The Civil War as a Question of Natural Right

The argument against the invented right of “secession” is not a denial of the natural

right of any State – indeed, of any individual person – to alter or abolish the federal

government or to abandon it when it has become destructive of the ends it was meant to

serve. The Declaration of Independence is the most eloquent enunciation of the rights and

obligations of the American social compact:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

We see that according to the American social compact, government is instituted for the protection

of certain inalienable, God-given rights; it is only when “Government becomes destructive of

these ends” that the people who made the compact have a right – no, an obligation – to alter or

abolish it. But the Declaration continues. Not only must a revolution have the justice of natural

right on its side, it should also be prudent:

Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security

The right of revolution is not a Constitutional right; the Constitution cannot logically

grant a right for its own destruction; it is not a legal right in any worldly sense; it is a

natural right; it is a right that precedes political union. When a people exercise this right,

they “assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of

Nature and of Nature's God entitle them.” They return to the State of Nature, in which man is

naturally free, subject to no authority at all, save God. God’s Natural Law, which is a common

grace to all men, is the only legitimate authority in the world. Political societies are rightly

formed only when the end of the contract is to abide by the Natural Law as closely as possible.

The Natural Law is always the standard to which a government is held accountable; it is the basis

for judging whether a regime is good or bad, as it is the basis for judging whether a break from a

regime is justified or unjustified.

The primary justifications presented for “secession” before and during the conflict are 1)

the inherent right of any State to secede on its own discretion, following Calhoun’s reconstruction

of the Constitution and denial of the compact made on July 4th 1776; and 2) that the North

wouldn’t enforce the Fugitive Slave Act and had a general design of abolishing the South’s

peculiar institution. These justifications are addressed, respectively, in the first and second

sections of this essay. In the second section I argue that the South’s revolution was unjust because

the Federal Government did not have a design to abolish the natural rights of the citizens of the

slave-labor States; I will show that the centrality of slavery as the principle cause of the war was

acknowledged on both sides of the Mason-Dixon line, and that, therefore, the South’s war for

“secession” did not meet the standards of the natural right of revolution. Separation for the sake

of preserving slavery is not only unwarranted by the American social compact, but it is directly

antithetical to it. In the third section I briefly address the legacy of Lincoln in particular, the

modern conservative turn against him as rooted in Kantian expectations of morality, and what I

argue to be peripheral or foolish justifications for secession made today, such as that of economic

determinists. But in the first section I leave the question of slavery – and therefore the litmus test

for a rightful revolution – aside. As much as the facts show the obvious centrality of slavery in

the controversy, it is equally obvious that the rank-and-file soldiers in the Confederacy (70-80%

of which didn’t even own slaves1) were principally motivated by patriotism for their respective

1 Kennedy, James Ronald The South was Right! (Gretna, LA: Pelican Publishing Company, 2000), 34.

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States. The first justification for secession, which is really no justification at all, is the States

rights doctrine, of which John C. Calhoun was the principle exponent. I say it is no justification

because no end for secession is vindicated. The South has the right to secede because every State,

in Calhoun’s understanding of the Constitution, has a veto power over the Federal Government,

to be executed whenever the State sees fit. By finding a legal right to secede, the South avoids

giving a just – ification for “secession.” I will argue that Calhoun’s States rights and the

understanding of the American social compact by the politically-active South are anathema to the

principles of the Founding.

American Social Contract Theory 101: The Natural Right of revolution and the non-right of “secession”

Before we get to Calhoun’s rejection of the American Founding, it is insightful to see how

modern defenders of the cause of the South attempt to justify “secession” on the basis –obviously

not of slavery – but of States rights and rule by consent a la Calhoun. The absurdity of their

position serves to demonstrate the wisdom of the founders and the true understanding of the

American social contract. James Ronald Kennedy argues in his book The South was Right! (yes,

with an exclamation mark) that the fact that the North acted to preserve the Union is a myth.

Those vile Yankees may have said they were for maintaining the Union, but they were really

attempting to enslave the South and form an empire. “Yes,” he says, “superficially the North did

maintain the Union. But are we discussing geographical boundary lines, or are we discussing

concepts such as the free and unfettered consent of the governed?”2 Kennedy’s position is that the

Federal Government had no right to use force to quell the rebellion by the plain and simple fact

that the “seceding” States no longer consented to be governed by it. No justifications are needed.

The South no longer consented, so it had the right to secede. Period. End of issue. What, are we

to deny that rule by consent is a central principle of American government? Ironically, it is

2 Kennedy, 33.

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precisely the principle of rule by consent that the South was violating with its newfound right of

“secession.” Lincoln, in the Gettysburg Address, wonders whether the experiment in true

republican government that is America will endure this severe test; whether a nation “conceived

in Liberty” can long endure; whether “government of the people, by the people, for the

people, shall not perish from the earth.” 3 Why was the Civil War such a test to the

American experiment in the mind of Lincoln (assuming he was not the monomaniacal

demon, perversely bent on spilling Southern blood that Kennedy portrays him to be)? Is it

not obvious that Kennedy’s understanding of rule by consent is ridiculous?

Imagine the consequences if everybody “seceded” from a country whenever they no

longer consented to it immediately. When individuals in the State of Nature make a

compact to secure each other’s natural rights, it is no light matter. In the Declaration of

Independence our Founding Fathers, representing every American, pledged to each other

their lives, fortune, and sacred honor. There’s no such thing as no-fault divorce in the

American social contract; you cannot get out of it as soon as the union is no longer

consensual; you would be violating the “States rights” of every other member of the

contract. The only thing that can legitimately break the union is a failure to abide by the

Natural Law. There must be a just reason to revolt; there is no such thing as a legal right

to secede. The consent of the governed is granted at the moment the contract is made, and

this is where unanimous consent is required. The contract is only made between those

who agree to the terms of the union –namely, that the end of government is to implement

and execute the Natural Law as closely as possible. The rest of humanity is excluded:

their natural rights to be respected, but not protected. The members of the union give up a

part of their freedom to the government. The government is now established as an arbiter, 3 Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, edited by Roy P. Basler. The Gettysburg Address. http://showcase.netins.net

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the lack of which, in the State of Nature, made adherence to the Law of Nature more

difficult. Henceforth, differences between the parties of the union are settled by majority

rule; otherwise, the union would be incapable of action. Unanimous consent was only

necessary to settle the ends of the union; how those ends are to be best secured is

determined by the majority. The members of the union count on each other for the

protection of their rights; if any member can call it quits as soon as he disagrees with the

majority, the union is bound to crumble - and quickly – for “as long as the reason of man

continues fallible, and he is at liberty to exercise it, different opinions will be formed.”4

Majority rule based on the ends made by unanimous consent is just by nature, but it is

also simply necessary for any stable government (irrespective of its ends). The founders

understood this as well as the Italian Mafia. Even la cosa nostra couldn’t function

properly if its members could call it quits whenever they felt like it. Some big thugs

would send you to sleep with the fishes in the East River if you ever gave “the family”

the slip. Or imagine a church in which a pastor is left unable to discipline his brothers

because they leave the church as soon as the smallest difference of opinion arises. While

we should certainly think twice about our membership in a certain church if the pastor

differs on core principles, we ought to acquiesce to his more mature knowledge when we

know that our core principles are the same. Such is the nature of the American contract:

acquiescence to majority rule is possible because the limits and ends of rule (the certain

inalienable rights) were unanimously agreed to beforehand. The government is bound to

protect the natural rights of the majority and the minority. Kennedy’s understanding of

rule by consent is as scary to us now as it was to Lincoln when he saw the pernicious

tendency of this logic. What is left of a government when you deny it the power to

4 The Federalist Papers, ed. Charles R. Kesler (New York, NY: Penguin Putnam, 1999), No. 10. pp. 46.

5

govern unsatisfied members? It is no government at all; the union would rapidly dissolve

and find itself back in the State of Nature.

Now, before we conclude that Kennedy is out of his mind, I hasten to explain that

the case that Kennedy, Charles Adams (another modern author), and Calhoun make, is

that it is only the federal government that requires the constant consent of all the States.

But this remains an absurdity. What power does the federal government have if any State

has the right to secede whenever it wants? Are we to understand that the nature of the

United States was meant to be like that of the United Nations: every member completely

independent, free to abide or not abide by its resolutions? This position is utterly

untenable if we see what the founders said about the nature of the Union of the States.

Both Kennedy and Adams follow Calhoun’s lead in justifying their States rights

version of the Constitution by quoting the Virginia Act of Ratification of the US

Constitution. Here is the relevant passage:

We, the delegates of the people of Virginia, duly elected, … in behalf of the people of Virginia, declare and make known, that the powers granted under the Constitution, being derived from the people of the Unites States, may be resumed by them, whensoever the same shall be perverted to their injury or oppression; and that every power not granted thereby, remains with them and at their will: that, therefore, no right, of any denomination, can be canceled, abridged, restrained, or modified.5

Adams says that by this act, Virginia “retained the right of secession.”6 Kennedy says that

“the people acting together through their agent the state retained the legal right to recall

5 Virginia Act of Ratification of the Constitution of the United States http://www.constitution.org/cons/virg1798.htm6 Charles Adams, When in the Course of Human Events: Arguing the Case for Southern Secession, (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2000), 15.

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any portion of their delegated or usurped sovereign authority.”7 Kennedy also quotes

Calhoun’s comment on this act:

It declares that all powers granted by the Constitution, are derived from the people of the United States; and may be resumed by them when perverted to their injury or oppression; and that every power not granted remains with them, and at their will; and that no right of any description can be canceled, abridged, restrained or modified by Congress, the Senate, the House of Representatives, the President, or any department, or officer of the United States. Language cannon be stronger!8

Kennedy goes on to simply assert that this act proves Virginia’s – and every other State’s

– “legal right to be free.” “We have now seen,” he says, “that any government must

receive its legal right to govern from the consent of the governed. If at any time that

government denies the consent of the governed, that government by its own action

repudiates its legal right to exist!”9 But Kennedy, Adams, and Calhoun get ahead of

themselves. They tell us that this act grants the right of separation and leave it at that.

They think they’ve proven their point that a State may secede when it no longer consents

to the Federal Government because no entity is a better judge than the State itself of

whether it is being oppressed. The assumption is that every State retains absolute

sovereignty so that it is the sole judge of whether the Constitution is at every point in

time favorable to the State’s interests. If this is the case, the Constitution is a mere treaty

between foreign nations. But what the act actually says in no way differs from the

Declaration of Independence. In the Virginia Resolution of 1798, Madison and Jefferson

reiterate that Virginia “pledges all its powers” to maintain “the Union of the States.”10

The “pledge” to the Union goes back to 1776, when the people of the several States 7 Kennedy, 163.8 Kennedy, 162.9 Kennedy, 163.10 Virginia Resolution of 1798 http://www.constitution.org/cons/virg1798.htm

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pledged their lives, fortunes, and sacred honor. The act of Ratification simply reiterates

what the Declaration of Independence says about the natural right of revolution. The

States may resume their powers when the common government of the States becomes

oppressive and injurious. What is the standard of oppression and injury? Is that left for

the States to decide? Well, there is no question, of course, that every State, every

individual person, will have to judge whether or not the common government becomes

destructive of its just ends (this point is also made in the Virginia Resolution and made

much use of to defend the “right of secession”). But it matters a great deal whether the

State or individual person judges rightly: the Natural Law is the ultimate standard of

whether their revolt would be justified or unjustified. To our authors it is enough that the

“legal right” is established. But no such legal right has been established. The act merely

reiterates the supra-legal right of revolution. If it can be established that a State has a

“legal right” to secede, the question of whether it is truly justified in its “secession” is not

asked. It is like today’s divorce laws; a woman can divorce her husband if she no longer

feels “fulfilled” because she has the legal right to do so: no questions are asked. But

whether she was justified by God’s laws is another question. Our authors make the

mistake of identifying a legal right in this act, when in fact it is about the natural right of

revolution and the definite standard for that right. It is not enough that a State deem it

necessary to revolt; there is no such thing as a legal right of secession. The charge that the

South makes against the Federal Government is that it denies the South’s “legal right to

be free.” In their view, the Federal Government is wrong for even questioning the justice

of the “secession,” let alone using force to impede it.

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I emphasize again that the South’s misunderstanding of the Virginia Act of

Ratification and the Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions is inevitably linked to their

misunderstanding of what happened on July 4th 1776. It was the Declaration of

Independence, not the Articles of Confederation, not the Constitution, that establishes the

social contract between and among the people of the several States. That is where the

ends of the Union are established. As Lincoln says, “Four score and seven years ago our

fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated

to the proposition that all men are created equal.”11 Adams says that this is nonsense; it is

only with the Articles of Confederation that something like a union is formed; but, in

turn, this union was dissolved to form a new one in the Constitution.12 Adams is wrong.

The Declaration establishes the Union, the Articles of Confederation state that the Union

is perpetual, and the Constitution is meant to perfect the Union. The Declaration of

Independence set the ends of the Union, the Articles of Confederation proved to be a very

imperfect government to fulfill those ends, and the Constitution has proven to be a much

better instrument. The Union was not “dissolved” when the Articles of Confederation

were dumped; actually, the American people exercised the natural right of revolution to

change the government of the perpetual Union; since the way powers were delegated was

to be formed anew, the Constitution required a unanimous consent from the people. For

the South it is critical to deny that the individual States ever made a Lockean social

contract with each other; that they ever gave up a part of their sovereignty to a common

government. Consider this letter written by Jefferson (co-writer of the Virginia

Resolution) from Paris during the Constitutional Convention:

11 Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, edited by Roy P. Basler. The Gettysburg Address. http://showcase.netins.net12 cf. Adams, 195-196.

9

It has been so often said, as to be generally believed, that Congress have no power by the confederation [viz., under the Articles of Confederation] to enforce anything, e.g. contributions of money. It was not necessary to give them that power expressly; they have it by the law of nature. When two nations make a compact, there results to each a power of compelling the other to execute it.13

Jefferson takes it for granted that there is a Union that underlies the Articles of

Confederation: the Union established in 1776. By the very authority of that contract, the

central government had the right to do what was necessary to put the ends of that contract

into effect. Consider also what Madison (the other co-writer of the Virginia Resolution)

says in Federalist 39, answering the charge of the predecessors of the Calhounian South,

the anti-federalists, that the proposed Constitution is not wholly federal. Madison answers

that the Constitution is neither wholly federal nor wholly national, but partly federal and

partly national. One example is that the House of Representatives demonstrates the

national character of the Constitution because representation in the House is based on the

indiscriminate population of the whole country; the Senate demonstrates the federal

character because every State is represented equally.

But Calhoun fostered the lie that the Constitution provides for a wholly federal

government, and by that he meant that the States gave up no measure of their sovereignty

to a common government: the States always retain the perfect right to veto any measure

by Congress and secede if necessary. Calhoun’s view of the Constitution would differ in

no significant way from the Articles of Confederation; the central government would

remain equally powerless. Though Calhoun died before the civil war, he was at the center

of the nullification crisis. In 1833, South Carolina, led by Calhoun, claimed the power to

nullify a federal tariff law. High tariffs may well be a nuisance to South Carolina, but

13 Harry Jaffa, A New Birth of Freedom, (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2000), 52.

10

Congress neither violated the natural rights of the South Carolinians nor did it act with

usurped power: Article 1 Section 8 of the Constitution gives Congress the power to

“collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the

common Defense and general Welfare of the United States.” There was no right, except

in the mind of Calhoun, for South Carolina to reject Congress’s authority to collect this

tariff. President Jackson (a Democrat) actually secured a Force Bill from Congress that

would have enabled him to send the army to South Carolina to collect the tariff. It was

understood that this might precipitate South Carolina into exercising her “right of

secession,” but Congress caved in and lowered the tariff, and South Carolina withdrew

the ordinance of nullification. The issues presented by Calhoun’s theory of States rights

were placed on the back burner, but they became a matter of dogma to the slave-labor

States in the ensuing years. Jackson had this to say against South Carolina’s nullifying

ordinance:

The right of the people of a single state to absolve themselves at will and without the consent of the other states from their most solemn obligations, and hazard the liberty and happiness of the millions composing this Union, cannot be acknowledged. Such authority is believed to be utterly repugnant both to the principles upon which the general government is constituted, and the objects which it was expressly formed to attain.14

South Carolina hazards the liberty and happiness of all the members of the Union not

because of the money they refuse to pay (such shallow reasoning belongs to Kennedy and

his ilk). The issue is not the tariff itself; it is the principle that any State at any time can

justly refuse to abide by the lawful acts of Congress. Jackson understood that Calhoun’s

14 Jaffa, 183.

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radical theory of States rights threatened the existence of the nation of the United States

as it was conceived.

To conclude the refutation of Calhoun’s claim that the Constitution provides for a

merely federal government (in his understanding of the word federal), we turn to a

particularly revealing quote that Harry Jaffa analyzes. Calhoun says,

That it [the Constitution] is federal and not national, we have the high authority of the convention which framed it. General Washington, as its organ, in his letter submitting the plan to the consideration of the Congress of the then Confederacy, calls it, in one place, - “the general government of the union;” and in another, - “the federal government of these States.”

It should make anyone’s blood boil to read what Washington actually says. Calhoun

extracts from a quote of Washington that says the exact opposite of what Calhoun

imputes to it. The part that Calhoun quotes is italicized:

It is obviously impracticable in the federal government of these states to secure all rights of independent sovereignty to each, and yet provide for the interest and safety of all – Individuals entering into society, must give up a share of liberty to preserve the rest.15

Washington is explicitly denying that the States retain “all rights of independent

sovereignty;” in accordance with American social contract theory, the States must give

up a “share of their liberty to preserve the rest.” The Constitution presupposes an existing

full-fledged Lockean social contract with all its implicit rights and obligations. In his

letter of transmittal, Washington had these further words: “In all our deliberations…we

kept steadily in our view that which appears to us the greatest interest of every true

American, the consolidation of our Union, in which is involved our prosperity, felicity,

perhaps our national existence.” As Jaffa points out, that Washington could speak of “the

15 Jaffa, 468.

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consolidation of our Union,” could not be more anathema to Calhoun; that it is the

interest of every “true American” to enter a consolidated Union is blasphemy to the

States rights crowd.

I understand that the issue of “States rights” is very appealing to the modern

conservative in view of today’s clear encroachments of federal power (e.g. the unchecked

power of federal agencies, a broadly accepted liberal interpretation of the 14th

amendment, and so on). But the true defenders of States rights are not the Calhounians.

Calhoun’s version of States rights is an excuse for any minority to absolve itself of the

rightful authority of a majority without any reference to a standard of justice. Calhoun

rejects, as we will see in the next section, the natural rights of individual persons – the

very founding principle of our Union – in favor of non-descript rights of minority groups.

Jaffa says that

even today, there are many who believe that Calhoun’s is the classic formulation of the problem of minority rights…and that his solution to the problem represents a progress in political science beyond that of the Federalist. Indeed, many say that it has not been surpassed by any subsequent work and that it remains the theoretical foundation of the constitutional defense of any minority against the tyranny of any majority. In this sense, one might call Calhoun the founding father of “interest group liberalism” in twentieth-century American political science.16

Instead of Calhoun’s States rights, conservatives should look to the principles of the

founding to answer today’s political woes – including centralization. For the Founders, it

was never a question of States rights uber alles on the one side and unlimited federal

power on the other. The Constitution formed a type of government unique in the history

of the world. It was partly federal and partly national in its form, though it had the

16 Jaffa, 430.

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authority of an underlying contract between all the citizens - mediated by the individual

states - of the nation made in 1776. “The seeds of the Federalist’s conception of dual

federalism and dual sovereignty,” says Jaffa, may be found in resolutions of the

Revolutionary colonial legislatures in 1776, authorizing their delegates to the Continental

Congress to vote for independence. “A number of these resolutions called for

independence and union. While calling for union, however, they reserved their ‘internal

police’ or ‘internal affairs’ to the governments of their own legislatures.”17 It was implicit

in the process of establishing the Union in 1776 that the several States were forming a

genuine government and not a mere alliance resting upon a treaty relationship; but it was

equally implicit that each State was to govern itself internally. There is no question that

the dividing line of this dual sovereignty was subject to much controversy and debate:

hence the need to improve the Union with the Constitution. But a rejection of the

founders’ understanding of the Union and the Constitution would leave us without both,

and would give credence to the challenge that government of the people, by the people,

for the people, conceived in Liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are

created equal, cannot long endure.

A New Aristocracy and Slavery as a Positive Good

17 Jaffa, 192.

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‘The stone which the builders rejected has become the chief cornerstone,'

and 'A stone of stumbling and a rock of offense.’ 1 Peter 2: 7-8

In the first section we saw that according to the founders’ understanding of the

American social contract, revolution is a natural right that can only be exercised when the

law of nature is violated and when prudence dictates that the outcome of revolution is

likely to be an improvement on the present condition. We saw that Calhoun’s legal

justification for “secession” has nothing to do with the natural right of revolution and is a

construction of political science completely foreign to our Founding principles; by

spreading a misunderstanding about the nature of the American Union and the

Constitution, Calhoun bypassed the question of natural justice by making “secession” an

unquestioned legal right, to be exercised at the discretion of any State. Although the

pseudo-Confederate States championed Calhoun’s doctrine of States rights as a pivotal

justification for secession, in this section we consider whether there may have been a

true, natural rights justification – not for secession – but for revolution on the part of the

South. We take a look at the reasons for the war given by the three biggest political

figures of the South: Jefferson Davis, Alexander Stephens, and John C. Calhoun.

Although Calhoun died in 1850, he predicted that the Union would come to blows over

slavery. But first, we look at the very first Declaration of Secession: that of South

Carolina, the leader and voice of the Confederacy.

Attached in the appendix are the South Carolina and the Mississippi Declarations of

Secession. I urge the reader to read them both carefully; he will find that every single

“justification” indicates that the end of secession is to preserve the institution of slavery. I

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urge the reader to look up the Declarations of Secession of the other slave-labor States;

he will find that they are all the same in essence.18

In the first eight, or so, paragraphs of the South Carolina Declaration, we see an

attempt to prove what, hopefully, we have disproved in part 1; namely, that no State gave

up any part of its sovereignty to a common government when it entered the Union. But it

then immediately goes on to list certain reasons why the Union has become oppressive –

every one of which is unambiguously about slavery. Thus, the Declaration is divided in a

way that parallels this essay: first it provides the non-justification of States rights (South

Carolina is seceding because she has the right to do so); second, if a justification must be

given, it is that the North is hostile to the institution of slavery. The first rebuke towards

the North is, in fact, the very best case that can be made for a Southern revolution, though

we will see that it cannot possibly hold up to the standards of natural right and prudence;

but the point we make right now is that it is about slavery. The objection is that the

Northern States are not abiding by the Fugitive Slave clause in the Constitution. We will

discuss this shortly. The next objection, or justification, is that while the Constitution

implies that slaves are property, the Federal Government (not the Northern States) denies

that they are mere property, and denounces “as sinful, the institution of slavery.” This

must be a reference to the Northwest Ordinance of 1787 (referenced, at least, in the

Mississippi Declaration, as a cause of the North’s hostility to slavery), that banned

slavery in the Northwest Territory, and the Missouri Compromise of 1820, that banned

slavery north of 36° 30’. This should indicate to us the tension over slavery that existed

as early as the Nation was born. The next justification also focuses on slavery; the 18 The Texas Declaration, for instance, varies in the emphasis it gives to the State’s sovereignty and unquestioned right to secede from the Union and join the pseudo-Confederacy without having to give further justification; but when any justification is given at all, it is the right to preserve the institution of slavery. Texas Declaration of Secession. http://www.civil-war.net/pages/texas_declaration.asp

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Declaration accuses Northern States of “permitt[ing] open establishment” of abolitionist

associations. The next justification also focuses on slavery. The Union is guilty of

nothing less than electing “a man to the high office of President of the United States,

whose opinions and purposes are hostile to slavery… 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.”

To digress a moment, we should remember that it was the very election of Lincoln

that triggered the first secessions, including South Carolina; no fact is more revealing of

the secessionist movement as one of a point blank refusal to abide by one of the

fundamental duties of the American social contract: to abide by the decision of the

constitutional majority. Lincoln wasn’t even given a chance to address the first two

“justifications” listed in this Declaration. Lincoln was not ambiguous about his position

on slavery, nor was the platform of the Republican Party. In his debates with Stephen

Douglass – infamous for not caring “whether slavery was voted up or down” – and in

practically every event prior to his being elected, in his very inaugural address, Lincoln

maintained that the slave-labor States must have all the protection that the Constitution

specifically guarantees, which is only the Fugitive Slave Clause. In his first inaugural,

Lincoln says, “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.”19 Concerning the Fugitive Slave Clause, Lincoln acknowledges

that the Fugitive Slave Act is imperfectly executed by every State, but the FSA, which

was passed by Congress as part of the Missouri Compromise in 1850, requires

19 Lincoln’s First Inaugural Address. The Avalon Project, Yale University. http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/presiden/inaug/lincoln1.htm

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cooperation of the executive power of every State, not to mention individual citizens (the

act puts responsibility on every citizen to aid marshals in the pursuit of slaves). Laws that

are annoying to the general public in certain States are necessarily going to be difficult to

execute. Take prohibition (of alcohol) as an obvious example. Would it not have been

ridiculous for certain States to “secede” because prohibition couldn’t be properly

enforced? The point is that the President isn’t an omnipotent ruler that can make

everything right: the FSA was flawed law because it depended too much on the power

and will of every State. That’s not a reason to exercise the natural right of revolution –

especially if it isn’t about anyone’s natural rights (it’s the opposite) – it’s a reason to

battle it out in Congress to pass a better law, or to continue with the FSA and sue

anybody that would not cooperate – the Supreme Court was certainly on the side (or in

the pockets) of the slave interest. These are his words,

The fugitive- slave clause of the Constitution and the law for the suppression of the foreign slave trade are each as well enforced, perhaps, as any law can ever be in a community where the moral sense of the people imperfectly supports the law itself. The great body of the people abide by the dry legal obligation in both cases, and a few break over in each. This, I think, can not be perfectly cured, and it would be worse in both cases after the separation of the sections than before. The foreign slave trade, now imperfectly suppressed, would be ultimately revived without restriction in one section, while fugitive slaves, now only partially surrendered, would not be surrendered at all by the other.20

Alexander Stephens, the Vice-president of the Confederacy, agrees with Lincoln that the

Federal Government is doing all it can to abide by the Constitutional prerogatives of the

slave-States, and that slavery is secure where it exists. The Constitution secured to

slavery, according to Stephens, “every essential guarantee…while it should last.”21

20 Ibid21 Jaffa, 218.

18

Stephens was a supporter of slavery and its expansion, but he believed (quite correctly,

obviously) that secession was not in the South’s best interest. In denouncing the move

towards secession, Stephens famously asks in his speech at the State Convention of

Georgia in 1861, “What reason can you give to the nations of the earth to justify it?...

What right has the North assailed? What interest of the South has been invaded? What

justice has been denied? And what claim founded in justice and right has been

withheld?”22 The problem, as Lincoln points out, is that “One section of our country

believes slavery is right and ought to be extended, while the other believes it is wrong

and ought not to be extended. This is the only substantial dispute.”23 But if the reader

thinks we get ahead of ourselves in attributing a desire to extend slavery as the only

interest for secession on the part of the South, let’s continue with the South Carolina

Declaration.

The next justification also focuses on slavery. The Declaration objects, making

their case that the North is simply hostile to slavery, that some States have made citizens

of free blacks, who, “by the supreme law of the land, are incapable of becoming

citizens.” This is a reference, of course, to Justice Taney’s famous opinion in the Dred

Scott case, where he says that “the negro has no right that the white man is bound to

respect,” in utter rejection of the Declaration of Independence. Lincoln’s response to this

objection could not be more eloquent and correct,

I do not forget the position assumed by some that constitutional questions are to be decided by the Supreme Court, nor do I deny that such decisions must be binding in any case upon the parties to a suit as to the object of that suit, …And while it is obviously possible that such

22 Jaffa, 215.23 Lincoln’s First Inaugural Address. The Avalon Project, Yale University. http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/presiden/inaug/lincoln1.htm

19

decision may be erroneous in any given case, still the evil effect following it, being limited to that particular case, with the chance that it may be overruled and never become a precedent for other cases, can better be borne than could the evils of a different practice. At the same time, the candid citizen must confess that if the policy of the Government upon vital questions affecting the whole people is to be irrevocably fixed by decisions of the Supreme Court, the instant they are made in ordinary litigation between parties in personal actions the people will have ceased to be their own rulers, having to that extent practically resigned their Government into the hands of that eminent tribunal.24

Let the Supreme Court have its authority in individual controversies, but don’t limit

legislation to what you would assume the Court would approve; the contrary would be an

effective tyranny of the judiciary.

The next justification also focuses on slavery. The Declaration says that the

Republican Party has determined that “a war must be waged against slavery until it shall

cease throughout the United States.” Well, it depends on what South Carolina means by

war. If the Declaration here means that the Republican Party platform is committed to

the defense of slavery where it exists (where the Constitution protects it), but is also

committed to the Northwest Ordinance of 1787 and the Missouri Compromise that

effectively stifle the expansion of slavery (which laws are in no way unconstitutional, and

which are in accord with the intent of the founders), and which is also hopeful that

through a Constitutional battle (e.g. a push for an amendment) slavery might be banished

once and for all as the founders intended, then the indignation of South Carolina is

understandable if she desires the expansion of slavery. There are no more justifications

made in the South Carolina Declaration for Secession.

24 Ibid

20

The Mississippi Declaration is even better. It doesn’t have a long prelude about the

nature of the Union, Sates rights, and so on. It gets straight to the point.

Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery - the greatest material interest of the world. Its labor supplies the product, which constitutes by far the largest and most important portions of commerce of the earth. These products are peculiar to the climate verging on the tropical regions, and by an imperious law of nature, none but the black race can bear exposure to the tropical sun. These products have become necessities of the world, and a blow at slavery is a blow at commerce and civilization. That blow has been long aimed at the institution, and was at the point of reaching its consummation. There was no choice left us but submission to the mandates of abolition, or a dissolution of the Union, whose principles had been subverted to work out our ruin.25

Isn’t such political incorrectness a delightful breath of fresh air? Is this the wonderful,

idyllic, South that modern conservatives daydream about? Well, political incorrectness is

one thing and evil is another. And the reader who cannot call this vindication of “the

imperious law of nature,” this defense of human slavery as a positive good, a serious evil

is a moral idiot. If calling slavery an evil of primordial severity is just PC, there’s no hope

for America, let alone the conservative cause. There’s no need to examine the rest of the

Declaration; like that of South Carolina, it does not provide one justification that is not

slavery. I invite the reader to read it in its entirety, and to read the Declarations of the

other slave-labor States.

These Declarations are not an exception to the rule. The political class of the South

defended slavery as a positive good, and they justified secession as a way to expand

slavery, the “cornerstone” of a greater, more enlightened civilization. I present the words

of the leaders of the Confederacy.

25

21

We read above that Alexander Stephens, the number two man in the Confederacy,

opposed secession because he thought it wouldn’t help the cause of the South. But he

nonetheless believed in Calhoun’s theory of States rights; and so, when Georgia declared

secession, contrary to George Washington’s bidding that we be Americans first, Stephens

dedicated himself heart and soul to Georgia and the Confederacy. Stephens had always

been a defender of slavery as a positive good, and if the South could successfully secede

(win the war) he did hope and strive for the expansion of slavery. The following is a

rather long excerpt of his famous Cornerstone speech. There hasn’t been a more evil and

blasphemous speech or writing in the history of America. We cannot spare a word; please

read carefully:

The new [Confederate] Constitution has put at rest forever all agitating questions relating to our peculiar institution – African slavery as it exists among us – the proper status of the negro in our form of civilization. This was the immediate cause of the late rupture and present revolution. Jefferson, in his forecast, had anticipated this as the “rock upon which the old Union would split.” He was right. What was conjecture with him is now a realized fact. But whether he fully comprehended the great truth upon which that rock stood and stands, may be doubted. The prevailing ideas entertained by him and by most of the leading statesmen of the time of the formation of the old constitution, were that the enslavement of the African was in violation of the laws of nature: that it was wrong in principle, socially, morally, and politically. [Stephens gets the founders exactly right, unlike Taney and today’s liberals and many pro-Southers]. It was an evil they knew not well how to deal with, but the general opinion of the men of that day was, that somehow or other, in the order of Providence, the institution would be evanescent and pass away. [This is Lincoln’s as well as the founders’ hope]. This idea, though not incorporated in the Constitution, was the prevailing idea at the time. The Constitution, it is true, secured every essential guarantee to the institution while it should last, and hence no argument can be justly used against the constitutional guarantees thus secured, because of the common sentiment of the day [Again, Stephens rightly points out that the protections for slavery in the Constitution were a hateful compromise]. Those ideas, however, were fundamentally wrong. They rested upon the assumption of the

22

equality of the races. This was an error. It was a sandy foundation, and the idea of a government built upon it; when the “storm came and the wind blew, it fell.” Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea; its foundations are laid, its corner stone rests upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man. That slavery – subordination to the superior race, is his natural and normal condition. This, our new Government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical and moral truth. This truth has been slow in the process of its development, like all other truths in the various departments of science. It has been so, even amongst us. Many who hear me, perhaps, can recollect well, that this truth was not generally admitted, even within their day. The errors of the past generation still clung to many as late as twenty years ago. Those at the North who still cling to these errors, with a zeal above knowledge, we justly denominate fanatics.26 (italics added).

Stephens is right in saying that the pseudo-Confederate States of America was the first

pseudo-nation to be based on this form of slavery. Ancient nations did not enslave on the

basis of a supreme race and a servile race. Slavery in the past was indiscriminate, the

priority of the victor; it still assumed a common human nature. I myself would favor

making slaves out of criminals, for instance. The level of evil to which “the various

departments of science” have finally brought us is peculiar to the historicism of

modernity, on display here in America as early as 1861. What a contrast to Jefferson’s

sober wisdom: no man is born with a saddle on his back, as no man is born booted and

spurred; or Lincoln’s terse, puritanical simplicity: “As I would not be a slave, so I would

not be a master.”27

But why settle for man number 2? Jefferson Davis, the president of the pseudo-

Confederate States, just like Stephens, defended slavery and its expansion as a positive

good. In his speech to the Democratic State Convention in Jackson, Mississippi in 1857,

26 The Cornerstone Speech, March 21, 1861. Alexander H. Stephens in Public and Private with Letters and Speeches (Philadelphia, PN: National Publishing, 1866), 721-722.27 Abraham Lincoln: His Speeches and Writings, ed. Roy P. Basler (Cleveland, OH: World Publishing, 1946), 427.

23

Davis argues that there is in fact a race of men born to subjection, to wear saddles on

their backs, and a corresponding race of men born to mount them:

The judgments of God are not as those of man. To the former all things are accommodated, and the fate of the subject is thereby his nature, but the victim of man’s decree rebels and struggles against his condition.When the Spaniards discovered this continent and reduced the sons of Shem to bondage, unsuited to that condition they pined and rapidly wasted away in unproductive labor. The good Bishop Las Casas, with philosophical humanity, inaugurated the importation of the race of Ham; they came to relieve from an unnatural state the dwellers in tents, and to fulfill their own destiny, that of being “servants of servants.”28 (Italics added)

I hope my previous writing on the implied condemnation of slavery in the Bible has been

convincing; but we must ask how Davis knows who the sons of Ham are. How does he

know that blacks are slaves by nature? Can you spot the historicism? The answer:

because they have been enslaved. “The fate of the subject is thereby his nature.” Davis

learned to think like this from Calhoun – or together with him. The staple feature of

historicism is the confusion of the ought with the is. There is no question of justice or

natural right in the abstract; fate, takes the place of nature. Nietzche characterized it best

as the idolatry of the present: everything that happens is as it ought to happen. If blacks

are stupid enough to become enslaved, it is as it ought to be because it is.

Finally, let us take another look at Calhoun, admired by luminaries such as Robert

Bork, M.E. Bradford, Russell Kirk and Willmoore Kendall as a hero of the conservative

cause and the “Moses of the Confederacy.”29 The fact that Calhoun is both the creator of

28 Jaffa, 156.29 Cf. Jaffa v. Bork: and exchange National Review, March 21, 1994. Also see my essay Whether the Principles of the Family have Corrupted the Family for a closer look at the divide between the Kristol / Brafdord / Bork brand of conservatism and the Natural Rights conservatism that admires the Founding of America. Mostly all of the major exponents of the latter kind of conservatism, including Harry Jaffa, write for the Claremont Review of Books and are also known as Claremont Conservatives.

24

States rights theory and perhaps the major exponent of slavery as a positive good and its

centrality in the Civil War indicates the crucial instrumental role that the former played in

the promotion of the latter. This is evident from the fact that States rights theory is non-

teleological. Calhoun’s States rights teaching can as easily be applied to defend abortion,

homosexual marriage, and polygamy. There is no foundation in an eternal natural law in

Calhoun’s political science.

Calhoun predicted that there would be a war over slavery; or rather, more

profoundly, over the truth or falseness of the “self-evident truths” of the Declaration of

Independence. Near the end of his infamous speech in the Senate on the Oregon bill, on

June 27, 1848, he asks what a future historian of the decline and fall of the Union might

think was the cause of its failure.

If he should possess a philosophical turn of mind, and be disposed to look to more remote and recondite causes, he will trace it to a proposition which originated in a hypothetical truism, but which, as now expressed and now understood, is the most false and dangerous of all political errors. The proposition to which I allude, has become an axiom in the minds of a vast majority on both sides of the Atlantic, and is repeated daily from tongue to tongue, as an established and incontrovertible truth; it is that “all men are born free and equal.”30

It is no exaggeration to say that the political leaders of the South stood in complete

opposition to the American founding. They were, in the most profound sense, anti-

American – dedicated to the self-evident truth that whites are the natural rulers of blacks.

With the words of these men in mind, it is easier to see the wisdom of one

historian’s account of the conflict and its more profound causes. Benson J. Lossing wrote

his History of the Civil War during the war and the conflict at large. Lossing sees the

30 Jaffa, 406.

25

beginning of the conflict in the South’s attempt to keep the balance between the free-

labor and the slave-labor States.31 From the very infancy of the Union, the Northwest

Ordinance of 1787 secured a numerical advantage with the free States. But with the

Missouri Compromise of 1820, the number of free States and slave States became equal;

Missouri and Alabama were accepted into the Union as slave-labor States, but slavery

could no longer expand above the 36º30’ parallel.32 The slave-labor politicians, however,

knew that their power was doomed to diminish, despite the fact that the coalition between

the slave-labor South and the Democratic party at large was much more powerful than the

Whig party. First of all, one wing of the Northern Democrats became increasingly

estranged from their Southern colleagues. Moreover, Calhoun and his ilk well knew that

the principles established in the Declaration of Independence were still strongly believed

by the majority of Americans. More to the point, the population of the North continued to

outgrow that of the South; sot that, while the balance of free and slave States guaranteed

friendliness to slavery in the Senate, the House became increasingly hostile to slavery.

Before the eve of the conflict, the Senate had vetoed many house bills unfavorable to the

expansion of slavery, including several pushes for a nation-wide abolition amendment,

like that proposed by Congressman John Quincy Adams in 1839.33 The Southern

politicians were faced with the reality of dwindling support for slavery as a stable and

permanent and positive institution as long as the Union was maintained. The expansion

into Mexico had proved unsuccessful. While Texas became a slave-labor State, it was

apparent that future States from the New Mexico territory would become free States like

California. Although the Wilmot Proviso, which would have banned slavery in the 31 Benson J. Lossing, History of the Civil War, illustrated with photographs by Mathew Brady, (New York: The Fairfax Press, 1866), 10.32 Lossing, 16.33 Lossing, 18-20.

26

territory acquired from Mexico, was dropped in the Compromise of 1850, this

compromise adopted Stephen Douglass’s popular sovereignty. The Compromise was a

major defeat for Calhoun and non-moderate Democrats, who pushed for the new

territories to espouse slave-labor. Stephen Douglass was becoming a major force in the

Democratic party; he was despised for his moderate stance on slavery, and for shifting

the balance of power of the Democratic party towards the moderate North. Left to

themselves, it was apparent that these new territories would turn into free States.34

The South also failed in conquering Nicaragua and in getting a majority to support

the Ostend Manifesto and the conquest of Cuba. In 1853, the Tennessean William Walker

went on a private “filibustering expedition” to conquer Baja California and Sonora.

Unsuccessful, he tried to conquer Nicaragua to make inroads for American expansion.

Walker was successful in instigating a civil war in Nicaragua, and even declared himself

President of Nicaragua. His control proved precarious, of course; he ended up being

captured and killed in Honduras in 1860.35 While Walker failed to get support from the

United States, he had the full political support of the Democratic Party, and the South

promoted his campaign as an opportunity to expand slavery. In the Democratic National

Convention at Cincinnati in June, 1856, the platform approved and supported Walker’s

campaign in South America and the Ostend Manifesto for the acquisition of Cuba.

Manifest Destiny, far from being something every American approved of, was strongly

opposed by the Whigs, who along with Lincoln, vehemently opposed even the war with

Mexico. It would not be until the founding principles were once again forgotten at the

34 Lossing, 14.35 Lossing, 8.

27

end of the 19th century that Teddy Roosevelt and his ilk would make a fresh push for the

“expansion of civilization.”

Lossing sees the emergence of “the right to secede” as the last resort of the South to

preserve and expand slavery and the form of polity that can logically accept slavery as a

positive good. The South, as demonstrated by Calhoun’s and Stephens’ writings, for

instance, rejected the very core principles of America. Secession was not just for the sake

of preserving slavery, but for giving birth to a nation that can philosophically accept

slavery as a positive good. The political ideology of the South had come to espouse a

new aristocracy. Lossing examines the Southern disdain for republican principles and a

desire to emulate aristocratic Europe. “The feeling of contempt for the Northern masses,”

says Lossing, “among the ‘chivalric Southrons’ was more intense in South Carolina than

elsewhere.” The Charleston Mercury, the chief organ of the conspirators of South

Carolina according to Lossing, declared that it was“the abiding consciousness of the

degradation of the ‘chivalric Southrons’ being placed on an equality in government with

the ‘boors of the North’ that made ‘Southern gentlemen’ desire disunion. It said

haughtily, ‘We are the most aristocratic people in the world. Pride of caste, and color, and

privilege makes every man an aristocrat in feelings.”36 Lossing then presents many more

quotes from prominent Southerners that display an emerging desire for disunion as a

matter of pride, as a way of establishing a government based on Southern principles and

the new science that Stephens talks about.

We conclude this section with a speech by Stephens that really demonstrates the

truth of Lossing’s observations. When Stephens was elected vice-president of the

36 Lossing, 48.

28

Confederacy, he gave a small speech in which he foresaw a glorious future for the South.

Alluding to the institution of slavery, Stephens said,

With institutions, so far as regards their organic and social policy, in strict conformity to nature and the laws of the Creator, whether read in the Book of Inspiration or the great Book of Manifestations around us, we have all the natural elements essential to the highest attainment in the highest degree of power and glory. These institutions have been much assailed, and it is our mission to vindicate the great truths on which they rest, and with them exhibit the highest type of civilization which it is possible for human society to reach.37

In opposition to economic determinists – people who would argue that the American

Revolution was about taxes on tea and that the Civil War was about tariffs – Stephens is

very clear that the Civil War was about slavery – not so much as essential to the economy

of the South, but as essential to the “highest type of civilization which it is possible for

human society to reach.”

Lincoln’s Legacy

One of the strategies of the pro-South writers is to build up a big pile of muck

against the North and eschew a principled defense for the “right of secession” and the

causes that motivated the South. A big part of this strategy is the demonizing of Lincoln.

Let us first look at some of the charges against him.

One charge is that Lincoln suspended the writ of habeas corpus to capture,

imprison, and exile people he deemed treacherous. The Constitution says that “The

privilege of the writ of habeas corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in cases of

rebellion or invasion the public safety may require it.” I hope I’ve proven that the Civil

War was indeed a rebellion, so that’s all I have to say about that.

37 Lossing, 100.

29

The most telling charge is that Lincoln was a hypocrite. If he was such a supporter

of freedom, why did he favor preserving slavery where it already existed? Why does he

want to send blacks away to Africa? According to this critique, Lincoln at least would

have been morally consistent if he had waged war with the South – not to fulfill his

Constitutional obligations – but for the sole purpose of emancipating slaves. These

charges are exactly akin to the charges made against the founders. The founders, we are

told, were hypocrites because, despite all the great-sounding jazz about equality in the

Declaration of Independence, they did not abolish slavery. This infantile logic was even

used by Justice Taney in his Dred Scott opinion. It is a logic that is completely Kantian.

Dr. Leo Paul de Alvarez is very fond of saying “we are all liberals” or “we are all

progressives.” We truly do need to analyze to what extent “we are all Kantians.” The

understanding of morality behind Kant’s “categorical imperative” is one that denies the

element of prudence in seeking out ends. If you say you’re against slavery, you must

devote yourself stupidly to the destruction of slavery; there is no room for compromise.

The founders knew better. They knew that a complete abolition of slavery was simply not

possible at the time of the Revolution; to insist on abolishing slavery could have meant

the impossibility of forming the Union. Likewise, there is no question of Lincoln’s belief

that slavery was evil, but he thought that the best way to fight it was by fighting it

Constitutionally. Our Kantian prejudices are laid bare by our horror at the phrase “may

the ends justify the means.” Our terror at the phrase is somewhat justifiable because we

relate it to Soviet Union atrocities. The SU justified throwing people into the gulag

because the end result would be to adapt them to the latest historical sphere. The problem

is not about ends justifying means, but about whether the ends are good. The World Wars

30

were awful – any war is awful – war is a means: you can’t get a worse mean than a war;

but was it not worth the fight? The Kantian says war is bad, period. There is no

circumstance in which war can be good because peace is the real good. The non-Kantian,

on the contrary, acknowledges that peace can only be attained sometimes through war. If

we say that ends don’t justify means, we’ve fallen into the very whirlwind of nihilism.

Furthermore, Lincoln was in favor of freeing slaves, not necessarily in favor of making

citizens out of them. They have a natural right to be free, but not a natural right to be

Americans. Lincoln took the very same position that Jefferson and most of the other

founders did; they believed it would be dangerous to suddenly make citizens out of all the

slave population. I encourage the reader to read Thomas G. West’s Vindicating the

Founders for a better explanation of this apparent ambiguity.

The only pro-South argument that gives me pause – though it’s not an argument;

it’s just another “fun fact” in the pile of muck, but a very severe one – is the evil done by

the Sherman campaign. I’m inclined to believe that many of the accounts of Sherman’s

push through Georgia during the war are exaggerated, given the nature of what I’ve seen

so far of Southern apologetics. I say, first of all, that Sherman was completely justified in

ruining supplies for soldiers. Sherman’s obligation is to do what he can to defeat the

enemy. Getting to the enemy’s supplies to thwart their war effort is perfectly legitimate,

though Kennedy counts this very practice as an atrocity. No, an atrocity in war occurs

when civilians are targeted, when women and children are harassed; and though there are

conflicting accounts about Sherman’s campaign, I don’t doubt that some atrocities were

committed: I don’t put it past any war, and I don’t put it past any army. I also think it was

wrong of Lincoln not to give his generals a more limited range of discretion: Sherman

31

was simply told to advance towards the East once he had secured the Mississippi river.

Since Sherman didn’t encounter much military resistance in his advance, the evidence

suggests that his soldiers had the leisure to unleash themselves to piracy. I denounce

Sherman’s campaign as much as I denounce the killing of millions of innocents in

Hiroshima and Nagasaki. But I insist that Justice was on the side of the North during the

Civil War just as much as it was on the side of the Allies during the World Wars. Only a

Kantian can believe that these two opinions are necessarily inconsistent.

Lincoln was on the right side of the war; he wanted to fight slavery in the same way

that the founders had fought it, not like John Brown. The emancipation proclamation was

limited to the Southern States precisely because he wanted to abide by the Constitution.

Under the Constitution and his duties as the executive, Lincoln was justified in taking this

measure as a military necessity or as an opportunity to bring a faster culmination to the

war. It would be up to Congress and the other States to use their authority to abolish

slavery or to continue as they were. Sure enough, the 13th amendment passed shortly

afterwards.

The legacy of Lincoln ought not to be the portrait of him made by today’s liberals.

They only like him as a poster boy for the rights of blacks. In reality, liberals are more

indebted to Calhoun as the father of minority rights politics. The legacy of Lincoln

should be that of being the preserver of the principles of the founding. The Civil War was

a fight for the true principles of America: the Declaration of Independence against the

doctrine of States rights and slavery as a positive good. Lincoln’s eloquence in presenting

the position of the founders against Stephen Douglas, Alexander Stephens, Davis,

Calhoun and the rest, was uncanny; his actions were a logical consequence of his political

32

philosophy. The empty claim of Bradford that Lincoln is the predecessor of the New Deal

and the centralization of power of today is ridiculous. Teddy Roosevelt and Woodrow

Wilson were at great pains to destroy the return to the founding that Lincoln had

achieved. Wilson, almost a hundred years after Calhoun, would specifically argue that

our founding principles are an aberration and that they belong in the ash bin of history.

Leo Strauss famously said about the Civil War: “It would not be the first time that a

nation, defeated on the battlefield and, as it were, annihilated as a political being, has

deprived its conquerors of the most sublime fruit of victory by imposing on them the

yoke of its own thought.”38 The historicist political philosophy of the South, its

willingness to abide by the new science and to let go of the past, seems to have won after

all. But the Union was preserved, slavery eradicated; Lincoln’s legacy is there for us to

see, as much as that of Jefferson, Adams, and Washington. And those who do not believe

in the inevitable logic of history may one day see yet another birth of freedom and a

restoration of the glory of republican government based on the Law of Nature.

38 Leo Strauss, Natural Right and History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1953), 1-2.

33