Was the Civil War about Slavery?

I've never called myself a libertarian, preferring the term "libertarioid," denoting that I have a strong belief in liberty, but that I take exception to several key-points frequently associated with modern American Libertarianism.

Issue Number One: The Civil War.

I came across this piece in The New Republic sometime over the course of the past few years. I'm not sure how I came to the piece, but I found a part of it to be very interesting:

As one prominent Washington libertarian told me, "There are too many libertarians in this country ... who, because they are attracted to the great books of Mises, ... find their way to the Mises Institute and then are told that a defense of the Confederacy is part of libertarian thought."

This may be a big part of why there's a bunch of BS revisionism being sold on the Civil War. The other reason I see (and the above may be an aspect of this) is that old-school republicans in the North and West gradually became democrats, and the democrats fell into an overabundance of anti-American hippie logic, while Southern democrats became the new republicans and the new guardians of American pride, albeit tinged with their old perspectives on the Civil War remaining largely intact. Between the "blame America first" left and the "my granddaddy was fighting for heritage" right, there remained, in the end, very few willing to support the "traditional" idea that the Civil War was fought to free the slaves.

Let me take a moment to make it clear that I'm not here to harass people who have been selling the revisionist version. I, too, have bought and sold the line that the Civil War was about economics and such more than slavery. That was, after all, the bill of goods I had been sold by my 8th grade history teacher from Missouri, and she was a great lady, and certainly not a racist. And it's certainly more attractive intellectually to regard this great bloodbath as being part of some huge tapestry of woes, wrongs, and abuses, in some cold, hard economic analysis, than to imagine that your forebears really incurred such a huge price in blood and treasure to free another man. When you strip away the ideology and look to the economics, it feels like you must truly be getting a sense of the reality behind it all; when something isn't about money, it's probably actually about money. Right?

Not really. At least, not in this case. The three things that led me to want to reassess my take on the whole matter were firstly the TNR article linked above, my having read Black Rednecks, White Liberals by Sowell, and most importantly, my recent visit to DC, and the overwhelming strength of convictions in the words of Lincoln inscribed on the walls of his memorial.

Okay, now let's get to the facts.

Firstly, what triggered the secession? Was it the passage of some new tariff that was murderous to Southern exports? Was it the announcement of a transcontinental railroad to be launched along a northern route rather than a southern route? No. It was the election of 1960 showing that Lincoln had won. The secession of the first seven states and the election of Jefferson Davis as the president of the Confederate States of America happened all between the election and the inauguration of Lincoln. The secession was not due to any acts under the lame-duck democrat James Buchanan. It was in response to the perception of Lincoln, and the new abuses the South perceived to be headed their way.

So who was Lincoln back in 1860? He'd had a stint in the Illinois House for a few terms, and then a single term in the US House representing Illinois' 7th district, ending in 1949. In this time, slavery had not played any significant role in his political career. After a 5 year hiatus from politics, during which time Lincoln acted as a lawyer, even arguing before the SCOTUS, Lincoln aimed to re-enter politics on the heels of the Kansas-Nebraska Act, due to the implications of the Act for "popular sovereignty" on the matter of slavery in western territories.

From this time, and continuing into the time of the famous Lincoln-Douglas debates, Lincoln became a heavy-hitter major player on the matter of slavery. That was the matter at the center of the Lincoln-Douglas debates, and the idea with which Lincoln would be associated in the late 1850s and early 1860s.

N.B., Lincoln was a "moderate" (relative to his time and place) on this matter, making it clear time and again that his goal was not complete emancipation, and making it clear that while he found the institution abhorrent and wished that it had never been in the place, as it did exist, the most that he could see as a prudent goal to which to work was containment and cessation of any expansion of the institution. And so I say this: the secession was the result of the election, and triggered by the perception of those in the South that Lincoln would upset their agenda of expanding slavery. They feared that if they did not secede, they risked the nation growing in ways that constantly reduced the percentage of the nation committed to slavery, and therefore risking outright abolition at some point in the future when they became a solid minority. It was better, in their eyes, to break off, form a new constitution that guaranteed and protected the institution of slavery, and be done with it. Ergo, slavery was why they seceded.

Certainly, here is where a lot of you are stiffening your backs and resisting. Surely, I have swallowed the propaganda, and the secession was all about states' rights, tariffs, and northern tyranny. Certainly, some of these things were aggravating factors, but that doesn't change the fact that the secession did not happen in the wake of some tariff or such. So let's see what the folks in the South at the time had to say:

The new constitution has put at rest, forever, all the agitating questions relating to our peculiar institution African slavery as it exists amongst us the proper status of the negro in our form of civilization. This was the immediate cause of the late rupture and present revolution. Jefferson in his forecast, had anticipated this, as the "rock upon which the old Union would split." He was right. What was conjecture with him, is now a realized fact. But whether he fully comprehended the great truth upon which that rock stood and stands, may be doubted. The prevailing ideas entertained by him and most of the leading statesmen at the time of the formation of the old constitution, were that the enslavement of the African was in violation of the laws of nature; that it was wrong in principle, socially, morally, and politically. It was an evil they knew not well how to deal with, but the general opinion of the men of that day was that, somehow or other in the order of Providence, the institution would be evanescent and pass away. This idea, though not incorporated in the constitution, was the prevailing idea at that time. The constitution, it is true, secured every essential guarantee to the institution while it should last, and hence no argument can be justly urged against the constitutional guarantees thus secured, because of the common sentiment of the day. Those ideas, however, were fundamentally wrong. They rested upon the assumption of the equality of races. This was an error. It was a sandy foundation, and the government built upon it fell when the "storm came and the wind blew."

Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea; its foundations are laid, its corner- stone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery subordination to the superior race is his natural and normal condition. This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth. This truth has been slow in the process of its development, like all other truths in the various departments of science. It has been so even amongst us. Many who hear me, perhaps, can recollect well, that this truth was not generally admitted, even within their day. The errors of the past generation still clung to many as late as twenty years ago. Those at the North, who still cling to these errors, with a zeal above knowledge, we justly denominate fanatics. All fanaticism springs from an aberration of the mind from a defect in reasoning. It is a species of insanity. One of the most striking characteristics of insanity, in many instances, is forming correct conclusions from fancied or erroneous premises; so with the anti-slavery fanatics. Their conclusions are right if their premises were. They assume that the negro is equal, and hence conclude that he is entitled to equal privileges and rights with the white man. If their premises were correct, their conclusions would be logical and just but their premise being wrong, their whole argument fails. I recollect once of having heard a gentleman from one of the northern States, of great power and ability, announce in the House of Representatives, with imposing effect, that we of the South would be compelled, ultimately, to yield upon this subject of slavery, that it was as impossible to war successfully against a principle in politics, as it was in physics or mechanics. That the principle would ultimately prevail. That we, in maintaining slavery as it exists with us, were warring against a principle, a principle founded in nature, the principle of the equality of men. The reply I made to him was, that upon his own grounds, we should, ultimately, succeed, and that he and his associates, in this crusade against our institutions, would ultimately fail. The truth announced, that it was as impossible to war successfully against a principle in politics as it was in physics and mechanics, I admitted; but told him that it was he, and those acting with him, who were warring against a principle. They were attempting to make things equal which the Creator had made unequal.

(Emphasis added)

http://civilwarcauses.org/toombs.htm

~Alexander H. Stephens, Vice President of the CSA

Savannah, GA March 21, 1861

Of course, some people would take exception to the "cherry picking" involved in looking at the mere VP of the CSA—a man claimed by some to be anything but representative; a radicalized former Whig of the same Henry Clay flavor that Lincoln held, until the radical republicans snatched the rug out from beneath him. They would point instead to the first inaugural address of Jefferson Davis, which makes no mention of slavery—of course, this newly picked cherry doesn't function as a list of grievances in any sense, and the word "tariff" doesn't appear, either. To the extent that he speaks of unencumbered trade, that could as easily be applied to slavery as to duties in that day and age. The next cherry they (at etymonline.com, as linked above) denounce having been ignored is the speech given by Robert Toombs, the treasury secretary of the CSA. In that speech, it is claimed, he "outlines how anti-slavery agitation in the North was exploited by political powers there to disguise economic motives." Funny, my reading sees almost the opposite. He details that free-trade abolitionists became protectionist abolitionists, but also that protectionist non-abolitionists became abolitionists. This shows that the North shored up itself as protectionist abolitionists, perhaps, but it does not, as the author suggests, show that it was a single, one-directional trump. The bigger problem is that Toombs lays this consolidation against free trade at the feet of Morrill and his tariff bill. Big problem, that—the bill passed the House in May of 1860 (and didn't precipitate a secession), and only after the South seceded was the senate able to get the bill passed and on the desk of the lame-duck democrat Buchanan, who signed it into law shortly before Lincoln's inauguration and well after secession was already a reality.

More to the point is this bit from the cited piece by Toombs:

Some excellent citizens and able men in Georgia say the election of any man constitutionally is no cause for a dissolution of the Union. That position is calculated only to mislead, and not to enlighten. It is not the issue. I say the election of Lincoln, with all of its surroundings, is sufficient. What is the significance of his election? It is the indorsement [sic], by the non-slaveholding States, of all those acts of aggression upon our rights by all these States, legislatures, governors, judges, and people. He is elected by the perpetrators of these wrongs with the purpose and intent to aid and support them in wrongdoing…

Since the promotion of Mr. Lincoln's party, all of them speak with one voice, and speak trumpet-tongued their fixed purpose to outlaw four thousand millions of our property in the Territories, and to put it under the ban of the empire in the States where it exists. They declare their purpose to war against slavery until there shall not be a slave in America, and until the African is elevated to a social and political equality with the white man. Lincoln indorses them and their principles, and in his own speeches declares the conflict irrepressible and enduring, until slavery is everywhere abolished.

(Emphasis added)

http://civilwarcauses.org/toombs.htm

~Robert Toombs, Nov. 13, 1860

Here, in trying to get away from a "false" assertion that slavery was the cause of the secession, the author (I presume to be Douglas Harper) asserts that the CSA VP was an outlier, and that Toombs is a better gauge. While Toombs' piece might not have the racist rhetoric of Stephens, the matter remains even more clearly stated: the secession—and by extension the Civil War itself—was about slavery first and foremost, if not exclusively. Toombs makes this point even more clearly in this piece (scroll down to Toombs), where he details 5 demands made by the South upon the Federal government, and all five are very clearly about slavery—not tariffs.

But let's get past that, if we must, to find the one truly solid objective source we can point to in the whole matter: the Constitution of the Confederate States of America. Here's a good link from a Canadian guy that runs the COTCSA against the comparable parts of the COTUS. What do we see here about free trade? Well, true to the declarations of A. H. Stephens, it includes protections against protectionism, and anything that might allow congress to favor one industry over another by means of tariffs or publicly funded improvements:

Article I, Sec. 8. The Congress shall have power —

(1) To lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts, and excises for revenue, necessary to pay the debts, provide for the common defense, and carry on the Government of the Confederate States; but no bounties shall be granted from the Treasury; nor shall any duties or taxes on importations from foreign nations be laid to promote or foster any branch of industry; and all duties, imposts, and excises shall be uniform throughout the Confederate States.

(2) To borrow money on the credit of the Confederate States.

(3) To regulate commerce with foreign nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian tribes; but neither this, nor any other clause contained in the Constitution, shall ever be construed to delegate the power to Congress to appropriate money for any internal improvement intended to facilitate commerce; except for the purpose of furnishing lights, beacons, and buoys, and other aids to navigation upon the coasts, and the improvement of harbors and the removing of obstructions in river navigation; in all which cases such duties shall be laid on the navigation facilitated thereby as may be necessary to pay the costs and expenses thereof.

However, I have a difficult time in seeing this as a strong devotion to what we would call free trade, as they decided to also to tack on an exception that congress can tax exports with a 2/3 majority (forbidden in the US Constitution), while also removing the bars in the COTUS that prohibit the imposition of duties on interstate commerce. They made it possible in the CSA to tax interstate commerce. In the CSA, Georgia could levy taxes against cotton Tennesseans sought to move to the coast to reach international markets. This is not exactly the move of people dedicated to unencumbered trade, in my book.

There were also some fiscal constraints imposed, such as the need to detail appropriations exactly, and the introduction of the line-item veto. That's interesting academically, but I don't see where anyone is arguing that any such thing was central to secession.

But what does it have to say on slavery? Quite a bit.

• In the 3/5ths clause, "…all other persons…" in the US constitution becomes "…slaves…" in the CSA constitution.

• Slavery importation, along with any immigration from blacks of any status, is clearly prohibited. Prior restraints in the US version were open-ended, but made no invocation of race whatsoever.

• "No Bill of Attainder or ex post facto Law shall be passed" becomes "No bill of attainder, ex post facto law, or law denying or impairing the right of property in negro slaves shall be passed." The right to own slaves—negro slaves, mind you—makes it in well before any "Bill of Rights" rights.

• "The Citizens of each State shall be entitled to all Privileges and Immunities of Citizens in the several States" becomes "The citizens of each State shall be entitled to all the privileges and immunities of citizens in the several States; and shall have the right of transit and sojourn in any State of this Confederacy, with their slaves and other property; and the right of property in said slaves shall not be thereby impaired."

• "No Person held to Service or Labour in one State, under the Laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in Consequence of any Law or Regulation therein, be discharged from such Service or Labour, but shall be delivered up on Claim of the Party to whom such Service or Labour may be due" becomes "No slave or other person held to service or labor in any State or Territory of the Confederate States, under the laws thereof, escaping or lawfully carried into another, shall, in consequence of any law or regulation therein, be discharged from such service or labor; but shall be delivered up on claim of the party to whom such slave belongs, or to whom such service or labor may be due."

• Finally, and most importantly, the CSA introduces the following: "The Confederate States may acquire new territory; and Congress shall have power to legislate and provide governments for the inhabitants of all territory belonging to the Confederate States, lying without the limits of the several Sates; and may permit them, at such times, and in such manner as it may by law provide, to form States to be admitted into the Confederacy. In all such territory the institution of negro slavery, as it now exists in the Confederate States, shall be recognized and protected by Congress and by the Territorial government; and the inhabitants of the several Confederate States and Territories shall have the right to take to such Territory any slaves lawfully held by them in any of the States or Territories of the Confederate States." (Emphasis added)

It's clear that the new Constitution sought to address certain abuses by northern manufacturers over southern agriculture in trade laws. But it's also clear that the new document sought to expressly solidify, strengthen, and perpetuate for all times not merely involuntary servitude, but specifically race-based slavery that was never even mentioned in the original version. Hence, what we have here is not merely a "preservation of heritage," but an absolutely new codification of slavery prescribed entirely on the basis of race. Words like "negro" and "African," found nowhere in the previous constitution, pop up again and again to affirm beyond all doubt that this new republic was to be based directly in racism, with racism codified in the very core foundations of the confederacy.

Now the final hobgoblin to nail down is the idea of States' Rights. Was the Civil War about States' Rights? Actually, I'd have to say it was, to very large extent. Yet contrary to the prevailing dialogue on States' Rights, I would suggest that the bulk of all such concerns were held by the Northern federalists.

If one takes the time to read through some of the Lincoln-Douglas debates, one will find time and again that Lincoln invokes the matter of state sovereignty, as there were events in the 1850s that posed a new great threat. First among these was the repeal of the Missouri Compromise and the decision that Kansas should be allowed slaves. Lincoln notes that the original work done in the US to ban slavery from federally-held non-state territories came from Jefferson, who was both a Virginian and a slave owner. As such, it's clear that in that time that such prohibitions by the Federal government on territories were seen as within the scope of its powers. But with the new idea of popular sovereignty on the matter, Kansas, with 1,500 registered voters, managed to become a slave state in an election which collected 6,000 ballots.

This does not, in and of itself, present a problem to States' Rights. However, a true threat emerged in 1857 with the Dred Scott ruling. In that, the notion of popular sovereignty became abused to work down to a personal level. In the words of Lincoln,

Well, then, let us talk about Popular Sovereignty! What is Popular Sovereignty? Is it the right of the people to have Slavery or not have it, as they see fit, in the territories? I will state—and I have an able man to watch me—my understanding is that Popular Sovereignty, as now applied to the question of slavery, does allow the people of a Territory to have slavery if they want to, but does not allow them not to have it if they do not want it. I do not mean that if this vast concourse of people were in a Territory of the United States, any one of them would be obliged to have a slave if he did not want one; but I do say that, as I understand the Dred Scott decision, if any one man wants slaves, all the rest have no way of keeping that one man from holding them.

First Lincoln-Douglas Debate, 1858

Popular sovereignty, brought to the forefront in the Kansas debate, coupled with the SOCTUS ruling to make it impossible for any state to outlaw slavery entirely. It was due to this that Lincoln sought to protect States' Rights.

More to the point, let's come back to that constitution of the CSA. With all of their new amendments, what new codification of the sovereignty of states did they delineate? The right of one state to impose a duty on tonnage upon the ships of another state. What States' Rights did they remove? The right of any state to prohibit to any degree the now sacred right of Free White Men to own African slaves.

The Confederacy is as the Confederacy does. It might have made some protections for industries manipulating federal law, but it did not, to any real extent, work to clarify or strengthen the rights of states. What it did do most clearly and consistently was systematically ensure that all states in the confederacy are and would remain slave-holding states; the new constitution clarified that this was not merely any system of involuntary servitude, but it was specifically a racist system of imposition of white dominance over African black subservience; and it ultimately did little more than burden-shifting, preventing the confederate government from covering costs of public works by instead allowing states to levy duties against one another.

When the too-often quoted Lew Rockwell says "The Confederate Constitution did, however, make possible the gradual elimination of slavery, a process that would have been made easier had the North not so severely restricted the movements of former slaves," HE IS ABSOLUTELY LYING. The Confederate Constitution "made possible" the elimination of slavery about as well as the COTUS "made possible" the imposition of a single state church, or cruel and unusual punishment—that is to say, technically, since the constitution left room for changing the constitution, we can ignore the bill of rights altogether. That's ridiculous, and we all know it. READ THE DOCUMENT. It clearly places protections on slavery equal to (if not greater than) our protections of free speech, due process, or the right of assembly. His conjecture about Northern aggression having prolonged it is pulled straight from his backside, and ought to be sent back where it came from with interest. Secession was precipitated by a) fears that the demographics of slavery in a democracy would eventually crowd out the slave holders, forcing federal restrictions that would come, and b) fears of states like Missouri being bordered on three sides by free states, allowing easy escape for fugitive slaves, a matter which could ultimately begin to reverse the economic viability of slave labor.

A quick last note on tariffs: looking at the overall rates, one can see that total duty rates were at historic lows directly before the War, and even with the tariffs passed in the wake of the evacuation of southern senators from the US congress, they did not reach the same height as they were at their worst in the late 1820s (precipitating the Nullification Crisis, which declared the tariffs to be nullified within the state, but the matter did not result in states passing motions to secede from the union entirely) . It's also fairly safe to assume that the huge spike in the tariffs seen to shoot up at the beginning of the Civil War was at least in part (if not largely) fueled by the enormous need for revenue the war itself precipitated, especially with the South no longer paying duties.

After this much, I'm sure a great many people would like to see me drop this and move on (of the 3 people that didn't "tl;dr" this article on principle), but there are a few more things to address about the secession than merely its causes.

The next matter to be discussed is the legality of the secession. It seems to be trendy in libertarian circles these days to regard the South's secession as being within their legal rights, and as such, the moves Abe made to suppress insurrection become de facto Northern Aggression.

First, let's look at the American Revolution and contrast it to the Civil War. Now it has been pointed out—incorrectly, in my view—that the war was not truly a Civil War, as was, say, the English Civil War, because there was no power struggle over the control of the federal/central government. It was a failed war for independence. It has also been argued—wrongly, in my view—that this was a "war between the states." That this was a war between the states is incorrect. It was a war between a federal power and a local state collective, much as the Revolution was the US states vs. Parliament and the king, rather than merely the states vs. England. The difference is important.

And this importance becomes clear when you look at how the actual hostilities began.

As should be known to all who went to school in the US, the hostilities began when the South demanded that Federal forces evacuate Ft. Sumter, and ultimately fired upon them.

Did they fire on Ohio, or Massachusetts? No. They fired on a federal institution.

Was it rightfully their land? No. Let's read the constitution:

Article I, Section 8:

Congress shall have power… To exercise exclusive Legislation in all Cases whatsoever, over such District (not exceeding ten Miles square) as may, by Cession of particular States, and the acceptance of Congress, become the Seat of the Government of the United States, and to exercise like Authority over all Places purchased by the Consent of the Legislature of the State in which the Same shall be, for the Erection of Forts, Magazines, Arsenals, dock-Yards, and other needful Buildings;

(Emphasis added)

So congress would have purchased by the consent of the legislature of the state of S. Carolina. If the South was simply pulling out of the union, and leaving the constitutional government otherwise intact, they would still have NO RIGHT WHATSOEVER to lay claim—particularly by force—to Ft. Sumter.

The law of the land, the supreme, highest law, is not the president, nor the congress. It is the constitution. By the constitution, the federal government had sole authority over the fort, and S. Carolina could not by any stretch of the imagination have any legal authority over a fort sold by the consent of the legislature to the federal government. An assault on the fort was by definition an assault on the legal authority of the constitution, and hence, an assault on the law of the land. Successful control being wrestled by force over any fort that had been granted by the legal dictates of the constitution to the constitutional federal government is an attack on the sovereignty of the constitution itself. Had they sought to negotiate a re-purchase of all lands previously legally ceded to the federal government, and had the legislature of the US decided to grant a repurchase of the forts and other federal holdings back to the states from which they were purchased, one might be able to make that argument. That didn't happen. The confederates raised arms against the constitutional authority over federal lands. Ergo, it was an insurrection seeking to invalidate and destroy the government of the United States. That's a Civil War. That they didn't seek to control 100% of the lands in the US is irrelevant, because the supreme law of 100% of the US was under attack.

Next, was the Union voluntary? Let's follow the trail of legitimate sovereignty. The constitution begins "We the people of the United States." Where does the legal body known as the United States at the time of the drafting of the Constitution derive its power? From the Articles of Confederation:

The Articles of Confederation

Nov. 15, 1777

To all to whom these Presents shall come, we the undersigned Delegates of the States affixed to our Names send greeting.

Articles of Confederation and perpetual Union between the states of New Hampshire, Massachusetts-bay Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia.

I.

The Stile [sic] of this Confederacy shall be "The United States of America".

(Emphasis added)

Further down in the same document, the idea is reiterated:

XIII.

Every State shall abide by the determination of the United States in Congress assembled, on all questions which by this confederation are submitted to them. And the Articles of this Confederation shall be inviolably observed by every State, and the Union shall be perpetual; nor shall any alteration at any time hereafter be made in any of them; unless such alteration be agreed to in a Congress of the United States, and be afterwards confirmed by the legislatures of every State.

(Emphasis added)

Check it for yourself, if you care to. Noting the final, italicized line, what this tells us is that every part of the Articles of Confederation that was not explicitly countermanded by the US Constitution—such as the composition of the congress—remained perpetually in effect, even in the wake of the signing of the constitution.

Any right that S. Carolina had to secede was forfeit at the moment that the state legislature ratified the articles of confederation. That act created a perpetual entity known as The United States of America, and it was under the authority of that initial act of union that the subsequent Constitution was comprised. And even in that later Constitution, it explicitly states:

VI

All Debts contracted and Engagements entered into, before the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be as valid against the United States under this Constitution, as under the Confederation.

That makes explicit that the Constitutional government was a continuance of the Confederation, and that nothing explicitly countermanded by the Constitution from the previous government formed under the articles remained valid. Let's look at the rest of that penultimate article:

This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding.

The Senators and Representatives before mentioned, and the Members of the several State Legislatures, and all executive and judicial Officers, both of the United States and of the several States, shall be bound by Oath or Affirmation, to support this Constitution; but no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.

(Emphasis added)

Given that requirement to uphold the Constitution, the attack of Ft. Sumter, along with the violation of the perpetuity of the Union, it becomes clear: SECESSIONISTS WERE LEGALLY GUILTY OF HIGH TREASON.

Bringing it back to the American Revolution, though—wasn't that also high treason? Yes, it was. Isn't it disingenuous to start making a stink about high treason in the case of the Civil War but not the Revolution? No, it isn't. Ultimately, this comes down to the final question: was the moral imperative on the side of the Union or the Confederacy?

This is at the center of the Revolution. You had in that situation a series of serious grievances; taxation without representation was the most prominent. You had at that time a supreme authority that did not derive its power by the consent of the people; you cannot say the same in the Civil War. The legislatures of the several states had representation, and they had by their own will ratified the Articles of Confederation and the Constitution.

We have the good fortune in the case of the Revolution that Jefferson put down to paper an explicit list of grievances against the king. It's worth reading again, if you have a moment to spare. Of course, had the confederates made a similar declaration at their time of attempted secession, I would have been able to save a great deal of time in my opening salvo. As it stands, the best I have found is that which I linked above (search for Toombs to find the speech in question). This comes from Robert Toombs, who I would point out is the man that I was directed to read by an apologist that complained about Stephens' piece not being sufficiently representative. It lays out five distinct demands on the Union, and every single one is about slavery.

I would submit the following: as the codified law of the land was, in both the Civil War and the Revolution clearly violated, each act of treason would appeal to natural law in order to claim righteousness.

If you compare the abuses of the King as described by Jefferson to the abuses of the Union described by Toombs, you will see clearly that the moral weight was on the side of Jefferson, but not Toombs (unless you're a soulless bastard who would actually condone slavery). If you look at the USA Constitution as of 1860 and compare it to the CSA Constitution, you will see again, that the moral weight is against that document which would specifically preclude any state from prohibiting slavery. The case is most clearly undeniable when you declare the US Constitution as of 1870, which it became as the clearest consequence of the Civil War.

I would condone the morality of treason in the context of expanding representation and securing rights, as was the case in the revolution. I would never condone the morality of treason for the purpose of further tightening the stranglehold held upon people born to perpetual servitude under a racist scheme of tyranny.

Finally, the Stars and Bars. GET THE HELL OVER THAT FLAG. I don't care if your daddy or your granddaddy was a Klansman, a Nazi, a Soviet, in the IRA, in the PKK, a member of the Symbionese Liberation Army, a crip, or a member of the bloody Mongol Horde. Past or present slaughter and tyranny is not something to be celebrated, and pride is no excuse. Descendants of Nazis didn't choose to be Nazis, either. Neither did any descendent of a slave choose that ancestry. Nor did I choose to be descended from illiterate cattle-raiding barbarians, or raping and pillaging Viking heathens. Go back far enough, you'll find them. There are better things to have pride in. And the Confederate Flag is a symbol of a struggle that was about slavery first and foremost, and a struggle which led most directly to the ultimate emancipation of millions living in the basest form of tyranny.

The Stars and Bars were designed in the wake of an act of immoral treason as a symbol of that immoral treason. It was not some symbol that predated the war and stood for Southern culture or pride. Any who would seek to raise so offensive a symbol, though it may not be their intent, is committing a grave offense of the highest order against both all who suffered under slavery as well as all who fought and died to end that abominable institution. I don't care what your folks told you. If you are a thinking human being, you should have the capacity to recognize that there are better things to hold pride in. For starters, any descendent of the Confederacy can also point to being a part of the greatest nation, one that would sacrifice so much to rid itself of such an abhorrent practice as slavery. Any who has more pride in the former than the latter is intellectually bankrupt or morally destitute.