assertion that the United States is now free of great evil. I wish that were so, but it is not. HRS

Nevertheless, there is much Biblical condemnation of the arrogance that might lead men to believe it is their due to hold others as slaves.

Agreed. I don’t think one can say in so many words that it is Biblically wrong to own slaves. I do think one can say that it is a bad idea to own slaves, especially as that ownership has oftentimes led to a temptation to adopt an attitude of arrogance and a feeling that the slaves are sub-human.

Unadorned: You did read that right. I think the slavery in the South was wrong. No more needs to be said than that. It was far from being one of the greatest evils of any time. Not only that, but I have heard that many of the accounts of mistreatment of slaves were exaggerated, taken out of context, or merely focused on while ignoring the huge number of slaves who were not mistreated. Also, I have heard that the validity of much of what Harriet Beecher Stowe wrote is worth, at the very least, questioning.

That said, I don’t mean to defend the slavery of the South. The slavery was understandable, but not justifiable.

Mr. Friedrich, I know you had no intention of defending slavery in your other post; I didn’t mean to imply anything else. Furthermore (though a New York City boy who has never set foot south of the Mason-Dixon line), I am an ardent admirer of the South and of Southerners. But again, I suggest you read, if you haven’t already, Frederick Douglass’ SEARING autobiographical account of the actual “behind-the-scenes” day-to-day practice of slavery. It is a book you won’t be able to put down and will never forget.

Yes, there were slaves lucky enough to be well treated (if reducing human beings to the condition of slaves at all can ever be said to be treating them well). As for the ones not so lucky — well, it was horrific what they went through, is all that can be said. What they were subjected to is something a person doesn’t even like to think about.

That said, you won’t find many defenders of the South who are more unshakable than I am. Slavery was something ordinary Southerners could no more undo than we today can undo the income-tax-IRS nightmare or the federal government’s excessive incompatible immigration policy. There are things that become so entrenched they are virtually impossible to overthrow — too many people who profit from them simply aren’t about to let go of them peacefully, and fight with all they have to preserve them intact.

I was a little surprised to see Mr. Auster adopting what seems to be an unqualified neocon position on Lincoln and the Civil War. I have always been troubled by the fact that such a bloody war occurred to remove slavery, even though it was ended peacefully in so many other places. Mightn’t Lincoln have let a few states go? Probably Virginia and several others would have stayed in the Union. Slavery in the tobacco growing states had become unprofitable due to a decline in world prices. Then with the invention of the cotton gin, cotton became King, and was enormously profitable. In time, cotton prices plunged. At that point, the seceding states would probably have found it much easier and indeed desirable to abolish slavery and return to the union. Lincoln ran as a factional candidate, apparently entirely beholden to the South’s worst enemies in the Northeast - the radical Republicans. We saw what they did in Reconstruction, paving the way not for national reconciliation envisioned by Lincoln, but for the rise of the Klan and black segregation. It seems to me this whole period of our history is so subject to different perspectives that the intense commitment to various partial points of view that one so often sees is unjustified. Surely this era also marked the consolidation of the Union into a centralized behemoth, very far indeed from the whole federalist concept, which may be seen working well today in Switzerland. I would hope Mr. Auster would refrain from being to quick to suggest that those raising questions are unread. In my own case, I have read the texts he mentions, and dozens of others. By the way, McPherson is very much of neocon view.

The Federalist Papers present a powerful argument that the political and economic unity of the states was as fundamental to the nation’s future prosperity as any other feature of the federalist design. Without it, we would become a prey to the European powers and live in discord, poverty, and constraint. Preserving political and economic unity was therefore worth a high price—though the price finally paid was unimaginable, and we will never know what would have happened if Lincoln had shied from paying it.