It is correct, analytically and logically, to distinguish secession from war. Many states secede peacefully, and it does not logically follow that secession must occasion war. The Southern states of America seceded peacefully, and Lincoln’s subsequent war which followed four months after secession was entirely unnecessary. Hence, Murray Rothbard wrote in his memo to the Volker Fund in 1961 that,
The road to Civil War must be divided into two parts:
- the causes of the controversy over slavery leading to secession, and
- the immediate causes of the war itself.
The reason for such split is that secession need not have led to Civil War, despite the assumption to the contrary by most historians.
Nevertheless, in understanding the Southern Cause it would be historically misleading to isolate secession entirely from the war, or to treat the two events as hermetically sealed off from each other. It is important to split them for the purpose Rothbard stated, namely, to debunk the assumption that secession must involve war, because many people wrongly view calls for secession as calls for war. But it does not follow that in understanding American history, the two events must be treated, for all purposes, as if they were not in any way historically, causally, or morally connected.
The Southern Cause found its expression in both secession and war, and it would be quite wrong to pretend that secession and war had nothing to do with each other as many libertarians attempt to do. They leap from one assumption—that secession and war need always be bound together—to the opposite assumption, that secession and war had nothing to do with each other. Their reason for clinging to this second assumption is that they wish to depict the Southern Cause as having two morally-distinct elements, one of which was just while the other was unjust.
Secession is seen as having been motivated primarily by a wicked cause, namely slavery, while the war itself is seen as motivated by a just cause, namely self-defense. In essence, they view the Southern Cause as containing two distinct moral elements: the morality of secession and the morality of war. They presume that the wickedness of the first would in no way taint the justice of the second, since they view the two as morally distinct. For libertarians who agree with Rothbard that the war of defense against Northern aggression was just, the morality of secession still remains contested.
In his article, “A Moral Accounting of the Union and the Confederacy,” Donald Livingston argues that secession was morally sound. He begins by establishing the foundations of his moral premise, namely, the right to secede:
Libertarians are and must be sympathetic to secession, for secession is nothing other than an exit right, a right internal to the very idea of liberty. Secession is not always justified, but, for libertarians, it is presumed morally justified unless compelling reasons to the contrary exist.
The question that must then arise is how secession could be morally sound if the aim of secession was to defend slavery. In Livingston’s view, the claim that secession was motivated by a desire to defend slavery is not based on historical analysis but on the mythology surrounding the righteousness of Lincoln’s War. He calls this the “Battle Hymn of the Republic” myth:
First, the founding myth of American nationalism is that the South seceded to protect slavery while the North invaded to abolish it. The vast resources available to the central government and its cultural elites have been used to drum this “Battle Hymn of the Republic” myth into the public consciousness for over a century. This myth, however, is false.
As we are here concerned with a moral defense of secession, it is significant to note that Livingston’s defense of the morality of secession does not depend on denying the immorality of slavery. It is often supposed that those who insist that the South seceded for liberty and independence must necessarily hold the view that slavery is moral. The perennial retort of those who insist that secession was about slavery is: “Liberty to do what? Independence to do what?” Their argument is that any claim to value liberty must be rejected if the person who seeks to defend his liberty is wicked and immoral, or seeks to use his liberty for wicked and immoral purposes. Livingston observes that the same accusation was made against the American revolutionaries, as slavery was legal in all colonies at the time:
One is reminded of Dr. Johnson’s irritation at the American colonists who threatened secession from Britain: he wondered why he had to hear constant yelps about liberty from the drivers of slaves. It is impossible not to feel the force of this argument, and we must acknowledge that slavery was a moral stain on the seceding American colonies, all of which allowed slavery in 1776, as well as on the seceding Southern states, all of which allowed slavery in 1861.
Livingston is highlighting the tendency to forget that slavery was legal in the American colonies when they seceded from the British Crown. Moreover, since there was an abolitionist movement well underway in the British Empire at the time—with slavery in the English common law having been ruled to be illegal by the Somerset case in 1772—it is noteworthy that rarely, if ever, do abolitionists argue that the American Revolution was “about slavery” or caused by a desire “to defend slavery.” Be that as it may, Livingston’s main point is not merely to highlight this hypocrisy, but to make the moral case for secession. Addressing the “yelps about liberty from the drivers of slaves” leveled against the American revolutionaries, he argues that “slavery is not the only moral wrong in the world, and its presence does not make other actions automatically immoral, nor opposing actions automatically moral.” People have no trouble understanding this point in the context of the American Revolution—the presence of slavery in the American colonies does not make the American Declaration of Independence immoral, as some activists peddling the “original sin” theory of American Independence have tried to claim. Indeed, this is the very parallel Murray Rothbard draws in his comment on secession in his “Just War” article.
Livingston, therefore, argues that the desire for liberty and independence does not become “immoral” merely because slavery was legal at the time. However, a further point still remains to be addressed, namely, whether the aim of secession was specifically to defend slavery. Those who run this argument claim that Southerners themselves said they were seceding to defend slavery. They rely on the mention of slavery in the secession declarations of South Carolina, Mississippi, Georgia, and Texas. They also rely on remarks made by Alexander Stephens, the Confederate Vice President, at an event in Georgia after secession but before the war, where he outlined the reasons why the Southern states had seceded and formed the Confederate Government. It is striking that the entire case for declaring that secession was “about slavery” relies almost entirely on these sources and often treats them as conclusive regarding the cause of secession. As they see it, there is no need to study any further historical context, because the secession declarations of these four states have settled the issue once and for all. As Rod Barr observes:
Often I hear that the primary sources I quote in defense of Southern secession are “cherry picked” or “out of context.” Those making these charges will then point to the four Declarations of Causes or The Cornerstone Speech as proof of my lack of context.
Curiously, the secession declarations of the states that did not mention slavery are deemed to be irrelevant. Nor is Alexander Stephens’s full speech deemed to be of any interest—except for the passage where he mentions that racial inequality is the “cornerstone” of the constitution. Yet, as Livingstone points out, Stephens’s views on racial inequality were no more significant than anything else he said in his speech. Livingston explains that these views on racial inequality were widespread at the time:
Nearly all Americans, North and South, saw America as a white European polity, and held that neither Indian nor African populations would ever participate as social and political equals.... As long as it was humane, slavery was considered a reasonable and productive arrangement for both blacks and whites. Thus, the tolerance of slavery can be viewed as the practical outcome of a white Euro-centric mindset.
This being the widespread view, which was also expressed on several occasions by Abraham Lincoln, it would make little sense for the South to secede specifically to defend that view. Livingston further points out that there was no threat to slavery in the Union, as Abraham Lincoln had repeatedly said that he did not intend to abolish slavery and indeed had no legal power to do so. Those who insist that secession was “obviously” about defending slavery rely on an alleged hypothetical threat that the South is said to have feared—the suggestion being that even though there was no threat to slavery yet, they may have been afraid that such a threat might hypothetically arise in future and may therefore have decided to quit while they were ahead. As David Gordon writes, such fears would have been fanciful at the time given Lincoln’s distinct lack of interest in threatening slavery:
The evidence that Lincoln did not invade the South to end slavery is well known, and I shall not rehearse it here. Suffice it to say that he sponsored the 1861 Corwin Amendment, which would have permanently guaranteed slavery in the states where it existed. Consider this alongside his first inaugural address, which above all emphasized the collection of duties and imposts.
The slave states and free states were certainly embroiled in political controversy over the legality of slavery in the Western territories. In his Volker Fund memo, Rothbard observes that, “The basic root of the controversy over slavery to secession, in my opinion, was the aggressive, expansionist aims of the Southern ‘slavocracy’” in an attempt “to foist the immoral system of slavery on Western territories.” But there is a significant difference between political machinations aimed at “foisting” slavery onto the Western territories, and the subsequent decision to secede. Logically, if the South had decided to secede in a fit of pique because they did not get their way in attempting to “foist” slavery on the West, how would seceding assist the “slavocracy” in achieving this goal they are said to have cherished? Seceding could not be a way of “foisting” slavery on the free territories. Seceding would accomplish the very opposite, because they had exited from the Union—slavery would be gone from all American territories. Rothbard indeed, echoing the abolitionists at the time, remarks that the Southern states should have been left to secede in peace as that would have been the end of slavery in the United States.
It is obvious that while the “slavocracy” may perhaps have dreamed of “foisting” slavery on the Western territories, seceding from the United States would in no way help them achieve this goal. The “slavocracy” did not even have a numerical majority in the conventions held to decide the question of secession. They would easily have been outvoted by citizens of the South who did not own slaves nor have any business or any other interests in the Western territories. The majority of Southerners, many of whom had fought to defend the Union in previous wars, would not leave the Union simply because the “slavocrats” had business interests out West that depended on slavery—not least being that it would help to maintain the political balance of power between the free states and slave states. Their political controversies over control of the Western territories, which Rothbard describes as “slavery-in-the-territories struggles of the 1850s,” were not controversies over whether to secede, and they do not supply the explanation for why they seceded in 1860-1861. Indeed, in his subsequent robust defense of the Southern Cause, Rothbard makes no mention of the political “slavery-in-the-territories struggles of the 1850s” when he explains why the South seceded:
In 1861, the Southern states, believing correctly that their cherished institutions were under grave threat and assault from the federal government, decided to exercise their natural, contractual, and constitutional right to withdraw, to “secede” from that Union. The separate Southern states then exercised their contractual right as sovereign republics to come together in another confederation, the Confederate States of America.
It is also worth noting that there was a vibrant abolitionist movement underway in the South, especially in Virginia where attempts had already twice been made to abolish slavery. Seceding could not reasonably have been seen by the “slavocracy” as a way of defending slavery given these conditions. They would be just as vulnerable to the growing abolitionist movement after secession as they were before, if not more so. Thomas Jefferson was known to have been sympathetic to abolition. Robert E. Lee had declared slavery to be a political and moral evil. Like John C. Calhoun—who was also a slave owner—the Confederate leaders who expressed opposition to abolition were concerned more with the practical challenges posed by the abolitionists trying to foment violent revolution, than with a defense of slavery as an institution. The “slavocracy” could have had no reason to suppose that they would be able to cling onto slavery forever. Livingston explains:
Calhoun [in 1837] carefully separated the question of slavery “in the abstract,” as Southerners called it, from slavery as a practical question. He tried to make clear that his point was only about the latter, and that under the institution, the African population had made remarkable progress and was capable of further improvements. He called the institution an “experiment,” which should be given a period of time, and he put no limit on the improvements of which Africans were capable.
As James Rutledge Roesch explains, far from seeing the dispute over slavery as a reason for secession, Calhoun tried to highlight that if the dispute was not resolved the hatred raised against the South would lead to disunion:
“However sound the great body of the non-slaveholding States are at present, in the course of a few years they will be succeeded by those who will have been taught to hate the people and institutions of nearly one half of the Union, with a hatred more deadly than one hostile nation ever entertained toward another,” warned Calhoun. “It is easy to see the end. By the necessary course of events…we must become, finally, two peoples.”
Rather than theorize about the hypothetical pre-emptive action the “slavocrats” may have wished to take, the historian Charles Adams has taken a different approach. In his review of Adams’s book When in the Course of Human Events, David Gordon highlights the role played by “financial affairs” in Adams’s account of the causes of both secession and war:
The Southern states favored a regime of free trade: this would enable them to benefit to the greatest extent possible from their cotton exports. By contrast, many in the North favored high tariffs to help local industries.
Because of high tariffs, the South was burdened to benefit the North, a situation hardly likely to promote amicable relations.
The significance of Adams’s emphasis on the financial causes of secession is that it opens up avenues for fresh insights into this important historical era, and a clear view that is not submerged in moralizing about slavery. Gordon quotes the explanation given by Adams as to why the stakes concerning tariffs were so high as to lead the South to secede and the North to attack:
Lincoln was determined, come what may, to collect tariffs from the ports of the seceding states. “Lincoln’s inaugural address on 4 March 1861, certainly set the stage for war, and most of the South saw it that way. It sounded conciliatory . . . [but] he would, however, use federal power to hold federal property (the forts) and ‘to collect the duties and impost; but beyond what may be necessary for these objects, there will be no invasion.’ Southerners immediately saw the meaning behind Lincoln’s words”… The arguments in favor of the “tariff war” thesis were well-known to contemporaries, both in America and abroad.
Adams casts much-needed light on the fuller picture that risks being lost when the history police insist that secession must obviously have been “about slavery.” Livingston points out that this insistence that the South seceded to defend slavery was certainly not the prevailing view at the time. For example, before secession Lincoln did not see the concerns of the South as being “about slavery”:
Unlike contemporary Americans who have inherited the “Battle Hymn of the Republic” view of a demonic South and virtuous North, Lincoln understood slavery as a national evil inherited from British colonial practice… Lincoln acknowledged the common moral understanding of Northerners and Southerners on the question of slavery. On August 21, 1858, he said, “Before proceeding, let me say I think I have no prejudice against the Southern people. They are just what we would be in their situation. If slavery did not now exist amongst them, they would not introduce it. If it did now exist amongst us, we should not instantly give it up. This I believe of the masses of the north and south. . . . When southern people tell us they are no more responsible for the origin of slavery than we, I acknowledge the fact.”
Finally, the best people to ask why they seceded are those who seceded. Jefferson Davis, in his book, The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government, answers that question by explaining the Southern Cause as Southerners saw it:
When the cause was lost, what cause was it? Not that of the South only, but the cause of constitutional government, of the supremacy of law, of the natural rights of man.
