[Peace-discuss] War then and now

[C. G. Estabrook]

There was a discussion of the US Civil War on this list, prompted by the 
rather uncomfortable parallel between the the propositions, "The 
invasion of Iraq was about oil" and "The Civil War was about slavery." 
Both propositions are nevertheless correct, and the latter is discussed 
in a recent book about the coming of the Civil War, reviewed below by 
Eric Foner.

"Everyone who lived through the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln observed in 
his second Inaugural Address, knew that slavery was 'somehow' its 
cause," writes Foner.  Similarly, it's hard to miss the fact that oil 
was somehow the cause of the current war, although it's important to 
explain that "somehow."

But we can also apply Foner's language to the current situation, and 
blame "irresponsible agitators and a 'blundering generation' of 
political leaders for bringing about a war [in Iraq] that could and 
should have been avoided."

(Yale UP has a new book, which I've only read about, that suggests why 
the US occupation of Iraq was so much more difficult than the Union 
occupation of the Confederacy or the German WWII occupation of France. 
"The corroded and corrupt state of Saddam was replaced by the corroded, 
inefficient, incompetent and corrupt state of the new order," writes Ali 
A. Allawi in "The Occupation of Iraq." The NYT writes, "In a rueful 
reflection on what might have been, an Iraqi government insider details 
in 500 pages the U.S. occupation's 'shocking' mismanagement of his 
country -- a performance so bad, he writes, that by 2007 Iraqis had 
'turned their backs on their would-be liberators'" -- as we saw in the 
news from Najaf today.)

Were there any justice in this world, Bush, Cheney, Rice, Rumsfeld et 
al. would be awaiting trial in The Hague under the Nuremberg Principles, 
but since that probably won't happen, we the living need to make clear 
their crimes, while we condemn those (like Clinton and Obama) who yearn 
to be complicit in them.  --CGE

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	The New York Times
	April 8, 2007
	The Three Souths
	By ERIC FONER

THE ROAD TO DISUNION
Volume Two. Secessionists Triumphant: 1854-1861.
By William W. Freehling.
Illustrated. 752 pp. Oxford University Press. $35.

Everyone who lived through the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln observed in 
his second Inaugural Address, knew that slavery was “somehow” its cause. 
Ever since, historians have been struggling to explain that “somehow.” 
Their interpretations fall into two broad schools. One sees the war as 
the result of an “irrepressible conflict” between two societies with 
incompatible interests and values. The second blames irresponsible 
agitators and a “blundering generation” of political leaders for 
bringing about a war that could and should have been avoided.

In “The Road to Disunion: Secessionists Triumphant,” the conclusion of a 
two-volume account of the Civil War’s origins, William W. Freehling 
seems to combine these approaches. It is “indisputable,” he writes, that 
slavery was the war’s main cause, and some kind of clash was probably 
inevitable. But not necessarily in 1861. Whatever the underlying 
reasons, the war that actually took place resulted from individual 
decisions, chance events and at least one “incredible coincidence.”

Since the publication four decades ago of “Prelude to Civil War,” a 
study of the nullification crisis of the early 1830s, Freehling has been 
among the foremost students of 19th-century Southern history. If one 
theme unites his scholarship it is that the Old South cannot be viewed 
as a monolith. It contained distinct regions with divergent economic 
structures and degrees of commitment to slavery. In the seven states of 
the Lower South, cotton was king and slaves comprised nearly half the 
population. The Middle South (Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee and 
Arkansas) contained large regions of nonslaveholding whites. In the 
Border South (Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky and Missouri) slavery seemed 
to be in decline. By 1860, 90 percent of Delaware’s black population and 
half of Maryland’s were already free.

Time and again, Freehling writes, the three Souths collided. In the 
three months following Lincoln’s election, the entire Lower South 
seceded. The Middle South waited, hoping for compromise; it joined the 
Confederacy only after the firing on Fort Sumter. The four border states 
not only remained in the Union but furnished thousands of troops to help 
defeat their Southern brethren.

As Freehling shows, this disunity long preceded 1861. In crisis after 
crisis, advocates of secession faced a “double enemy” — Northerners 
hostile to slavery and white Southerners willing to compromise with 
their foes. “Secessionists Triumphant” begins in 1854, when the question 
of slavery’s westward expansion moved to the center stage of national 
politics and ends 500 pages later with the outbreak of war. Many of the 
subjects Freehling covers — Bleeding Kansas, the Dred Scott decision, 
John Brown’s raid — are well known; others, like the movement to reopen 
the African slave trade, will be new even to many specialists. But by 
keeping his eye fixed on the problem of Southern disunity, he manages to 
offer original insights on even the most familiar topics.

Freehling examines how, in the 1850s, the Lower South became more and 
more committed to defending slavery as a positive good. At the same 
time, he tells us, the Middle and Border Souths persisted in the dream 
of eventually removing all slaves (and free blacks) from the region and 
reorienting its economy toward the North. Secessionists were not wrong, 
he writes, to see these states as slavery’s Achilles’ heel.

The movements in the 1850s to acquire new slave territories for the 
United States, reopen the African slave trade and re-enslave free blacks 
also revealed Southern disunity. Freehling offers fascinating accounts 
of each. But his main point is that because of opposition within the 
South, all failed. Even South Carolina, he shows, was divided. In his 
account of the aftermath of Lincoln’s election, Freehling overturns the 
conventional picture of a state rushing headlong into disunion. South 
Carolina secessionists emerge instead as a beleaguered minority, fearful 
that their state would stand alone (as it had during the nullification 
crisis).

At this point, Freehling’s “incredible coincidence” comes into play. A 
railroad had just been completed linking Savannah, Ga., and Charleston, 
S.C. As the South Carolina legislature deliberated, leading citizens of 
the two cities took part in a celebration. The Georgians, carried away 
by the emotion of the moment, pledged their state’s support for 
secession. Suddenly convinced that other states would follow, the 
legislature moved the secession convention up to December. The 
“coincidence,” Freehling argues, changed history. Had South Carolina not 
taken this step, Unionists might have prevailed throughout the South.

Whatever one thinks of this excursion into counterfactual history (and 
the argument seems dubious to me), Freehling’s overall emphasis on the 
role of contingency in history offers genuine insights. But it comes at 
a cost. It has become fashionable of late for historians writing with 
one eye on the best-seller list to disparage fellow scholars for 
supposedly alienating the broad reading public. Unlike “academic 
historians,” Freehling proclaims, he tells “stories about striking 
individuals” and their unpredictable impact on history.

There is no question that “Secessionists Triumphant” is peopled by a 
colorful cast of characters, from William L. Yancey, a hotheaded 
secessionist who tried to inspire Southerners with a sense of 
nationhood, to James Henry Hammond, a South Carolina planter who preyed 
on his female slaves. But Freehling’s fondness for individual stories 
puts undue emphasis on psychological explanations, with words like 
“frustration” and “rage” sprinkling the text. Moreover, the attempt to 
assume a popular literary style often seems forced. (Was the pro-slavery 
theorist George Fitzhugh really dealing in “sound bites”?)

I think it’s time to declare a moratorium on scholars’ denigrating other 
scholars for failing to achieve popularity. As Freehling’s own extensive 
footnotes demonstrate, those much-maligned specialized studies are the 
building blocks of historical knowledge. Nor is his dismissal of what he 
calls “multicultural social history” in favor of the study of politics 
persuasive. Surely, the task of the historian is to integrate the two.

Freehling himself inadvertently makes this case. At one point he remarks 
that “blacks’ impact remains the most overlooked cause of the Civil 
War.” Without runaways seeking liberty there would have been no 
political crisis over fugitive slaves. Without one slave’s suit for 
freedom, there would have been no Dred Scott decision. But Freehling 
never returns to this striking insight, partly because his emphasis on 
stories involving political actors leaves little room for the slaves. 
The men, women and children over whose fate political battles raged and 
who, in fact, made up a majority of South Carolina’s population, remain 
largely invisible in this account of the road to disunion.

Eric Foner, the DeWitt Clinton professor of history at Columbia 
University, is the author, most recently, of “Forever Free: The Story of 
Emancipation and Reconstruction.”

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