Myths of American Slavery

by Walter Kennedy

  True to his republican principles, Rawle demands that the people, the voters of the state, should have the final voice in the act of withdrawing from the Union. For Rawle and Tucker, self-government is the foundation of all other civil liberties. The act of acceding to a form of government or the act of seceding from a form of government is the ultimate test of self-government. In the very chapter of his book in which he discusses the right of secession, Rawle notes that the noble example of self-government given the world by America "ought never to be withdrawn while the means of preserving it remains."27 This self-government could only be maintained by the good will and intent of the parties of the agreement. The Union as a free association of sovereign states cannot be enforced at the point of a bloody bayonet because force precludes volition. In his book, Commentaries on American Law, James Kent of New York echos Rawle's warning about how the Union is to be maintained. In discussing this subject, Kent states: "[O]n the concurrence and good will of the parts [the states], the stability of the whole [Union] depends." Kent (1827), Rawle (1825), Tucker (1803) differed greatly from Lincoln (1861) on how the Union was to be maintained. As Kent points out, the Union would be held together by the concurrence and good will of the people of the sovereign states, not by bloody bayonets. As St. George Tucker states:

  The union is in fact, as well as in theory, an association of states, or, a confederacy ... [each state] is still a perfect state, still sovereign, still independent, and still capable, should the occasion require, to resume the exercise of its functions as such, in the most unlimited extent.28

  The preceding has been offered as proof that secession was not considered an un-American act nor was secession a scheme invented by Southern slaveholders in an attempt to defend their slave property. Tucker and Rawle have been offered as representative men from both the South and from the North who believed in the right of secession and yet were also opposed to the institution of slavery. Yet, even before either of these men had given their views on secession Thomas Jefferson, the author of the Declaration of Independence, and James Madison, the Father of the Constitution, wrote and published the Kentucky and Virginia Resolves.

  Even though these resolutions were authored by two different individuals and were then submitted to the actions of two different state legislatures, they still speak of the same principles. The tone and tenor of these resolutions are of limited federalism, State's Rights, and the ultimate right and duty of the sovereign state to judge for itself whether or not an act of the Federal government is pursuant to the Constitution. Then, as a sovereign entity, that state has the duty to take whatever action is required to protect the liberty of its citizens. These resolves addressed the question: Are the states subservient to the Federal government? In the Kentucky Resolution of 1798, Jefferson writes:

  Resolved, That the several states composing the United States of America, are not united on the principle of unlimited submission to their general government ... they [the states] constituted a general government for special purposes, delegated to that government certain definite powers, reserving, each state to itself, the residuary mass of right to their own self-government; and that whensoever the general government assumes undelegated powers, its acts are un-authoritative, void, and of no force: That to this compact each state acceded as a state ... That the government created by this compact was not made the exclusive or final judge of the extent of the powers delegated to itself ... as in all other cases of compact among parties having no common judge, each party [state] has an equal right of judge for itself, as well of infractions, and of the mode and measure of redress.29

  In this small portion of the Kentucky Resolve, Jefferson asserts the idea that the Federal government is the creation of the people of the sovereign states, and the people of the states have the right to judge for themselves how to respond to Federal abuse. This is what the people of the Southern states did in 1860-61 when they elected state conventions that voted to withdraw from the Union. They seceded from the Union in the same manner that they had acceded to that Union-by the action of a convention of the people of that state.

  In the Virginia Resolves, James Madison made the same points as made by Jefferson. Madison writes:

  The powers of the Federal Government as resulting from the compact to which the states are parties, as limited by the plain sense and intention of the instrument constituting that compact; as no further valid than they are authorized by the grants enumerated in that compact; and that in case of a deliberate, palpable, and dangerous exercise of other powers not granted by the said compact, the States, who are the parties thereto, have the right, and are in duty bound, to interpose for arresting the progress of the evil, and liberties appertaining to them.30

  These resolutions became the fundamental statements of the State's Rights party in American politics. Here we have two of America's paramount Founding Fathers defending the rights of "we the people" of the sovereign states against Federal abuse. But secession was more than an ideology of Southern political philosophers.

  In 1803, while debating whether to purchase the Louisiana Territory, Josiah Quincy, a representative of Massachusetts, declared that his state would secede if the Louisiana Territory was added to the United States. Again, when Louisiana petitioned for admission to the Union, Quincy declared the willingness of the people of Massachusetts to secede from the Union if Louisiana was admitted to it. Now, if secession is tantamount to treason, was Representative Quincy condemned by the United States House of Representatives or the American people? Of course he was not condemned as promoting treason. The answer tells us much more about how people felt about the right of secession. In 1815, the people of New England, growing tired of the adverse effects of the War of 1812, met in convention (The Hartford Convention) to promote the secession of the New England states from the Union. The end of the war and the resumption of normal trade made secession unnecessary. If this event had not occurred, the New England states may very well have seceded from the Union some forty-five years before South Carolina found it necessary to do so. In 1835 Texas seceded from Mexico. The United States first recognized the right of Texas to secede from Mexico, then in 1845 admitted Texas into the Union. Now, if secession is such an un-American principle, why did the United States admit a state into the Union which owed its very existence to the right of secession? Again, the answer tells us how early Americans felt about the right of secession. Prior to the advent of the War for Southern Independence, the right of secession, while not something to be resorted to for light or transient reasons, was not viewed as treasonous or un-American.

  SUMMARY

  These United States of America were born as a result of a successful secession movement. The right of a people to secede from an abusive central government is enshrined in the joint Declaration of Independence adopted on July 4, 1776. Prior to the secession of the states of the South in 1861, numerous threats of secession were made by Northern states. Before the advent of the War for Southern Independence, secession, although at times considered imprudent or unwise, was not condemned as "treason." The right of secession was so enshrined in American political philosophy that the use of a textbook at West Point Military Academy which taught secession as a right of the states was never condemned. Even more shocking, the author of that book, William Rawle, was never ridiculed as promoting sedition or treason. Every Fourth of July Americans should recognize that they are celebrating America's great secession holiday.

  The right and duty of "we the people" to alter or abolish any government that does not serve the happiness and safety of the people existed before the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence . "We the people" have the supreme authority to establish a government that governs by the authority of the free and unfettered consent of the people. As Rawle and Tucker, along with a host of other Founding Fathers, explained, in America this consent is given by the people of the sovereign states-each state acting for itself only. This concept of state sovereignty is indispensable to the opera
tion of the original Constitutional Republic of 1787-88. As has been shown, the existence of these state governments predates the formation of any type of central government in the United States. Only after the defeat of the South did America repudiate this doctrine of real State's Rights. In 1803, St. George Tucker warned Americans about the threat of civil slavery if the government became the supreme authority rather than the people. According to Tucker's theory, post-Appomattox civil slavery is the legacy of all Americans.

  MYTH: The idea of secession is so closely related to the defense of slavery as to make it repulsive to those who love freedom.

  REALITY: Secession is nothing more than the people of each sovereign state "consenting" to the form of government they live under. As has been shown, these United States were born in the midst of the secession of thirteen colonies from Great Britain. These very same thirteen political communities, acting in their own interest, either acceded to or seceded from various forms of government, as they deemed necessary, until the adoption of the Federal Constitution. As the Constitution states, those powers not delegated to the Federal government by the states were retained by the states or the people (see the Ninth and Tenth Amendments). The right to "alter or abolish" (in the words of the Declaration of Independence) the form of government they live under was never surrendered by the people of the states as they acceded to the new Union. Therefore, that which they possessed before the adoption of the Constitution, they fully retain. The people at the local level (i.e., the state) are the supreme judge of their government, and they alone have the right to judge the limits of how they will be governed.

  MYTH: Secession was just a wicked scheme by evil Southern slaveholders to protect their slave property.

  REALITY: In this chapter we have looked at the life and works of two early Americans, one, St. George Tucker, a Southerner, and one, William Rawle, a Northerner. Both men worked for the elimination of slavery, and both men believed in the right of secession. How can anyone maintain that secession is a ploy of Southern slaveholders? Both Tucker and Rawle were members of the early American abolition movement; yet, unlike the Radical Abolitionists, they were highly respected members of their states. As has already been pointed out, secession was an integral part of the founding of these United States. At that time all thirteen of these states recognized slavery as legal. Those states that had the fewest slaves were the ones that were most actively involved in the nefarious slave trade. If, as many liberals contend, the secession of the Southern states must be condemned because they all recognized slavery as lawful, what can we say about the secession of the thirteen original colonies from Great Britain? Is it logical to praise the slaveholder and slave trader's secession in 1776 and condemn that same action in 1861? There is one major difference between the secessionists of 1776 and 1861: The secessionists of 1861 formed a government that categorically denied any additional importation of African slaves into the new nation being formed. Also, it should be remembered that the vast numbers of men who were to make up the rank and file of the soldiers and sailors of the Confederacy were from non-slaveholding families. How realistic is it to maintain that these men would give up the comforts of home and face death just so a rich plantation owner could live in the lap of luxury? While many Confederate leaders were slaveholders, just as many Americans were slaveholders and slave traders during the War for American Independence, many of them, such as Robert E. Lee, were practicing abolitionists before the War for Southern Independence broke out. Lee, at great cost to himself, freed his slaves several years before the War. If we are to be consistent, if we condemn the Confederacy because its first president was a slaveholder, we must also condemn the United States because its first president was also a slaveholder. If we condemn the thirteen states of the Confederate States of America because each state recognized slavery, we must also condemn the thirteen original colonies because each of them recognized slavery as well.

  MYTH: The principle of secession runs counter to the American idea of civil liberty and civil rights.

  REALITY: As St. George Tucker pointed out, the very foundation of civil liberty is based upon the right of self-government. The acknowledged right of the people to alter or abolish their government is an insurmountable obstacle to the abuse of civil liberties by government. Once this right has been removed, government becomes supreme, not the people. As American history teaches, the act of acceding to or seceding from one system of government into another is the American way of exerting the God-given right of self-government.

  MYTH: Fighting against the Federal government is tinAmerican. Only traitors would do such a thing.

  REALITY: When it comes to resisting the abuses of the central government, Patrick Henry said it well: "The first thing I have at heart is liberty, the second thing is American Union."31 As long as the Union is subservient to the cause of liberty, as Henry noted, the Union is secure. But when the Union arrogantly attempts to usurp the rightful place of liberty, it is time for the people to act. Any government that tramples upon the rights and liberties of the people must be opposed by true friends of freedom. Friends of freedom should recall the words of Patrick Henry who faced down Tories of his day when they charged him with being a traitor. Henry looked into the eyes of his accusers and boldly stated, "If this be treason, let us make the most of it." Let us take our stand with Patrick Henry-Freedom first, Union second.

  CHAPTER 6

  Lincoln: The Un-Emancipator

  If Lincoln loved the Union, he was responsible, more than any man, for its destruction, for he consciously violated the constitution.... The war was not a war of slavery versus freedom; it was a war between those who preferred a federated nation to those who preferred a confederation of sovereign states. Slavery was the ink thrown into the pool to confuse the issue.

  Andrew Nelson Lytle

  The Virginia Quarterly Review

  October 1931

  No study of American slavery would be complete without a look at the mythical sixteenth president of the United States, Abraham Lincoln. It is doubtful that there is any American icon more worshiped than Lincoln. The adoration given Lincoln by modern Americans has been described as "an idolatrous religious cult wherein Abraham Lincoln is literally worshiped as a god."' His likeness, seated upon a marble throne as if he were the embodiment of Zeus at rest in his temple upon the Acropolis, appears more emblematic of a pagan god than a man. For many Americans, the myth of Lincoln has elevated him beyond the point of being a mere man to the position of a god. It is his name that is intoned whenever any presumed social ill needs to be resolved. Whether viewed as a Greek god or a Roman emperor-god, Lincoln, at his memorial in Washington, is the subject of adoration and reverence unlike any other of America's heroes.

  Yet, the Lincoln of fact and the Lincoln of mythology are two different and distinct personalities. In examining Lincoln's views about slavery, about African-Americans, and about American liberty, we will tread down paths not often traveled by the victors of the War for Southern Independence. As demonstrated, just because an individual does not wish to go down a certain path does not mean that truth cannot be found at the end of that trail. In the following chapter a few questions regarding Lincoln and his views will be addressed: (1) How did Lincoln view African-Americans? (2)What was Lincoln's view of American slavery? (3) Did Lincoln free the slaves? and, (4)What was Lincoln's view of American liberty? Most Americans will find the answers to these questions very disturbing as their image of Abraham Lincoln is shattered and they discover the truth about the man.

  Lincoln as the archenemy of slavery, promoter of equality, and friend of oppressed African-Americans is one of the most pervasive myths in modern America. Rather than being in the forefront of the advocacy of social equality for all races, Lincoln was among those who openly opposed such action. In fact, his views were more akin to those of the followers of a modern-day neo-Nazi hate group. As demonstrated in preceding chapters, the philosophy of Negro inferiority was commonly held throughout America. Eve
n Lincoln voiced his support of this theory in the famous LincolnDouglas Debates of 1858:

  I will say, then, that I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of bringing about in anyway the social and political equality of the white and black races-that I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of making voters or jurors of negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people; and I will say in addition to this that there is a physical difference between the white and black races.... I, as much as any other man, am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race.`-

  In September of 1859 he had this to say about the equality of the races:

  Negro equality. Fudge! How long in the Government of a God great enough to make and maintain this universe, shall there continue knaves to vend and fools to gulp, so low a piece of demagoguism as this?`;

  Not only did Lincoln hold to the belief of Negro inferiority, he was also a proponent of removing the African-American population from America once they were freed. In his political debate with Stephen A. Douglas on the subject of slavery, Lincoln clearly stated his ideas for the removal of freed slaves from America:

  Such separation if effected at all, must be effected by colonization.... [W] hat colonization most needs is a hearty will.... Let us be brought to believe that it is morally right, and at the same time favorable to, or at least not against, our interests to transfer the African to his native clime, and we shall find a way to do it, however great the task may be.4

  As noted, Lincoln's views were held by the vast majority of people both in the North and the South at this time. Although most Americans today do not hold these views, there is no demand to remove Lincoln's "racist" face from every five-dollar bill. Nor is there a demand to rename schools named in honor of him because of his "racist" views, which are much different from the views of modern Americans. At the same time, all attempts to honor Southern heroes of Lincoln's day are met by wild denunciation of so-called Southern racism. A vociferous uproar is heard from the left of center establishment any time any elected official even hints at anything good about Confederate leaders (as witnessed by the liberal outcry at Sen. John Ashcroft's few nice words about some of these men). Impartial Americans should ask themselves, "Why do we respect Abraham Lincoln, who held the same racial views as most Southerners of his time, and yet denigrate Southern heroes like Robert E. Lee, Stonewall Jackson, or Jefferson Davis?"