Reflections on the Gettysburg Address and the Civil War
It is also a determined piece of goalpost shifting designed to cope with the fact that Lincoln's Civil War was a bloody, improvised botch that he rescued by
abandoning the positions that had won him the Presidency…
…and by redefining not only that war, but all American wars to come.
Lincoln, as is well known, was no abolitionist in 1860 (i.e.
he had no plans to change the status of slaves inside the current slave-holding
states). He ran for president on the
Republican ticket on a platform of halting the expansion of slavery into the
territories, something that the Southern-centric administration of James
Buchanan and the deadlocked US Congress had been unable to achieve.
Southern arrogance, presumption, and scheming historically relied
on the belief that the North lacked both the will and the means to do anything
except bargain away its free-soil convictions when faced with serial Southern extortion
by threat of secession. When Lincoln won
re-election, the South concluded that Northern forbearance was at an end, and decided
to finally make good on its threats.
Southern confidence at secession was bolstered by slave state gains in the 1850s: the Dred Scott decision overturning the Missouri
Compromise restrictions on territorial slavery as unconstitutional, the success
of Southern intransigence over the Kansas issue in obtaining Buchanan’s
recognition of a fraudulent pro-slavery Kansas constitution, the superior
ability of the Southern cotton economy to weather the Panic of 1857, and the
political dominance of a militant and confrontational anti-North/pro-slavery
consensus in the South.
Before Lincoln’s inauguration, with secession abrewin’,
Kentucky’s John Crittenden tried to broker a compromise that would have
extended the 36 degree 30 minute latitude line (the southern border of Missouri
and the demarcation line for slavery in the Louisiana Territory since 1830) out
to the California border.
Lincoln rejected the compromise, since the extended line
would have permitted slavery in New Mexico, Oklahoma, and Arizona. He had run on a platform of restricting
slavery in the territories, not expanding it, and was understandably loath to
abandon his platform and his deeply held convictions even before he took
office.
The South’s response to the Lincoln challenge to its
political grip in Washington and over national slave policy in the territories
was a wave of southern state secessions initiated by South Carolina even before
Lincoln was inaugurated.
Ironically—an irony little acknowledged in the universal
hagiography surrounding Lincoln and his prosecution of the Civil War—southern
secession and the departure of the obstreperous southern delegations from
Washington and their enablers from the White House basically assured that in
1860 the disposition of the remaining territories would be determined
by the anti-slavery, North-dominated government without the need for a civil
war.
Indeed, a Congress freed of Southern disruption was
something of a progressive Golden Age, as the Federal government legislated a
slew of “national improvements” and social legislation—including, of course,
prohibition of slavery in the territories-- that the southern delegations had
always blocked as favoring the integrated economies of the north at the expense
of the Cotton Kingdom.
Alternative scenarios for a Confederate States of America
allowed to secede abound, no doubt.
It can be said with some confidence that the South would
have done rather well, perhaps successfully executing filibusters like the
seizure of Cuba (a plan supported by President Buchanan and thwarted only by
the sabotage of Northern anti-slavery zealots) as part of a new slave empire,
the promotion of slavery-friendly coup d’etats in Central American states like
Nicaragua (William Walker, the entrepreneur of Nicaraguan regime change, was a
Southern darling), and annexation of more of Mexico.
The North probably also would have done reasonably well, thanks
to its diversified economy and the discovery of gold in California. Foreign trade would have taken a huge knock,
at least in the short term (cotton exports were the mainstay of US exports and,
indirectly, through the tariff on goods purchased overseas with cotton revenues,
served as the foundation of federal government finance as well).
It can also be said with some confidence that the United
States would not have tried to hollow out the southern slave economy by
offering free refuge to southern slaves fleeing the CSA. The northern anti-slavery platform was an
expression of the desire to keep slave labor bottled up in its southeastern
homeland, and prevent the establishment of slave economies in new territories
that would close off opportunities to white labor.
Maybe the CSA slave economy would have persisted into the 20th
century; maybe a domestic reform movement would have mediated a transition to a
post-slavery economy; maybe a titanic rebellion would have brought a bloody end
to the unjust Confederate regime.
Really can’t say.
In any case, Abe didn’t let ‘em go. After making sure that the CSA fired the
first shot at Fort Sumter, Lincoln sent his armies into the South.
In 1860, both sides had the expectation of some sort of sharp,
decisive military confrontation: either a Northern triumph that would discredit the
CSA as a viable nation and bring the seceding states back into the Union, or
convincing Southern victories that would demonstrate to the Union, Great
Britain, and France that the CSA could hold its own in a defensive war and
should be allowed to depart the Union.
