Thats what Boston Abolitionist, American patriot and freedom-lover Lysander Spooner (1808 – 1887, pictured left) believed the American Civil War brought to America.
With one of my all time favorite quotes, Spooner put the Civil War and its aftermath into a proper and clear perspective; “On the part of the North, the war was carried on, not to liberate the slaves but by a government that had always perverted and violated the Constitution, to keep the slaves in bondage; and was willing to do so, if the slaveholders could thereby be induced to stay in the Union.
“The principle on which the war was waged by the North, was simply this: that men may rightfully be compelled to submit to, and support, a government that they do not want; and that resistance on their part, makes them traitors and criminals.
“No principle that is possible to be named can be more self-evidently false than this, no more self-evidently fatal to liberty. Yet it triumphed on the battlefield and is now assumed to be established. If it really be established, then the number of slaves, instead of having been diminished by the war, has been really increased; for a man, thus subjected to a government that he does not want, is a slave. And there is no difference in principle – only in degree – between political and chattel slavery. The former, no less than the latter, denies a man's ownership of himself and the products of his labor.” (Lysander Spooner 1886)
The fact that the importation of slaves into America was outlawed in 1809, is a noble one that far too many Americans seem unaware of. Another little known fact is the legacy of black Confederates, despite the fact that there are now many books chronicling that fact.
In fact, “It has been estimated that over 65,000 Southern blacks were in the Confederate ranks. Over 13,000 of these “saw the elephant,” also known as meeting the enemy in combat. These black Confederates included both slave and free. The Confederate Congress did not approve blacks to be officially enlisted as soldiers (except as musicians), until late in the war.
“But in the ranks it was a different story. Many Confederate officers did not obey the mandates of politicians, they frequently enlisted blacks with a simple criteria, “Will you fight?”
“Historian Ervin Jordan explains that “bi-racial units” were frequently organized “by local Confederate and state militia Commanders in response to immediate threats in the form of union raids.” Dr. Leonard Hayes, an African-America professor at Southern University stated, “When you've eliminated the black Confederate soldier, you've eliminated the history of the South.”
As the war came to an end, the Confederacy took progressive measures to build back up its army. The creation of the Confederacy States Colored Troops, copied after the northern colored troops came too late to be successful. Had the Confederacy been successful it would have created the world's largest armies (at that time) consisting of black soldiers even larger than that of the North. This would have given the future of the Confederacy a vastly different appearance than what modern day racist or anti-Confederate Liberals conjecture.
“Not only did Jefferson Davis envision black Confederate veterans receiving bounty lands for their service, there would have been no future for slavery after the goal of 300,000 armed black CSA veterans came home after the war.”
The Civil War was not about slavery, in fact, to his shame, Abraham Lincoln made very clear that he would've accepted an accommodation with slavery had the South acquiesced on the primary issue o preserving the Union.
But the South felt its agrarian economy was being stifled by northeast banking interests and after James Buchana botched things, the die was cast and the Civil War was all but inevitable.
The South fought for the original Constitution (localized governance and State's Rights) and against a growing federal monolith. Even the Confederate General James Longstreet is reported to have said, “We should've freed the slaves and then fired on Fort Sumpter.”
And I say that knowing that many of my ancestors, on my father's side, came “off the boats” in Boston and New York and went right to war.
It was a necessary war and one that had to be fought. Lincoln was right that a divided nation would not last very long, but one of the casualties of that war was the original Constitution.
