U.S. Civil War, States Rights, and Slavery

A recent article in the Washington Post titled "Texas Officials: Schools should teach that slavery was 'side issue to Civil War" has, once again, shed light on a very old fight taking place on the core issues of the United States Civil War.  Historians almost across the board agree that slavery was the core issue of the U.S. Civil War, those that disagree will normally acknowledge that the "states right" that was being fought over was slavery.  I will touch on that, later in this post, but I first wanted to express in a more general tone why, to my eye, this particular issue on the interpretation of the U.S. Civil War is so critical and is still so violently fought over.

Since the close of the U.S. Civil War in 1865, and with the termination of Reconstruction in the late 1880s, the United States has seen a general move by its southern states, and portions of the northern states, to embrace the U.S. Civil War as a fight over the "Lost Cause."  This is a romanticized view of the U.S. Civil War, a re-imagining of the conflict as a battle fought by an outmatched foe (the South) against an aggressive dominating rival (the North.)  This view of the U.S. Civil War pivots the narrative into one of the Southern states fighting to defend more morally palatable issues for the United States of the 1880s forwards, issues of limited government, Constitutional balance, and yes, states rights.

States rights reaches to the issue of federalism, the balance between the states and the central federal government, and has been an issue of contention in the United States since its founding.  The initial divide between our two political parties reflects this, it is a divide which is rooted in the current debates shaping the United States today.

At its root the "Lost Cause" view of the U.S. Civil War was an effort to remake the war into something more noble.  It was also part of an effort by the north and south to reunify the country and close still strong sectional divisions in the early 20th century.  As part of this effort both sides agreed to a tacit cultural agreement, northern historians and cultural figures would accept the "nobility" of the southern cause and support that position, and southern historians and cultural figures would embrace Abraham Lincoln and the northern actions as necessary if regrettable.  I will admit this is just my opinion but I believe it was this compromise that really put an end to the idea that states had a moral right of secession as a mainstream theory about the U.S. Civil War, most people today may debate the legality of secession and when it could happen, but they've accepted the U.S. Civil War was necessary because it kept the United States a strong nation.

This compromise reached its height, in my opinion, in 1958 with the passage of U.S. Public Law 85-425 which granted the widows of Confederate forces the right to a pension from the U.S. government.  The actual law is limited to just this but it has since been taken in common culture as a taciturn recognition of Confederate veterans as having the same status as veterans of the U.S. armed forces in general.  For the purposes of this post the actual legality of that view is irrelevant, what matters is that since 1958 the accepted image of Confederate veterans in the south is that they were patriots, equal to U.S. veterans, not traitors or criminals.

But was the U.S. Civil War about slavery at its core?  Bottom line, yes, and also state's rights, and also regional power.  To see this though you have to go back to the Missouri Compromise of 1820, which dealt with how to handle new states entering the U.S.  The issue was the admission of Missouri, whose residents wanted to own slaves.  The challenge was that the balance of power in the U.S. Senate balanced evenly between slave states and free states in 1820.  This balance of power was considered vital for the southern states because the more populous north dominated the House of Representatives and with the northern states there was growing resistance to slavery.  (Not due to any particularly strong moral issues, although that was part of it, rather to a blend of moral issues with good old-fashioned economic concerns.)

To deal with this Maine was admitted at the same time, as a free state, and the U.S. Congress drew a line across the lands of the Louisiana purchase marking off where slavery would end.  Both sides also understood that newly admitted states would have to maintain the Senate balance of power between slave states and free states.  To offset that balance was unacceptable to both sides - to the north loss of the Senate would make them bound to an unfair "slave power" in the U.S., which had economic interests violently opposed to the growing interests of northern industrial powers.  For southern states loss of the Senate would make them vulnerable to pressures that would harm their economic interests as a trading power engaged in a fiercely competitive global agricultural trade.

This balance remained in place until Stephen Douglas in 1854, in part of a bid to improve his political position in a run for the Presidency, in part to open land for railroad settlement, and also due to his political convictions came up with a new plan - scrap the Missouri Compromise and let the residents of each state decide if they wanted to be free or slave.  Hence the creation, and passage, of the Kansas-Nebraska Act which said "you local residents, you decide among yourselves if you want to be slave or free."

Now if slavery was not, by itself, a burning issue with deep roots to sectional conflicts, state position, and deeply held ethnic tensions in the United States, you might imagine that this would have been settled in a calm, collected manner.  It was not.

The image above is a "free state" poster regarding Kansas - give it a look - as you can see people were quite touchy on the issue of if Kansas would be a slave or free state.  Both sides on the issue flooded the territory with individuals and the issue was resolved with armed force.  This period was, and is, referred to as "Bleeding Kansas" and it basically pitted "free territory" settlers against individuals from Missouri who came to ensure that slavery would be allowed to expand into Kansas.  The situation wasn't really resolved until 1861 when Kansas was admitted as a free state to the union.  (By which point things had already reached the "Holy Hell" stage with South Carolina already pulling out of the United States.)

Allow me to close with this point - slavery as an issue in the United States from its founding through 1865 was a contentious issue, both on its own merits and for what it symbolized to the people of the United States.  From the 1850s onward though it became probably the central issue of United States politics, for better or for worse.  From the rise of the Republican Party out of the dead remains of the Whig Party, a new political organization with an avowed goal of shattering slavery in the United States ideally and at a minimum containing it in the southern states till it died out on its own against Southern leaders who with the Dred Scott decision made it clear they intended to bring slavery into free states and use the power of the federal courts to make slavery a default acceptable option throughout the United States.

If I had to summarize it I'd say that the U.S. Civil War was about slavery because it was a war about what shape the United States would take, what sort of nation it would be - one with slavery or one without.  Because within that issue was tied a whole host of other issues of what the United States would be:

• Predominately a strong agricultural exporter power with low tariffs or a strong industrial power with high tariffs and limited foreign trade
• A nation with a strictly enforced racial hierarchy empowered by law or one in which the racial hierarchy was more fluid
• A nation in which private property was sacrosanct or one in which the federal government had the right to redefine, seize, and modify property based on Congressional laws
• A nation in which the federal government or the individual state governments would hold the strongest position of power

It is an ugly truth today but in the end it all really did come down to the issue of...slavery

Sources:  Wikipedia articles on Bleeding Kansas, Lost Cause, Kansas-Nebraska Act, and the Missouri Compromise

19th Immigrants to America - the wrong message for a modern election

So the image above has been making the rounds on Facebook and appears to be showing a queue of immigrants, either in the late 19th or early 20th century, passing through Ellis Island or an equivalent port of entry into the United States.  The tagline at the bottom says that these immigrants "never burned our flag, respected American culture, cared about America."  With the top line it implicates that immigrants entering the United States in the 21st century, illegally, don't equal the same "higher quality" immigrants from a cultural protection perspective than these older immigrants.

First off, wow, the levels of cultural perspective shift held in that image, especially considering the widespread anti-immigrant feelings in the United States in the early 20th century specifically targeted at the above groups of immigrants is shocking.  But I am going to let that go for now, because the reality behind this text line is also wrong.

This image if from 16 September 1920, and is from the bombing of Wall Street, an act of revolutionary violence which was, most likely, carried about by Anarchists attempting to disrupt the United States economy and political system.  Although the United States government never formally determined who was responsible for the bombing attack, most evidence at the time and in later investigations points to a group of Italian immigrants, the Galleanists, a dedicated revolutionary group of Italian anarchists and followers of Luigi Galleani.  This group was mostly made up of Italian immigrants and most certainly did not respect United States culture or care about America as it was in the 1920s, it was dedicated to the overthrow of the United States government and American society.

The above bombing by the way killed a total of thirty-eight people and was done with a massive explosive device planted in a horse-drawn carriage.  It was detonated at noon to ensure maximum carnage.  (The physical damage to the Wall Street building was left in place and can be seen today.)

The center point of this particular movement is pictured above, Luigi Galleani, an anarchist from Italy who was expelled from multiple European nations, and the Middle East, before arriving in the United States.  He traveled the U.S. East Coast with a goal of motivating other anarchists, spreading revolutionary fervor among the working class, and supporting striking workers.  He was a believer in "propaganda of the deed" - carrying out revolutionary violence to inspire others to join in.  His followers are responsible for waves of assassination attempts (some successful), bombings, mass poisonings, and building a support network for anarchist activists through the early 20th century.  (His newsletter was also a source of an early form of "doxing" - printing home addresses of leading capitalists to inspire his readers to direct action.)

This is just the tip of the iceberg when it came to immigrant activism, throughout that period Socialists, Communists, and other political dissidents came to the United States to spread their ideas and make a strong attempt at revolution within the United States.  The Anarchists happen to stand out  in United States history because they were more colorful than other efforts and far more aggressive in the use of violent tactics.

But broadly there is no magical period of dutiful, loyal immigrants who came to the United States that can be contrasted with the immigrants of today.  Even in the late 19th through early 20th century immigrant boom in the United States you had efforts within that community to deliberately destroy the society and government of the United States, with any eye towards forging something new.

Sources:  Wikipedia articles on the Wall Street bombing of 1920 and Luigi Galleani

Rescue The Hitchcock 9

Worldhistoryblogspot.blogspot.com - Alfred Hitchcock (1899-1980) directed ten silent films during the 1920s, nine of which have survived and are currently preserved in the air-locked film vaults of the National Film Library in Berkhamsted, Hertfordshire. Most early silent films were destroyed when talkies were introduced at the end of the 1920s. The cellulose nitrate film on which they were produced was often melted down for its silver content and they were expensive and dangerous to store as the nitrate was very easily flammable. It is remarkable that Hitchcock’s silent films have survived – only his second film The Mountain Eagle (1926) has been lost.

The BFI National Archive recently launched a major campaign to restore all nine surviving films - The Pleasure Garden(1925), The Lodger (1926), The Ring(1927), Downhill (1927), Easy Virtue (1927), The Farmer's Wife (1927), Champagne(1928), The Manxman (1929) and Blackmail (1929) – to their original 1920s versions. The project is the biggest single undertaking in the archive’s history. The films are due to been shown to the public in London in 2012.

Henry Miller explains the restoration process in an article in the Guardian.

Siam Officially Renamed Thailand

Richard Cavendish explains how the proposal to change the name of Siam to Thailand was eventually accepted on May 11th, 1949.

Worldhistoryblogspot.blogspot.com - On July 20th, 1948, the Siamese constituent assembly voted to change the name of Siam to Thailand, the change to come into effect the following year. Muang Thai or Thailand means ‘land of the free’ and the name had been changed before, in 1939 under the fascist military dictatorship of Field Marshal Luang Phibunsongkhram, but the anti-Axis powers refused to recognise the new name after Siam allied herself with the Japanese and in 1942 declared war on the United States and the United Kingdom.

Phibun and his nationalist supporters in Siam took the Japanese side, partly because it initially looked like the winning one, partly because they hoped to recover long-lost territory in Laos, Cambodia and Burma, and partly because of their profound hostility to the Chinese in Thailand. They had already restricted Chinese immigration, closed hundreds of Chinese schools and shut down Chinese newspapers. In any case, when the Japanese late in 1941 demanded free passage across Thailand to invade Malaya and attack Singapore, the Thais were in no position to resist.

As the war went on, however, and it became clear that the country had picked the losing side, the resources of Thai diplomacy were skilfully marshalled to make the country’s peace with the Allies while taking care not to offend the Japanese unduly. Phibun’s regime ended in 1944. After the war the United States decided that the Thai regime had acted under duress and no objection was raised to the change of name. Phibun returned to power in 1948 and his hostility to Communist China now put him in an altogether better light with the Western powers. He lasted until 1957, when his military cronies decided they had had quite enough of him and sent him packing. He retired to Japan and lived in Tokyo until his death in 1964.
 

Richard Cavendish is a longstanding contributor to History Today, having penned dozens of the Months Past columns. He is also author of Kings and Queens: The Concise Guide.

Lee Kuan Yew becomes Singapore’s Prime Minister

June 31st, 1959 - Richard Cavendish remembers how a former-British colony gained a long-serving leader. 

Worldhistoryblogspot.blogspot.com - After the expulsion of the Japanese in 1945, British plans for a united Malaya left Singapore, the island at the foot of the Malay peninsula, out because its population was heavily Chinese, not Malayan. It became a separate British colony run by a governor with a mainly appointed, mainly Chinese council. Pressure for independence grew and in 1954 the socialist politician Lee Kuan Yew founded the People’s Action Party (PAP).

Lee came from a rich Chinese family which called him Harry and brought him up speaking English, but he was bent on bringing an end to British rule.

In 1955 Singapore was given an elected legislature and its own administration in charge of all matters except foreign policy and defence. Lee’s party won only three seats in that year’s election. But in 1958 he helped to negotiate in London for a Singapore with a fully elected government responsible for all internal affairs. His party won 43 of the 51 seats in the subsequent 1959 election and, after securing the release of imprisoned communist colleagues, Lee took office as Singapore’s prime minister in June.

The PAP had called for union with Malaya and in 1963 Lee crushed the communists, who opposed it, and Singapore joined the new Federation of Malaya. It did not work. The island’s Chinese character proved an impossible obstacle and the federation asked Singapore to leave two years later. It became a separate, sovereign republic and in the elections from 1968 to 1980 the PAP won every single seat in the legislature. Lee became one of the most important political figures in south-east Asia and by the time he stood down in 1990 he was the world’s longest-serving prime minister.

Richard Cavendish is a longstanding contributor to History Today, having penned dozens of the Months Past columns. He is also author of Kings and Queens: The Concise Guide.