The fools were wrong. They provoked and went into a war with no military preparation. The best they could do was to steal military equipment from the United States government which they were attempting to leave. The ignorance and incompetence of the Southern foot soldier could not be exaggerated. First, his ignorance was illustrated by his willingness, or even eagerness to fight for a cause that promised nothing to him. The peasant had no slaves, and certainly no desire to extend slavery into the territories. He had no voice in government. South Carolina, for instance, did not even consult him before seceding. No doubt he was ignorant enough to hate the north, the abolitionists, and the Negro, but we was willing to suffer and die for a cause that was not his own. He was eager to fight, to murder, and to kill, but he hadn't a thought in his head about what he was fighting for. One of the most politically successful swindles in history is the fire eaters convincing poor whites to fight for "states' rights."
The foolish overconfidence that swept the South when it won the battle of Bull Run was such that even John B. Gordon (the "hero of Appomattox") couldn't even get his miners in the Georgia forces and had to settle for an Alabama regiment. It was Lincoln's misfortune that his general McClelland was so timid and frightened, that he refused to capture Richmond in the Seven Days and end the war immediately. Hard to imagine a Grant, or a Thomas, or a Sherman being hornswoggled by Magruder's theatrics.
Anyone, a general, a political scientists, a historian or an economist who looks at the comparative strength of the North and the South (at its greatest imaginable extent) concludes that the South's cause was hopeless, unless the North from cowardice or blunders threw their advantages away. It was not necessary for Lincoln to build up the North, it was only necessary for him to release its potential.
You wish to deny the North its natural advantages of industrial might and European immigration. You may not assume them away. Southerners chose to ignore the overwhelming advantages of the North. The myth of Southern valor and military skill was simply a myth. Southerners ran and panicked just as did Northerners. A. S. Johnston, Leonidas Polk and Gideon Pillow were as incompetent as any Northern political general you could suggest, and lost the West and the war before it was well begun.
As for the valor of ignorance, I have never respected people willing to die to enslave and exploit others. Their cause was evil, and if they had bothered to think about it, they would have known it was both evil and doomed. As Jefferson wrote on the subject years before, "When I reflect that God is just, I tremble for my country."
Shaw suggested at the start of World War I that the soldiers shoot their officers and go home and collect the harvest. Good advice. For the Southerners, it was the wrong season. They lacked the wisdom to rebel against their officers. They reaped the whirlwind. They destroyed the South economically and politically for three generations. The lucky ones died at Chickamauga, Gettysburg, and the Wilderness. Those who returned from the war to their homes occupied by bluebellies, renegades, carpet baggers, and scalawags returned to hunger, poverty, and humiliation. Not only had they been beaten, but they had been humiliated, their ideas shown for the wickedness they were, and their children doomed to ignorance, hookworm, and hopelessness.
The much vaunted Southern culture dissolved like the phantom it was, leaving nothing of value behind. While some the heroes of the battlefield were remembered and honored no one had a good word for the fire eaters who had destroyed their world. It was not Lincoln whom Southerners hated after the war. Rather they learned to hate the fools who had destroyed their society. True, there are fools and romantics today who cherish the "days before the war." But in my opinion every intelligent Southerner needs to reject the sins of his ancestors, and to admire those Southerners who opposed slavery and fought for the union. They were the real heroes of the age. To me, a man like James Longstreet, unbreakable in war, but himself a simple man of the people who became a Republican after the war is a far greater Southerner than Nathan Bedford Forrest who launched the Ku Klux Klan.
The South never had a reasonable chance of preserving its temporary independence. No compromise was possible for Lincoln unless he was defeated. The South never had the courage nor strength to defeat the North. The South might have won a hundred battles (even though it actually lost far more than it won) but it could never win the last one. Only so much could flesh and blood do. Ill-equipped, ill-fed, ill-led by leaders scarcely capable of rational thought, the South took a thrashing that anyone who thought about it in 1861 should have known was coming.
It is in my opinion fortunate that the South fought as long as it did, allowing the North to revolutionize itself, turn against slavery, and to pass laws which would eventually destroy slavery everywhere. It is amusing that in its last days, Lee was begging that slaves be liberated to fight in the Southern armies. Even that foolish old man thought that slaves would eagerly fight to preserve the slavery of their race. It is possible that in those dying days of Dixie that Lee wondered whether it would not have been best had he accepted the command of the Northern armies and put a quick end to the war and restored the union. As he looked at the misery and death that he had helped cause, he must have thought that he could have prevented most of it if he had let his own selfish ambition rule his actions.
The Civil War period is full of might have beens. No one can say what would have happened. Facts are facts. The North was far more capable than the South of waging war. One seldom goes wrong in military matters than to estimate the enemy's strengths by his capabilities, rather than by his intentions. The Southern fools thought that the North wouldn't fight. Or if they would fight, they would not be able to resist Southern valor. Or that England would intervene on behalf of the South (thus the Confederacy's embargo on the export of cotton even in exchange for arms). One can hardly find a reasonable thought or action in their preparations.
I think intelligent people, like Lee in 1861, knew that the cause was hopeless. He also thought he knew his duty. There is IMO something terribly wrong with a philosophy in which one is required to commit and facilitate disaster out of duty.
Lee, like most other Southerners, was willing to surrender his and his family's future into the hands of irrational people. During his lifetime of service in the Army he had failed to develop a sense of loyalty to the United States which had done everything for him. Rather he remained loyal to Virginia, which had done nothing for him. His intelligence told him that secession would come to a bad end. I don't believe he himself owned any slaves or other property (his children owned plantations inherited from others in the family).
It is obvious that there has been a revolution in political thought in the United States. I have been a citizen of perhaps a dozen states. I don't even want to count them, because I have and can imagine no loyalty to them. I have always been a citizen of the United States and have served it a civilian and soldier. I can imagine many situations in which I would disobey its commands, but the idea of being loyal to Georgia or Hawaii rather than the Nation is utterly incomprehensible to me. Obviously other people feel differently, notably Timothy McVey. To me, the Constitution is quite clear when it defines treason as waging war against the United States, adhering to its enemies, giving them aid and comfort. The Civil War did not change this. Those who fought the Union, who fired on the flag, who seized its property were traitors. I would have had the first Southern prisoners tried for treason, and if convicted I would have had them sentenced to death. I don't think I would have executed the sentence until the South had an opportunity to understand what an evil thing they had done, but if necessary, I would have executed them all, just as today the execution of Timothy McVey is a political necessity (even though he is being executed for murder of federal officials, rather than treason -- it is not fitting that his cowardly murder of children be dignified as "waging war").
As for the permissability of secession, I have never been able to understand the doctrine. When we ordained and established the union we made no provision for anyone leaving the union. One would have thought that simply to avoid uncertainty, there would be explicit procedure for secession if it were to be permitted. Perhaps when we were recruiting states to join the union it was considered impolitic to say "if you attempt to desert his indissoluble union the rest of us will shoot you dead." In any event, anyone with reservations who joins a club or a union without knowing how to get out of it is a fool.
I have today many friends in the Hawaiian independence movement. Some of them declare themselves members of the Kingdom of Hawaii, and try to avoid paying taxes. Some are fined, and others go to jail. The Supreme Court will not approve of their arguments. Like it or not, they are citizens of the United States and the state in which they reside. If they start violently to resist the power of the United States they will be killed even though they have appealed to the United Nations. As a practical matter, I am in favor of giving them a few of the Hawaiian Islands (say Kahoolawe, Molokai, Lanai) and making them independent. They can then practice offshore banking. money laundering. gambling, and tax evasion, smuggling and live happy prosperous lives, which is more than you can say about Hawaii. But mark my words, no one will support such a solution. The Hawaiians want all of Hawaii. And the Federalists want to suppress the incipient rebellion. IMO the ideology of independence is as foolish today as it was in 1860. Sufficient to the day is the evil thereof. We do not need to seek trouble.
The South would have been fine if they hadn't lost their minds. They could have had a friendly president in Douglas, but they caused Lincoln to be elected. They could have had slavery forever, simply ratifying the 13th Amendment that was on offer. They could have avoided war, simply by refraining from firing on Fort Sumter. They could have imported vast quantities of military equipment. Lincoln would not commit an act of war unless the foolish Confederates started it. But the fools started it.
And the North finished it, and reduced the conquered states to political slavery. |
