Misinterpretation: War Between the States

The War for the Southern Confederacy, also known as the War for Southern Independence, has been mostly mischaracterized and misinterpreted as having been a supposed civil war that occurred in the then existing United States of America. By proper definition, however, a civil war exists only and when the two (or, potentially, more) sides in a conflict actually seek to rule the entire nation as to the particular dispute being conducted by such a drastic resort to force of arms.

At various times and for different reasons, the terrible conflict has been called by such diverse names as: The Brothers’ War, Mr. Lincoln’s War, The War of the Rebellion, The Second American Revolution, The Rich Man’s War, The Poor Man’s Fight; and, of course, the American Civil War, 1861 – 1865.

It is also, by the way, a true misnomer to call it the War Between the States; this is clearly and logically because two entities were at war, not any individual states as such; it was the government of United States of America (USA), meaning those that remained as the Union, versus the government known as the Confederate States of America (CSA), the Confederacy. Secession, therefore, had created a new de facto nation, as did the past American Revolution, which had resulted in establishing the political reality that became the USA; but, no civil war had so occurred in either case.

Thus, the Southern nation, as resulting from the cited secession, did not at any time ever seek to control the rest of the former united USA as to its government; the Confederate States of America, moreover, sought only, solely, to fully break away from the Union to form a then completely separate country; thus, there was, by definition, never a civil war.

It is, therefore, absolutely always inappropriate, in both legal and historical terms of reference, to describe the conflict as having ever been a civil war. In the early annuals of the triumphant Union, moreover, the conflict was once officially, originally, termed: The War of the Rebellion. In later years, various historians and others wrongly, incorrectly, decided to call it the American Civil War, which, today, usually gets just simply shortened into being called the Civil War. The CSA has, ever since, remained the usually vilified loser; some critics have gone so far as (insanely) comparing it to Nazi Germany.

But, regardless of any later historical misinterpretations, the precise and accurate nature of the war cannot be somehow illogically and improperly transmuted into supposedly becoming what it was, by definition, not in any way whatsoever. The South honestly had hoped to peacefully secede from the older Union; it was violently prevented from doing so, of course, because Abraham Lincoln and most people in the North totally refused to let the Confederacy exist. [As an interesting side note, prior to the 1840s, most Americans thought of the New England states as being the most naturally secession prone; this was especially true somewhat before, during, and even some years after the War of 1812; one can easily think of, e.g., the Hartford Convention as an illustration of this fact.]

Now, the legal and constitutional crux of the matter is, of course, the asserted right of secession, which had been, in fact, generally recognized as a constitutional fact up until the 1850s, when a major change occurred due mainly to the extreme antislavery agitation coming to a peak of ferment. The North, especially as seen in the Abolitionists, wanted to impose its will upon the slave-holding South and, eventually, did so; the “rehearsal” for all this was in Bloody Kansas due to the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854.

Some actual American history, however, is needed regarding the specific issue of secession, which is tied into states-rights doctrine; but, everything stated here can, of course, be completely and independently researched and verified, if needed or wanted. The first union of what had been the original 13 former colonies had resulted in the effectuation of the Articles of Confederation, the first US Constitution that was adopted in 1781. A permanent union, in that document, was announced and explicated as is so stated clearly in the Articles, which was based upon a confederation of sovereign states, as the colonies had, thus, established themselves politically during and after the Revolution.

Yet, this stated legal and constitutionally valid permanence had, in fact, lasted only until 1788. Thus, one clearly recognizes the empirical failure of so much thought then given for the once assumed permanent nature of an American union of states. In 1788, as a matter of historical, political, and legal fact often ignored by almost all historians, 11 states freely withdrew from the supposedly indissoluble and unbreakable Union of organized states; they ratified, as is known, what then became the second and still existing US Constitution, which became effective, as such, on March 4, 1789.

Although what had occurred was, thus, supposed to be for making a “more perfect union” with this Constitution, it is rarely commented on or much less noticed that no talk of any assumed permanent union exists in any of the language chosen in that document, which is or ought to be a most curious matter indeed. Back then, perhaps unlike today, people had labored long and hard to find the proper legal language for properly defining legal situations, especially pertaining, of course, to something as important as the Constitution itself no less.

One might search as hard as possible and still find no mention of the proposed union of the states as being thought to be ever permanent, in any sense, in the terms of that document. Why? Among other prominent legal reasons, it is known, for instance, that such states as New York, Virginia, and Rhode Island had ratified the Constitution only in terms of their specifically reserving their sovereign rights, when thought necessary, to secede from the existing or future union; and, this was, of course, totally consistent with states-rights doctrine. [The political doctrine of states- rights has been wrongly associated, much too often, with only a defense of slavery; during the 1850's, however, the Northern Personal Liberty Laws, passed to aid the runaway slaves, were explicitly based upon such thinking.]

It was, thus, not at all a supposed oversight or neglect, by any means, that the US Constitution had no provision whatsoever for mentioning a permanent union of the states, as was, in fact, so completely true regarding the prior Articles of Confederation. This fact is highly important. It greatly needs to be very well noted.

PLEASE NOTE: Too many commentators and historians improperly and anti-historically overlook, ignore, minimize, or simply wrongly sidestep its most obviously great and significant legal-constitutional importance as to the then appropriate understanding of the valid contracting powers of the then sovereign states of the Union. This was certainly in proper line with, however, political knowledge of the constitutional rights of the states.

Although the Preamble, of course, states that the Constitution exists to promote certain things for the American people, however, the obvious contracting parties were the states themselves, the public agents of assent, who had properly exercised their legitimate legal powers in, thus, ratifying the aforementioned document. New York, Virginia, and Rhode Island, as was significantly mentioned, had stated that they still and ever fully reserved to themselves the known right to resume, to take back, the governmental powers delegated or granted to the United States as a part of the Federal Union. The claims of those states to the right of secession was, back then, easily and clearly understood and, thus, agreed to by the other ratifiers, which included, of course, a delegate from Virginia, George Washington himself, the first President under the second US Constitution. Secession, in that era of constitution making, was a known and validly accepted legal concept not held, moreover, in too much real dispute by most people.

The Federal government was, furthermore, meant to just be the union of all the state governments acting together, meaning in concert, with the national government headquartered in the national capitol; today, of course, the misnomer exists that the Federal government is itself the only true sovereign power, as being the whole of the general government of the entire nation, instead of only the other part of the fully united entity to be properly known as the Federal government.

Thus, in the older definition of a federal government for the nation, secession was held to be a rather natural and normal constitutional option, a sovereign right, available to the sovereign states who did not give up all rights of sovereignty by entering the union of states; the union was not ever , therefore, meant to illegally and unconstitutionally create a single, national, consolidated government. John C. Calhoun, among many others, correctly knew that to be the truth many years prior to the conflict that destroyed the old Union.

Decades after the war, Henry Cabot Lodge, a knowledgeable historian of a high caliber, wrote in his interesting book, Life of Webster, that such men as Washington, Hamilton, Clinton, and Madison all regarded the new system as being an experiment; every state, therefore, had the free and full right to act like states, meaning, of course, to be able to peacefully withdraw from the Union.

In other words, secession was properly thought of as not merely conceivable in just some purely theoretical or only hypothetically argumentative sense but legally true, as to a most valid political doctrine held as such by the bulk of the American people; this is a most important historical fact to remember; further than that, secessionism was, moreover, actually viewed, in line with the states-rights doctrine, as being vitally necessary in helping to maintain a people’s precious freedom and liberty.

Moreover, it has been pointed out, significantly, that the book titled: A View of the Constitution, written by Judge William Rawle, which was used, in fact, as an actual textbook at West Point before the War for Southern Independence, stated, rather explicitly, that the act of secession of a state only depends on the will of the people of the state wishing to so secede.

Throughout much of the early 19th century, therefore, the US government was still thought of as a kind of experimental confederacy of freely joined and associated states from which various states could, in legal fact, secede in the same constitutionally appropriate manner in which they had acceded to the Union earlier in time. There was no absolute constitutional or legal barrier, moreover, to the natural right of secession in minds and hearts of most American statesmen.

As a matter of recorded history, Abe Lincoln, when he was still a freedom-loving Whig, could write these quite interesting words, as late as 1847: “Any people whatever have a right to abolish the existing government and form a new one that suits them better.” Of course, as was often rightly said of Sir Winston Churchill, it has been, also, well remarked that Lincoln was almost on every side of every political issue during his entire political career.

In the dramatic aftermath of the War for the Southern Confederacy, it is important to historically and otherwise note that not a single Confederate leader was ever made to stand trial for treason; surely, such a significant trial would have brought great and obvious attention to the important question of secession’s constitutionality.

Federal prosecutors then had, logically, assumed that the empirical verdict was simply decided by force majeure in that might made right, in that the Union side fully conquered. Lincoln, to the ever supreme delight of Machiavellians everywhere, had easily proved the harsh truth of Napoleon’s sarcastic, military dictum (since Bonaparte greatly had scorned religion): that God is on the side of the heaviest artillery. Secession had lost militarily, so it was (no need to really guess) expertly declared null and void.

The victors, moreover, tend to write the history books; this is said here just in case the reader was in any doubt of this major fact. Nonetheless, this noted activity, based upon a self-interested subjectivism, can, unfortunately, often greatly distort needed and most requisite historical truth. Thus, secessionism was not regarded as being a crime prior to the Union’s illegal and unconstitutional efforts to destroy the existence of the CSA, which event changed the course of American history toward ever greater political centralization of power in the consolidated Federal government. The victory of the Federal power was, therefore, a dark day in the history of human freedom and liberty.