WEBVTT NOTE War, Reconstruction and the End of the Old Republic 1 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:25.000 If there are those here this afternoon who feel that they are devoted followers of the grand old Republican Party and an astounding saint, A. Lincoln, then you probably will feel a bit of discomfort this afternoon during the proceedings, have a feeling bordering on sacrilege, probably. 2 00:00:25.000 --> 00:00:32.500 So, if you are inclined to be shocked by that, you probably should prepare to put your hands over your ears at some point. 3 00:00:32.500 --> 00:00:46.000 Now, I'm actually going to be very temperate in my remarks, but I can't vouch for Lew Rockwell or Tom Blaine, who are of a much more fiery disposition than I am. 4 00:00:46.000 --> 00:00:53.960 There is a team of paramedics standing by, however, in case any Republicans are too deeply 5 00:00:53.960 --> 00:00:59.440 shocked by the evidence proceedings. 6 00:00:59.440 --> 00:01:07.120 The War of 1861-65 is still the largest event in American history in terms of the scale 7 00:01:07.120 --> 00:01:14.160 of mobilization, of destruction, of death, of revolutionary change in American society. 8 00:01:14.160 --> 00:01:18.420 More Americans were killed in that war than all the other wars put together. That's an 9 00:01:18.420 --> 00:01:24.600 absolute number. It's not in proportion to the population at the time. We would have 10 00:01:24.600 --> 00:01:29.240 had to have had something in World War II, something like 300,000 battle deaths in order 11 00:01:29.240 --> 00:01:39.240 to equal the scale of casualties in the Civil War. We should not forget that. 12 00:01:39.240 --> 00:01:50.880 A famous American historian of a couple of generations ago used to say that the historical 13 00:01:50.880 --> 00:01:57.100 knowledge of a great many people consisted of an enthusiastic belief in a few things that 14 00:01:57.100 --> 00:01:59.700 were not true. 15 00:01:59.700 --> 00:02:03.660 He had in mind the words Washington and the cherry tree and things of that sort, but it 16 00:02:03.660 --> 00:02:09.440 It seems to me that comment is very apt when we consider what passes for knowledge about 17 00:02:09.440 --> 00:02:17.280 the American Civil War in our public discourse that we are allowed to have and in government 18 00:02:17.280 --> 00:02:21.820 subsidized television productions. 19 00:02:21.820 --> 00:02:30.080 What we are generally allowed to assume about the Civil War consists of several things which 20 00:02:30.080 --> 00:02:45.680 Consider the image of the winning victorious side marching into battle singing hymns with 21 00:02:45.680 --> 00:02:56.840 the goal of striking the chains from the poor suffering black man, or in a slightly more 22 00:02:56.840 --> 00:03:04.160 Marching into battle singing hymns in order to save the sacred union, although exactly 23 00:03:04.160 --> 00:03:10.560 why the union is sacred is never made clear. 24 00:03:10.560 --> 00:03:18.920 So what we have is the fact that the triumph in 1861-65 of the Republican Party, a minority 25 00:03:18.920 --> 00:03:27.640 of the American Citizens. Carried out by the conquest, invasion, destruction of the southern 26 00:03:27.640 --> 00:03:37.120 states, part of the nation, is somehow mixed up with the idea of government of by and for 27 00:03:37.120 --> 00:03:46.800 the people. A strange result, so it seems to me. I plan during most of this talk to 28 00:03:46.800 --> 00:04:16.680 H. L. Micken in 1920 wrote an essay on the Gettysburg Address, in which he praised its 29 00:04:16.680 --> 00:04:34.240 It is genuinely stupendous, but let us not forget that it is poetry not logic, beauty 30 00:04:34.240 --> 00:04:40.480 not sense. Think of the argument in it. Put it into the cold words of every day. The doctrine 31 00:04:40.480 --> 00:04:45.720 is simply this, that the Union soldiers who died at Gettysburg sacrificed their lives 32 00:04:45.720 --> 00:04:51.800 to the cause of self-determination. That government of the people by the people for the people 33 00:04:51.800 --> 00:04:59.180 should not perish from the earth. It is difficult to imagine anything more untrue. The Union 34 00:04:59.180 --> 00:05:04.560 soldiers in that battle actually fought against self-determination. It was the Confederates 35 00:05:04.560 --> 00:05:09.640 who fought for the right of their people to govern themselves. What was the practical 36 00:05:09.640 --> 00:05:13.760 effect of the Battle of Gettysburg? What else than the destruction of the old sovereignty 37 00:05:13.760 --> 00:05:18.760 of the States, that is to say, of the people of the states. 38 00:05:18.760 --> 00:05:28.760 Edgar Lee Masters, the Middle Western poet, said something similar in 1931. 39 00:05:28.760 --> 00:05:39.760 The Gettysburg Oration, therefore, remains a prose poem, but in the inferior sense that one must not inquire into its truth. 40 00:05:39.760 --> 00:05:54.760 One must read it apart from the facts. Lincoln dared not base the facts of Gettysburg. He was unable to deal realistically with the history of his country, even if the occasion had been one when the truth was acceptable to the audience. 41 00:05:54.760 --> 00:06:03.760 Thus we have in the Gettysburg Address that refusal of the truth, which is written all over the American character and its expressions. 42 00:06:03.760 --> 00:06:10.140 The war then being waged was not glorious, it was brutal, hateful, and mean-minded. 43 00:06:10.140 --> 00:06:16.060 It had been initiated by radicals and fanatics. 44 00:06:16.060 --> 00:06:25.860 To try to spell out a little further, how the concept of the Union, which to the founding 45 00:06:25.860 --> 00:06:34.220 and Fires was an ideal of consent, of rational self-government, how this was transformed 46 00:06:34.220 --> 00:06:45.340 into a kind of a religious symbol, a mystical self-justifying goal, suggesting a religious 47 00:06:45.340 --> 00:06:51.140 symbolism as Mel Bradford has written about. 48 00:06:51.140 --> 00:06:56.700 In his first message to Congress, Lincoln used the traditional term union, implying 49 00:06:56.700 --> 00:07:03.620 a confederacy of states 32 times, the term nation 3 times. In the Gettysburg Address 50 00:07:03.620 --> 00:07:11.100 and in the second and overall the term union is not used. And we are told that the war 51 00:07:11.100 --> 00:07:18.340 then going on is for the preservation of the nation, though exactly how you preserve the 52 00:07:18.340 --> 00:07:48.340 What we have is clearly a nationalist pathology. John Lukas reminds us, the historian reminds us of the old saying, over and over again, patriotism is the wholesome, constructive law of the ones, on people and country. Nationalism is the aggressive, destructive law of the ones, on people and country. Nationalism is the aggressive, destructive law of the ones, on people and country. 53 00:07:48.340 --> 00:07:52.340 and the desire to put down and conquer others. 54 00:07:52.340 --> 00:07:59.340 What we have here is a nationalist mythology, it seems to me. 55 00:07:59.340 --> 00:08:04.340 Patriotism is an appropriate sentiment for people who wish to maintain their freedom. 56 00:08:04.340 --> 00:08:10.340 Nationalism is not an appropriate sentiment for people who wish to maintain their freedom, 57 00:08:10.340 --> 00:08:15.340 as the history of this century seems to demonstrate very fully. 58 00:08:15.340 --> 00:08:23.340 The Union was preserved, but it was not the Union established by the founders. 59 00:08:23.340 --> 00:08:40.340 It was like the authoritarian governments of the old world, self-justifying and not based upon the consent of the people. 60 00:08:40.340 --> 00:08:48.940 As Jean-Cyclone put it in his last speech describing the Triton Union, 61 00:08:48.940 --> 00:08:59.340 But surely that can, with no propriety of language, be called a union with the only means by which the weaker is held connected with the stronger portion is force. 62 00:08:59.340 --> 00:09:06.740 It may indeed keep them connected, but the connection will partake much more of the character of subjugation 63 00:09:06.740 --> 00:09:14.740 on the part of the weaker to the stronger than the union of free, independent, and sovereign states. 64 00:09:14.740 --> 00:09:21.740 Moreover, the cry of union comes from those we cannot believe to be sincere. 65 00:09:21.740 --> 00:09:25.740 If they love the union, they would necessarily be devoted to the Constitution. 66 00:09:25.740 --> 00:09:31.740 The Constitution made the union, and to destroy the Constitution is to destroy the union. 67 00:09:31.740 --> 00:09:35.740 That is the truth. 68 00:09:35.740 --> 00:09:45.740 Alexis de Tocqueville, thought by many to be the most profound European commenter on America, wrote in the antebellum period, 69 00:09:45.740 --> 00:09:55.740 The Union was formed by the voluntary agreement of the States, and these in uniting together have not forfeited their nationality, 70 00:09:55.740 --> 00:10:00.740 nor have they been reduced to the condition of one and the same people. 71 00:10:00.740 --> 00:10:22.740 If one of the states chose to withdraw its name from the contract, it would be difficult to disprove its right of doing so, and the federal government would have no means of maintaining its claims except by force, foreseeing the situation that arose in 61-65. 72 00:10:22.740 --> 00:10:30.740 James Madison tells us that the Constitution, the meaning of the Constitution, is to be sought 73 00:10:30.740 --> 00:10:38.740 not in the opinions and intentions of the body which planned and proposed it, 74 00:10:38.740 --> 00:10:46.740 but in those of the state conventions where it received all the authority which it possesses. 75 00:10:46.740 --> 00:10:55.380 That is to say, when we talk about the sovereignty of the people, a republican system or a democratic system, 76 00:10:55.380 --> 00:11:04.980 the sovereignty of the people means, purely and simply, the people of each state acting in their sovereign constitution-making capacity, 77 00:11:04.980 --> 00:11:12.020 as they did in the American Revolution, when they overthrew British authority and established their own constitutions, 78 00:11:12.020 --> 00:11:27.020 as they did in accepting and ratifying the Constitution of the United States, as they did in rescinding that ratification. 79 00:11:27.020 --> 00:11:39.020 If we don't have that sovereignty of the people expressed in that way, then our alternative for the ultimate authority 80 00:11:39.020 --> 00:11:55.020 is those black robe justices in Washington who go into the closet and commune with the gods and tell us what the Constitution means and what we're supposed to do. 81 00:11:55.020 --> 00:12:05.020 So, I suggest that the cost of the war was the end of the old union and the substitution of the idea of force 82 00:12:05.020 --> 00:12:20.020 for the previous American idea of self-government and the old-world idea of obedience to authority rather than consent, however the authority may be established. 83 00:12:22.020 --> 00:12:33.020 Recall the fact that Lincoln in 1860 received the votes of 39.9% of the American electorate. 84 00:12:35.020 --> 00:12:44.020 That he was almost an unknown quality. He had no, unlike every other previous president, he had no record of distinguished public service. 85 00:12:44.020 --> 00:13:00.020 He was unknown, and his public statements were deliberately ambiguous, which is more hostile, or is more threatening actually, than being hostile, the ambiguity. 86 00:13:00.020 --> 00:13:07.020 and that he was the first completely sectional candidate to be elected president. 87 00:13:07.020 --> 00:13:17.020 In the election of 1864 with the South out of the Union, the vote in the North against Lincoln actually increased by 10%. 88 00:13:17.020 --> 00:13:23.020 The election was carried by the arrest of political opponents, suppression of newspapers, 89 00:13:23.020 --> 00:13:29.020 holding the election at that point in the border states and New York City and other places. 90 00:13:29.020 --> 00:13:59.020 The hasty admission of several new states, like Davana, we need to consider exactly what is meant by the concept of government of, by, and for the people, it seems to me, and even after the war was won, the position of the republicans who had won it was not secure, 91 00:13:59.020 --> 00:14:05.020 Because they had conducted the war on the idea that the states could not succeed. 92 00:14:05.020 --> 00:14:12.020 The states were merely under the control of a conspiracy of rebels. 93 00:14:12.020 --> 00:14:19.020 When this conspiracy is ended, then presumably the states are where they were before when they cannot succeed. 94 00:14:19.020 --> 00:14:27.020 And yet, as soon as the war is over, we're told, well, the states have committed suicide, so they have no existence whatsoever. 95 00:14:27.020 --> 00:14:32.580 and so forth, their conquered provinces, and the whole of Reconstruction was built on a 96 00:14:32.580 --> 00:14:43.580 series of convenient lies about the war. A very simple proposition. It would have been 97 00:14:43.580 --> 00:14:54.900 far better to allow the American Union to dissolve into two or more Confederacy's at 98 00:14:54.900 --> 00:14:57.740 and the Will of the People. 99 00:14:57.740 --> 00:15:02.760 There is nothing whatsoever in the legacy of the Founding Fathers, in the theory of 100 00:15:02.760 --> 00:15:12.020 self-government and republicanism, to prevent this or that argues against it. 101 00:15:12.020 --> 00:15:16.420 In the thoughts of Jefferson, we can find in fact that he rather anticipated it and 102 00:15:16.420 --> 00:15:18.620 welcomed it. 103 00:15:18.620 --> 00:15:27.620 The point was to preserve the concept of self-government in whatever the arrangements are secondary. 104 00:15:27.620 --> 00:15:35.140 The union in itself is not necessarily the end-all of self-government, in fact it can 105 00:15:35.140 --> 00:15:38.740 indeed become hostile. 106 00:15:38.740 --> 00:15:46.500 And supposedly Americans have always been in favor of self-determination. 107 00:15:46.500 --> 00:15:53.460 I don't like usually the deal, and it might have been history, I think that's unwise usually, but 108 00:15:55.620 --> 00:15:59.940 it might not have been necessary for the American Union to break up. 109 00:16:02.020 --> 00:16:05.860 If there had been an honest government in Washington that was really interested in 110 00:16:05.860 --> 00:16:12.420 compromise and preserving the Union, a great deal could have been done in the period 60-61 111 00:16:12.420 --> 00:16:19.380 to prevent a war and a break up of the Union. Given Lincoln's minority status, he would 112 00:16:19.380 --> 00:16:25.260 have certainly have been sustained by much northern opinion, by border state opinion, 113 00:16:25.260 --> 00:16:36.340 if he had pursued a program of compromise. Instead, he kept completely quiet. It's not 114 00:16:36.340 --> 00:16:44.900 Not widely known, but the seceded states sent commissioners to Washington to negotiate honorably, 115 00:16:44.900 --> 00:16:49.540 perfectly ready to pay for the federal property in the southern states to assume their portion 116 00:16:49.540 --> 00:16:56.060 of the national debt to negotiate honorably any other issues that were up. These people 117 00:16:56.060 --> 00:17:06.140 were not officially received by Lincoln. They were unofficially dealt with by being deceived 118 00:17:06.140 --> 00:17:12.780 into thinking that Fort Sumter was meant to be reinforced and when it was found that Fort Sumter 119 00:17:12.780 --> 00:17:18.380 was to be reinforced, the bombardment was taken. But even after the bombardment of Fort Sumter, 120 00:17:18.380 --> 00:17:25.740 remember that all the other forts had already been surrendered peacefully, except for Fort Sumter, 121 00:17:25.740 --> 00:17:31.180 and Fort Sumter was bombarded in a fairly symbolic fashion and then surrendered and there were no 122 00:17:31.180 --> 00:17:48.100 It would have been possible, even after the war had progressed a little bit, for the northern 123 00:17:48.100 --> 00:17:55.700 government of a more traditional bent to have made a peace short of the destruction that 124 00:17:55.700 --> 00:18:04.600 and to conduct a war, a gentleman's disagreement over the matter of secession. 125 00:18:04.600 --> 00:18:11.360 That was far less destructive and revolutionary than the war actually turned out to be. 126 00:18:11.360 --> 00:18:19.220 There were many, many, many northerners who advocated this somewhat forgotten part of American 127 00:18:19.220 --> 00:18:49.220 History. And a great deal of the exodus's death and destruction might indeed have been avoided, as well as the destruction of the old union of consent. This did not happen, why? Because, in fact, it was the revolution that was the point. Throughout the period of the war and Reconstruction, the Republican Party, or elements of it, behaved as a 128 00:18:49.220 --> 00:18:58.100 A revolutionary party, a Jacobin party, bent on ruling no matter what, on establishing 129 00:18:58.100 --> 00:19:05.180 their authority at any cost, and at times they even hampered the Northern War effort 130 00:19:05.180 --> 00:19:09.580 for the purposes of maintaining their own power. 131 00:19:09.580 --> 00:19:18.460 It is very hard to doubt this for anybody who has actually studied the behavior of the 132 00:19:18.460 --> 00:19:31.700 Mr. Denson mentioned this morning the statement of Lord Acton about the end of the war, that 133 00:19:31.700 --> 00:19:40.100 Appomattox was a greater setback for constitutional liberty than Waterloo had been a victory. 134 00:19:40.100 --> 00:19:51.980 The costs of war, the greatest cost then is the growth of the Leviathan state that's inseparable 135 00:19:51.980 --> 00:20:01.140 from war and accompanying the shrinking of liberty, which is the greatest problem of 136 00:20:01.140 --> 00:20:03.380 our own time. 137 00:20:03.380 --> 00:20:08.580 If by liberty we mean the self-government of the individual and of the communities, which 138 00:20:08.580 --> 00:20:23.580 Which is what our founding fathers understood liberty to be. The absence of a minority in power who could rule against the sense of the people. 139 00:20:23.580 --> 00:20:30.580 It's said that the only thing worse than fighting a war is losing a war. There are also costs for winning a war. 140 00:20:30.580 --> 00:21:00.580 And let me suggest very briefly, there's not time to talk about a lot of things. Some of the costs to the old republic that winning the war for the Union entailed. There's nothing very controversial about any of the historical points that I'll point out. They're just usually not put together. They're well known. There's a certain tendency to say, well, 141 00:21:00.580 --> 00:21:22.580 The tendency to look at this period through rose-colored glasses, and historians who will admit that there was a great deal of corruption that came along sort of after the war, but they want somehow this mysteriously happened after Lincoln died, you know, it didn't, the obvious origins in 1861 are not counted on. 142 00:21:22.580 --> 00:21:36.580 And whenever you criticize the cause and the behavior of those who carry out the cause, of course, the ultimate argument is always slavery. 143 00:21:36.580 --> 00:21:47.580 I've had this argument a hundred times and whenever they are cornered by the facts of history, always, well, slavery. 144 00:21:47.580 --> 00:21:58.080 which is a sort of, almost a resort to mysticism about the nobility of a particular cause. 145 00:21:58.080 --> 00:22:07.080 If anything is justifiable, anything is excusable in this great cause against slavery. 146 00:22:07.080 --> 00:22:12.080 And preserving the sacred union, which I suggest is a religious image, 147 00:22:12.080 --> 00:22:22.080 and a religious image is not appropriate to the political discussion of free people. It's irrational. 148 00:22:22.080 --> 00:22:30.080 Lincoln's excesses in the exercise of power are well-known, well-documented. 149 00:22:30.080 --> 00:22:35.080 They were utterly unprecedented in American history to that time. 150 00:22:35.080 --> 00:22:42.080 The Americans had prided themselves on the rule of law, on the freedom from arbitrary authority. 151 00:22:42.080 --> 00:22:55.080 The economic, a great deal happened in regard to the loss of economic liberty and the loss of Republican virtue. 152 00:22:55.080 --> 00:23:00.080 That was a deliberate result of the economic program. 153 00:23:00.080 --> 00:23:07.520 That was enacted in 1861 and thereafter, because the South was out of the Union. 154 00:23:07.520 --> 00:23:15.680 Policies that had been prevented at that time, the protective tariffs certainly among the foremost. 155 00:23:15.680 --> 00:23:23.600 And certainly it can be argued that one of the chief motives for the War of the Union was the fear 156 00:23:23.600 --> 00:23:28.720 of the establishment of a huge free trade zone along the Atlantic and Gulf, 157 00:23:28.720 --> 00:23:39.320 which, after all, would have destroyed the Northern economy as it then existed because it was dependent upon the Southern economy. 158 00:23:39.320 --> 00:23:46.020 The National Banking System, which was so bad, although many Misesians will not agree with me, 159 00:23:46.020 --> 00:23:55.020 but they instituted a National Banking System that was so bad that the Federal Reserve was actually an improvement when it was adopted. 160 00:23:55.020 --> 00:24:01.660 The Bonded Homestead Law. Who can disagree with giving away free lands to the people? 161 00:24:01.660 --> 00:24:07.500 Sounds very good until you look at what had been the traditional position of the founding fathers. 162 00:24:07.500 --> 00:24:15.580 The public lands had been regarded as a trust. They were sold off at moderate prices to legitimate 163 00:24:15.580 --> 00:24:22.300 settlers. Orderly settlement occurred. And if you were selling off the public lands, 164 00:24:22.300 --> 00:24:27.100 The taxes mean you didn't have to have any other taxes, like the tariff or whatever. 165 00:24:27.100 --> 00:24:30.780 So they were all, except for the protected tariff, there were almost no federal taxes 166 00:24:30.780 --> 00:24:32.660 in the antebellum period. 167 00:24:32.660 --> 00:24:38.100 So the government got revenue and you avoided taxes and you had orderly settlement. 168 00:24:38.100 --> 00:24:44.860 The wise policy that was devised by Jefferson and the other southern leaders of the republic 169 00:24:44.860 --> 00:24:48.420 who had acquired most of these lands. 170 00:24:48.420 --> 00:24:57.340 Supposedly a great step forward, the homestead law. In fact, only about 20% of the land that 171 00:24:57.340 --> 00:25:03.220 was given away went to actual settlers. And many of those were foreigners who were lured 172 00:25:03.220 --> 00:25:09.740 here just for that purpose. The rest of it went to railroad corporations, mining corporations 173 00:25:09.740 --> 00:25:14.900 and so forth amidst great corruption. Not that the land should not have gotten into 174 00:25:14.900 --> 00:25:44.900 and the private hands for development but the circumstances in which this occurred were a violation of public trust and of a burden on the taxpayer and a source of great corruption and we found the origins of the American, widespread American prejudice against business, particularly big business which had not existed before arising out of the corruption, the reconstruction, post-reconstruction period, that prejudice which the left has made great use of for a long time. 175 00:25:44.900 --> 00:25:55.900 The arbitrary arrests, 20,000 people or more, 300 newspapers suppressed, all without any shadow of law whatsoever. 176 00:25:55.900 --> 00:26:00.900 Secretary Seward is supposed to have bragged to the British Ambassador, 177 00:26:00.900 --> 00:26:05.900 I can ring a bell on my right hand and have a citizen of Ohio arrested. 178 00:26:05.900 --> 00:26:11.900 I can ring a bell on my left hand and have a citizen of New York arrested. Queen Vignoria cannot do this. 179 00:26:11.900 --> 00:26:19.900 And Seward was actually one of the mildest of the Republicans, he was sort of an easygoing Herman Gehring. 180 00:26:19.900 --> 00:26:26.900 Secretary Stanton was Henry Kimbler. 181 00:26:26.900 --> 00:26:31.900 Clear political manipulation also by state and local governments and vigilantes. 182 00:26:31.900 --> 00:26:39.900 All of this occurring in the North against political opponents, almost no overt acts of subversion or anything like that, 183 00:26:39.900 --> 00:26:49.700 but against wrong opinions, a real fall of moral standards and standards of liberty, confiscation 184 00:26:49.700 --> 00:26:51.500 and destruction. 185 00:26:51.500 --> 00:26:58.100 General Sherman estimated that of the destruction that took place in his march across Georgia 186 00:26:58.100 --> 00:27:04.580 and the Carolinas, only 20% was of any military value or significance. 187 00:27:04.580 --> 00:27:14.580 The rest was sheer wanton terrorism against civilians in order to destroy their will to fight. 188 00:27:14.580 --> 00:27:22.580 Not exactly what we'd like to think of in terms of American behavior. 189 00:27:22.580 --> 00:27:26.580 And again, I would suggest we have never recovered from the loss of standards. 190 00:27:26.580 --> 00:27:33.580 And Richard Weaver commented that the greatest loss of the war, of course, was the decline of the 191 00:27:33.580 --> 00:27:47.580 The inauguration of the total war concept and the decline of the progress that had been made in sort of making war fair. 192 00:27:47.580 --> 00:27:57.580 Republicans behave very high-handedly in running the legislatures and in every other way. 193 00:27:57.580 --> 00:28:08.340 A theft of a hundred million dollars worth of cotton, only a small part of which went to the government and the rest was stolen by various officials of the army and government. 194 00:28:08.340 --> 00:28:23.580 The Secretary of the Treasury said, I'm sure I must have sent a few honest cotton agents south, but none of them stayed that way for very long, an incredible fact in American history. 195 00:28:23.580 --> 00:28:32.580 After all, we did free the slaves. Of what did freeing the slaves consist? 196 00:28:32.580 --> 00:28:37.580 It didn't start out to be a war goal. It became a war goal a year and a half after the war started. 197 00:28:37.580 --> 00:28:45.580 A great many northerners have no enthusiasm for it. In fact, soldiers' letters will indicate that 198 00:28:45.580 --> 00:28:58.580 Half of the army of the Potomac helped the trade and was ready to go home when they heard of the Emancipation Proclamation, which had changed the war into something different from what they thought it was. 199 00:28:58.580 --> 00:29:08.580 In the British and French empires and elsewhere, slavery was ended gradually and without great upheaval. 200 00:29:08.580 --> 00:29:14.020 in this society it cost the life of every tenth northern and every fourth southern white man 201 00:29:14.020 --> 00:29:21.060 and the greatest act of confiscation of personal property, private property, ever having occurred 202 00:29:21.060 --> 00:29:28.220 in the western world. But put all that aside, what does freeing the slaves mean? A delegation 203 00:29:28.220 --> 00:29:32.940 of freed men visited Lincoln and asked him what they should do now that they were free. 204 00:29:32.940 --> 00:29:42.940 This is a response and this is well documented. Root hog or die. Root hog or die. You know, you're free now. 205 00:29:42.940 --> 00:29:51.940 Not the slightest recognition of the social problem presented by millions of freed men without education or property. 206 00:29:51.940 --> 00:29:56.940 And what the effect this was going to have on American society. 207 00:29:56.940 --> 00:30:05.440 Give them the vote, allow them to stay in the south, and support the Republican Party, and this is the end of slavery. 208 00:30:05.440 --> 00:30:13.440 There's lots of free land at the west, but that is not for the black people, because that would be invasion of northern territory. 209 00:30:13.440 --> 00:30:24.440 One can make a very good argument from social statistics that in the year 1900, the black population was worse off than it was under slavery, 210 00:30:24.440 --> 00:30:32.940 in terms of health, longevity, work skills, family stability, crime, all sorts of things, 211 00:30:32.940 --> 00:30:36.740 that there had been an actual deterioration. 212 00:30:36.740 --> 00:30:44.240 If that is true, then our pundits who tell us now that most of the problems in society are due to slavery have missed the boat. 213 00:30:44.240 --> 00:30:51.540 Because in fact, the further that we get from the antebellum plantation in time and location, the worse the problems become. 214 00:30:51.540 --> 00:30:57.540 and it has to do not with slavery but with the way that slavery was ended. 215 00:30:57.540 --> 00:31:05.540 I could go on for a long time talking about the ways of moral and economic in which the old public suffered 216 00:31:05.540 --> 00:31:13.540 from the war, pensions, which were originally a reward for the disabled and for very meritorious service 217 00:31:13.540 --> 00:31:19.540 returning to the lavish entitlement to everybody who had ever worn the uniform for five minutes. 218 00:31:19.540 --> 00:31:24.540 The beginning of all the entitlement programs that come along afterward. 219 00:31:24.540 --> 00:31:28.540 The Rule of Terror and Reconstruction. 220 00:31:28.540 --> 00:31:38.540 Did the Civil War leave America a full-fledged empire? 221 00:31:38.540 --> 00:31:41.540 No, but not from my point of view. 222 00:31:41.540 --> 00:31:45.540 At least it prevented them from being repeated for a while. 223 00:31:45.540 --> 00:32:11.540 The fabric of self-government was too strong in this country to be overturned immediately under normal circumstances but all the bad precedents were set, the bad precedents that were adapted, as we heard this morning, by the progressives who undertook World War I, it was all there. 224 00:32:11.540 --> 00:32:21.860 As Herman Melville wrote, who viewed the war from Lew Rockwell's hometown of Pittsfield, Massachusetts, 225 00:32:21.860 --> 00:32:29.940 Power unannointed may come, dominion unsolved by the free, the Founder's dream shall flee. 226 00:32:29.940 --> 00:32:36.260 That was the result of the war, according to Melville. 227 00:32:36.260 --> 00:33:04.260 The Republican victory was a Jacobin revolution. Jacobinism is a power grab by a minority, leading to a centralized state, an egalitarian ideology, which really masked the will to power of one party rule, a great transfer of wealth, a ruthless disregard for tradition, a tendency towards a totalitarian state. 228 00:33:04.260 --> 00:33:10.260 Not perfect because the techniques of totalitarianism were by no means perfected in the 19th century. 229 00:33:10.260 --> 00:33:13.260 But as I said, not from life trying. 230 00:33:13.260 --> 00:33:24.260 If all of that doesn't describe the way that the ruling elements behaved in the 1860s, then I don't know what does. 231 00:33:24.260 --> 00:33:31.260 So as a guess, we are living with a somewhat tainted inheritance. 232 00:33:31.260 --> 00:33:40.260 And if our desire is to restore the principle of liberty as it was originally understood by Americans, if that is possible, 233 00:33:40.260 --> 00:33:53.260 we need to rid ourselves intellectually and morally of the superstitions of unionism and emancipation, 234 00:33:53.260 --> 00:34:06.260 which are the fountain of all the other status superstitions and all the other status usurpations from which we have suffered and been cursed in this century. 235 00:34:06.260 --> 00:34:11.260 It seems like a very unlikely thing to happen. 236 00:34:11.260 --> 00:34:38.760 I met, although recently, the French people celebrated their revolution, and a great many of them rethought the heritage of Jacobinism, which they had been taught was a great tradition, and there was a real revulsion of opinion about that, a rejection of what had been regarded as a great tradition. 237 00:34:38.760 --> 00:34:45.760 And Americans will have to do no less if they wish to recover genuine self-government.