-- South Was Right The

That pretty much summarizes this book. Real historians have been saying for at least 60 years, probably much longer, that the Union went to war to preserve the Union, not to free the slaves. Yes, Lincoln was a bigot, as everyone who knows anything about the Civil War has acknowledged since, well, the Civil War. Yes, he said that he would free no slaves if he could preserve the Union and repeated his assertion that the war was not about slavery but about preserving the Union until 1863. Lincoln believed he did not have the Constitutional power to interfere with slavery in the states. He did advocate attacking slavery where he had such power, however--Washington, DC, federal territories, etc. Lincoln also was desperately trying to keep the Union slave states from fleeing to the Confederacy. So, no, he did not want to opine that the war was undertaken to end slavery. But also remember that Lincoln in his personal correspondence--read it!--said repeatedly that he hated slavery for what it did to both the slave and the master and the reputation of the United States as beacon of liberty. He said, repeatedly, that despite his personal belief that black people were probably inferior (the bigot) they should still not be enslaved. Yes, the Union went to war to defend the idea of majority rule democracy (a concept alien to southerners, who denied well over half of their population any political rights), not to further abolitionism. Remember, too, that a hell of a lot of northern soldiers fought because they saw the war as an abolitionist crusade (see Manning, What this cruel war is over; McPherson, What they fought for). Remember, too, that many Republicans were abolitionists--maybe half of Lincoln's cabinet were anti-slavery sympathizers or abolitionists; Congress, within months of the war's beginning passed confiscation acts to free slaves; many abolitionist generals freed slaves despite Lincoln's hesitation. The authors of this "history" just glaze over these facts in their attempt to exonerate the South by castigating the North. The proof is overwhelming that the South fought to preserve slavery--read the resolutions of secession passed in 1861 by almost every southern state legislature. Read the correspondence of the secession commissioners from South Carolina and Georgia who visited other slave states to recruit them into the Confederacy. The war, for them, was clearly about protecting slavery from the potential threat of Republican abolitionists, in whose number they, erroneously perhaps, counted Lincoln.



The real point of this book is just to spread more anti-government, pro-state's rights nonsense. The authors seem to forget that the South forced the greatest expansion of federal power in American history to that time upon the North in 1850 with the passage of the Fugitive Slave Act. And they seem to forget that the state right the South sought to defend was the right to own other human beings and treat them legally as no more than cattle. And as to the use of Rebel or Yankee--no serious historian cares--they are just names used by both sides to describe themselves and their enemies. Even northerners from the Midwest--not New England--came to embrace the term. And southerners embraced the term Rebel with relish.



I will say that the authors are correct that the Civil War furthered the creation of a capitalist plutocracy in America that still rules today. The authors, however, are not so much socialist critics as they are southern apologists.



If you are really interested in the complex issues that caused the war, go elsewhere. There are so many, many better books. Only read The South Was Right if you want a watered down version of some great scholarship or if you only read books that confirm your preconceptions.


(218 customers reviews)
Customers Rating=3.5 / 5.0

More Detail For South Was Right The