WEBVTT NOTE Southern Secession and Reconstruction 1 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:11.000 American, and they're Lincolnian Americans, and we don't communicate very well. 2 00:00:11.000 --> 00:00:17.280 Now one reason why you can't take Southern secession seriously is because of slavery. 3 00:00:17.280 --> 00:00:24.440 The United States, in invading the South, created the greatest atrocity of the 19th 4 00:00:24.440 --> 00:00:25.440 century. 5 00:00:25.440 --> 00:00:28.640 If you look at the destruction, I won't go into all of that. 6 00:00:28.640 --> 00:00:36.520 It got away with murder, and its alibi was emancipating slaves, or if that's not exactly 7 00:00:36.520 --> 00:00:41.920 what's said, one hears, well, the war was about slavery, you know what I'm saying? 8 00:00:41.920 --> 00:00:46.400 Nobody actually invaded to free slaves, but somehow it was about slavery. 9 00:00:46.400 --> 00:00:49.960 Well, if it was, no one knows what that means. 10 00:00:49.960 --> 00:00:53.040 It's never spelled out in detail when it's said rhetorically. 11 00:00:53.040 --> 00:00:58.840 Well, if it was about slavery, then it's hard to take Southern secession seriously. 12 00:00:58.840 --> 00:01:03.980 How can you take the idea that Southerners were fighting for liberty when they will do 13 00:01:03.980 --> 00:01:09.480 not extend liberty to the African population in their borders? 14 00:01:09.480 --> 00:01:15.080 Now this was the argument that Samuel Johnson gave against the succeeding colonists in the 15 00:01:15.080 --> 00:01:16.640 18th century. 16 00:01:16.640 --> 00:01:25.340 He asks, why do I have to hear constant yelps about liberty from the drivers of slaves? 17 00:01:25.340 --> 00:01:26.340 Good question. 18 00:01:26.340 --> 00:01:34.220 And it has to be admitted that slavery was a moral stain on southerners and a moral stain 19 00:01:34.220 --> 00:01:35.660 on the American colonists. 20 00:01:35.660 --> 00:01:42.720 All the colonies had slavery in the late 18th century. 21 00:01:42.720 --> 00:01:47.000 Only 10% of southerners, however, own slaves. 22 00:01:47.000 --> 00:01:51.720 So we're not talking, we're talking about a rather complicated matter. 23 00:01:51.720 --> 00:02:00.240 Okay, so what I want to discuss is the moral issue of the moral, I want to look at the 24 00:02:00.240 --> 00:02:04.320 secession from the moral point of view of what is the relationship between slavery and 25 00:02:04.320 --> 00:02:06.640 secession. 26 00:02:06.640 --> 00:02:11.040 There was almost universal agreement among antebellum Americans, north and south, on 27 00:02:11.040 --> 00:02:15.080 and the moral status of slavery. 28 00:02:15.080 --> 00:02:19.960 This usually isn't brought out, but most everybody agreed about it, North and South. 29 00:02:19.960 --> 00:02:26.720 Most agreed that abstractly considered, if you just think about it as abstract proposition, 30 00:02:26.720 --> 00:02:32.080 slavery is immoral, but they also thought that it must be acquiesced in out of practical 31 00:02:32.080 --> 00:02:34.920 necessity. 32 00:02:34.920 --> 00:02:38.840 Larry Tice, who's written a wonderful book on the pro-slavery arguments, has called this 33 00:02:38.840 --> 00:02:43.980 is the negative pro-slavery argument and has shown that it was first deployed not by Southerners 34 00:02:43.980 --> 00:02:51.100 but by late 18th century Northerners responding to Samuel Johnson-type criticisms from Europeans 35 00:02:51.100 --> 00:02:56.860 after Americans had gained their independence. It was a stark part of what he calls a counterrevolution 36 00:02:56.860 --> 00:03:01.700 that swept the North at the turn of the century and eventually the South as Americans recoiled 37 00:03:01.700 --> 00:03:07.240 from the more radical implications of the democratic ideals of the revolution. 38 00:03:07.240 --> 00:03:12.760 Now even Calhoun's teaching that slavery is a positive good was not the radical doctrine 39 00:03:12.760 --> 00:03:17.920 hitherto unknown in America that historians have tirelessly said it was. 40 00:03:17.920 --> 00:03:24.840 Calhoun carefully separated the question of, quote, slavery in the abstract, as Southerners 41 00:03:24.840 --> 00:03:29.800 called it, from slavery as a practical moral question. 42 00:03:29.800 --> 00:03:35.120 He tried to make clear that his point was only about the latter and that the institution, 43 00:03:35.120 --> 00:03:43.120 He said under the institution the African population had in fact made remarkable progress and was capable of further improvements. 44 00:03:43.120 --> 00:03:52.120 He called the institution, quote, an experiment which should be given a period of time and he put no limit on the improvements Africans were capable of. 45 00:03:52.120 --> 00:03:58.120 But what was this universal practical necessity that forced acceptance of slavery? 46 00:03:58.120 --> 00:04:03.120 It was in a word, white European supremacy. 47 00:04:03.120 --> 00:04:17.120 Most Americans, North and South, the vast majority, believe that America was a white European polity and that neither the Indian nor the African population would ever participate as social and political equals. 48 00:04:17.120 --> 00:04:21.120 This is the common assumption. 49 00:04:21.120 --> 00:04:26.120 Now let's see how this assumption works in Northern policy in regard to Africans. 50 00:04:26.120 --> 00:04:31.120 Northern manumission laws were designed to rid the North of its African population. 51 00:04:31.120 --> 00:04:36.600 It was not actual slaves that were freed, but those born after a certain date upon achieving 52 00:04:36.600 --> 00:04:38.920 a certain age. 53 00:04:38.920 --> 00:04:44.280 By 1860, the formerly slave-trading state of Massachusetts had reduced its African population 54 00:04:44.280 --> 00:04:46.120 to around 1%. 55 00:04:46.120 --> 00:04:50.280 In many states, emancipation was accompanied with a period of apprenticeship. 56 00:04:50.280 --> 00:04:56.160 New Jersey, for example, abolished slavery, but only after defining those freed as apprentices 57 00:04:56.160 --> 00:05:01.520 for Life. 58 00:05:01.520 --> 00:05:06.440 Most northern states passed laws prohibiting the entrance of free blacks or severely restricting 59 00:05:06.440 --> 00:05:12.360 their entrance. Free blacks were shut out of New Jersey. Massachusetts at one time prescribed 60 00:05:12.360 --> 00:05:18.560 flogging for non-residents who stayed longer than two months. Ohio at one time passed a 61 00:05:18.560 --> 00:05:25.520 law expelling the entire black population. A number of states erected constitutional 62 00:05:25.520 --> 00:05:33.520 The Language of Oregon's Constitution was typical. 63 00:05:33.520 --> 00:05:47.520 Quote, no free negro or mulatto not residing in this state at the time of the adoption of this constitution shall ever come, reside, or be within this state, or hold any real estate, or make any contract, or maintain any suit therein. 64 00:05:47.520 --> 00:05:59.520 and the Legislative Assembly shall provide by penal laws for the removal by public officers of all such free Negroes who shall bring them into the state or employ or harbor them therein. 65 00:05:59.520 --> 00:06:06.520 The state of Indiana's constitution read almost the same way. 66 00:06:06.520 --> 00:06:13.520 Now, Illinois once allowed free blacks to enter, but only if they posted a bond of $1,000 each. 67 00:06:13.520 --> 00:06:15.520 A lot of money back then. 68 00:06:15.520 --> 00:06:22.520 But after 1848, white supremacy became even more insistent in some northern and western states. 69 00:06:22.520 --> 00:06:34.520 Illinois, for example, changed its constitution in 1848 to absolutely exclude the further entrance of free blacks or mulattos. 70 00:06:34.520 --> 00:06:41.520 In 1853, the legislature of Illinois enacted statutes to enforce the ban. 71 00:06:41.520 --> 00:06:49.520 Oregon's constitution banning the entrance of free blacks passed by a vote of 8 to 1 in 1857. 72 00:06:49.520 --> 00:06:54.520 Now, once in a northern state, blacks were tightly managed. 73 00:06:54.520 --> 00:07:01.520 Just to give you one example from Illinois, which was admittedly a pretty rough state for this sort of thing, 74 00:07:01.520 --> 00:07:04.520 its revised statutes after 1833 say, 75 00:07:04.520 --> 00:07:26.520 If any person or persons shall permit or suffer any servant or servants of color to the number of three or more to assemble in his, her or their outhouse, yard or shed for the purpose of dancing or reveling, either by night or day, the persons or persons so offending shall forfeit and pay a fine of $20. 76 00:07:26.520 --> 00:07:47.520 And it's the duty of all coroners, sheriffs, justices, judges, justices of the peace, judges who learn of such assemblages to commit the servants to the jail of the county and on view of proof thereof, order each and every such servant to be whipped, not exceeding 39 stripes on his or her back, end quote. 77 00:07:47.520 --> 00:07:51.520 So you can get the point, you know. 78 00:07:51.520 --> 00:08:05.520 Now, Illinois is worth pondering because it was Lincoln's state and because he supported its oppressive black codes and never objected to them throughout his career. 79 00:08:05.520 --> 00:08:13.520 Let's look at Illinois. Once in Illinois, blacks were not citizens. Remember back then, only a state could make you a citizen. 80 00:08:13.520 --> 00:08:19.520 Once you became one, then you had the privileges and immunities of citizens everywhere. 81 00:08:19.520 --> 00:08:24.160 You're not a citizen if you're in Illinois, in black. You could not vote. 82 00:08:24.160 --> 00:08:30.480 You could not even serve on a jury and you could not even testify against whites in court. 83 00:08:30.480 --> 00:08:34.560 If somebody started messing with your property, you had to get somebody to help you go to court. 84 00:08:34.560 --> 00:08:37.840 To my test file on your behalf. 85 00:08:37.840 --> 00:08:42.080 You could not marry with whites and you were forced to pay taxes for a public school system 86 00:08:42.080 --> 00:08:48.800 that excluded black children. No segregated school system. 87 00:08:48.800 --> 00:08:54.560 There's none. Lincoln voted for and supported these laws because he did not believe that free 88 00:08:54.560 --> 00:09:00.240 blanks would ever have social and political equality with whites. He held to this position 89 00:09:00.240 --> 00:09:05.440 throughout his career and repeated it publicly everywhere in language that cannot be disguised. 90 00:09:06.720 --> 00:09:11.200 In one of the debates with Stephen Douglas, September 18, 1858, he declared, quote, 91 00:09:11.200 --> 00:09:17.040 I will say then that I am not, I am not nor have ever been in favor of bringing about in any way 92 00:09:17.040 --> 00:09:22.840 Today, the Social and Political Equality of the White and Black Races, that I am not or 93 00:09:22.840 --> 00:09:29.760 have ever been in favor of making voters or jurors of Negroes, nor of qualifying them to 94 00:09:29.760 --> 00:09:32.760 hold office, nor to intermarry with white people. 95 00:09:32.760 --> 00:09:37.120 And I will say in addition to this, that there's a physical difference between the white and 96 00:09:37.120 --> 00:09:42.740 black races, which I believe will forever forbid the two races living together on terms 97 00:09:42.740 --> 00:09:46.360 of social and political equality. 98 00:09:46.360 --> 00:09:52.680 And inasmuch as they cannot so live, while they do remain together, there must be the 99 00:09:52.680 --> 00:09:59.520 position of superior and inferior. And I, as much as any other man, am in favor of having 100 00:09:59.520 --> 00:10:04.840 the superior position assigned to the white race." 101 00:10:04.840 --> 00:10:11.320 Now these laws in Illinois and Lincoln's remarks here give new meaning to the bumper sticker 102 00:10:11.320 --> 00:10:16.120 Land of Lincoln, to the license plates, Land of Lincoln. 103 00:10:16.120 --> 00:10:18.680 I lived in Illinois for 15 years and saw that every day. 104 00:10:18.680 --> 00:10:20.200 Land of Lincoln. 105 00:10:20.200 --> 00:10:21.360 All right. 106 00:10:21.360 --> 00:10:24.720 Lincoln meant every word of this as his career shows. 107 00:10:24.720 --> 00:10:26.880 He voted against voting rights for blacks 108 00:10:26.880 --> 00:10:30.280 in the first year he was in the legislature of Illinois. 109 00:10:30.280 --> 00:10:34.800 He refused to sign a petition from a black friend of his, 110 00:10:34.800 --> 00:10:37.300 acquaintance of his, requesting that blacks 111 00:10:37.300 --> 00:10:39.640 be allowed to testify in court. 112 00:10:39.640 --> 00:10:54.240 He voted against abolishing the slave trade in the District of Columbia during his undistinguished 113 00:10:54.240 --> 00:10:57.040 and only term in Congress. 114 00:10:57.040 --> 00:11:02.520 Against enormous pressure from friends and foes alike, he adamantly refused to use blacks 115 00:11:02.520 --> 00:11:07.520 as troops during the war, until Congress forced him to do so. 116 00:11:07.520 --> 00:11:13.000 He said they would be fighting with the Confederacy if you let black troops come in. 117 00:11:13.000 --> 00:11:19.120 And when they were used, he insisted on paying them seven dollars a month, whereas whites 118 00:11:19.120 --> 00:11:22.040 received thirteen dollars a month. 119 00:11:22.040 --> 00:11:23.520 And that stuck. 120 00:11:23.520 --> 00:11:28.160 Near the end of the war, he helped draft the new constitution of Louisiana. 121 00:11:28.160 --> 00:11:33.560 And just as Lincoln had always publicly opposed the granting of citizenship to blacks in his 122 00:11:33.560 --> 00:11:39.640 in his own state, so he refused to acknowledge black citizenship and suffrage in Louisiana, 123 00:11:39.640 --> 00:11:42.080 even for black union veterans. 124 00:11:42.080 --> 00:11:46.000 He relented only under pressure from Congress. 125 00:11:46.000 --> 00:11:51.360 Now throughout his career, Lincoln was opposed to universal emancipation as being an evil 126 00:11:51.360 --> 00:11:54.200 greater than slavery itself. 127 00:11:54.200 --> 00:11:58.740 And the reason is equality wouldn't be possible, so you have emancipation with no equality 128 00:11:58.740 --> 00:12:04.620 and all of these restrictions, then you're going to have social chaos. 129 00:12:04.620 --> 00:12:08.420 It's better to manage this alien population. 130 00:12:08.420 --> 00:12:09.920 Listen to what he says. 131 00:12:09.920 --> 00:12:10.760 What? 132 00:12:10.760 --> 00:12:14.680 Free them all and keep them among us as underlings, 133 00:12:14.680 --> 00:12:18.700 as they are in Illinois, not citizens, can't use accords. 134 00:12:18.700 --> 00:12:21.400 Is it quite certain that this betters their condition? 135 00:12:23.520 --> 00:12:24.860 What next? 136 00:12:24.860 --> 00:12:28.160 Free them and make them politically and socially our equals? 137 00:12:28.740 --> 00:12:35.740 My own feelings will not admit of this, and if mine would, we well know that those of the great mass of white people will not. 138 00:12:35.740 --> 00:12:42.740 Whether this feeling is caused with justice and sound judgment is not the sole question, if indeed it is any part of it. 139 00:12:42.740 --> 00:12:49.740 A universal feeling, whether well or ill-founded, cannot be safely disregarded. 140 00:12:49.740 --> 00:12:54.740 We cannot then make them equals. 141 00:12:54.740 --> 00:12:59.740 That was the assumption that Americans had. 142 00:12:59.740 --> 00:13:10.740 What then was the moral solution to an alien population that people believed was never to be socially and politically integrated into the polity? 143 00:13:10.740 --> 00:13:12.740 That was the moral issue. 144 00:13:12.740 --> 00:13:14.740 Slavery wasn't the moral issue. 145 00:13:14.740 --> 00:13:19.740 It was an abstract natural right proposition, because most people agreed on that. 146 00:13:19.740 --> 00:13:21.740 The problem was a practical one. 147 00:13:21.740 --> 00:13:28.560 Now, what do you do with these alien people? Now, Lincoln confessed, here's the greatest 148 00:13:28.560 --> 00:13:34.060 of all American statesmen, so great that you can't even comprehend it, he confessed that 149 00:13:34.060 --> 00:13:41.300 he was blocked at every turn in thinking of a solution. Quote, if all earthly power were 150 00:13:41.300 --> 00:13:48.740 given to me, I should not know what to do as to the existing institution, end quote. 151 00:13:48.740 --> 00:13:54.740 Well, you know, abolitionists knew what to do. 152 00:13:54.740 --> 00:13:58.740 I mean, they had pretty radical positions, but there were things you could do. 153 00:13:58.740 --> 00:14:01.740 Anyway, accordingly, Lincoln acknowledged... 154 00:14:01.740 --> 00:14:05.740 One reason he said that, of course, is because everybody was hedged in. 155 00:14:05.740 --> 00:14:07.740 It was just something... 156 00:14:07.740 --> 00:14:11.740 Given the assumptions and the way people actually were, it was a real problem. 157 00:14:11.740 --> 00:14:18.740 Accordingly, Lincoln acknowledged the common moral understanding of northerners and southerners on this question. 158 00:14:18.740 --> 00:14:22.740 He said, we agree on all the basic moral issues. 159 00:14:22.740 --> 00:14:28.740 He says this, August 21st, 1858, and many other places, at a debate with Douglas. 160 00:14:28.740 --> 00:14:37.740 Quote, before proceeding, let me say, I think I have no prejudice against the southern people. 161 00:14:37.740 --> 00:14:39.740 Lincoln often called himself a southerner. 162 00:14:39.740 --> 00:14:42.740 He was from Kentucky, married into a southern family. 163 00:14:42.740 --> 00:14:45.740 He said, well, you know, we southerners don't think like some of you on these issues. 164 00:14:45.740 --> 00:14:51.740 Who would say things like that? He had the kind of cultural background. 165 00:14:51.740 --> 00:14:53.740 I have no prejudice against the southern people. 166 00:14:53.740 --> 00:14:58.740 They are just what we would be in their situation. 167 00:14:58.740 --> 00:15:00.740 Think of Illinois. 168 00:15:00.740 --> 00:15:06.740 If slavery did not now exist amongst them, they would not introduce it. 169 00:15:06.740 --> 00:15:11.940 Here the common belief of Americans that slavery abstractly considered is wrong, and Lincoln 170 00:15:11.940 --> 00:15:18.940 is acknowledging that even for Southerners. They wouldn't introduce it. Why? Because they 171 00:15:18.940 --> 00:15:27.940 think it's wrong. If it did now exist amongst us, we should not instantly give it up. Here 172 00:15:27.940 --> 00:15:32.340 the common belief among Americans that the consequences of universal emancipation will 173 00:15:32.340 --> 00:15:45.780 This I believe of the masses of the North and South. 174 00:15:45.780 --> 00:15:49.580 When Southern people tell us they are no more responsible for the origin of slavery than 175 00:15:49.580 --> 00:15:56.900 we, I acknowledge the fact, here, the common belief that slavery is an unfortunate inheritance 176 00:15:56.900 --> 00:16:01.080 of British colonialism, end quote. 177 00:16:01.080 --> 00:16:08.600 Insofar as Lincoln had any solution to the problem, it was, one, gradual emancipation. 178 00:16:08.600 --> 00:16:13.320 He didn't even talk about it for the first 46 years of his life, but gradual emancipation 179 00:16:13.320 --> 00:16:19.600 accompanied by a period of apprenticeship, two, compensation of slaveholders. 180 00:16:19.600 --> 00:16:22.040 He always believed in compensating slaveholders. 181 00:16:22.040 --> 00:16:28.160 He had a great respect for property, except when the war came, but anyway. 182 00:16:28.160 --> 00:16:33.160 and three, eventual deportation of Africans out of the United States. 183 00:16:33.160 --> 00:16:37.160 That was a fundamental policy and I want to talk about that. 184 00:16:37.160 --> 00:16:44.160 The American Colonization Society, which promoted deporting blacks out of the United States, 185 00:16:44.160 --> 00:16:49.160 including among its members Lincoln, Daniel Webster, Francis Scott Key, Andrew Jackson, 186 00:16:49.160 --> 00:16:55.160 Millard Fillmore, John Marshall, James Monroe, James Madison, Thomas Jefferson, and so on and so on. 187 00:16:55.160 --> 00:17:02.160 Henry Clay, who had been president of the society, was Lincoln's mentor on matters of slavery, economics, and politics. 188 00:17:02.160 --> 00:17:07.160 Much of Lincoln's writings are almost cribs from Clay. He loved Clay. 189 00:17:08.160 --> 00:17:21.160 Like Clay, Lincoln had a high moral vision of slavery as a period of tutelage whereby Africans acquired the dispositions of a superior civilization in religion, law, and liberty. 190 00:17:21.160 --> 00:17:24.160 This is a common thing Southerners would say, too. 191 00:17:24.160 --> 00:17:37.160 These could be taken back, quote, by the African to his native clime to educate and enrich his posterity. 192 00:17:37.160 --> 00:17:44.160 Lincoln always thought of blacks as an alien people out of their, quote, native land, end quote. 193 00:17:44.160 --> 00:17:51.160 Whereas most southerners thought that blacks' native land was Virginia and Georgia and so on. 194 00:17:51.160 --> 00:18:05.460 According to his biographer, J.G. Randle, Lincoln placed deportation at the top of his presidential policy agenda and observed that, quote, 195 00:18:05.460 --> 00:18:14.460 One can hardly find any subject on which Lincoln argued and pleaded more earnestly than on this, end quote, deportation. 196 00:18:14.460 --> 00:18:23.460 In two State of the Union addresses, in the preliminary Emancipation Proclamation and in a number of other policy statements, 197 00:18:23.460 --> 00:18:29.460 Lincoln urged that the federal and state governments buy slaves and deport them to an appropriate place. 198 00:18:29.460 --> 00:18:33.460 He had argued for this during the debates with Douglas. 199 00:18:33.460 --> 00:18:41.620 In 1857, he proposed that the Illinois legislature appropriate money to colonize free Negroes 200 00:18:41.620 --> 00:18:44.380 out of the state. 201 00:18:44.380 --> 00:18:49.700 He introduced a constitutional amendment in 1862 to buy and deport slaves. 202 00:18:49.700 --> 00:18:55.140 Lincoln engaged the State Department to arrange a treaty with England, France, the Netherlands, 203 00:18:55.140 --> 00:19:01.380 and other colonial powers to sell or to lease a place for free Negroes. 204 00:19:01.380 --> 00:19:05.540 The Secretary of State was ordered to explore the possibility of settlements in Haiti, Liberia, 205 00:19:05.540 --> 00:19:14.140 New Granada, Ecuador, Senkwa, Suriname, British Guiana, Honduras, and even the Amazon. Preferably 206 00:19:14.140 --> 00:19:22.380 a hot place. At one time, he proposed deporting the entire slave population to Texas. This 207 00:19:22.380 --> 00:19:30.460 was when Texas was fighting. Florida was also considered. Even in the last months of the 208 00:19:30.460 --> 00:19:35.740 or Lincoln proposed to his cabinet raising $400 million to compensate slaveholders if 209 00:19:35.740 --> 00:19:42.380 they would return to the Union and ratify the 13th Amendment by July 1st, 1865. 210 00:19:42.380 --> 00:19:50.500 Now compensated emancipation was always tied in Lincoln's mind to the policy of deportation. 211 00:19:50.500 --> 00:19:54.620 And he did say that the deportation would be at their will, that the slaves would have 212 00:19:54.620 --> 00:19:55.620 to give their consent. 213 00:19:55.620 --> 00:20:02.580 But once the federal government has a policy of deportation by consent, consent gets pretty tacit. 214 00:20:02.580 --> 00:20:06.940 We now start talking about tacit consent. 215 00:20:06.940 --> 00:20:12.580 So you don't want to have federal government talking about deportation of anything or anybody. 216 00:20:12.580 --> 00:20:19.300 Okay, for 45 of his 56 years, Lincoln never raised the issue of slavery. 217 00:20:19.300 --> 00:20:25.900 Nor did he make any effort to improve the conditions of blacks in Illinois. 218 00:20:25.900 --> 00:20:30.620 Lincoln took up the topic of slavery only after the Kansas-Nebraska Act was passed in 219 00:20:30.620 --> 00:20:32.780 1854. 220 00:20:32.780 --> 00:20:37.900 This act abolished the Missouri Compromise Line that extended to the west, allowing slavery 221 00:20:37.900 --> 00:20:41.260 to the south but ruling it out to the north. 222 00:20:41.260 --> 00:20:48.060 The territories would now decide, after this Kansas Act, whether or not to allow slavery. 223 00:20:48.060 --> 00:20:52.580 Most commentators agree that Lincoln turned to the slavery question as a way of reviving 224 00:20:52.580 --> 00:21:00.840 a moribund political career. He was dead politically. As many today play the race card to gain power 225 00:21:00.840 --> 00:21:06.920 and to centralize power, so Lincoln played the slavery card. He heated up passions by 226 00:21:06.920 --> 00:21:12.760 inciting fear that the Kansas-Nebraska Act now opened the door to the extension of slavery 227 00:21:12.760 --> 00:21:16.320 into the West and to the Northern States as well. 228 00:21:16.320 --> 00:21:17.960 In other words, if any state could decide 229 00:21:17.960 --> 00:21:19.720 whether it would have slavery or not, 230 00:21:19.720 --> 00:21:23.280 then, you know, for all you Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, 231 00:21:23.280 --> 00:21:26.880 God knows what the slave power could do. 232 00:21:26.880 --> 00:21:30.920 They'd all be voting for slavery or if, you know, and so on. 233 00:21:30.920 --> 00:21:34.480 So, but this was largely a contrived issue, 234 00:21:34.480 --> 00:21:36.560 this fear of slavery in the West, 235 00:21:36.560 --> 00:21:38.240 as Daniel Webster pointed out. 236 00:21:39.280 --> 00:21:41.600 There was no probability of the plantation system 237 00:21:41.600 --> 00:21:50.960 and Moving West. By 1860, there were only 17 slaves in all of the Western Territories. 238 00:21:50.960 --> 00:21:58.100 This was, you know, it heated up passions. Lincoln gave high-minded speeches about slavery 239 00:21:58.100 --> 00:22:02.480 being wrong and why it should be forbidden in the Western Territories. But it was not 240 00:22:02.480 --> 00:22:08.200 slavery as such that bothered him or his audience. As anyone reading the Black Codes of Northern 241 00:22:08.200 --> 00:22:21.200 It was the entrance of Negroes, free or slave, into the West, but once in the territories, slaves could pass through an apprenticeship system, for example, and be free. 242 00:22:21.200 --> 00:22:35.200 So indeed, diffusion of the African population westward was one scenario of eventual emancipation that Jefferson and other southerners had once entertained. 243 00:22:35.200 --> 00:23:04.200 A Reduction of the Black to White Ratio in a State would ease the difficulty of social and political integration, 5% Black to White, but not 30% or 25% or 40%. 244 00:23:04.200 --> 00:23:08.560 But diffusion had been blocked by the demand that the northwestern territory should be 245 00:23:08.560 --> 00:23:10.040 an African free zone. 246 00:23:10.040 --> 00:23:14.840 For example, John Randolph freed his slaves in his will and bought farms for them in western 247 00:23:14.840 --> 00:23:15.840 Ohio. 248 00:23:15.840 --> 00:23:21.600 But the citizens of Mercer County, Ohio, forced them out. 249 00:23:21.600 --> 00:23:31.400 The slaves returned to Virginia and asked to be made wards of the state, and they were. 250 00:23:31.400 --> 00:23:36.500 The Virginia didn't want to keep having these wards of the state to take care of. 251 00:23:36.500 --> 00:23:41.320 It was this fear that the western territories would be a dumping ground for blacks and not 252 00:23:41.320 --> 00:23:47.120 a moral passion to stamp out or to restrict slavery that animated Lincoln's speeches and 253 00:23:47.120 --> 00:23:49.760 inflamed his audience. 254 00:23:49.760 --> 00:23:51.080 We really have to stress that. 255 00:23:51.080 --> 00:23:52.840 It wasn't a moral passion. 256 00:23:52.840 --> 00:23:55.800 People say, well, Lincoln was anti-slavery, et cetera, et cetera. 257 00:23:55.800 --> 00:23:59.040 But we've got to look at this ugly white supremacy. 258 00:23:59.040 --> 00:24:07.040 The territories, he said, quote, should be kept open for the homes of free, white people, end quote. 259 00:24:07.040 --> 00:24:19.040 Quote, is it not rather our duty, he asked, to make labor more respectable by preventing all black competition, especially in the territories, end quote. 260 00:24:19.040 --> 00:24:23.040 And he has some more colorful language to describe those who are coming in. 261 00:24:23.040 --> 00:24:42.040 And one example he gives, he has a little story, he likes to tell stories, of a farmer with a vegetable garden and a fence around it and his neighbor lets his hogs out and they come running through, knock the fence over and go run over the cabbages and everything and just make a mess of it. 262 00:24:42.040 --> 00:24:59.040 The Western Territories of the Garden, The Fence, the Missouri Compromise Line, the Kansas-Nebraska Act, Knock the Fence Down, and you're going to have all these black hogs coming in. 263 00:24:59.040 --> 00:25:05.040 Keeping all blacks out of the territories would solve the problem of miscegenation, which Lincoln viewed with horror. 264 00:25:05.040 --> 00:25:09.940 He declared in his speech, 1857, June 26, that, quote, 265 00:25:09.940 --> 00:25:14.540 A separation of the races is the only perfect prevention of amalgamation, 266 00:25:14.540 --> 00:25:17.740 but as an immediate separation is impossible, 267 00:25:17.740 --> 00:25:22.540 the next best thing is to keep them apart where they are not already together. 268 00:25:22.540 --> 00:25:25.640 If white and black people never get together in Kansas, 269 00:25:25.640 --> 00:25:31.040 they will never mix blood in Kansas, end quote. 270 00:25:31.040 --> 00:25:33.440 What I would most desire, he said at another place, 271 00:25:33.440 --> 00:25:39.760 would be the separation of the white and black races. 272 00:25:39.760 --> 00:25:44.240 Now the myth of the moral grandeur of Lincoln is rooted in the debates with Douglas where 273 00:25:44.240 --> 00:25:48.760 Lincoln is supposed to have raised the moral horizon of Americans by rediscovering the 274 00:25:48.760 --> 00:25:53.880 radical egalitarian implications of the statement in the Declaration of Independence that all 275 00:25:53.880 --> 00:25:58.880 men are created equal. 276 00:25:58.880 --> 00:26:03.240 The moral quarrel between Lincoln and Douglas was briefly this. 277 00:26:03.240 --> 00:26:07.840 Lincoln has argued that the founders did not include Africans in the declaration's claim 278 00:26:07.840 --> 00:26:14.060 that all men are created equal, but rather tacitly understood a certain kind of man developed 279 00:26:14.060 --> 00:26:17.700 by a certain kind of culture. 280 00:26:17.700 --> 00:26:23.380 Lincoln argued that Africans and indeed all men, independent of culture and tradition 281 00:26:23.380 --> 00:26:26.960 and law, were included. 282 00:26:26.960 --> 00:26:32.800 Here Lincoln appears to have taken the high moral ground. 283 00:26:32.800 --> 00:26:38.560 But this is an illusion. For in the debates he also holds that there is a physical difference 284 00:26:38.560 --> 00:26:43.800 between blacks and whites which rules out social and political equality, and that blacks 285 00:26:43.800 --> 00:26:48.960 are to remain in a subordinate position. This is very clear in the debates. A proposition 286 00:26:48.960 --> 00:26:53.220 that he and Douglas agree on, quote, I as well as Judge Douglas am in favor of the race 287 00:26:53.220 --> 00:26:57.640 to which I belong having the superior position, end quote. 288 00:26:57.640 --> 00:27:02.200 Now how are you going to reconcile the radical egalitarian claim, supposedly coming from 289 00:27:02.200 --> 00:27:16.580 Lincoln's answer is that the egalitarian principle applies only to new states. 290 00:27:16.580 --> 00:27:21.720 Where slavery is already established by law and custom, slavery can remain, and it would 291 00:27:21.720 --> 00:27:27.120 be criminal to subvert it, for example, to disobey the fugitive slave laws in the name 292 00:27:27.120 --> 00:27:30.120 of natural rights. 293 00:27:30.120 --> 00:27:41.760 Lincoln was reduced in the debates with Douglas to the moral absurdity that blacks were included 294 00:27:41.760 --> 00:27:46.760 in the inalienable natural rights affirmed in the Declaration of Independence, but that 295 00:27:46.760 --> 00:27:57.860 they could not exercise those rights in the United States. 296 00:27:57.860 --> 00:28:04.020 He said that on many occasions and in some cases so clear that he could not be misunderstood. 297 00:28:04.020 --> 00:28:10.740 Here's a passage, quote, Negroes have natural rights as other men have, although they cannot 298 00:28:10.740 --> 00:28:13.220 enjoy them here. 299 00:28:13.220 --> 00:28:17.500 And even Taney once said that the Declaration of Independence was broad enough for all men. 300 00:28:17.500 --> 00:28:20.940 But though it does not declare that all men are equal in their attainments and social 301 00:28:20.940 --> 00:28:27.280 position, yet no sane man will attempt to deny that the African upon his own soil has 302 00:28:27.280 --> 00:28:33.400 has all the natural rights at instrument vouchsafes to all mankind, end quote. 303 00:28:33.400 --> 00:28:38.240 In other words, in order for blacks to enjoy the natural rights that no time, circumstance 304 00:28:38.240 --> 00:28:44.360 or tradition can alienate, they must be deported to Africa. 305 00:28:44.360 --> 00:28:49.000 Anybody get the irony of that? 306 00:28:49.000 --> 00:28:54.480 So it turns out natural rights, it depends on where you are as to where you have them. 307 00:28:54.480 --> 00:28:58.720 Lincoln said many times that the Declaration did not imply that blacks were equal to whites 308 00:28:58.720 --> 00:29:02.640 in all respects and that they could be justly placed in conditions of ordination where they 309 00:29:02.640 --> 00:29:03.640 were not equal. 310 00:29:03.640 --> 00:29:08.200 Now, in what respects were they equal or unequal? 311 00:29:08.200 --> 00:29:13.280 On this most important moral question, this greatest of all American statesmen had virtually 312 00:29:13.280 --> 00:29:15.240 nothing to say. 313 00:29:15.240 --> 00:29:20.360 In what respects are they equal? 314 00:29:20.360 --> 00:29:21.360 That's the big deal. 315 00:29:21.360 --> 00:29:22.440 What are they? 316 00:29:22.440 --> 00:29:27.240 He says there's a physical difference, and not merely a cultural one, and he says that 317 00:29:27.240 --> 00:29:33.000 blacks are not equal in color, and perhaps not in moral or intellectual endowment. 318 00:29:33.000 --> 00:29:36.120 Lincoln mentioned only one sense in which they were equal, and he mentions it a number 319 00:29:36.120 --> 00:29:37.120 of times. 320 00:29:37.120 --> 00:29:42.120 Quote, and the right to put into his mouth the bread that his own hands have earned, 321 00:29:42.120 --> 00:29:47.200 he is the equal of every man, white or black, end quote. 322 00:29:47.200 --> 00:29:52.420 That sounds all very well, but consider, the free man in a free society must also have 323 00:29:52.420 --> 00:29:56.420 He must have control of the means of producing the bread. 324 00:29:56.420 --> 00:30:03.420 He must have the right to earn it somewhere and to protect that right in the courts when it is violated. 325 00:30:03.420 --> 00:30:12.420 But he cannot earn it at all in Lincoln's, Illinois, because the Constitution of that state prohibits his entrance. 326 00:30:12.420 --> 00:30:21.420 And even if he's in the state, he's not a citizen, does not have use of the courts, and cannot vote, and severely restricted. 327 00:30:21.420 --> 00:30:27.420 The right to earn, the right to eat the bread he's earned with his own hands, tell it like it is, Abe. 328 00:30:27.420 --> 00:30:35.420 But he can't, you know, that's all very well, but that's an abstract thing that you can use to heat up passions. 329 00:30:35.420 --> 00:30:41.420 You've got to be able to actually earn the bread somewhere and be able to go to court to protect your earnings. 330 00:30:41.420 --> 00:30:47.420 On March 2nd, 1861, Congress passed what would have been the 13th Amendment. 331 00:30:47.420 --> 00:31:11.420 This amendment protected slavery forever. 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. 332 00:31:11.420 --> 00:31:20.420 You notice what that said. It didn't say that Congress will never have the authority to interfere with slavery. It didn't say that. 333 00:31:20.420 --> 00:31:27.420 It said the Constitution can never be amended to give Congress the authority. 334 00:31:27.420 --> 00:31:38.420 The only other place where it is said that the Constitution can't be amended is that every state has a right to equality in the Senate, equal representation in the Senate. 335 00:31:38.420 --> 00:31:43.420 So what this amendment does is it ties slavery to the very idea of the Union. 336 00:31:43.420 --> 00:31:48.420 It's internal to the Union. 337 00:31:48.420 --> 00:31:54.420 If you suggest an amendment to abolish slavery via the Federal Government, you are throwing into question the Constitution itself. 338 00:31:54.420 --> 00:31:59.420 Amazing, amazing. Lincoln approved it. 339 00:31:59.420 --> 00:32:04.420 In his first inaugural, he says, I have no objection to its being made express and irrevocable. 340 00:32:04.420 --> 00:32:07.420 Because he had always maintained just that. 341 00:32:07.420 --> 00:32:16.420 So if the South had stayed in the Union, slavery would have continued as long as the states desired, as far as the Federal Government goes. 342 00:32:16.420 --> 00:32:30.420 Now, as strange as it may seem, there was no serious political opposition to slavery throughout the entire antebellum period, at least not in the form of national political parties. 343 00:32:30.420 --> 00:32:42.420 A few abolitionists were elected here and there in state elections, but no political party of any importance even raised the question of emancipation. 344 00:32:42.420 --> 00:32:56.420 Van Buren's minute Free Soil Party did include a compensated emancipation plank, but it was flatly rejected at the polls, sort of like Pat Buchanan's try. 345 00:32:56.420 --> 00:33:04.420 Nor were Lincoln and his associates above inciting racist fears and attacking Van Buren's courageous proposal. 346 00:33:08.420 --> 00:33:13.420 The North didn't invade the South over the moral question of slavery. 347 00:33:13.420 --> 00:33:17.420 This is clear. There was no national party arguing for emancipation. 348 00:33:17.420 --> 00:33:20.420 Lincoln was opposed to emancipation and so on. 349 00:33:20.420 --> 00:33:25.420 And slavery would have been protected by this constitutional amendment, the Dred Scott case protected slavery. 350 00:33:25.420 --> 00:33:32.420 I mean, how could you protect it anymore than it was? So why do they secede? 351 00:33:32.420 --> 00:33:41.420 The answer is a complicated one and cannot be even partly adequately taken up here, but it can be said right away, there was no single reason. 352 00:33:41.420 --> 00:33:48.420 It's the first thing. It's a big region. Different states seceded for different reasons. 353 00:33:48.420 --> 00:33:59.420 Just to give an example, Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee and Arkansas voted to remain in the Union even after the Confederacy was formed. 354 00:33:59.420 --> 00:34:02.420 They were strongly Unionist. 355 00:34:02.420 --> 00:34:09.420 They reversed themselves only after Lincoln decided on invasion, which they considered both unconstitutional and immoral. 356 00:34:09.420 --> 00:34:15.420 These four states certainly did not secede over slavery. 357 00:34:15.420 --> 00:34:45.420 Now, here's another thing we think about. Had Jefferson lived in Madison and Washington, all those were pro-union people, had they lived to see that happen, had they lived to see Massachusetts troops coming over the border of Virginia, there's no question in my mind that Jefferson would have been a Confederate, that Madison would have been a Confederate, that George Washington would have been a Confederate. Even though these were Union men, because Virginia was a Union state, it always had an investment in the Union. 358 00:34:45.420 --> 00:34:49.420 is that the South was American. 359 00:34:49.420 --> 00:34:53.420 In other words, its secession was an American thing. 360 00:34:53.420 --> 00:34:59.420 Whereas our nationalist historians have pictured the South as a kind of weird, crazy section 361 00:34:59.420 --> 00:35:05.420 that tried to destroy the last best hope on earth so they could enslave human beings. 362 00:35:05.420 --> 00:35:10.420 When you think of Jefferson as a confederate, you've got a real problem with understanding 363 00:35:10.420 --> 00:35:19.420 Herman Melville puts it this way in a poem, if I can remember it correctly. 364 00:35:19.420 --> 00:35:30.420 He who has seen Lee has seen Washington and must hide the thought, so fraught with grievous meaning is it wrought. 365 00:35:30.420 --> 00:35:35.420 You've seen Lee, you've seen Washington, and you just have to suppress that. 366 00:35:35.420 --> 00:35:49.420 If one had to pick one cause of secession around which the other causes revolved in orbit, it would have to be the 40-year long moral and constitutional conflict surrounding the Northern policy of imposing a protected tariff. 367 00:35:49.420 --> 00:36:02.420 I don't think this was the major cause. I don't think there's a major cause. There are many, many causes, including people just getting sick of constant rancor in the air. 368 00:36:02.420 --> 00:36:08.420 Sometimes there's just people you don't want to live with anymore. 369 00:36:08.420 --> 00:36:16.420 If one had to pick one, okay, Charles Adams has written brilliantly on this. 370 00:36:16.420 --> 00:36:19.420 His book is out there, Winning the Course of Human Events. 371 00:36:19.420 --> 00:36:24.420 But British, it's interesting that British pundits such as Charles Dickens, as he points out, 372 00:36:24.420 --> 00:36:29.420 Lord Acton and Karl Marx, all agreed on the basic cause of the war. 373 00:36:29.420 --> 00:36:33.900 The War. Mark supported the North, but he had no illusions as to what the war was about. 374 00:36:33.900 --> 00:36:39.300 Quote, the war between the North and the South is a tariff war. The war is further not for 375 00:36:39.300 --> 00:36:46.820 any principle, does not touch the question of slavery, and in fact turns on the Northern 376 00:36:46.820 --> 00:36:52.260 lust for sovereignty, end quote. What we have is the modern state getting the artificial 377 00:36:52.260 --> 00:37:05.260 from 1820 to 1860, the United States was in a condition of bitter sectional conflict over tariff and surrounding issues. 378 00:37:05.260 --> 00:37:12.260 As of 1860, about 75% of American exports were agricultural staples. 379 00:37:12.260 --> 00:37:18.260 Nearly all of this came from the South and was exchanged for British and European manufactures. 380 00:37:18.260 --> 00:37:24.260 The South raised little objection to a tariff in 1816 to pay off the debt for the War of 1812. 381 00:37:24.260 --> 00:37:29.260 The result was a 25% tax on woolen, cotton and iron manufacturers. 382 00:37:29.260 --> 00:37:35.260 A 30% ad valorem tax on various goods and a 15% duty on all other imports. 383 00:37:35.260 --> 00:37:41.260 The 1816 tariff was to have expired in three years but was extended to 824. 384 00:37:41.260 --> 00:37:47.260 Under this tariff, Northern profits on manufacturing climbed as high as 25%. 385 00:37:47.260 --> 00:38:06.140 Charles Wiltz observes that, quote, tariff sentiment rose with rising profits. The protectionist 386 00:38:06.140 --> 00:38:12.980 movement came to be as completely sectional as slavery itself, end quote. Now this spectacular 387 00:38:12.980 --> 00:38:23.980 The labor increase in northern profits prompted an increase of the tariff in 1824. 388 00:38:23.980 --> 00:38:40.980 The minimum duty on cotton goods, which had been set at 25%, was raised to over 33% for a stunning average rate of 37%. 389 00:38:40.980 --> 00:38:47.480 South Carolina's economy depended almost entirely on exporting staples on an unprotected world market. 390 00:38:47.480 --> 00:38:57.280 A year after the new tariff in 1824, the price of cotton dropped from 21 cents per pound to 12 cents a pound in one year. 391 00:38:57.280 --> 00:39:00.880 The next year it dropped again to 8.8 cents a pound. 392 00:39:00.880 --> 00:39:08.280 From 1825 to 1827, her exports declined from 11 million to 8 million. 393 00:39:08.280 --> 00:39:15.240 Not satisfied, the North again raised the tariff to the unbelievable high average of 50% on 394 00:39:15.240 --> 00:39:21.280 durable goods in 1828. This is called the Tariff of Abominations. Now this was done 395 00:39:21.280 --> 00:39:26.560 in full knowledge of what it would do to the South Carolina export trade. The response 396 00:39:26.560 --> 00:39:32.400 of South Carolina was nullification until the tariff came down to 10%. A compromise 397 00:39:32.400 --> 00:39:38.040 was reached on durable goods at around 19%, eventually where it hovered until Lincoln's 398 00:39:38.040 --> 00:39:54.040 Now, Lincoln ran on a Republican Party plank that proposed raising the tariff back to the high level that had prompted South Carolina's nullification, back to the tariff of abomination. 399 00:39:54.040 --> 00:40:04.040 So this is... Not only that, but listen to what Southerners had to listen to. Wendell Phillips was a major leader in the Republican Party. 400 00:40:04.040 --> 00:40:31.040 It is just what we have attempted to bring about. It is the first sectional party ever organized in the country. It does not really know its own face, and calls itself national. But it is not national, it is sectional. The Republican Party is a party of the North pledged against the South. 401 00:40:31.040 --> 00:40:39.040 Now what historians will tell you is when the Republicans elected an anti-slavery president, the South seceded. 402 00:40:39.040 --> 00:40:46.040 You're supposed to believe that they loved slavery so much that the mere whiff of anti-slavery drove them out. 403 00:40:46.040 --> 00:40:52.040 None of this stuff is mentioned, that they had to listen to leading Republican leaders say this was a sectional party, 404 00:40:52.040 --> 00:40:56.040 and the Republican party got no votes in the South. It was a sectional party. 405 00:40:56.040 --> 00:41:06.040 Now it was clear to the South that the North would use its majority in Congress to pursue its interests, even if it meant wrecking the southern export trade. 406 00:41:06.040 --> 00:41:21.040 Accordingly, South Carolina succeeded and Congress immediately raised the tariff to 47% average on durable goods on March 6, 1861, before Fort Sumter. 407 00:41:21.040 --> 00:41:28.040 Lincoln said that South Carolina could stay in the Union if it liked, but he would collect the revenue. 408 00:41:28.040 --> 00:41:31.040 Like Rome, the North would live by tribute. 409 00:41:31.040 --> 00:41:35.040 Lincoln sent troops to Fort Sumter where the tariff was collected. 410 00:41:35.040 --> 00:41:40.040 South Carolina resisted paying tribute to the Union, and as their fathers before them had done, 411 00:41:40.040 --> 00:41:44.040 they drove the tax-collecting military from the fort with no casualties. 412 00:41:44.040 --> 00:41:51.040 None of this had anything whatsoever to do with the moral issue of slavery. 413 00:41:51.040 --> 00:42:02.040 If you go to Charleston on East Bay Street, right on the water, you'll see a huge, the biggest building there, a huge marble building, the U.S. Customs House. 414 00:42:02.040 --> 00:42:11.040 Look at it sometimes. It kind of looks like the Lincoln Memorial. 415 00:42:11.040 --> 00:42:18.040 Okay, I'm not going to read any more about the tariff business, I think you get the point of that. 416 00:42:18.040 --> 00:42:25.040 Lincoln was a Hamiltonian mercantilist, which you'd learn from Clay. 417 00:42:25.040 --> 00:42:32.040 I want to turn now to the Northern abolitionist argument that secession of the North was the best way to solve the problem of slavery. 418 00:42:32.040 --> 00:42:38.040 And Jeffrey Hummel, of course, has written a wonderful book on this, Emancipating Slaves and Enslaving Free Men. 419 00:42:38.040 --> 00:42:44.200 To appreciate this, let's consider what would most likely have happened if the South had not succeeded. 420 00:42:44.200 --> 00:42:48.540 Now again, our subject is the moral issue of slavery. This is what we're thinking about. 421 00:42:48.540 --> 00:42:57.600 The Constitutional Amendment making it impossible to change the Constitution to allow Congress to interfere with slavery would have been ratified by the states. 422 00:42:57.600 --> 00:42:59.340 No question about it. 423 00:42:59.340 --> 00:43:05.340 Slavery would last as long as the states wanted to, and the federal government would have no power. 424 00:43:05.340 --> 00:43:07.800 How long did Lincoln think it might last? 425 00:43:07.800 --> 00:43:17.800 He said it might last a century, he just didn't want it to go west, he didn't want any blacks in the west, that was the problem. 426 00:43:17.800 --> 00:43:21.400 But in the south it could last a century, work its way out. 427 00:43:21.400 --> 00:43:28.500 He drew up a private emancipation bill for Delaware, which was never published, in which the apprenticeship period was quite long. 428 00:43:28.500 --> 00:43:38.300 On his scheme, slavery would not have been eliminated until 1914. 429 00:43:38.300 --> 00:43:43.580 In his State of the Union Address, December 1st, 1862, he proposed what would have been 430 00:43:43.580 --> 00:43:48.980 another 13th Amendment to the Constitution that required slavery be abolished January 431 00:43:48.980 --> 00:43:50.460 1st, 1900. 432 00:43:50.460 --> 00:43:55.040 His proposed 14th Amendment would compensate slaveholders who had remained loyal to the 433 00:43:55.040 --> 00:44:18.040 These were presented before the Emancipation Proclamation was issued. Had the South stayed in the Union, slavery would have had an ironclad protection and could have easily stretched into the 20th century if Southern states had desired it. 434 00:44:18.040 --> 00:44:28.040 What would have been the prospects of emancipation in the South had the Confederacy secured its independence? 435 00:44:28.040 --> 00:44:38.040 It is reasonable to think that the South would have abolished slavery in a reasonable period of time and probably sooner than the schedule projected by Lincoln. 436 00:44:38.040 --> 00:44:45.040 By the 1880s slavery had entirely vanished from the Western Hemisphere. 437 00:44:45.040 --> 00:44:49.040 Only in Haiti, in the United States, was its abolition accompanied by violence. 438 00:44:49.040 --> 00:44:53.040 There had long been an abolitionist tradition in the South, especially in Virginia. 439 00:44:53.040 --> 00:44:57.040 By 1830, there were more abolitionist societies in the South than in the North. 440 00:44:57.040 --> 00:45:03.040 In 1832, the Virginia legislature was called by the governor to do something about slavery. 441 00:45:03.040 --> 00:45:10.040 It passed a resolution to abolish slavery in Virginia, but ran into difficulties when writing the statute. 442 00:45:10.040 --> 00:45:12.040 The bill was tabled. 443 00:45:12.040 --> 00:45:18.340 It was just at this time that the abolitionist frenzy swept down from the North, urging immediate 444 00:45:18.340 --> 00:45:21.720 and uncompensated emancipation. 445 00:45:21.720 --> 00:45:27.280 The circulation of pamphlets, urging a slave uprising, poisoning water in the wells, murdering 446 00:45:27.280 --> 00:45:31.960 the families of planters in their sleep, as John Brown did and was praised for doing, 447 00:45:31.960 --> 00:45:36.280 did not strengthen the moderate forces of abolition in the South. 448 00:45:36.280 --> 00:45:41.400 Thomas Hart Benton, who had worked to secure the right of a jury trial for slaves in Missouri, 449 00:45:41.400 --> 00:46:01.400 Sirfdom, a European form of slavery, was abolished in England not by statute, but over centuries by judicial review under the common law. 450 00:46:01.400 --> 00:46:05.400 A great deal of Southern jurisprudence was rooted in this principle. 451 00:46:05.400 --> 00:46:28.000 Let me explain it. The principle was laid down in common law by Chief Justice Lord Mansfield in Somerset's case, 1771, namely that slavery, being a violation of natural law, could be justified only by positive statute, and that such statutes must be strictly construed in the light of natural law. 452 00:46:28.000 --> 00:46:34.000 So if you had any wiggle room, you nudged the statute for interpretation, you nudged it in the direction of natural law. 453 00:46:36.000 --> 00:46:52.000 To take an instance, a Virginia statute provided that, quote, slaves shall hereafter be brought into this commonwealth and kept therein one year or so long, at different times as shall amount to one year, shall be free, end quote. 454 00:46:52.000 --> 00:47:04.000 But the statue had a proviso that excluded a slaveholder from another state who had become a citizen of Virginia and took a specified oath within a certain period of time. 455 00:47:04.000 --> 00:47:17.000 In Murray v. McCarty, 1811, Judge Joseph Cable construed the proviso strictly so as to grant a slave, Nancy Murray, her freedom. 456 00:47:17.000 --> 00:47:40.000 Chief Justice William Gaston of the North Carolina Supreme Court in State vs. Manual, 1838, carried the principle of strict construction and the direction of freedom so far as to hold that whenever a slave became free by any lawful means, he also became a citizen of his state with the same rights as other citizens. 457 00:47:40.000 --> 00:47:46.000 Now, recall that Lincoln was opposed to making black citizens in his state. He said, quote, 458 00:47:46.000 --> 00:47:56.000 the state of Illinois has the power, or no, to make, yes, to have the power to make black citizens, I should be opposed to the exercise of it, end quote. 459 00:47:56.000 --> 00:48:03.000 Dred Scott sought his freedom and that of his wife and daughters in a suit brought before the Circuit Court of Missouri. 460 00:48:03.000 --> 00:48:18.000 The Southern Court granted Scott his freedom and his family, basing the decision on a long chain of precedents in Southern state courts rooted in Lord Mansfield's ruling in the Somerset case of 1771. 461 00:48:18.000 --> 00:48:26.600 That a slave entering territory where slavery is prohibited by law is instantly free. 462 00:48:26.600 --> 00:48:33.000 Scott lost his freedom when the case went to the Supreme Court of the United States on appeal in 1857. 463 00:48:34.000 --> 00:48:41.200 So you have a lot of cases where slaveholders lose in the state courts in the South and then they win when they appeal to the federal courts. 464 00:48:43.000 --> 00:48:51.200 Free blacks flourished in the South as businessmen, slaveholders, there were a number of slaveholders, about 6% of free blacks were slaveholders. 465 00:48:51.200 --> 00:49:01.200 One quarter of the blacks in New Orleans were free. In many places, especially urban areas, slavery was developing into an apprenticeship system and slaves were able to buy or work out their freedom. 466 00:49:01.200 --> 00:49:08.200 William Gilmore Sims of Charleston, South Carolina was the greatest Southern literary figure and planter. He thought slavery was a benevolent institution. 467 00:49:08.200 --> 00:49:12.200 But he had no difficulty in abandoning it either, should circumstances change. 468 00:49:12.200 --> 00:49:18.200 In the 1850s he argued that slavery would be eliminated in the border states in about 20 years. 469 00:49:18.200 --> 00:49:24.200 His reason was that the border states, quote, will become manufacturing, end quote. 470 00:49:24.200 --> 00:49:28.200 It's elimination of the deep south, he thought, would take longer. 471 00:49:28.200 --> 00:49:35.200 His prediction was reasonable. By 1860, about half the blacks in Maryland were free, not by statute, 472 00:49:35.200 --> 00:49:39.200 but by having purchased their freedom through apprenticeship. 473 00:49:42.200 --> 00:49:46.200 Just a few other examples. 474 00:49:48.200 --> 00:49:59.200 Well, I won't mention Jefferson Davis' wife adopted a young black boy at seven years old who was being abused, he was an orphan. 475 00:49:59.200 --> 00:50:03.200 She took out papers for his freedom and they adopted him into the family. 476 00:50:03.200 --> 00:50:10.200 He lived, slept and ate and played with the Davis children as a member of the family in the Confederate White House during the years they were in Richmond. 477 00:50:10.200 --> 00:50:17.200 The Union Army seized him by force when Davis was captured and despite Mr. Davis' efforts over the years, 478 00:50:17.200 --> 00:50:23.800 to find him and to quote, look after Jim's education, end quote, he was never heard from again. 479 00:50:23.800 --> 00:50:30.600 You can read the letters the children wrote back and forth to him and about him. 480 00:50:30.600 --> 00:50:34.440 That Lincoln, who never did anything in Illinois to improve the conditions of blacks, would 481 00:50:34.440 --> 00:50:39.400 have freed and adopted a black orphan and raised him up with his own children in the starkly 482 00:50:39.400 --> 00:50:43.840 segregated north of Washington is unimaginable. 483 00:50:43.840 --> 00:50:54.840 Finally, the long-suppressed story of blacks who identified themselves as Southerners were loyal to the Confederacy and saw the war as an opportunity to improve their condition as gradually becoming known. 484 00:50:54.840 --> 00:50:59.840 Blacks were used by Confederates both as workers and as troops before they were so used by the North. 485 00:50:59.840 --> 00:51:06.840 Blacks were everywhere in the Confederate Army. When white regiments marched off to war, they were often accompanied by an equal number of blacks. 486 00:51:06.840 --> 00:51:11.840 For example, there were some 30,000 body servants in the Army of Northern Virginia alone. 487 00:51:11.840 --> 00:51:13.920 in Virginia alone. 488 00:51:13.920 --> 00:51:18.160 Given the informality of Confederate units, some of these and other blacks served in 489 00:51:18.160 --> 00:51:20.000 military capacities. 490 00:51:20.000 --> 00:51:24.360 An Afro-American scholar recently observed, quote, when you eliminate the black Confederate 491 00:51:24.360 --> 00:51:27.840 soldier, you've eliminated the history of the South. 492 00:51:27.840 --> 00:51:31.640 We share a common heritage with white Southerners who recall that era. 493 00:51:31.640 --> 00:51:35.320 We shared in the plantation scheme of things as well as the forces that fought to keep 494 00:51:35.320 --> 00:51:37.120 them, end quote. 495 00:51:37.120 --> 00:51:41.800 Nor should this be surprising as another Afro-American scholar observed, quote, 496 00:51:41.800 --> 00:51:45.920 Students of African-American history should have been able to predict with a great degree 497 00:51:45.920 --> 00:51:51.320 of certitude that some, if not most, black southerners would support their country as 498 00:51:51.320 --> 00:51:54.600 did most white southerners during the Revolutionary War. 499 00:51:54.600 --> 00:51:59.360 Black and white fought on both sides, demonstrating that it is possible to hate the system of 500 00:51:59.360 --> 00:52:04.280 slavery and love one's country, end quote. 501 00:52:04.280 --> 00:52:10.200 Irvin L. Jordan, another African American pioneer in black confederates, 502 00:52:10.200 --> 00:52:17.480 has estimated that up to 25 percent, 65,000 out of 261,000 free Negroes in the South, 503 00:52:17.480 --> 00:52:27.800 and 15 percent, 600,000 out of 4 million slaves, actively supported the South in its struggle for independence. 504 00:52:27.800 --> 00:52:35.160 and it was this use of blacks that so irritated northerners and urged Lincoln to arm blacks 505 00:52:35.160 --> 00:52:43.880 because here the south are using the blacks so we need to subvert their war effort. 506 00:52:43.880 --> 00:52:47.240 Early in the war Confederate commanders such as Patrick Claiborne had argued for arming 507 00:52:47.240 --> 00:52:52.920 blacks as early as August 1863 the Jackson Mississippian insisted that slavery should 508 00:52:52.920 --> 00:52:56.960 should not be, quote, a barrier to our independence. 509 00:52:56.960 --> 00:53:01.160 If it is found in the way, if it proves an insurmountable object to the achievement of 510 00:53:01.160 --> 00:53:08.360 our liberty and separate nationality, away with it, let it perish, end quote. 511 00:53:08.360 --> 00:53:12.320 Later the Confederate cabinet agreed to abolish slavery five years after the end of hostilities 512 00:53:12.320 --> 00:53:17.040 in exchange for British and French recognition. 513 00:53:17.040 --> 00:53:21.920 Now finally, in the last year, the Congress authorized raising 300,000 black troops. 514 00:53:21.920 --> 00:53:28.120 Some states were already raising black troops. Jefferson Davis issued order number 14, which 515 00:53:28.120 --> 00:53:33.680 required that slaves be fully emancipated and treated equally with whites. Quote, no 516 00:53:33.680 --> 00:53:39.560 slave will be accepted as a recruit unless with his own consent and with the approbation 517 00:53:39.560 --> 00:53:46.880 of his master by a written instrument conferring, as far as he may, the rights of a free man. 518 00:53:46.880 --> 00:53:51.800 And again in the order he says, quote, all officers are enjoined to a provident, considerate 519 00:53:51.800 --> 00:54:21.800 and Humane Attention to Whatever Concerns the Health, Comfort, Instruction and Discipline of these Troops and to the Uniform Observance of Kindness, Forbearance and Indulgence in their Treatment of Them, and especially that they will protect them from Injustice and Depression, end quote. And unlike Black Union Troops, they receive equal pay. Okay, let me just end now because we're getting to the... What is missing from nearly all American history 520 00:54:21.800 --> 00:54:36.800 The historyography is the humanity of the South, I mean, the South aren't human beings, they're just cardboard figures stuck as in a Byzantine mosaic to explain American, self-congratulatory American nationalism. 521 00:54:36.800 --> 00:54:42.800 There aren't any blacks there that love their country and would be willing to move up and help. 522 00:54:42.800 --> 00:54:53.800 Most Southerners who could rethink things, they were just stuck in this artificial creation that American nationalism needs. 523 00:54:53.800 --> 00:55:01.800 There were 10,000 Jews that fought in the Confederacy. The five civilized Indian tribes of Oklahoma fought for the Confederacy. 524 00:55:01.800 --> 00:55:09.800 They were represented in the Confederate Congress and in a rare act of magnanimity in American Indian relations were promised a state, 525 00:55:09.800 --> 00:55:19.800 Not a Federal Reservation, but their own state. Indians would have their own state if the Confederacy gained its independence. 526 00:55:24.800 --> 00:55:33.800 Okay, nearly all American historiography after 1865 is nationalist. This is what we've got to fight. 527 00:55:33.800 --> 00:55:38.800 And based on the moral assumption that the Union should have been preserved at all costs, 528 00:55:38.800 --> 00:55:43.800 In the 19th century, the heyday of empire and wars of unification and consolidation, 529 00:55:43.800 --> 00:55:47.800 an American empire might have seen something worth trying. 530 00:55:47.800 --> 00:55:50.800 But we have learned since then, through fatal experience, 531 00:55:50.800 --> 00:55:55.800 about the evils of vast-scale modern states and what they bring in their wake. 532 00:55:55.800 --> 00:56:00.800 Libertarians should begin a new historiography, rooted in the moral proposition 533 00:56:00.800 --> 00:56:04.800 that secession in 1860 was a good thing. 534 00:56:04.800 --> 00:56:12.000 It was the only rational and humane solution to all the problems confronting the Federation at that time. 535 00:56:12.000 --> 00:56:17.600 When two men are about to come to blows, it's best to separate. 536 00:56:17.600 --> 00:56:23.200 To write the history from the assumption that the peaceful dissolution of the Union in 1860 was a good thing 537 00:56:23.200 --> 00:56:27.200 would bring to light a vast array of facts and moral possibilities 538 00:56:27.200 --> 00:56:31.200 and spectacular moral losses that have been hidden from view. 539 00:56:31.200 --> 00:56:35.200 This is what a paradigm shift does. It brings new things out. 540 00:56:35.200 --> 00:56:42.200 It would open up new political possibilities that are today closed off because of the limits. 541 00:56:42.200 --> 00:56:49.200 Because the limits of politics are in large part the limits of human historical self-understanding. 542 00:56:49.200 --> 00:56:54.200 A lack of moral imagination prevents us from even entertaining this thought. 543 00:56:54.200 --> 00:56:59.200 A disability brought on by over a century of state-enforced national propaganda. 544 00:56:59.200 --> 00:57:06.240 How might we ask that there be two unions and a land from sea to shining sea? 545 00:57:06.240 --> 00:57:12.300 Old 19th century nationalist habits are hard to break, even when their rationale has vanished. 546 00:57:12.300 --> 00:57:17.520 But suppose America had conquered Canada, as was attempted on at least two occasions. 547 00:57:17.520 --> 00:57:22.320 Suppose now that the Canadian states and legally called conventions of the people should secede, 548 00:57:22.320 --> 00:57:26.100 leaving Alaska disconnected from the continental United States. 549 00:57:26.100 --> 00:57:27.840 One can hear the objections. 550 00:57:27.840 --> 00:57:29.840 The Austrian arrangement could never work. 551 00:57:29.840 --> 00:57:31.840 Canada would not be viable. 552 00:57:31.840 --> 00:57:32.840 What about defense? 553 00:57:32.840 --> 00:57:35.840 There would be constant war between the two states, as in Europe. 554 00:57:35.840 --> 00:57:37.840 And what about detached Alaska? 555 00:57:37.840 --> 00:57:42.840 But in fact, the arrangement works quite well. 556 00:57:42.840 --> 00:57:47.840 Every possible scenario brought forth to exhibit the horrors that would have occurred 557 00:57:47.840 --> 00:57:54.840 if secession of the South had been allowed or dwarfed by the actual horrors that occurred in suppressing it. 558 00:57:54.840 --> 00:58:01.480 And let me just read this last passage, a little longer than passage. 559 00:58:01.480 --> 00:58:08.880 Vice President of the Confederacy, Alexander Stevens, had been a unionist who nevertheless believed in the right of the state to succeed. 560 00:58:08.880 --> 00:58:17.520 After the war, he looked into the future and thought he saw a dark era of consolidationism emerging in Europe and the modern world, 561 00:58:17.520 --> 00:58:22.080 what we would later know as eventually totalitarianism. 562 00:58:22.080 --> 00:58:29.080 And he took comfort in the fact that the South had not only resisted this disposition of the modern state to centralize power, 563 00:58:29.080 --> 00:58:32.080 but it erected constitutional principles to prevent it. 564 00:58:32.080 --> 00:58:37.580 If you want to know why the South seceded, just read the Confederate Constitution. 565 00:58:37.580 --> 00:58:40.080 It's a constitution designed to prevent decentralization. 566 00:58:40.080 --> 00:58:42.080 Don't pay any attention to the pundits. 567 00:58:42.080 --> 00:58:45.080 Don't listen to anything Stevens or Davis. Just read the Constitution. 568 00:58:45.080 --> 00:58:50.080 That's why they seceded. 569 00:58:50.080 --> 00:58:58.880 Then he said this, quote, depend upon it, echoing the language of Jefferson and the anti-Federalists, quote, 570 00:58:58.880 --> 00:59:08.280 There is no difference between consolidation and empire, no difference between centralism and imperialism. 571 00:59:08.280 --> 00:59:17.680 If the worst is to befall us, if our most serious apprehensions and gloomiest forebodings as to the future in this respect are to be realized, 572 00:59:17.680 --> 00:59:23.320 If Centralism is ultimately to prevail, if our entire system of free institutions as 573 00:59:23.320 --> 00:59:30.000 established by our common ancestors is to be subverted, and an empire is to be established 574 00:59:30.000 --> 00:59:35.800 in their stead, if that is to be the last scene of the great tragic drama now being 575 00:59:35.800 --> 00:59:42.680 enacted, then be assured that we of the South will be acquitted not only in our own consciences 576 00:59:42.680 --> 00:59:49.320 but by the judgment of mankind of all responsibility for so terrible a catastrophe and from all 577 00:59:49.320 --> 00:59:57.360 the guilt of so great a crime against humanity." 578 00:59:57.360 --> 01:00:04.980 Stevens had no idea how great the crimes against humanity would be that future modern consolidationisms 579 01:00:04.980 --> 01:00:11.200 would have to answer for, nor how long it would take for historians to free themselves 580 01:00:11.200 --> 01:00:17.480 from the Legitimating Myths and Ideologies in Which Consolidationism Has Wrapped Itself.