What, you may ask, has the American Civil War got to do with present day politics? Firstly, there are parallels with the European Union. Secondly, it is the victors who write the history and therefore it can be difficult to get an unbiased view of events when the media is controlled by the victors.
Witness the adulation given to Abraham Lincoln, the 16th President of the United States from 1861 to 1865.
The American Civil War was a war between the Northern (New England) states and the Southern (Confederate) states.
There is a debate about the causes of this war; some believe it was all about slavery and some believe it was about States having the right to secede from a Union. Let us say Greece decided to leave the European Union because of the disastrous Euro currency and because of the hostility from Northern Europe; Greece believing it has a legal right to leave this Union (which it does).
Let us then say that the European Union decides that Greece cannot leave the Union and starts a war against Greece which last four years and at the end of it at least 600,000 soldiers are dead and then Greece, being utterly beaten into submission, feels it has no option but to stay in the “Union”.
Would you then say that the leaders of the European Union were “great” for saving the Union? The above scenario may sound far-fetched but this, in my view, is similar to what happened in America in the 1860s.
Most texts books about the American Civil War will tell you that Lincoln “was a great man” and that he “saved the Union”. Hollywood does not help with its cartoonish view of history. Some say that Lincoln was “the greatest American President ever”.
This article takes a dissenting view of Abraham Lincoln and I make no apology for that. Dissent and criticism are healthy in a democracy. How best to counteract over one hundred and forty years of biased information?
One way to do it is to use the facts and a good place to start is by reading what Abraham Lincoln actually said in his speeches.
Was slavery the cause of the war?
Abraham Lincoln, in his Inaugural Address on the Capitol steps, 1861:
“I have no purpose directly or indirectly to interfere with the institution of slavery in the states where it exists.I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so.”
200,000 slaveholders were in the Confederate Army whereas 315,000 slaveholders were in the Union Army. President Lincoln put a slaveholder, General U. S. Grant, in command of the Union Army.
The Southern States put General Robert E. Lee (who had freed his slaves) in command of the Confederate Army.
General U.S. Grant and General Robert E.Lee
General Grant (Union Army) said:
“Should I become convinced that the object of the Government is to execute the wishes of the abolitionists, I pledge you my honor as a man and a soldier I would resign my commission and carry my sword to the other side.”
Simon Cameron, Lincoln’s Secretary of War, wrote to General Butler in New Orleans:
“President Lincoln desires the right to hold slaves to be fully recognized. The war is prosecuted for the Union hence no question concerning slavery will arise.”
Of course, slavery was an ugly scar on American history. It was wrong then and it is wrong now but the North and South were both to blame. The slaves were brought to America by British and Dutch vessels but also by American ships which were owned by Northerners.
Less than one in fifteen Southerners was a slaveholder. Not one Southern man owned or commanded a slave ship. The question of slavery became an all important one in the years leading up to the Civil War.
The people of the North soon became horrified at an institution which they themselves once countenanced and they allowed their opposition to it to assume the character of a fanatical hatred. However Lincoln made it very clear what he really thought about the slaves in a repulsive speech at Charleston, Illinois in 1858.
Leaving the Union
From the beginning, Southerners and Northerners were not congenial. The North became a manufacturing section. The South turned to agriculture. Congress invented a “protective tariff” to increase the profits of Northern factories.
Abraham Lincoln was the first Republican Party President and when the Republican Party was formed in 1854, a part of their platform was to increase this tariff which was crippling the Southern States.
It was mainly due to the unfair tariff and the vitriolic abuse of Northern Puritans that the Southern states seceded from the Union. The people who settled in the North (New England States) were of a different character from those who settled in the South.
Most of the emigrants who settled in the New England States were religious malcontents. These Puritans had the memory of Oliver Cromwell and the execution of King Charles still fresh in their minds.
They began to despise the liberal and free civilisation that was developing in the Southern States.
The Confederates believed that if the Declaration of Independence justified the secession of 3,000,000 colonists in 1776, then they did not see why the Constitution ratified by the same men should not justify the secession of 5,000,000 of the Southerners from the Federal Union in 1861.
The Southerners remembered what Abraham Lincoln had said in 1847:
“Any people, anywhere, being inclined and having the power, have the right to rise up and shake off the existing government, and form a new one that suits them better. This is a most valuable, a most sacred right; a right which we hope and believe is to liberate the world.”
Referring to the right to safety and happiness, the Declaration of Independence said:
“Whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to abolish, and to institute a new government.”
Abraham Lincoln did not believe his own words and then he brought forth a bitter war with the Confederates. Over 620,000 deaths later and after battering the Confederate states into submission by greater manpower and resources, Lincoln had “saved the Union” but it was and still is a Union divided.
Many Southerners still regard themselves as different to Northerners and the Confederate flag is still flown in many parts of the South.
Abraham Lincoln: sordid facts the historians leave out
Did you know that Abraham Lincoln practically imposed a dictatorship on the Northern states, closed down nearly 300 Northern newspapers, had thousands of Northerners arrested, invaded the Northern States of Maryland, Kentucky, and Missouri and took over their legislatures, all because those three sovereign States didn’t want to participate in his war which they considered unconstitutional.
The Writ of Habeas Corpus was suspended by Abraham Lincoln during the Civil War, during which tens of thousands of anti-war Northerners were imprisoned for voicing their views. Lincoln issued an arrest warrant for the Supreme Court Chief Justice when he correctly ruled that according to Article I of the Constitution, only Congress, not the President, could suspend the Great Writ of Habeas Corpus.
This is what Lincoln said in a speech at Charleston, Illinois in 1858.
“I will say, then, that I am not, nor ever have been, in favour of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races—that I am not, nor ever have been, in favour of making voters or jurors of Negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people; and I will say in addition to this, that there is a physical difference between the white and black races which I believe will forever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality.
And in as much as they cannot so live, while they do remain together there must be the position of superior and inferior, and I, as much as any other man, am in favour of having the superior position assigned to the white race.”
“Fourth Lincoln-Douglas Debate, September 18, 1858, Charleston, Illinois,” in “Abraham Lincoln: Speeches and Writings” (New York: Library of America, 1989), p. 636, and in Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, Volume 5, page 371
Barack Obama, the current President of the United States, identified with Abraham Lincoln and quoted him often during his Presidential campaigns in 2009 and 2013. Obama was sworn into office with the same Bible originally used by Lincoln at his 1861 presidential inauguration.
Perhaps Obama and his advisers should have done a little more research!