OR
Professor Eric Muller of the University of North Carolina Law School has been using his web site www.isthatlegal.org to uncover rather interesting bits of information about the book The Politically Incorrect Guide to American History and author Professor Thomas Woods of Suffolk Community College and his affiliations, including the rather spooky League of the South. (You can go through the various threads, links to Woods’s defenses, and so on and make up your own mind.)
Addendum: Cathy Young of Reason magazine has a review of Woods’s book in the Boston Globe, to which Professor Woods has responded by calling her a “neocon” (the slam of choice on lewrockwell.com for anyone who disagrees with their Confederate Revivalism) and writing, “There is no point in answering someone like this.” Zing!
Tiny Tim said: “…the core of Rothbardianism seems to be ‘Slave Morality.'”
Ah yes, if only the anarcho-capitalists were more Nietzschean… 🙂
Tiny Tim’s remarks seem to indicate that he has been boxed into a corner. Surely killing 600,000 innocents to free one innocent can’t be justified. (Maybe even killing one innocent to free 600,000 innocents can’t be justified; at the least, some justification would be required.)
One could have opposed the war waged by the northern states without supporting the slavery-inspired secession by the southern states. Indeed, some did. (Although many of the abolitionists who early on came out for northern withdrawal from the union later supported the war against the southern states.)
It is worth remembering, for those who are interested in such matters, that (if memory serves me right — and I’ve no chance at the moment to check the record) Garrison and some other abolitionists had early on criticized Spooner for his book on the unconstitutionality of slavery. It seems as if the only book some have read by Spooner is his “No Treason No. 6: The Constitution of No Authority.” His other books are also quite well reading and give a much broader picture of a dedicated friend of liberty. (He was a friend of liberty with whom I do not always agree, as in his book on intellectual property; whether one ends up agreeing or not, Spooner is always challenging and well worth reading.)
One point in particular puzzles me in regards to the Confederate sympathizers: What happened to the “I’d push the button” mentality. DiLorenzo and others argue that the Civil War should have been avoided because slavery would have gradually faded from the scene. Perhaps. I find this quite odd, however. Apparently the South is justified in seceding due to the North’s tyrannical economic protectionism, but the enslavement of almost half of the South’s population should be left alone to abolish itself. Kinsella and others are almost always questioning the libertarian credentials of those who post on this blog, yet the violation of the axiomatic beginning of libertarianism (self-ownership) is virtually ignored by the Southern sympathizers. When they do “condemn” Southern slavery, it receives the very banal “While slavery was bad, the North’s actionsÃ?Â?Ã?¢Ã?¢?Ã?¬Ã?Â?Ã?¦”
“Surely killing 600,000 innocents to free one innocent can’t be justified.’
The key word here is INNOCENT. How innocent is a culture which enslaves an entire group of people (either directly or via proxy by democratic support of a regime which does)? Let’s not be naive here.
I feel sad when a cop accidently shoots an innocent bystander. I believe in processes and controls to minimize these accidents. And I know a cop is murderer if he directly targets an innocent person. BUT STILL – targeting and shooting criminals is morally justified. The CSA was a criminal regime (which anyone can morally eradicate) and anyone talking up arms in its defense was a legitmate target. That doesn’t justify the bad things the Union did. But the bad things the Union did still doesn’t justify the existance of the CSA or unjustify it’s erradication.
Dan: Well said.
Tiny Tim writes that slavery “is inhuman.” I certainly agree with that. He also writes: “The ‘price’ of the labor of the slaves is irrevelent.” I find that nonsensical. The United States had chattel slavery. So the question becomes how do we most cheaply rid the country of that evil. My argument is that compensated emancipation, while not a perfect solution to be sure, would have been much more desirable than a horrendously destructive war. I don’t see how that is “unlibertarian” or consistent with “slave morality,” whatever that ill-defined term means.
And, by the way, I am no Rothbardian. It is these sorts of hard questions that the Rothbardians seem eager to avoid — especially when a rather straightforward empirical (gasp!) and perhaps even Posnerian (how evil!) analysis seem appropriate.
Eli: The “slave morality” cut was aimed at the Rothbardians, not you.
Your “negotiated settlement” seems irrelevent. The South was not willing to entertain any type of emancipation, hence why it formed the CSA.
PS: Assuming the USA is “evil” or the only party acting (e.g. the CSA were “victims”) is what I mean by Slave Morality. The CSA chose to take up arms in defense of slavery, just as a bank robber chooses to shoot at the cops. Are the cops unjusfified in shooting back?
Eli: I am not trying to marginalize your “negotiated settlement” concept – It would have been better. But it just doesn’t sound realistic given the actual circumstnaces.
Tom Palmer writes: “One could have opposed the war waged by the northern states without supporting the slavery-inspired secession by the southern states.” This is an interesting statement. Is this meant to imply that one can not support secession without supporting its major inspiration, slavery? The statement “One could have opposed the war waged by the northern states without supporting slavery” would be very true, but what does secession have to do with it? I see secession as a key political right which cannot be alienated by any other sins of the parties in question, any more than they can alienate their right to free speech.
Dan asks “What happened to the ‘I’d push the button’ mentality?” Any real libertarian would “push the button” to end chattel slavery immediately, and then they would probably have a party to celebrate the pushing of the button. But you are asking them to push a button to end slavery AND ALSO start a huge war and conquer an independent country. That’s not the same thing at all, since the purity of the goal is the whole point of the “button question”. Radical libertarians advocate immediately ending Canada’s national health care, but they don’t advocate invading Canada, repealing national health care, and then incorporating Canada as the 51st state.
I wish to commend Tiny Tim on his or her courageous anti-slavery stance.
I should add that I don’t believe the 600,000 deserved to die, only that they are completely blameless.
I also dispute that it is soley the USA’s fault for their deaths, as the CSA (by it’s existance) also put them at risk.
Mr. Kerner: Some of us don’t believe an “independent country” can exist when it enslaves half its population.
But I am not a “radical libertarian” who fights tooth and nail for the “rights” of criminal regimes.
” they are NOT completely blameless.”
damn it, I need to preview before I post!
Tiny Tim: It’s true that all the slaveholding border states (with the exception of Washington, DC, which also permitted slavery and culturally was thoroughly southern in the mid-19th century) rejected Lincoln’s plan for compensated emancipation. Part of this was probably due to economic reasons: they wanted a higher price. And part was probably due to social pressures: they didn’t want to give up their “peculiar institution.” But given how expensive the war actually was, slaveholders could have been compensated well above the prevailing price for slave labor in exchange for freeing their subjects, and it still would have been a less costly solution. It’s true that we cannot know whether they would have accepted this deal at a new, higher price. But for most, I think their sense of cultural and regional pride would have given way in return for monetary gain. Also, I think that if such a proposal had been advanced, the four states of the “Upper South” (Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Arkansas), which rather reluctantly seceded months after the initial seven left the union, would have brought significant pressure on their southern neighbors to reach a compromise.
Eli: Interesting. But I don’t think they anticipated how expensive the war would be, given the advances in technology.
Also, I think you are discounting the “racism factor,” the fact many would have to admit that black people were….well…really people with the same rights. It wasn’t just “cultural and regional pride” but also “racial pride.”
…and also the cost of giving up power over other people (which as libertarians we know is never cheap).
To me, this entire debate is one over emphasis: Certainly Lincoln was no prophet of freedom and liberty. Nor did Lincoln have the best interests of the black population at heart. The Civil War was not fought entirely to free the slaves. The Emancipation Proclamation was largely hollow. We can all admit these things. However, the South represents the largest violator of libertarian ideals in our nation’s history. To physically enslave, beat, rape, and murder humans is the grossest of gross violations of self ownership. That a group of states formed their own government and seceded to protect their right to tyranny is disgraceful. Did some believe they were seceding to protect liberty? Certainly. There is no honor, however, in defending a government that survived upon a foundation of slavery.
Exam Giver: ‘What was the cause of the Civil War?’
Apu: ‘The split between abolitionists and secessionists had come to a head in in The Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 when…’
Exam Giver: ‘Just say slavery.’
Apu: ‘Slavery it is, sir!’
Mr. Kerner writes, “I see secession as a key political right which cannot be alienated by any other sins of the parties in question, any more than they can alienate their right to free speech.” A political write for whom? If a person wants to secede just to be left alone to tend to his own affairs and to secure his own rights, that’s one thing. (See, for such a proposal, Herbert Spencer’s chapter on “The Right to Ignore the State” in his book “Social Statics”.) But could I legitimately “secede” and take Mr. Kerner with me as my slave? What kind of an inalienable political right is that?
When Mr. Kerner writes of “other sins of the parties in question,” I take it that he is referring to the sin of holding other people in chains. If that’s correct, then he is flat wrong about not being able to lose the right to secede. You can lose your rights (in John Locke’s terms, you forfeit them) if you aggress against the rights of others. I doubt that Mr. Kerner would say that someone’s “right to secede” is unaffected in any way by the fact that at the same time (indeed, even for some time before) that person “secedes” he is capturing people and eating them, and that his “secession” is effected in order to continue doing so. If I am right and Mr. Kerner would agree that no one has the right to “secede” for the purpose of eating hapless victims, what right would one have to secede for the purpose of keeping others in chains?
TGP states:
“When Mr. Kerner writes of “other sins of the parties in question,” I take it that he is referring to the sin of holding other people in chains. If that’s correct, then he is flat wrong about not being able to lose the right to secede. You can lose your rights (in John Locke’s terms, you forfeit them) if you aggress against the rights of others. I doubt that Mr. Kerner would say that someone’s “right to secede” is unaffected in any way by the fact that at the same time (indeed, even for some time before) that person “secedes” he is capturing people and eating them, and that his “secession” is effected in order to continue doing so. If I am right and Mr. Kerner would agree that no one has the right to “secede” for the purpose of eating hapless victims, what right would one have to secede for the purpose of keeping others in chains?”
But I thought natural rights came in two flavors, alienable and inalienable. Violating another’s rights, some (such as GHS) would argue, can cause one to lose alienable rights but not inalienable rights. If one views secession as an inalienable right–the political equivalent of the right of association–then one need not announce WHY one wishes to secede, any more than one need announce why one wishes to associate with A but not B.
MEANWHILE, one does not have the right to enslave others, and does not acquire it by seceding. One can be stopped from man-stealing either before or after secession.
So (in summary) I’m not clear why TGP feels one can secede for only “correct” reasons. I suspect it is because Tom is viewing this as a historical discussion of the actions of political entities (northern and southern governments) while others may be viewing this as a theoretical discussion of what INDIVIDUALS can, by right, do.
Ross
Ross is right that you can’t alienate an inalienable right. But you can forfeit it. I may forfeit my right to liberty if I aggress against others, although I could not transfer that right to another. I may even forfeit my right to life, although I could not transfer that right to another.
Similarly, I cannot claim a right to exercise a power when the exercise of that power entails the violation of the rights of others. That is especially the case when the very purpose of exercising the power is to violate the rights of others.
Ross is also right to point out that this discussion is much about the asymmetrical situation of the northern (non-slave) states and the southern (slave) states. The former could have legitimately seceded for the purpose of withdrawing their former enforcement of slavery; the latter could not have legitimately seceded for the purpose of perpetuating slavery. The reasons for secession certainly matter when it comes to evaluating its legitimacy.
Tom G. Palmer writes: “A political right for whom?” Well, for everyone. Ross Levatter is correct that some rights are inalienable. “But could I legitimately ‘secede’ and take Mr. Kerner with me as my slave?” Theoretically, you could, but I would then secede from you and declare my freedom. Admittedly, this is a very abstruse way of describing real life. Actually, slavery is a separate issue from secession. If Tom Palmer enslaves me, I’m going to be struggling for my freedom regardless of whether he is a secessionist or not.
When I say “other sins” I mean any sins. So, no, I would not “agree that no one has the right to ‘secede’ for the purpose of eating hapless victims”. Eating hapless victims has nothing to do with secession — the cannibalism should stop under any circumstances. It’s like asking “do you have the right the free speech if you use it to slander people?” Yes, you always have the right to free speech; no, you must not slander people. Surely, no matter how many times I am convicted of defamation, no one would try to stop me from making statements in favor of, say, voting for John Kerry.
I disagree with Mr. Kerner on a number of points, it seems, but one is especially striking. “Eating hapless victims has nothing to do with secession — the cannibalism should stop under any circumstances.” But slavery had a great deal to do with the secession of the southern states. That’s one of my main reasons for despising the Confederacy so. The purpose of the Confederacy was the defense of slavery. As such, it had no right to exist.
Mrr. Kerner writes that “theoretically” I could legitimately secede and take him with me as my slave. I cannot understand the claim at all. It’s like saying that “theoretically” I could leave the country with him stuffed in my suitcase. Does he think that I shouldn’t be stopped were I to try to do that? Of course I should be. No one has the right to kidnap another person, just as no one has the right to leave the country “with” his slaves.
As to speech, certainly the circumstances matter. You don’t have the right to incite a lynch mob to murder someone. You don’t have the right to shout out incorrect information in order to create a stampede for the exits. You don’t have the right to tell a hit man to go and murder someone else. Those are not examples of free speech, but of criminal acts that involve speech. Some speech is not protected, such as criminal conspiracy. Otherwise, Hitler, who merely induced others through speech to commit crimes, would be innocent, while the executioner who pulled the trigger would be guilty. That can’t be right.
Mr. Kerner’s theory of the relationship between different kinds of acts seems insufficiently nuanced to capture criminal conspiracy, kidnapping, and the like. (Kidnapping is not an exercise of the right to freedom of movement plus stuffing someone in a sack; it is a complex of physical acts united by intentionality. The entire complex act is illegal, not merely bits of it that might be separated from others.)
I really think Tom Palmer is a fine one to be preaching to others about intellectual dishonesty. He continues to repeat, as though it were a mantra of some sort, that the states which made up the Confederate States of America left the union in order to protect and perpetuate slavery. He himself knows full well, however, that this description, at best, applies only to some of the Confederate States. Four of them — Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Arkansas — definitely did not secede from the Union because of slavery. They remained in the Union while the lower South formed its new confederacy, and Jeffrey Rogers Hummel believes they would likely have remained there permanently if the U.S. government had allowed the seceding states to go in peace. Instead, after the Confederate attack on Fort Sumter (which was inside Confederate territory) on April 12, 1861, Lincoln issued a proclamation calling up the militia and making clear his determination to use force of arms to prevent the lower South from seceding. As Hummel writes, “Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Arkansas all promptly transferred their allegiance to the Confederate States of America. Previously unwilling to secede over the issue of slavery, these four states were now ready to fight for the ideal of a voluntary Union.” (141)
Even less convincing is Palmer’s insistence that those southern states that did secede over slavery had no right to do so, because they sanctioned slavery. In considering this tissue of absurdities, let us consider for a moment the nature of the government from which they were seceding. *It* sanctioned slavery. Human beings lived in slavery in the United States during the so-called “Civil War,” just as they did in the Confederate States. The Constitution of the United States recognized the “property right” of slave owners in their slaves and required that fugitive slaves be apprehended and returned to their “masters.” During the war, the president of the United States emphasized repeatedly that the war was not being fought to end slavery. For any partisan of the Union to claim that the Confederate States had no right to secede because they condoned slavery is laughable. It’s the pot calling the kettle black.
I think I now understand better the point that Mr. Palmer is making, which was not completely clear to me before. He says: “Mr. Kerner writes that ‘theoretically’ I could legitimately secede and take him with me as my slave. I cannot understand the claim at all. It’s like saying that ‘theoretically’ I could leave the country with him stuffed in my suitcase.” If Mr. Palmer wants to kidnap me and then physically leave the country, it would be quite reasonable for someone to stop him. If he makes it to another country, it would still be nice if someone would free me from his suitcase. However, if Mr. Palmer merely wishes to stash me in his luggage and there declare “I am now an independent country, the Republic of Palmer”, who cares about the declaration? What difference does it make? Please rescue me from his clutches in any event.
I also think that the point Ross Levattner makes above is important: that we may be discussing the slightly different topics of a) what individuals have the theoretical right to do; and b) the concrete case of the actions surrounding the War between the States. Whether or not the Northern states should have invaded the Southern states in order to free the slaves is any interesting question. I am certainly sympathetic to people like Lysander Spooner, who wanted private guerilla raids on slave plantations. However, they could equally well have invaded regardless of whether they recognized the independence of white southerners, which is why secession is a separate issue.
TGP: “As to speech, certainly the circumstances matter. You don’t have the right to incite a lynch mob to murder someone.” I agree completely. There are things one must not do with one’s free speech. In that sense, it is semantic to argue over whether one retains “freedom of speech” while in the act of abusing it. However, I hope that everyone will agree that, once you are done shouting fire in a crowded theater, you still retain your freedom of speech afterward, and no amount of illegal speech can change that.
As to the purpose of the CSA and the purpose of the war:
Tom Palmer is correct to point out that the articles of secession of some Confederate states (subject to Jeff Riggenbach’s qualification above) mentioned the defense of slavery. But, to demonstrate that the War was “about slavery,” don’t we also have to know what the Northern states thought the War was about? I think a fair reading of the historical record indicates that neither Lincoln, nor key decision-makers within his Administration, not Union commanders, nor the Union rank-and-file, (a) wished to eliminate slavery in the South, (b) believed in full and equal legal rights for blacks, (c) welcomed free blacks to live in their states, and so on. Inded, the Union armies probably would have revolted if the troops thought they were risking their lives to liberate the black man. And of course we know that Lincoln’s entire political agenda, before becoming President, was focused on Henry Clay’s “American system” of high tariffs, corporate welfare, inflationary central banking, and the like.
So, if it could be shown that the Northern armies were fighting for something else, other than emancipation, can’t we say that the War was not only “about slavery,” but also about the something else?
Mr. Riggenbach seems to have misunderstood my point. I was not advocating war on the confederacy, but rather disagreement — and in some cases disgust — with those who yearn for it. The initial decision to secede was motivated by….slavery, which Mr. Riggenbach does not dispute. That others later joined or supported that cause (as I acknowledge above) was in some cases motivated by other factors:
“The issues touched above are not always cut and dried, but there is one issue that is rather straightforward. The Confederacy was a conspiracy to keep people enslaved. Others joined or supported it to fight off invasion, or out of local patriotism, or for other reasons.”
I’m frankly surprised that Mr. Riggenbach doesn’t note that the initial decision to secede was motivated by a desire to perpetuate injustice and a fear that remaining in the Union would have led to it’s end. As I also made clear (regarding “the asymmetrical situation of the northern (non-slave) states and the southern (slave) states”), “The former could have legitimately seceded for the purpose of withdrawing their former enforcement of slavery; the latter could not have legitimately seceded for the purpose of perpetuating slavery. The reasons for secession certainly matter when it comes to evaluating its legitimacy.” There is neither an endorsement of the waging of war nor any endorsement of the policy of the Union of enforcing runaway slave laws; the reason that the Confederacy was formed was to perpetuate an institution that its supporters feared would disappear if they were to remain in the Union. Others joined for other reasons, but that does not negate the point that the motivation for formation of the Confederate States of America was to perpetuate slavery. For that reason, it gets no sympathy from me. (I should add that Hungary joined the Axis powers in the Second World War because of its geographical position and because Hitler promised Transylvania to whichever of the two states of Romania [also an ally] or Hungary fought the hardest against the USSR; that makes me more sympathetic to the Romanians and the Hungarians, but it does not diminish the evil of Hitler’s territorial expansionism and the wickedness of his dream of a National Socialist European Reich. The same may apply to German soldiers who fought in the war simply because they were drafted, or because they feared invasion of their homeland, or for other reasons. There’s no reason to spit on their graves, but also no reason to be sympathetic to the cause that led to the bloodshed in the first place.)
Mr. Kerner’s point is now more clear to me, as well, but I don’t understand why he uses the term “freedom of speech” when describing cases in which one should not, in fact, be “free” to use it, since one should be prohibited from doing so. It’s not even clear that once one is done shouting fire in a crowded theater, one should retain “freedom of speech” afterward; if one engages in criminal conspiracy to murder someone, it is not unusual for a part of the punishment to be a ban on one’s speaking out for profit, say by writing a memoir or directing a movie about one’s crimes, afterward. The point is not a narrow sematic one, but a broader point about the intentionality of complex acts; the secession that led to the formation of the Confederate States of America was about retaining slavery — it was not an act of secession that was merely coupled to the accidental accompanying fact that slavery would be retained; it was a movement to retain slavery. As such, I’m not sympathetic, despite my sympathy for the right of persons to secede from larger political units when in pursuit of justice, or, at the least, when not in the pursuit of injustice.
I had not seen Patrick’s note until after posting the one above. Note that I did not attempt to “demonstrate that the War was ‘about slavery.'” As I wrote above, “One could have opposed the war waged by the northern states without supporting the slavery-inspired secession by the southern states.” I said that the formation of the Confederacy was about slavery. The war was primarily about union, as I think is fairly clear from the historical record. So Patrick’s remarks are about some other discussion than the one above.
1) Was it wrong for the People’s Republic of Vietnam to invade Cambodia to overthrow Pol Pot?
2) Was it wrong for the e People’s Republic of Vietnam to invade the Republic of Vietnam? (I would LOVE to see the Rothbardians try to squirm out of this one. Afterall, do you think we all forgot how you cheered the NVA and Viet Cong and cheered the end of South Vietnam as a “death of a state”? So why was this North vs. South any different than the despicable CSA being destroyed by the USA?)
http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/csa/scarsec.htm
“But an increasing hostility on the part of the non-slaveholding States to the institution of slavery, has led to a disregard of their obligations, and the laws of the General Government have ceased to effect the objects of the Constitution…For twenty-five years this agitation has been steadily increasing, until it has now secured to its aid the power of the common Government. Observing the forms of the Constitution, a sectional party has found within that Article establishing the Executive Department, the means of subverting the Constitution itself. A geographical line has been drawn across the Union, and all the States north of that line have united in the election of a man to the high office of President of the United States, whose opinions and purposes are hostile to slavery. He is to be entrusted with the administration of the common Government, because he has declared that that ‘Government cannot endure permanently half slave, half free,’ and that the public mind must rest in the belief that slavery is in the course of ultimate extinction.”
This is not complicated. When the folks who seceded formally explained to the world their decision to secede, they discussed hostility to slavery, hostility to slavery, and hostility to slavery. Read the words of the secessionists. Words have meaning.
Frederick Douglass gave a speech once (“Oration in Memory of Abraham Lincoln”) that might shed some light on this issue.
In the speech, Douglass made clear that Lincoln was, like most whites of his time, a racist, and concerned only with the interests of his own race.
That said, Douglass continued, “Though Mr. Lincoln shared the prejudices of his white fellow-countrymen against the Negro, it is hardly necessary to say that in his heart of hearts he loathed and hated slavery.”
Douglass continued, “I have said that President Lincoln was a white man, and shared the prejudices common to his countrymen towards the colored race. Looking back to his times and to the condition of his country, we are compelled to admit that this unfriendly feeling on his part may be safely set down as one element of his wonderful success in organizing the loyal American people for the tremendous conflict before them, and bringing them safely through that conflict. His great mission was to accomplish two things: first, to save his country from dismemberment and ruin; and, second, to free his country from the great crime of slavery. To do one or the other, or both, he must have the earnest sympathy and the powerful cooperation of his loyal fellow-countrymen. Without this primary and essential condition to success his efforts must have been vain and utterly fruitless. Had he put the abolition of slavery before the salvation of the Union, he would have inevitably driven from him a powerful class of the American people and rendered resistance to rebellion impossible. Viewed from the genuine abolition ground, Mr. Lincoln seemed tardy, cold, dull, and indifferent; but measuring him by the sentiment of his country, a sentiment he was bound as a statesman to consult, he was swift, zealous, radical, and determined.”
Finally, in a list of what black Americans “saw” during the Lincoln presidency, Douglass noted, “we saw the Confederate States, based upon the idea that our race must be slaves, and slaves forever, battered to pieces and scattered to the four winds.”
You can find the whole thing at:
http://teachingamericanhistory.org/library/index.asp?documentprint=39
Beyond Douglass’ account (which I would easily accept before Tom DiLorenzo’s or any of Lew Rockwell’s folks), there is evidence that, to a number of Southerners, slavery was more important than secession, states’ rights, voluntary union, or any other consideration. For instance, many of them lobbied for union, not secession, based only on their fear that secession would nullify the Fugitive Slave Act and give slaves greater incentives to escape.
In any event, I think it’s wise to consult original sources for these discussions, and for my money, few people offer greater insights than Frederick Douglass.
Well, I’m comfortably letting the matter rest on this footing: the same way that one could, arguably, void one’s right to future speech by egregious misuse of speech, one could argue that those individuals who are directly responsible for slavery might void their rights to secede from another country. If one supports the death penalty, one could make a pretty strong case that those who hold slaves void their right to live. Clearly they deserve some sanction stronger than just being forced to remain in the U.S. Actually, that hardly seems like much punishment at all, considering the deals that the white Southern elite made in the 1870s to retain their local power under the United States.
As for those Southerners who were not directly involved in slavery and who were like the 2/3 of Confederate soldiers in a study who stated that their reason for fighting was to defend their homes, I still don’t see what would prejudice their claim at independence.
“stated that their reason for fighting was to defend their homes”
Is that why they swore loyalty to the CSA?
Tom, I guess I’m confused, then, about what this thread is all about. You began the thread by slamming Tom Woods (and linking, approvingly, to Cathy Young’s attack on his book). Now you’re saying you don’t necessarily support the Union’s invasion of the South, only that the Confederacy deserves no “sympathy.” Well, neither Woods nor his book offers any “sympathy” for the Confederacy, as in some kind of nostalgia for the Good Ole’ Days when blacks knew their place. His book argues that Southern secession was legal and that the Union’s invsion was unjust. You may disagree with the former point (you haven’t said where you stand on the latter), but is this any reason to smear the book as racist trash?
Patrick,
I’ve not smeared the book as “racist trash.” I wrote the following,
“Since the Confederacy was set up to perpetuate slavery, I am suspicious of any and all who articulate nostalgia for it, who brush aside the crime of slavery, or who speak of ‘self-determination’ as the foundation for the CSA, when the self-determination of many of the selves affected was deliberately denied by the advocates of southern independence.”
I do not believe that the decision to secede was justified, for the purposes set out above. I also wrote,
“I believe that the Civil War (‘War Between the States,’ ‘Late Unpleasantness,’ or whatever the Rockwellites call it) was a horror and that many institutions inimical to liberty and justice had their start in the U.S. during that war and its aftermath.”
Where’s the smear?
I fear that a book such as Mr. Woods’s will associate reasonable matters, such as the question of whether the New Deal prolonged the Depression, rather than ending or ameliorating it, with sympathy with the cause of the Confederacy.
As to linking “approvingly” to Cathy Young’s review, I wrote,
“Cathy Young of Reason magazine has a review of Woods’s book in the Boston Globe, to which Professor Woods has responded by calling her a “neocon” (the slam of choice on lewrockwell.com for anyone who disagrees with their Confederate Revivalism) and writing, ‘There is no point in answering someone like this.’ Zing!”
Mr. Woods’s response was feeble. My “approval” of Ms. Young’s review was to write “Cathy Young of Reason magazine has a review of Woods’s book in the Boston Globe.”
I fear that you are reading far too much into what others write. That seems the other side of the coin of “reading far too little into what others write,” in cases when people express interest in or sympathy for, say, the Council of Conservative Citizens, but argue that “it’s not racist to run articles on “the brutal beating of a white man by a hulking black man,” which seems to miss the context of the article, which is the promotion of race hatred.
I posted a note about the controversy about Woods and his book, mentioning “links to Wood’s defenses” and suggested that readers [you] can “make up your own mind.” That doesn’t seem much like a smear.
Very interesting discussion, but it’s hard to keep up with the flow of comments… 🙂
I think that Tom has only partially addressed Patrick’s post. He has replied to the claim that he smeared Woods’ book. But he has not stated whether he thought the war was warranted or just.
Sure, he has written, that the war “was a horror and that many institutions inimical to liberty and justice had their start in the U.S. during that war and its aftermath.” But no reasonable person would disagree with the first part of that statement, and few with the latter part. The question remains: Where does he stand on the Union’s decision to wage war on the South? The issue may not be “cut and dried.” Few hard questions are. But that doesn’t mean that serious people who engage in public forums like this one — especially those who host them — don’t have a responsibility to try to clearly address those questions as best they can.
Sorry if my answer was not clear enough. I would have opposed the decision to go to war. How the world would have turned out is difficult to say, but I don’t think that the decision to wage war to keep the union intact was just. I also think that the efforts to free slaves, against which the Confederacy was organized, was just and that guerrilla war against the Confederacy by slaves and their supporters was just. Just as I opposed the war against Saddam’s regime in Iraq, I also think that Saddam should hang for his crimes and I am glad that his regime is no more.
I’m quite concerned, however, that the legitimate claims for secession around the world are tarred with association with the illegitimate claims for secession that motivated the Confederacy. The same goes for the issue of “states rights,” a term I don’t use because it is quite misleading (at best, states exercise delegated powers that are not delegated to the United States) and because it carries so much ugly freight with which it should not be burdened. (The issue of gay marriage has been put in terms of “states rights” by some, which has led some opponents to raise the connection with the ugliness of Jim Crow laws, which were also justified under the term “states rights”; I would rather note that there is no power at the federal level to define marriage for the states, which means that, to the extent that it comes under the authority of government at all, it is a matter reserved to the states or to the people.)
Indeed, it is like libertarians hailing National Socialists as paragons of property rights because they were fighting FDR and the New Dealers.
So why pick super-statist racist slavers like the CSA as an example for liberty? (Unless the Rockwellians are trying to get money from racists, trying to appeal to racists politically or maybe really are racists…)
Tom: “I fear that you are reading far too much into what others write.” OK, fair enough. I’ll try not to do that. But, in fairness, note the photos with which you chose to decorate this blog entry. Wouldn’t you say that’s just a bit inflammatory?
By the way, while Woods did not pen a detailed reply to Cathy Young’s piece, he was written several other replies to critics (http://www.lewrockwell.com/woods/woods35.html, http://www.lewrockwell.com/woods/woods36.html, and also http://blog.lewrockwell.com/lewrw/archives/007450.html, in which he explains his relationship to the League of the South). He also posts a short summary of the book itself at http://www.lewrockwell.com/woods/woods30.html.
Tom writes:
“I don’t understand why he uses the term ‘freedom of speech’ when describing cases in which one should not, in fact, be ‘free’ to use it, since one should be prohibited from doing so. It’s not even clear that once one is done shouting fire in a crowded theater, one should retain ‘freedom of speech’ afterward.”
In a free society, on one’s own property, or on the property of a consenting owner, one may say anything one damned well pleases.
But I’m sure we can all wholeheartedly agree that if we want to know what Abraham Lincoln was attempting to achieve, we should ignore what Lincoln said about the matter and consult Frederick Douglass.
Apologies to all, the links above seem to include the punctuation marks, so they don’t come up properly. Here are corrected links:
http://www.lewrockwell.com/woods/woods35.html
http://www.lewrockwell.com/woods/woods36.html
http://blog.lewrockwell.com/lewrw/archives/007450.html
http://www.lewrockwell.com/woods/woods30.html
(Tom: I think there is a bug in your software. I typed those links in carefully, putting the commas and periods outside the closing anchor tag. When I previewed my comment, however, the punctuation marks had been moved inside the tag. I didn’t do it, I swear. The software seems to do this automatically.)
“…there is evidence that, to a number of Southerners, slavery was more important than secession, states’ rights, voluntary union, or any other consideration. For instance, many of them lobbied for union, not secession, based only on their fear that secession would nullify the Fugitive Slave Act and give slaves greater incentives to escape.”
Yep. Secession and slavery were different issues, though they overlapped. Many people, including most non-slaveholding Southerners, wanted to secede for reasons other than slavery. Other people wanted to keep slavery and correctly realized that they could stay in the Union, and, although they would be burdened by high tariffs, Lincoln would probably do nothing to interfere with slavery. Indeed, he would help send fugitive slaves back to their masters, as he did throughout the war.
During the war there were Southerners who thought that abolishing slavery would help them fight for their independence. Robert E. Lee, for one, was much more interested in repelling the North than preserving slavery, which he opposed. He joined the secessionary movement in opposition to the Union’s invasion, not support of slavery.
Furthermore, as Hummel points out, toward the end of the war “aboard a steamer in Hampton Roads, Virginia, the President and William Seward informally met with Alexander Stephens and two other Confederate commissioners. Lincoln offered an armistice that left open possible compensation for former slaveholders in the South, in spite of the certain objections that Radical Republicans would raise. He appeared to have elevated slavery’s abolition into one of the North’s war goals, but he and Seward simultaneously hinted that the southern states, if they rejoined the Union, could prevent or postpone the ratification of an antislavery amendment. The Republican President was inflexible on one condition, however. Reuniting the coutnry was still non-negotiable.
“Jefferson Davis summarily rejected Lincoln’s demands, yet he might have given in on southern emancipation in return for Southern independence. His countrymen were already debating the revolutionary expedient of arming slaves to fight for the Confederacy, even though they knew that this meant an end to their peculiar institution. As early as August 1863, an editorial in the Jackson Mississippian declared that slavery should not be ‘a barrier to our independence. If it is found in the way — if it proves an insurmountable object of the achievement of our liberty and separate nationality, away with it! Let it perish!’ This was a drastic step, but ‘we must make up our minds to one solemn duty, the first duty of the patriot, and that is to save ourselves from the rapacious North, whatever the cost.'” (280-281)
It seems to me quite clear that many Southerners were less afraid of the Union’s stand on slavery (it had slavery in four of its states, sent freed slaves back to the South throughout the war, and was led by a president who said repeatedly that abolition was not his agenda), than they were of Lincoln’s protectionism and despotism. The Union was less a free-state than Britain was during the American Revolution, and it was much more protectionist and tyrannical in its trade policies and violations of civil liberties than was Britain in its treatment of the American revolutionaries. But rooting for the Americans in their secession against Britain, even the slave-holding ones, isn’t necessarily a defense of all the evils they committed.
Yes, the first states to secede said slavery was their motivation. The states themselves, like all states, cannot speak for all the people in their jurisdiction. (And even the Declaration of Independence complains about the “savage” Indians; once the American Revolution was over the U.S. was quite murderous to this group of people. This doesn’t mean the whole American secession from Britain was unjust.)
Many Southerners took up arms not against abolitionism, but against a ruthless Union army and the tyrannical regime it attempted to preserve, at the cost of the principles of the American Revolution, many innocent lives and many liberties. Those who did so do not deserve to be characterized as defenders of slavery. Many of them weren’t.
The people I know who supposedly “defend the Confederacy” have no sympathy with slavery, nor do they think it was a wise choice to form the CSA, nor even to go to war with the Union, nor even necessarily to secede. Meanwhile, there are “libertarians” out there who think the Civil War was justifiable.
We all know that no libertarians think chattel slavery was libertarian. And yet there are many who think the war, including its draft, murder and mayhem, was libertarian. That’s troubling.
Sorry. Forgot to give my name in the above posting.
Apologies to Patrick for the url problem. I find that I always leave a space after a URL before putting in a comma or a period. Otherwise, the punctuation is incorporated into the URL. You don’t need the special tags, just the URL and it converts it into a linkable address. (I’m not that sophisticated about such matters, so that’s about all I know.)
Jeff Riggenbach has spoken too loosely, I believe. He writes,
“In a free society, on one’s own property, or on the property of a consenting owner, one may say anything one damned well pleases.”
What one says can be a part of a criminal act; if you threaten a person, for example, you are speaking, but not “only” speaking. Your speech is a part of a threat. The threat is a violation of rights, even if the gun that is held to one’s head is not discharged. Indeed, if one hears a threat and considers it credible, one can react and harm the one making the threat, even if it turns out that he had no weapon or that the gun was merely a toy.
So, in a free society, in “on one’s own property, or on the property of a consenting owner,” one may not say to another person, “Go and kill Ralph Jackson; here is his address; you will find a gun hidden in his mailbox,” when that speech is not a part of a joke or a play, but is a part of a plan to commit murder, no matter how well one is pleased by saying it. Thus, it is not the case, that, “on one’s own property, or on the property of a consenting owner, one may say anything one damned well pleases.”
Jeff Riggenbach’s remarks might be correct if it were the case that human actions were describable only in corporeal, spatial, and physical terms; thus, if speech were merely the expulsion of air that is modulated by the merely physical movements of lips and tongues, then it would be hard to characterize speech as an element of a rights violation. But if that were the case, one could not speak about the matter at all. The fact that we can speak about such things is evidence that speech has meaning, that is, that it is a part of a complex intentional whole that endows what would otherwise be mere movements with significance. Planning a kidnapping on my own property is criminal, regardless of whether the kidnapping ever takes place and regardless of whether the body of the one who does the planning and speaks the orders actually comes into contact with the body of the one kidnapped. Intentions matter.
To tie that in to the act of secession, if an act of secession is a part of a plan to kidnap or to maintain in slavery a group of innocent people, then it is not justified. If, on the other hand, it is a part of a plan to stop supporting slavery (as the secession of the northern states from the union would have been), then it can be justified. (Other conditions may apply, of course.) Similarly if it is a part of a plan to remove oneself from tyrannical rule. That does not apply to the decision of the South Carolina convention, which was (as noted above) moved to preserve slavery against a threat that it might be abolished.
This is slightly off topic, but I can’t resist. Tiny Tim here and elsewhere on this blog frequently rails against the Rothbardians’ “Leninist” strategy. So this passage from Tuesday’s Washington Post article on Cato’s role in the Social Security debate caught my eye:
“In the fall of 1983, Cato made clear that it was preparing for a protracted fight. It published a paper by Heritage Foundation scholars Stuart M. Butler and Peter Germanis that called for ‘guerrilla warfare against both the current Social Security system and the coalition that supports it.’ They compared the drive to Nikolai Lenin’s effort to undermine capitalism: ‘Lenin well knew to be a successful revolutionary one must also be patient and consistently plan for real reform.’ ”
I presume that Tiny Tim was referring, not to the idea of being patient and undertaking long-temr planning, but rather to the cadre strategy that I discussed with Murray Rothbard many times and that I came to reject as both inappropriate and repulsive. Rothbard frequently quipped that “Fewer but better is better,” i.e., that one had constantly to purge out those with deviant thoughts (as defined by MNR) to find the true cadre who could be relied upon to play their role. That is a strategy that may be appropriate to what Lenin accomplished, viz. the seizure of absolute power, but it is not appropriate to what libertarians favor, which is the elimination of absolute power and universal respect for the equal rights of all.
Tom: Yup. But don’t forget the other part of the strategy – infiltrating/influencing other groups to make them politically subserviant to the cadre.
Don’t you see the connection between the strategy and their kkkrazy connections with racists like the League of the South and he Council of Conservative Citizens?
Stupid, sick and unlibertarian, the hallmarks of Rothbardianism.
Anthony Goodman — was the CSA despotic? Was the CSA a tyranny? If not, what do YOU call a State which holds half its population in chains?
“Anthony Goodman — was the CSA despotic? Was the CSA a tyranny?”
Yes and yes, of course. But the CSA is not the same as the people of who lived under it, even if many of those people shared with the CSA the goal of secession.
Putting this in context your question of whether it was “wrong for the People’s Republic of Vietnam to invade Cambodia to overthrow Pol Pot”, I will say that obviously the Khmer Rouge was despotic and totalitarian. But I’m guessing many Cambodians fought back against the Vietnamese, not to affirm the values of the Cambodian regime, but to oppose the invasion which did, undeniably, kill people and have despotic intentions. (Interestingly, the U.S. government supported the Khmer Rouge in that conflict, rather than the Vietnamese — or the actual people of Cambodia, otherwise it is unexplicable why the U.S. helped the Khmer Rouge train in Thailand. For this, and many other reasons, I consider the U.S. government quite unsavory and at times murderous. But if a regime invaded the U.S., even from a country much more internally free than the U.S., and began killing innocent Americans, I would oppose the invasion.)