College of Political Knowledge

Subject:  American History/Slavery

We recently celebrated the “beginning” of the Civil War by observing the 150 anniversary of the first shots fired on Ft. Sumner in South Carolina….personally, that was not the beginning….the election of Lincoln on this day,  Nov. 6, 1860 was the beginning….it was when South Carolina followed by six other states seceded from the Union. Even though his views about slavery were considered moderate during the nomination and election, South Carolina had warned it would secede if he won. Lincoln agreed with the majority of the Republican Party that the South was becoming too powerful and made it part of their platform that slavery would not be extended to any new territories or states added to the union.

And the political philosopher, John Stuart Mill made this observation……

But we are told, by a strange misapplication of a true principle, that the South had a right to separate; that their separation ought to have been consented to, the moment they showed themselves ready to fight for it; and that the North, in resisting it, are committing the same error and wrong which England committed in opposing the original separation of the thirteen colonies.  This is carrying the doctrine of the sacred right of insurrection rather far.  It is wonderful how easy, and liberal, and complying, people can be in other people’s concerns. Because they are willing to surrender their own past, and have no objection to join in reprobation of their great-grandfathers, they never put to themselves the question what they themselves would do in circumstances far less trying, under far less pressure of real national calamity.  Would those who profess these ardent revolutionary principles consent to their being applied to Ireland, or India, or the Ionian Islands?  How have they treated those who did attempt so to apply them?  But the case can dispense with any mere argumentum ad hominem.  I am not frightened at the word rebellion.   I do not scruple to say that I have sympathized more or less ardently with most of the rebellions, successful and unsuccessful, which have taken place in my time.  But I certainly never conceived that there was a sufficient title to my sympathy in the mere fact of being a rebel; that the act of taking arms against one’s fellow citizens was so meritorious in itself, was so completely its own justification, that no question need be asked concerning the motive.   It seems to me a strange doctrine that the most serious and responsible of all human acts imposes no obligation on those who do it, of showing that they have a real grievance; that those who rebel for the power of oppressing others, exercise as sacred a right as those who do the same thing to resist oppression practised upon themselves.  Neither rebellion, nor any other act which affects the interests of others, is sufficiently legitimated by the mere will to do it. Secession may be laudable, and so may any other kind of insurrection; but it may also be an enormous crime. It is the one or the other, according to the object and the provocation.   And if there ever was an object which, by its bare announcement, stamped rebels against a particular community as enemies of mankind, it is the one professed by the South. Their right to separate is the right which Cartouche or Turpin would have had to secede from their respective countries, because the laws of those countries would not suffer them to rob and murder on the highway.  The only real difference is, that the present rebels are more powerful than Cartouche or Turpin, and may possibly be able to effect their iniquitous purpose.

Likening the South to highway robbers such as Dick Turpin, Mill thought they had no right to insurrection to defend an unjust cause…….we are told that the war was fought for economic reasons…that is true…the South did NOT want to pay the help……there is NO justification for the Civil War other than the protection of the right to own slaves……nothing else is accurate!