Themes of the American Civil War
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| Rebels before Our fathers of yore, Rebel’s the righteous name Washington bore. Why, then, ours be the same. 36 Put so starkly, the South’s assertions brooked little argument. The invocation of George Washington was a particularly powerful symbol. As a southerner himself, and as Father of his Country, the Confederacy could not have found a more impressive figure to appropriate for their cause in the America of the nineteenth century. Washington was the ultimate national figure, and if southerners perceived any irony in using the man who had warned his countrymen to beware of sectional rivalries and to properly estimate the immense value of your national Union to your collective and individual happiness to support their destruction of that Union they did not show it. 37 As Jefferson Davis patiently explained, in order to guard against any misconstruction of their compact, the several States made explicit declaration in a distinct article—that “each State retains its sovereignty, freedom, and independence, and every power, jurisdiction, and right which is not by this Confederation expressly delegated to the United States in Congress assembled.” 38 Faced with this deadly combination of emotive and legalistic argument in favor of secession, northerners struggled to offer not just an alternative, but an overwhelmingly persuasive argument in support of their assertion that America was constructed as, and ought to remain, one nation. Initially, those who supported the Union set out a variety of relatively straightforward arguments in its favor. In an article written for the London Times and published just over a month after the start of the war, John Lothrop Motley praised the Northern response to Lincoln’s initial call for troops, noting that the loyalty of the Free States has proved more intense and passionate than it had ever been supposed to be before. It is recognized throughout their whole people that the Constitution of 1787 had made us a nation.” Motley set out the case for Union, succinctly, arguing that the “Union alone is clothed with imperial attributes the Union alone is known 306 • Susan-Mary Grant and recognized in the family of nations the Union alone holds the purse and the sword, regulates foreign intercourse, imposes taxes on foreign commerce, makes war and concludes peace The Revolution, he reminded his readers, had made America a nation, with a flag respected abroad and almost idolized at home as the symbol of union and coming greatness Yet, in recalling the Revolution, Motley had hit on an important and troubling point, although it is doubtful if he recognized the fact. Secession, he argued, was nothing more than a case of rebellion However, if it proved successful, then it became “revolution.” 39 This was much more than a distinction without a difference. The difference between rebellion and revolution in an American context, was vast. The American nation, and the Union that the North was fighting to save, was the product of a revolution, a fact that the South had not been slow to pickup on and use in defense of its actions in 1861. Although equally keen to align themselves with the ideals of the revolutionary generation, northerners found it difficult to breakthrough this particular part of the South’s defenses. As it was understood at the start of the war, the Revolution seemed better suited as justification for the Confederacy than as prop for the Union. To acknowledge that the South was engaged in an act of revolution was, in a very real sense, to validate secession and to recognize that the South had the right to attempt to establish a Confederate nation. One possible response, and the one favored by Lincoln himself, was to argue that the act of secession was less an attempt to construct a separate nation than an attack on an established Union which had to be met with force. Lincoln regarded secession as rebellion, pure and simple. Further, he saw it as rebellion not of but in the South. This was a theme he developed throughout the first year of the war. Some months before the fall of Fort Sumter he had questioned what principle of original right is it that one- fiftieth or one-ninetieth of a great nation, by calling themselves a state, have the right to breakup and ruin that nation as a matter of original principle Once war had broken out, he encouraged support for the Union by reflecting that this issue embraces more than the fate of these United States. It presents to the whole family of man the question, whether a constitutional republic, or a democracy—a government of the people, by the same people —can, or cannot, maintain its territorial integrity against its own domestic foes By the end of the year he was still reiterating his firm belief that secession constituted nothing more or less than a war upon the first principle of popular government—the rights of the people.” 40 Lincoln would continue to develop and refine his arguments in defense of the Union throughout the war—putting them most succinctly and powerfully in his Gettysburg Address of but his position, however persuasive it seems with hindsight, was by no means impregnable. Throughout the conflict, Lincoln, and those who concurred with his viewpoint, had to work hard to defend From Union to Nation? • 307 themselves against attack not just from the South but from opposition forces within the Union. Download 2.25 Mb. Share with your friends:
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