Why we Yankees fought

This is a post that has been rumbling around in my head for quite some time, but the inspiration to finallly put it into bandwith was Jim Bowden’s post on the War of the Rebellion (though he did not use that term).  In the title, I finally come to terms with who and what I truly am.  I am the father of a native Virginian and two other native Southerners (northern Florida), but I was raised in northern New Jersey, and try as I might, myheritage is not something I can escape, nor do I choose to do so.  While there were many Virginians who took to the defense of the Union (including the Rock of Chickamauga – General George Thomas), I do not bring to that period the perspective of a Southerner who chose not to abandon his country.  I come with the perspective of my ancestors – northerners whose outrages, claims, and political reactions are largely forgotten because, having won the war, they did not feel the need to repeat and defend them through the centuries.  This is not meant as an insult to Southerners who repeat and defend their justifications, as much as I may disagree with them; it is only to note that northern grievances have been nearly lost to history – nearly.

I remember them because they were passed down to me (although I needed to reach back directly into history rather than hear the stories passed down) by my great-great-great-great-grandfather: the New York political master, Thurlow Weed.

For starters, most historians badly misunderstand and underestimate the breath and depth of slavery’s stain.  Those with a background in economics understand far better than the pure historians how slavery wormed its way into every political issue of the day.  Southern agribusiness (and that’s what the plantations were) had unique advantages over their northern industrial counterparts.  While the northern factory owner or farmer have to maximize profit against both labor and capital cost, for the southern slaveowner, they were one and the same.  Just as important, southerners had the added advantage of the only kind of non-landed-capital in world history that could appreciate for decades (human chattel), while northerners were confronted with capital that depreciated always.

As such, the southern entrepreneur was far more comfortable and confident in the larger economy.  This made him more willing to strike out into the global economy without tariff protection, government aid in reaching his markets (canals, roads, etc.), legal incorporation, or an active banking system - things northerners felt was essential to keep them going in their more complex economic situation.  Thus, the greatest economic issues of the day – every single one of them – had at least one bond to, well, bondage.

It got worse as the cotton crop slowly starved the soil of the eastern seaboard.  Without slavery, southern cotton farm owners who picked up stakes and headed west would have been hailed by the laborers among their new hosts as new potential employers who could bid up the wage rates for hired hands.  Instead, their insistence on spreading slavery wherever they went ensured they would be seen as infringers who would take land that could have been used by non-slaveowner farmers to support legions of laborers.  Instead, the consignment of land to bonded labor reduced both employment opportunities and real wage rates.

These economic issues were, of course, quite complex, and the indirect effects of slavery were difficult for many to see (except the last one).  However, by the 1850s, the north was forced to start storing poltiical grievances of their own that nearly everyone has since forgotten.

1850-54: With the passage of a new Fugitive Slave law, all northerners (including opponents of slavery and even supporters of abolition) were required – under penalty of imprisonment - to join any and all slave patrols that came north to retrieve escaped slaves in free states.  Thus many northerners were forced to actively support an institution they despised.

1855-59: After the Missouri Compromise was burned to a crips by Stephen Douglas (!), Missourians poured into Kansas, illegally voted in election after election, and repeatedly shot their way to power when free-state emigrants demanded an end to the corrupt outrage.  The actions of the “ruffians” was so egregious that even southern Democrats who came to Kansas as their Washington-appointed benefactors would be chased out as their disgusted and embittered opponents.

1856: Senator Charles Sumner is beaten to within an inch of his life (without even the courtesy of being allowed to defend himself) because a Southern Congressman was offended by his words.  Southernerns cheer the near-murder of an elected official and darkly hint that any other Yankee determined to exercise his free speech rights can meet a similar fate.  Massachusetts (Sumner’s constituency) is so shocked an appalled that they re-elected Sumner later that year, despite the fact that would not be able to resume his duties until 1859.

1857: Supreme Court Chief Justice Roger Taney - with timely assists from President-elect James Buchanan pressuring justices – embarks on the most egregious form of judicial activism in American history (and the judicial fountainhead for nearly all federal judiciary intrusions since) with the Dred Scott decision.  Not only does it override all Congressional restrictions on slavery, but the decision opens the door for future invalidation of free-state anti-slavery laws (such a test case was working its way up the court system as early as 1859).

Finally in 1860, the North – yes, the North – put its foot down and said no more, electing Abraham Lincoln.  Contrary to the myth of the Lost Cause, Lincoln had pointedly and repeatedly rejected any effort to end slavery where it already existed.  However, by then, most southern fire-eaters had been so used to having the country under whip and spur that they decided to break off just to maintain control.

Thus were the southern republics born; thus did they form the Confederacy – and thus did the northern masses turn their thoughts to war.

Granted, it was not a war to end slavery – until it became necessary to do so in order to win.  Few on either side assumed it would last so long, but shockingly – both to the southerners and themselves – northerners refused to accept defeat.

Why?  Because they knew what defeat meant.  The idea of a particular class of people (southern leaders) claiming everything within their field of vision before 1860 and then asking merely to left to their existing lands after 1860 was preposterous, and northerners knew it (indeed, one of the first military actions the Confederacy undertook in its “defensive” war was the invasion of New Mexico).  More importantly, the American republic could not survive if pieces of it could break away every time they lost an election.  Britain was still the colonial power above the North (Canada did not rise from mulitple British colonies into a Dominion until 1867), while the French tyrant Louis Napoleon was trying to conquer Mexico by proxy.  A future with an atomized American nation, with squabbling, petty states and federations serving as pawns for the European powers, was a real possibility – and those who did not see it themselves had it loudly explained to them by refugees from the warring Germanic states that struggled from the ashes of the Holy Roman Empire.

Every southerner is told that the Confederacy fought to make a country.  Far fewer Americans recognize that the Unionists fought to save the country from ruin. Allowing the Confederates to leave would be to admit the experiement failed, to acknowledge that we would soon go the way of the squabbling Greek city states that fell to the Macedonians and later the Romans.  It would destroy the work of the Framers, not restore it.

That is what we northerners understood; it is why we – even as we respect the reasons southerners donned gray – will never consider the rebel as noble as we do the Unionist.  It is why we (those who refuse to forget) cherish the memories of northern men who came by the hundreds of thousands, bled, died, and when given the chance in 1864 (the first time a serious effort was made to allow the military to vote in American history), rejected the political weakness of their own ex-commander (McClellan) and voted literally to keep themselves in harm’s why by helping re-elect Lincoln.  It is, for those who have ever wondered, why the Unionists took to the field.  It is why we Yankees fought.