Conservative Publisher's New Book: "If There Had Been No Civil War, the South Would Have Abolished Slavery Peaceably"
| Tue Nov. 25, 2008 11:40 AM PST
Regnery Publishing, the home of such conservative stalwarts as Swift Boat Veteran John O'Neill (who wrote Unfit for Command, which contained falsehoods about John Kerry) and author Jerome Corsi (who co-wrote Unfit for Command and wrote The Obama Nation, which contained falsehoods about Barack Obama) just emailed me to promote one of their newest releases. This time, it's The Politically Incorrect Guide to The Civil War, which, you guessed it, reveals how "conventional 'wisdom' about the Civil War, slavery, and states' rights has been hijacked by Northeast liberals." (Update: I just noticed that the book's cover, pictured to the right, advertises an "Afterword by Jefferson Davis.") Among the book's claims: "How the Confederate States of America might have helped the Allies win World War I sooner," and, of course, "How, if there had been no Civil War, the South would have abolished slavery peaceably."
I know it's probably just because I suffer from the "liberal self-hatred that vilifies America's greatest heroes," but I find the idea of the slave states voluntarily giving up their slaves to be really, really dumb. The Southern states seceded largely because they didn't want to be ruled by Lincoln, who had argued against expanding slavery into new territories. The Confederate constitution says, "No bill of attainder, ex post facto law, or law denying or impairing the right of property in negro slaves shall be passed." But in case you don't believe me, I asked retired army Lt. Colonel Robert Mackey, author of The UnCivil War and bona fide Civil War geek. Dr. Mackey, a combat veteran who was Assistant Professor of Military History at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, says it's "a heaping pile of bulls**t" and offers up a few reasons why:
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1. Slaves represented real property value. The South's biggest asset wasn't cotton, it was human beings. That is why the Southern economy collapsed after 1865—old Nathan Bedford Forrest himself said "I went into the war a millionaire and came out a pauper." Why? All his 'wealth' was in slaves.
2. The virtual serfdom of poor whites and blacks in the South after Reconstruction. The entire economic system, which only fell apart because of the Depression and the great migration of blacks to the North in WWI and WWII, was based on sharecropping. Sharecropping only worked because the "New South" replaced antebellum planters with bankers, etc. It was a form of slavery as well—just one in which "the owners" had no moral or ethical responsibility to care for the slave...since they had no 'property rights.'
3. There is zero evidence slavery would have naturally ended. There was no antebellum abolitionist movement in the South. On the contrary, the entire social system was set up to reinforce slavery.
Lastly, just imagine how easy it would have been for anti-labor industrialists to move factories South, where you not only did not have labor unions, but could contract for workers from their 'owners' at a set, low rate. It would have been horror, and the death of any hope of democracy in America.
So I hope that ridiculousness has been suitably debunked. But Civil War "political incorrectness" and Democratic presidential candidate bashing isn't all Regnery publishes. They also publish non-peer-reviewed "science" written by controversial authors. In 2003, Chris Mooney wrote in Mother Jones about John Lott, a Regnery author whose pro-gun social science came under fire:
Pressed by critics, [Lott] failed to produce evidence of the existence of a survey—which supposedly found that "98 percent of the time that people use guns defensively, they merely have to brandish a weapon to break off an attack"—that he claimed to have conducted in the second edition of "More Guns, Less Crime". Lott then made matters even worse by posing as a former student, "Mary Rosh," and using the alias to attack his critics and defend his work online.
Lott's pro-gun writing for Regnery must have endeared the company to other gun-toting types, because in February, Blackwater founder and CEO Erik Prince signed a book deal with the company. I look forward to the Regnery email promoting "Blackwater's Politically Incorrect Guide to the Iraq War," or whatever they end up calling it.
(Mother Jones has covered Regnery many times before. Last year, Debra Dickerson wrote about how some of the company's authors were suing their publisher for depriving them of royalties. In 2004, Bradford Plumer—now of The New Republic—interviewed Media Matters for America's David Brock on the subject of the "Republican Noise Machine." Regnery comes up.)
Comments
...I find the idea of the slave states voluntarily giving up their slaves to be really, really dumb.
Odd that you should feel that way, given that every other slave holding nation in history, excepting for Lincoln's war, has done exactly that.
It's also a pretty ludicrous presumption that, at this point in world history, ANY nation would find slavery an economically viable option.
None do. But maybe you can explain how a 21st century Confederate States of America might have bucked the tide and still be able to survive as a slave-based agrarian economy?
The Swiftboaters were correct about Kerry and the book about Obama was also factual.
Most Southerners owned no slaves but were fiercely nationalistic and proud. They fought for independence, not slavery. The boll weevil destroyed the Southern cotton society and would have spelled the end of slavery.
Submitted by Eric Ferguson (not verified) on Tue Nov. 25, 2008 2:30 PM PST.
Of course slavery wouldn't have been ended peacefully. If we're wondering how the confederacy would have changed had it survived, the closest parallels are segregation and apartheid. The end of apartheid came with decades of guerrilla war and intense outside pressure. Ending segregation required the power of the federal government. Those are imperfect parallels since the continuation of the confederacy would be a different situation from what happened, but that's the closest to reality we have. Societies organized around oppression as the South was just don't change entirely peaceably. Look for societies that abolished slavery voluntarily, and you'll find societies where slavery was a sidelight, not an organizing principle.
Look for societies that abolished slavery voluntarily, and you'll find societies where slavery was a sidelight, not an organizing principle.
Don't think so, Eric.
Great Britain, from whom we inherited the institution of slavery, had a very profound economic interest in slavery in it's colonies, particularly Jamaica, which consumed more African slaves than anywhere else. They even rounded up and sent women & children from rebellious Ireland to work as slave labor, and yet it ended the practice peacefully there, and in all the other outposts where it had 'organized' such a 'principle'.
In NO OTHER instance in history was a war involved in ending slavery. Yet it ended in all cases.
The chips are NOT stacked in favor of such an argument, no matter what 'conventional wisdom' was taught us in public schools eager to America's bloody atrocity.
Only "The Evil American South", of all the nations on Earth, would have preserved slavery down to the present day. And all other slave-holding peoples would be found to have risen above it.
That "school history book" story stands up to logical examination about as well as the old "benevolent white man" version of European-AmerInd relations they used to teach, leaving out the European manipulations of tribal rivalries for European ends, and the genocide parts of the story.
In short: Hogwash!
Submitted by Zeno (not verified) on Tue Nov. 25, 2008 2:53 PM PST.
The CSA would have helped the USA in World War I? It's more likely they would have been on the other side. I prefer my alternate history from Harry Turtledove, not Regnery. The alternative to Regnery is reality.
The Civil War wasn't about states rights, it was about a particular "right", that of holding slaves. It wasn't even about any efforts to abolish slavery in the near term, which neither Lincoln nor any other mainstream figure at the time was proposing. It was about restricting slavery in the new territories, about which new states would become slave vs. free. Slave states were worried that if too many free states joined the union, their power would be diluted and slavery might eventually go away.
I do think that eventually it would have ended with or without the Civil War. The question is, when? 50 years later? 100? What would have been the fate of the freed slaves? Southern apologists paint all the troubles of reconstruction on interference with the north causing resentment and upheaval, but without "Northeast liberal" intervention, injustice would most certainly have gone on far longer. (Note: the northeast has and continues to have it's racial problems as well, that is clear.)
Without a unified United States, it's also possible that other advances we've seen in human freedoms would not have been possible. There's a lot of folks alive today who remember the days of separate water fountains, schools, lunch counters, the days when lynching, harassment, and poll taxes kept the land of the free from extending democracy to all it's people.
The effects the United States has had throughout the world would have been felt very differently. Would a Confederate States of America felt a more natural allegiance to England and France in WWI or to Germany? There were sad elements of American Society that found Hitlers racists and anti-semitic arguements compelling, would they have found root in the home of what in another history would have been the Klu Klux Klan? During those wars, would the north American continent been riven by conflict?
Even assuming those troubles could have been navigated, would apartheid have fallen in South Africa in a world where the CSA practiced a similar system?
Yes, southern revisionists like to present history in a way that makes them seem noble, that avoids the devastating legacy they might have left had slavery continued, and only died an eventual economic death decades later. But we must be vigilant in protecting the legacy of Lincoln, who did eventually oppose slavery more fully, and who was able to overcome his prejudices. We must value the actions of the United States of America, that opposed repression of freedom inside it's borders and out.
My country may not be perfect, but I'm damn proud of it, and won't let these pseudo patriots stain that pride with lies.
But we must be vigilant in protecting the legacy of Lincoln, who did eventually oppose slavery more fully
Did he? Did he really mean anything by his much vaunted Emancipation Proclamation?
The stereotyped picture of the emancipator suddenly striking the shackles from millions of slaves by a stroke of the presidential pen is altogether inaccurate. On this point one should carefully note the exceptions in the proclamation itself. The whole state of Tennessee was omitted; none of the Union slave states was included; and there were important exceptions as to portions of Virginia and Louisiana, those being the portions within Union military lines. In fact freedom was decreed only in regions then under Confederate control. "The President has purposely made the proclamation inoperative [declared the N. Y. World] in all places where we have gained a military footing which makes the slaves accessible. He has proclaimed emancipation only where he has notoriously no power to execute it. The exemption of the accessible parts of Louisiana, Tennessee, and Virginia renders the proclamation not merely futile, but ridiculous."
...
"We show our sympathy with slavery," Seward is reported to have said, "by emancipating slaves where we cannot reach them and holding them in bondage where we can set them free." The London Spectator declared (October 11, 1862): "The government liberates the enemy's slaves as it would the enemy's cattle, simply to weaken them in the . . . conflict. . . . The principle is not that a human being cannot justly own another, but that he cannot own him unless he is loyal to the United States."
www.civilwarhome.com/lincolnandproclamation.htm
Lincoln justified his Emancipation Proclamation entirely on military necessity. That was why he limited its operation to areas behind enemy lines, he told Salmon P. Chase, who expressed disappointment that it did not apply to Confederate areas under Union occupation. If he applied it where there was no military necessity, "[would] I not give up all footing upon constitution or law? ... Could it fail to be perceived that without any further stretch, I might ... change any law in any state?" He was never confident that the Emancipation Proclamation as a war measure worked a permanent divestiture of slaveholders' claims to their slaves, although he avowed that as president he would never return anyone freed under its terms to servitude. He refused to sign the Wade-Davis Reconstruction Act of 1864 because it required the abolition of slavery, which intervened in the domestic institutions of the states beyond what military necessity required.
www.historycooperative.org/journals/jala/10/benedict.html
...and who was able to overcome his prejudices.
Did he?
Is he on record somewhere recanting the blatantly racist, "white supremacy" types of statements he made in the debates with Steven Douglas?
I haven't seen it, but I'm willing to examine such quotes if you have them.
Hee hee hee. Southerners still trying to argue the civil war. That's right my low-latitude brethren: the nasty north just wanted to pick a fight with the honorable south (which only enslaved the dark-complexioned in the absence of boll-weevils; this is why once boll-weevils occurred in the South, black Americans were instantly welcomed into full equality under the law and in practice) for the privilege of spending the next century and a half sending the south federal tax dollars.
Lincoln you tyrant!
Submitted by roger (not verified) on Tue Nov. 25, 2008 5:09 PM PST.
Of course, the South might have ended slavery at some point, but that would have meant introducing slavery lite, aka the Jim Crow regime. Hmm, that actually happened. And if it hadn't been for the U.S. congress in 1964, passing a civil rights bill opposed, as far as I know, by every Southern representative, that regime would still be in place. Or rather, there would be a civil war going on, much like in the breakup of Yugoslavia.
That the right has a fondness for treason, terrorism, kidnapping, robbery, murder, and racism is one of those cute things about the right. Besides the white hoods, of course.
On the other hand, you could say that the South, after the civil rights revolution destroyed the feudalistic society its white population preferred, did get its revenge. Developing a parasitic economy that programatically took a free ride on investments made elsewhere by truly developed economies - the North's industries, the Japanese auto manufacturers - Dixie produced the model in which tax cuts and government subsidies sustained employment, all the while underinvesting in education, infrastructure, the environment, etc. Sort of like a cowbird, a bird that lays an egg in another bird's nest. This parasitic model was then foisted on the country as a whole by Bush. And now the party of Lincoln is the party of Jeff Davis. Hilarious.
There are two things very wrong with this thesis.
First, the South started the Civil War, NOT the North.
Lincoln's Party AGREED with the South that the Federal Government lacked the Constitutional power to interfere with slavery in an existing State. (To paraphrase Lincoln: The Gentlemen of the South demand that we leave them alone. But we DO leave them alone!)
The immediate debate was over slavery in the territories (which were under the jurisdiction of the Federal Government, not an existing State). This got people worked up over the morality of slavery and themselves, but was not of any great economic importance to the South. If the South had been willing to back off on slavery in the territories (and a few peripheral issues) they could have maintained the status quo for quite some time. Not only would Lincoln not have been elected, his Party would not have existed.
The South was probably right that Lincoln's election signaled the start of a shift in political opinion that would eventually lead to the abolition of slavery, but it was going to be a long process. Rather than trying politics, the South decided to break up the country with the near certainty of a war that (by any reasonable analysis) they could not expect
to win. They were not actinghn rationally.
So, the North did NOT start a war to abolish slavery, the SOUTH started a war to prevent the abolition of slavery at some time in the unforeseeable future.
I strongly recommend the works of William W. Freehling on how this all came about.
If the South had backed off, there would have been no war and slavery would eventually have been abolished. If the CSA had become an independent country, it would have eventually (at least mostly) abolished slavery, not from principle, but because it would not be a workable labor system in a more modern economy.
The second problem with the thesis at hand is that all
this does NOT say that without the war everything would have been sweetness and light! On the contrary, abolishing slavery is one thing and abolishing racial discrimination and prejudice is QUITE another (see South Africa, colonialism, various foreign countries). If there had been a CSA that lasted to the present day, it would not have slavery, but it would have something very like apartheid, keeping the ex-slaves as an oppressed and exploited work force.
Even with the Civil War, the US has had a long row to hoe on race. Readers of this Magazine will know that we're still paying a steep price for slavery and the social and political culture that developed to defend it, but
is still very much alive today (You Betcha!).
Without the Civil War, one shudders to think where we would be. Lincoln knew what he was talking about at Gettysburg. (Gary Wills.)
The South fought for slavery and racial oppression---not self-defense, not "States Rights," or anything else. (Well, maybe the right to get rich off of slavery and racial oppression.) We should be very clear with the modern neo-confederates: Gone with the Wind --- and Good Riddance!
When exactly and to what extent exactly Lincoln or anyone else freed the slaves is irrelevant. What is important is, Lincoln carefully did what he could when he could. The anti-slavery coalition of the Republican party was not particularly strong and was weak in "border states" like Illinois, Indiana, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey. (Team of Rivals, Goodwin). Also, Lincoln was attempting to keep the Union together if he could. It should be noted that Dred Scott, who met many abolitionists in his lifetime, said that Lincoln was the only white man who never made him feel inferior; he never said that about any other abolitionist. (Team of Rivals, Goodwin).
The real agenda of this new book is separating the Republican party from Lincolnian ideas. Lincoln was for a strong federal government where it had power. He was pro-equality and pro-immigrant. Lincoln is a great inconvenience to the Republican party's current base, which is Tom-Tancredo crazy about immigration and clearly (at the far-right fringe) anti-black.
Books like these are published as a false pretense to the insurmountable eveidence being presented by present anthropolgists who are digging for the truth. You see, there has been so much mythologizing of how the "good old South" was that one day folks woke up and said "let's find out the truth". In doing excavations and researching records more evidence is presented on a daily basis on just how cruel the so called "benvolent plantation owners" were to their slaves as well as the whole system and commerce of slavery itself.
I'm originally from Charleston, SC and I can tell you that the whole history of the region is being re-written and the final concclusions with destroy these hillbilly inbreds forever!!
Lincoln also ran for the Illinois State legislature on a platform of keeping blacks out of Illinois. During the Civil War, slave states who sided with the North were not concerned by the initial Abolition law. He was one of our most politically expedient presidents.
Since it's Thanksgiving tomorrow, I'll add that this holiday was invented after the Civil War to kind of help wedge things back together again. Again the irony of all those images of colonist-Indian banquets when so many Indians were enslaved during that time in what was later to become New England.
We don't seem to take the time to digest our history. We just put the spin on it which will explain and justify the status quo and we force-feed it to ourselves and our children.
Droolius, you cannot use Great Britain's abolition of slavery to point to the absurd supposition that the CSA would have followed suit.
As you mention, Britain's slaves were almost exclusively in their colonies- thousands of miles and months by sail away from their governing body and any significant public opinion. In the South, slavery was an ingrained part of the social system; in Britain it was an economic embarrassment that benefited a small portion of society.
I think the book is probably right, Brazil, the last slave owning society in the hemisphere peaceful abolished slavery in 1881, because the economics of slavery was less efficient than wage slavery, which we currently call work.
Submitted by The Local Crank (not verified) on Fri Nov. 28, 2008 7:29 AM PST.
I realized how abysmally stupid the "Politically Incorrect" guides are when I read in one of them that clearly the Pilgrims did not steal land from the Indians because there are still Indians living in New England. No, seriously, I am barely paraphrasing here. As for whether or not slavery would have been abolished without a civil war, even if true, so what? Surely, the authors aren't claiming slaves would've gone straight from bondage to full civil rights? At best, you would've had a debt-peonage system enforced by racist terrorism, which is basically what happened after Reconstruction was abandoned.
Actually, Lincoln did not call for an end to slavery until AFTER the civil war strarted. At the begininng of the conflict the North was losing badly. European countires, understanding this, began to mass troops along the Canadian and Mexican borders. (the French in what was then Mexico, and the English along the North). Lincoln new that the Euro's would not support their armies fighting on the side of a "pro-slave" movement.
Get beyond your 8th grade history book and check it out!
Nick, I can see that you know nothing about economics. Wake up! It has been cheaper for a business to hire some of the untold millions of immigrants that were waiting to come into the country and pay them below subsistence wages. Read history Nick. The slave owners had to give resources sufficient to keep their property alive and well, like any farmer would treat their work horse. Not so with the blood sucking capitalists that were responsible for millions of people dying from malnutrition and disease. Nick, why do you think that our jobs went overseas? Because they can pay the workers subsistence wages and no health care.
Workers of the world unite, you have only to lose the chains that bind you.
Who says slavery doesn't work in modern economic systems? And this site refers to real slavery. What about the sweatshop type working conditions where people are paid nominal amounts of money. But who really aren't free. Isn't that just sharecropping in a different form? Which was in itself just slavery with the plantation owners replaced by bankers?
Of course, Karl may have it right. In most economic circumstances today, it may be that slavery wouldn't survive because it costs too much too treat the workers that well.
