The Original Republic: Gone with the Wind

June 3rd marks the birthday of Jefferson Finis Davis, the only President of the Confederate States of America. Righteous Cause propagandists demonize Davis and others who understand the U.S. Constitution to be a compact between the ratifying States, meaning it is up to the citizens of the respective States to remain in the Union or leave it. Although commonly accepted in both North and South in the early days of the Republic, this view is foreign to many modern Americans. To amplify the present situation, fellow Alabama Gazette columnist John Sophocleus has stated that individuals have told him with a straight face the federal government created the States. How did the agent created by the States miraculously turn the tables and create the States? Is George Orwell in the room? How do you converse with anyone with such an ahistorical belief?

A learned man steeped in the agrarian tradition, Davis stated his view of the voluntary nature of the Union in his January 21, 1861, Farewell Address to the U.S. Senate: “It is known to Senators who have served with me here, that I have for many years advocated, as an essential attribute of State sovereignty, the right of a State to secede from the Union.” Davis understood nullification is a tactic to remain in the Union. Relative to secession, he explained: “Secession belongs to a different class of remedies. It is to be justified upon the basis that the States are sovereign. There was a time when none denied it. I hope the time may come again, when a better comprehension of the theory of our Government, and the inalienable rights of the people of the States, will prevent any one from denying that each State is a sovereign, and thus may reclaim the grants which it has made to any agent whomsoever.”

Davis went on to say: “Then, Senators, we recur to the compact which binds us together; we recur to the principles upon which our Government was founded; and when you deny them, and when you deny to us the right to withdraw from a Government which thus perverted threatens to be destructive of our rights, we but tread in the path of our fathers when we proclaim our independence, and take the hazard. This is done not in hostility to others, not to injure any section of the country, not even for our own pecuniary benefit; but from the high and solemn motive of defending and protecting the rights we inherited, and which it is our sacred duty to transmit unshorn to our children.”

Irish-born Confederate General Patrick Ronayne Cleburne knew, if independence failed, it was only a matter of time before the South would be demonized by the victors. Cleburne stated: “Surrender means that the history of this heroic struggle will be written by the enemy; that our youth will be trained by Northern school teachers; will learn from Northern school books their version of the War; will be impressed by all the influences of history and education to regard our gallant dead as traitors, and our maimed veterans as fit subjects for derision.” Cleburne recognized the North’s immediate goal in denying the South’s right to self-government, stating: “It is merely the pretense to establish sectional superiority and a more centralized form of government, and to deprive us of our rights and liberties." [Survival of the Republican Party was one of Lincoln’s primary goals.]

Although Lincoln’s “cause” was keeping the geographical union together he expressed his immediate concern -- the only reason he would go to war -- in his First Inaugural Address (March 4, 1861). This sentiment was echoed in the Blockade Proclamation (April 19, 1861), and in three separate interviews (April 4, 1861, April 12-13, 1861, and April 22, 1861) with Southerners trying to talk him out of war. That reason was to regain the forts to “collect duties and imposts” (import tariffs). Had the South agreed to pay these exorbitant taxes, could war have been avoided?

When the Southern States were coerced back into the Union, the Original Voluntary Federal Republic was “Gone With The Wind” – this is perhaps Abraham Lincoln’s greatest legacy. Raphael Semmes and many other Confederates understood the ultimate goal was empire. In the 1866 correspondence between Robert E. Lee and Lord Acton, both men lamented the denial of Southern Independence. Lee predicted “the consolidation of the states into one vast republic, sure to be aggressive abroad and despotic at home” would lead to ruin like previous empires. Acton saw “in State Rights the only availing check upon the sovereign will…and secession, not as the destruction but as the redemption of Democracy.”

Voltaire noted: “History is the propaganda of the victorious.” The War to Prevent Southern Independence is a classic example.

Sources: The Papers of Jefferson Davis, Volume 7, pp. 18-23. Transcribed from the Congressional Globe, 36th Congress, 2d Session, p. 487, at: https://jeffersondavis.rice.edu/archives/documents/jefferson-davis-farewell-address; A-Z Quotes, at: https://www.azquotes.com/quote/1059015); “Acton and Lee: A Conversation on Liberty”, by Stephen Klugewicz, The Imaginative Conservative, at: https://theimaginativeconservative.org/2014/08/lord-acton-robert-e-lee-conversation-liberty-stephen-klugewicz.html; and Union At All Costs: From Confederation to Consolidation, by John M. Taylor, at: https://www.amazon.com/UNION-ALL-COSTS-Confederation-Consolidation/dp/1634916468 NOTE: Both Thomas Jefferson and the nationalist Alexander Hamilton referenced the constitution as a compact. See: https://www.alabamagazette.com/story/2022/08/01/opinion/compact-is-more-than-a-theory/2400.html The Abbeville Blog and lewrockwell.com are great sources to find more details about the “Righteous Cause Myth” and much of the information included in this article. Of course, Gone with the Wind references the book and movie based on Margaret Mitchell’s family’s accounts of the war.

THE VIEWS OF SUBMITTED EDITORIALS MAY NOT BE THE EXPRESS VIEWS OF THE ALABAMA GAZETTE.