Some thoughts on Anglo-American history contrasted with Bavarian history – with possible political and/or cultural consequences. The main expanders of the state in 19th century Britain are remembered (at least by most of the minority of people who remember them at all) as good people.
Edwin Chadwick was a good man who urged for state police forces to be made compulsory in every town (done in 1835 as part of Municipal Corporation Act, the Act that swept away, apart from in the City of London, the nasty Tory closed corporations and created the new councils that would mean more economical local government – of course we are still waiting for those lower local taxes). And in the rural areas , achieved by the Act of 1856 (which also provided central government funding and controls) – before this time the people of the villages of England and Wales were savages who hunted each other for food.
Chadwick was also the nice man who saved us all from being killed by filth (government being the only thing that can provide water or remove waste you see) or falling over in the dark (government being the only thing that can provide street lighting) and so on on and so on. A noble reformer in the tradition of his mentor Jeremy Bentham (although Bentham’s dream of 13 departments of state controlling every aspect of human life, had to wait till the 20th century to come to pass – even the national Public Health Board was repealed in 1858 in the time of the wicked Palmerston).
All of Chadwick’s doctrines are described as things that “everyone agrees with” in J.S. Mill’s “Political Economy” of 1848, of course there were large numbers of things that looked human that did not agree, but J.S. Mill did not count them as people (a full person being someone whose mind is fully developed – and whether someone had a fully developed mind could be determined by whether or not they agreed with J.S. Mill, this is also true of the Labour Theory of Value which was “settled” with everyone in agreement the people who did not agree, such as Richard Whately and Samuel Bailey, being nonpersons). Academics and media people carry on with J.S. Mill’s tactic to this day, and like him, they talk endlessly of “freedom” and “liberty” as they do so. There were some large cities in Britain were “public services” were mostly provided by private companies funded by voluntary payment (Newcastle for example) right up to the First World War, but conventional history draws a veil over such places.
Later on even the evil Tory folk (at least at the leadership level – which is often different to the drink sodden local Tory folk) accepted the need for reform and produced such noble people as Disraeli who as well as expanding the franchise (partly to people who would have lost it when the next generation of “pot wallopers” lost the vote under the noble Reform Act of 1832 – but we must not make history too complicated for the children) also did such things as try and put the unions above the Common Law on such things as obstruction (“picketing”) and contract breaking (the effort behind the Act of 1875 – sadly held up by pesky court judgements till the Act of 1906) and further with such things as council housing (sadly only taken up by a few places before the First World War) and local government Acts (such as the one of 1875 which took about 40 different powers that before local councils might do and said they must do them – whether local rate payers liked the idea or not) and, of course, compulsory education (the Act of 1876 – for those places who had been enlightened enough to set up a School Board under the Liberal Government Act of 1870).
Even Gladstone can be thrown in (if one is selective) – with his support for government regulation (or outright control) of the railways, and his support for a government savings bank via the Post Office. And, of course, after Gladstone’s “retirement” (which came as news to him at the time – but a veil can be drawn over that as well) the Liberal party was free of the reactionary parts of his thinking (one can tell the rare curious person that the reactionary parts of Gladstone’s thinking came from him starting out as a Tory). There had once been a “voluntarist” stream within liberalism – but by the 1900’s it was reduced to a rump (for the tradition of liberty in the various political parties see W.H. Greenleaf’s “The British Political Tradition”, two volumes, specifically the section titled “The Libertarian Strand”).
In the United States things are much the same.
The man behind the revival of government education (it had declined in the 18th century and in the early 1800’s) was the noble reformer H. Mann – with his religion of humanity style of thinking, the true “Father of American Public Schools” (and government madhouses, where some of the people who were shoved in were not mad when they first arrived – but let us not dwell on that…). A true citizen of Massachusetts. Followed decades later by the noble Bellamy brothers – Francis and Edward, with their Pledge of Allegiance (so beloved by conservatives who do not notice that it contains no mention of the United States Constitution – and this was no accident), and their religion without God, sadly reactionaries removed Francis Bellamy from his position as a minister over his desire to introduce a religion in which government, rather than God, is worshipped – he was ahead of his time, and there other ideas as advocated in their magazine “National Socialism” funded, in part, by the flag making companies (the Bellamy’s ideas would mean that schools would buy flags – and their socialism would never be dangerous…).
Of course the biggest spending politician in 19th century America and the man who established that no State may leave the Union (regardless of anything the Constitution might or might not say) was the Henry Clay Whig (“a national bank, a protective tariff and internal improvements – these are my principles” first speech on slavery in 1854) Abraham Lincoln – another hero lauded by history.
Here I will get into trouble with the Ludwig Von Mises Institute people – as I hold that the Civil War was (in main part) about slavery. I do not believe that State governments like Virginia and North Carolina, which were (for the time) big government States – spending taxpayers money just about everything,, tried to leave the Union because they were concerned about the rise of big government. And the actual economic policies of the Confederacy during the war were actually more collectivist (on inflation, on “progressive” income taxes, on imprisonment without trial – although Governor Vance of North Carolina dissented from that), even than Lincoln’s.
Abraham Lincoln was indeed a nasty piece of work, he was a corrupt politician (as his record in Illinois shows – although just about every politician was corrupt there, and they still are) a big government man – and incompetent to boot (with the overwhelming advantages Lincoln had the Civil War should not have lasted four years and cost 600,000 lives – it did, in part, because Lincoln was useless). Lincoln was far from the hero presented in the school text books and shown in the statues – but the other side was even worse, as southerners who faught for the Union like General George Thomas understood. As did other people from States such as Virginia, especially those people from what became West Virginia (as well as eastern Tennessee – which is Republican to this day) – oh yes many of the hill-billy Rednecks were for the Union although it has slipped down the memory hole now.
Even in the West pro Union (or “anti slavery” “free State” people – which is what they called themselves) groups were every bit as good fighters, and often every bit as brutal, as their foes – in a war that actually started in “bleeding Kansas” (although it spread to other areas – in the Civil War there was large scale fighting as far West as what would one day be the States of Colorado and Utah) before Lincoln – and lasted till the last remaining of those foes in arms, the James “gang” and the Youngers, were defeated in their raid on a town in Minnesota – decades after Lincoln was dead (defeated by local residents who out-shot them – although they did not hang the people they captured, Minnesota not having the death penalty for attempted armed robbery).
Although some have even claimed that the last gasp of the Civil War was on a street in Tombstone Arizona – where the Earp brothers (with the assistance of Doc Holliday – who rather complicates the picture, being both a TB sufferer and a “moral defective” – i.e. the sort of person who H. Mann and co would have had locked up back in Boston) defeated the Clantons and their friends. But I do not know enough about the situation there to make a judgement.
“Well what has this got to do with Bavaria Paul”.
Simple enough, in both Britain and the United States statists of the 19th century have gone down as heros. The “reformers” in Britain were noble people (and by “reform” the history books and the culture that history informs do not mean the free trade movement or the movement to reduce taxes and government spending – liberals of the type of Joseph Hume are not what is meant).
And in the United States Lincoln is the liberator of the slaves (forget everyone else – and forget Lincoln’s own incompetence), thus proving that big government (especially big centralized government) is noble. Again forget that Jefferson Davis (the President of the Confederacy) was an even bigger big government centralizer than Lincoln was (although the burning of the Confederate records in Richmond allowed Davis to pretend that he had not wanted to be) and…
In 19th century Bavaria things are not quite the same…
They start off the same – with noble reformers, in the early 1800’s, imposing taxes on the nobles and Church and setting up compulsory education, and “ending serfdom” (which meant a rather different thing in Bavaria compared to other places – but such details can be kept from people).
But then things change.
Government is no longer about noble reformers – it is a matter of mad Kings building fairytale castles and subsidizing Richard Wagner (actually I prefer that, especailly the bit about building fairytale castles – but “progressives” do not). And then in the late 19th century government is not about noble Bavarians at all – it is about the dictates of an outsider.
Otto Von Bismark (not my favourate person – as some of you may know) could not claim to be the liberator of the slaves when he defeated Bavaria (and the other traditional Germanic states) in war. Nor was he romantically killed in the year of victory – in fact he clung on to power (by every corrupt means) till 1890 and lived on till 1898.
Nor was he even totally victorious – he had to make deals that gave Bavaria (and some other Startes) a wide measure of autonomy (even their own army).
Nor was Bismark even a democrat (and the constitutional form of democracy is the religion of Progressives – as long they totally control the “democracy” in practice) in fact he came to power by the whim of a King (the King of Prussia) and kept power by using the Prussian Army to trump the Prussian Parliament (collecting un-voted for taxes by force) and by a policy (and it was a policy – whoever formally declares war first, Bismark had written the script and manipulated everyone) of successful wars against Denmark, Hapsburg Austria (and the rest of the Germanic states that would not follow him) and France. Wars that made the name of Bismark a legend. Unlike Lincoln, Bismark choose the correct Generals and had clear military plans (rather than working from fantasy assumptions).
However, this did not make Bismark popular in Bavaria (unlike, oddly enough, a previous Prussian enemy of Bavaria – Frederick the Great in the 18th century, who at least had abolished torture and declared freedom of religion before he started his wars of conquest).
Nor did Bismark achieve popularity by his policy of persecuting the Roman Catholic Church in his “war of cultures” (which was going on at the same time as the start of the “War of Method” in economics – between the logical, partly Aristotelian, Austrian School of Carl Menger and the Historical, partly Hegalian, School of Bismark’s Germany, although the actual economic policies of Austria were actually more statist than the traditional economic policies of Prussia).
The Welfare State (the dream of so many German thinkers for centuries) was achieved by Bismark – at first on a tiny scale (the seeds would grow), but all the essential features (bar unemployment “insurance” which Germany did not have till after the First World War) were introduced by Bismark – but he can not be praised as the creator of the Welfare State by Progressives in Germany, especially in areas (such as Bavaria) which he defeated and persecuted the people of. Especially as Bismark eventually lost his “war of cultures” – and had to go begging to the Roman Catholics for aid against the socialists (Bismark had subsidized socialists early in government, as a stick to beat liberals with, – the socialists were Bismark’s monster, but he lost control of them).
In Britain the creator of the first Welfare State schemes (again on a tiny scale at first) was the Progressive hero Lloyd George.
And in the United States the first Presidents to talk of such things (although they did not achieve them – due to the resistance of evil reactionaries in Congress) were the Republican “Teddy Roosevelt” (held as a hero by John McCain and cited on health care by Barack Obama) and the Democrat Woodrow Wilson (the first American President to have spoken admiringly of socialism – although he was careful not to do so publicly, the little people were not ready they had not been “educated” enough yet). Both of these men are presented as hero types, good guys – and most people have some vague idea of them (or know someone who does – the names have been heard of and are “good names”).
But after the fall of Bismark the man who led the charge for statism in Germany was the Kaiser (Wilhelm II) – who had actually kicked out Bismark for not being statist enough (the Kaiser wanted more welfare schemes, more colonies, a bigger navy – and so on and so on).
Opinions of the Kaiser vary wildly – to some he was a racist madman bent on world conquest, to others he was a well meaning kindly man, who was scared of all the big powers around Germany and has been repeatedly misquoted. However, there are few people who hold Wilhelm II to be a hero – he made repeated misjudgements (the first being to break the alliance with Russia – a misjudgement that Bismark desperately tried to prevent) and then managing to alienate Britain (the traditional ally of Prussia), by a series of misjudgements.
The Kaiser has all the faith that Bismark had in “blood and iron”, but none of Bismark’s skill in politics/warfare. The Kaiser was more on the skill level of Lincoln – but Lincoln’s Union free population outnumbered the free population of their enemies by about four or five to one (that comes as a shock to modern Americans – who live in an environment where southerners have been out breeding northerners for decades, and where people who live in the mountain and hill country of the South also count themselves as “southern” which was not always so in the past), the Kaiser was outnumbered (greatly outnumbered) by the people he made the enemies of Germany.
The Kaiser led Germany to defeat – and how can a Prussian King come German Emperor be a hero for modern Progressives anyway? Remember their love of the forms of constitutional rule (the German Parliament was democratically elected – but the Kaiser choose the ministers).
Things go on:
In the 1920’s and 1930’s the main leader in developing welfare state schemes in Britain was Neville Chamberlain (working in the tradition of his father “radical Joe”), but memory of Neville Chamberlain is so dominated by his policy of talking to the National Socialist government in Germany that things like his housing policy or his general policy of taking the schemes of Lloyd George and working them up into univeral policies is overshadowed). Besides Chamberlain can be presented as a “reactionary” because of his insistence that welfare state schemes be paid for by taxation – rather than by borrowing and printing. And borrowing and printing (and modern variations of printing money) are the road to prosperity, especially in a slump, – as every progressive academic and media person knows.
In the United States there was little Progressive going on in most of the 1920’s (apart from government racism and prohibition – but it is forgotten that these were parts of the Progressive movement). However, then came FDR – President Roosevelt (Roosevelt the Second) who “saved America from the Depression” and “won World War II”.
Of course FDR did not save America from the Depression (caused by the credit money bubble of Ben Strong’s Federal Reserve and President Hoover’s panic response to the bursting of the bubble) – like Herbert “The Forgotten Progressive” Hoover, everything that President Roosevelt delayed recovery (“he had to do something” – well he could have cut taxes and government spending as Warren Harding did during the slump of 1921, after the collapse of the World War One credit bubble, and the economy was in recovery within six months “we do not mean that”).
However, President Roosevelt was around during World War II and the Nazis and Imperial Japan were defeated. And, contrary to some of the Ludwig Von Mises institute people, it was right for the United States to defeat the Nazis and Imperial Japan (it was just wrong not to defeat the Communists as well – when America had the chance). So FDR goes down as a hero – as does his statism.
In Germany in the 1920’s there was first the Weimar Republic (a total mess that even the Progressive can not claim was a great success) and then the leader of Progressive politics in Germany in the 1930’s – whose policy of government spending, printing and borrowing, and direct controls of prices and wages (and so on) was so praised by J. M. Keynes in the introduction to the German edition of the “General Theory…” in 1936 – Adolf Hitler. Of course Lloyd-George was a big fan to – rightly seeing in the economic policies of the Nazis the logical destination of his own thinking, and dreaming that (even at his advanced age) a deal could be made with Germany to bring him back to power (however let us not confuse the kiddies with that stuff).
It is not respectable in Germany to be a fan of Adolf Hitler (although a politician in Austria did try and praise Hitler’s employment policies – but he is dead now), so the Progressive can not use Hitler as a hero.
After World War II the United States has the “Fair Deal” effort of President Truman – defeated by “reactionary” elements in Congress (as with Teddy Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson), but Progressives can still point to Truman as a hero and say “he was in favour of these things – if only they had come to pass”.
In Britain they all did come to pass of course – the final transformation of the schemes of Lloyd-George and Neville Chamberlain into a fully formed Welfare State (with no limits on its further development). And nationalization and “planning” and other controls and…
And the Atlee government is widely held (by the education system and the media) to be the foundation of post war prosperity in Britain – so his policies must have been correct. The fact that Britain fell behind virtually every other Western European country (and many outside Western Europe) in economic growth after World War II can be ignored – so much if they got richer faster, we were still better off and that must be because of Atlee and his Progressive politics (although if only they had been more Progressive as Harold Laski wanted – then Britain would be as prosperous as North Korea).
However, Germany after World War II was the land of Ludwig Ernhard (who first started as an adviser to the Bavarian government before he moved to the national scale) and Konrad Adenauer. The land of radical deregulation and free markets.
So it is hard to see how the Progressives can claim that the “German economic miracle” after World War II was the result of Progressive policies (it was the result of “reaction” of the most literal kind – reaction against both the policies of World War II and the pre war policies of Hitler and the National Socialists).
However, Germany began to move away from the free market path in the late 1960s and in the 1970’s.
Just as the United States had President Johnson (whose Welfare State policies are also attributed to President Kennedy – although I have never seen much evidence that Jack Kennedy believed in building a Welfare State) and President Nixon (who expanded Johnson’s “Great Society” and added massive regulation of the economy on top) and Britain had Harold Wilson and Edward Heath (see Johnson and Nixon), so Germany had Willy Brandt and Helmet Schmidt.
And as with Britain and the United States the 1960s and 1970’s are remembered in Germany (especially by people who look back with the rosy glasses of the memory of their youth) as a time of consumer pleasure (yes even in Britain – people remember the bright colours and forget the unburied dead) and sexual revolution – and whatever the long term consequences of the “sex, drugs and rock and roll” (que Samuel Adams 1772 quote about those who seek to undermine the liberty of the people first conspire to corrupt their morals, and then add in musings about the lies of Kinsey Report of the late 1940’s and the intentions of the left to…) it was fun for the people involved – at least if they did not get to closely involved and got made deaf by the pop music, or got a nasty sexual illness, or died of an overdose of drugs.
For the record I have my doubts about the Samuel Adams position – after all Americans may have been (were) a very socially conservative people in 1936 (for example the most religious people in the Western World, the old Nazi jibe about “German soldiers carry copies of Nietzsche’s writings on the Superman – Americans carry copies of Superman comics” was false – American soldiers were more likely to carry a copy of the Bible than a comic, and to call on God in battle rather than a political leader), but that did not stop 60% of them voting for Franklin Roosevelt (thus showing a somewhat less than strong commitment to liberty – although the nature of the population did limit just how far FDR could go, he could never be worshipped as more important than God). However, it is true that there was one long Progressive orgy in the late 1960’s and 1970’s (eating the seed corn of the future in terms of industrial investment).
However, Bavarian just continued to be ruled by conservatives and not “conservatives” like Nixon, Heath, or George Walker Bush either. And this has continued right to our own times.
Even the government school system never had a great “Progressive” reform (as happened in Britain and the United States decades ago). Although there are signs of “legal” (i.e. activist court) attacks on religion in schools and there are signs that changes in German Federal tax law on inheritance may hit the family owned companies that have been the life blood of German manufacturing for centuries (already that vampire Warren Buffett has been seen in Germany).
However, over the last one and half centuries both Britain and the United States have had a strong Progressive tradition, but after the Progressive reforms of the early 1800’s it is harder to maintain that Bavaria has such a strong Progressive tradition over the last one and half centuries. All this I think I have established above.
What are the political and/cultural consequences of this (if any)? I have written quite enough – so I leave this question for others.
Blimey.
One day, Paul, I hope you stop summarising, and tell us what you really mean.
One question- does this history lesson have a point? Perhaps that there are many paths to Hell on Earth?
I was hoping that your discussion of Bavarian history might include Count Rumsford. An 18th-century American exile empowered by the Elector of Bavaria to implement sweeping reforms, Rumsford claimed that most philosophies of government aim to make people virtuous, which will render them happy, but he would first make people happy and that would lead them to virtue.
The story I heard was that he took the local large population of beggars and thieves, gave them work, training, shelter, food and education, and largely succeeding in transforming them into useful citizens. I always wonder if this was a fluke — he was dealing with early 19th-century Southern Germans, who seemed naturally inclined to orderliness and industry, as well as the docility necessary to cough up the taxes to fund his experiment — or if his example had useful lessons for future generations.
Paul, I agree with you about the Ludwig von Mises’ Institute’s approach to the Civil War. To say it was not primarily about slavery is a bit like saying that the English Civil War did not involve the issue of religion. I am afraid that won’t wash.
The issue is this: should an individual state, within a federal structure, be allowed to permit the enslavement of some of its people and prevent such people from fleeing to competing jurisdictions? (No). If the answer is no, then the demands by such states that they break away to form their own seperate political entity, with the enslaved folk trapped even more, is intolerable. Lincoln agreed with that viewpoint, a fact that makes me glad, whatever criticisms one can rightfully make about some of the other arguments/actions used by the North in the war. One does not have to be a starry-eyed defender of Lincoln to look with considerable scepticism on the arguments sometimes given by the Confederates.
Jonathan, first of all agree with you that the Civil War had to be fought and the slaves had to be freed. Now a question to anyone interested:
Would it have to be seen differently if the South was not part of the Union to begin with? Should the North in that case have been indifferent towards state-sanctioned slavery just south of their border? Would this situation be fundamentally morally different? The US fought and defeated Nazi Germany, it occupied it in part to keep the Nazis or their likes from returning to power, but it didn’t annex Germany – was it only due to geographical constraints? In short I wonder if it was possible to let the South break away after the slavery-supporting elements within it have been defeated. Paul, has anything like this ever been discussed at that time?
Salmon P. Chase was the “slaves lawyer” before the Civil War (and Chief Justice of the Supreme Court after it) and he held that “slavery” was a series of crimes – unlawful imprisonment and assault being two of them.
Whether any State has the right to “legalize” such crimes via the “institution of slavery” is a big point – I say NO.
As for whether a State has the right to “reclaim its freedom” – sure it does (I support the right of secession), as soon as it allows the people in the State to “reclaim their freedom”.
By the way – Chase as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court convicted himself (in his prior capacity as Treasury Sec) for breaching the U.S. Constitution by issuing fiat money “Greenbacks” during the Civil War (the Congress having the power to “coin money” not return to the “not worth a Continental” fiat currency of the Revolutanary – and only gold or silver coin may be legal tender in any State).
Bavarian reformers – I DID mention that in the early 1800’s Bavaria was dominated by reformers. I did not write about them much (or about 18th century reformers) because I was writing about how Bavarian history has diverged from Anglo-American history over the last one and half centuries (not how it was once much the same). Although the ultra reformers in Bavaria (with their dreams of destroying traditional religion and getting rid of private property) were dealt a heavy blow in the 1770’s in Bavaria – where the Illuminati lost (and lost big).
By the way – before anyone mentions it, I do know that Doc Holliday got his medical training in Philadelphia not Boston, and was a man from Georgia (not that this means much – “Texas Jack” was from Virginia, and he sided with the Earps).
By the way to the revisionists (“the Earps were the bad guys they were trying to enforce gun control in Tombstone and ……”) please avoid going into a time machine and meeting people like Curly Bill (Clanton enforcer and previously a servant of the Dolan- Murphy machine in the Lincoln County war in New Mexico) or Johny Ringo.
However, if you do come upon Johny Ringo make sure you are armed and never turn your back on him – there is no recorded case of Johny Ringo shooting an armed man (not in the front anyway). Like many of the “Cowboy” gang Ringo had a yellow streak a mile wide.
If anyone feels like disputing the yellow streak nature of the “Cowboys” (those proud liberators of other peoples cattle – whose defenders used to claim “they only stole cattle from Mexicans and they only had fun with Mexican women” before it became a bit un P.C. to make that “defence”) then read up on how Virgil Earp became a cripple, and how Morgan Earp died.
“You did not tell us what the political and cultural consequences for Bavaria of its different history”.
Well I did put in a question mark in my bit of typing (it got lost in the wash), but actually I want to leave that to other people to tell me.
I suppose I should point out that Dizzy’s Act of 1867 did not restore the vote to all the “pot wallopers” (just those over a certain position in life – owning or renting houses that only a skilled working could afford).
There was no “system” before 1832 (at least as regards the towns – the county vote was a standard). In some towns (such as Preston) any man who had a fire and pot to bang on it (hence “pot walloper”) had the vote – in other towns far fewer did.
It was a matter of the querks and chances of history – much as there is no American “health system” now (every time use the word “system” about American health care it sets my teeth on edge – because it is just the wrong word to use). This does not mean that the mess of subsides and regulations in the United States is a good thing (far from it) – but a “health system” will be even worse.
As for Bavaria – O.K. I will “spill the beans” on my hopes.
I hope that Bavaria will be part of what the Pope (and others) call the “saving remanent” – i.e. that some memory of civilization (of Western culture) will be remembered there as things fall apart in the West (as seems likely).
Of course I hope that a new Dark Age will not come – but it may well.
As for whether Bavaria’s different history over the last one and half centuries will mean that it can be part of a “saving remanent” – I do not know enough to judge (I hope others do).
But it would be nice to think that some memory (some tradition) of the West would remain even in a future world mostly given over to horror.
As for Britain – here people can not even remember the rhymes that once every child knew. This is a land without hope.
Golly, this “comments” part is better than most of the better blogs !. Thank you, one and all.
Conventional thinking is a contradiction in terms.
Idealism is the seed from which disenchantment grows.
Trust is a four letter word, spelled with five, to trick us.
To understand the Earps, “Ned Buntline” was a pen name, of an interesting fellow, who wrote fiction, and, often lived it.
Aside: There was once a story about the actor, Hugh O’Brien, having shot himself in the tush while demonstrating his facility with a revolver. Disappeared.
Once knew a Cherokee, who was a police firearms instructor. “They’re all a bunch of cowboys” he said.
Since I live in the home “town” where the police invented the “cop killer blank” and “sem-auto underload”, I’ve no doubt he was right.
Johnathan,
Not far from where I live there is a museum that was a station on the underground railroad. Fugitive slaves would arrive hidden in wagons of grain or other goods and they would be concealed in an underground tunnel until they could continue to the next hiding place on their way out of the United States.
Why? Wisconsin was not a slave state. Answer, The Fugitive Slave Act. The National government was not necessary to end slavery precisely because it was necessary to preserve it. Were it not for those enlightened politicians (never let a crisis go to waste?) there would not have been a crisis to fix. Those slave states would have held slaves like a colander holds water. Creating a crisis that they can ‘fix’ it is not unique to this current government.
As for Lincoln, the Emancipation Proclamation specifically did not free slaves in the four non-seceding slave states and those under Union army control.
Which could be interpreted to say that Lincoln was interested only in forming a single nation and didn’t cave on slavery until he was losing support for the unification war. There is a huge and ongoing effort to make Lincoln a hero but count me among the skeptics.
The American Civil War was about slavery in the same way that the Copenhagen treaty is about the environment and the stimulus is about saving the economy. Which is to say that it was a means to an end very different than the one that was publicly claimed.
Thanks Mid, this clarifies quite a bit.
Interesting piece, though I have to take issue with your comment that “it was just wrong (of Roosevelt/Truman) not to defeat the Communists as well – when America had the chance”.
There was no chance. The American people wouldn’t have sanctioned war with the USSR.
Mid nails it on the slavery issue. What he didn’t address, in response to Johnathan’s earlier post, was the “compact theory of government” issue. Remember, the United States was formed, not as a unitary nation, but as a coalition of 13 sovereign states. The original Articles of Confederation, and later the Constitution, spelled out exactly the limits of federal power. It was a partnership, a union of convenience to collectively manage issues of larger importance such as national defense. Implicit in such a union (and, indeed, explicit in a number of the states’ ratifying resolutions) was the concept that any party unhappy with the arrangement could withdraw from it. The national government is a compact among the states, not an irrevocable merger of their political sovereignties. There is little doubt that such was the intent of the framers, but that is precisely what Lincoln abrogated.
Regardless of the evils of slavery (which no one today disputes) or its role as the proximate cause of the Civil War, the fact remains that the Confederate states had the legal and moral right to withdraw from a political union which, in their view, no longer served their interests. They were prevented from doing so by overwhelming military force.
Those of you on this site who argue the the UK should withdraw from the EU should bear this cautionary tale in mind. Two points to take from it: (1) Isn’t that your theory: that the EU “constitution” (or whatever you call it) is a “compact” from which the participating nations can withdraw at pleasure? (If so, don’t denigrate the Confederate states’ attempt to use that same theory 150 years ago.) (2) If you allow Brussels 70 years to consolidate its power do you really think you’ll ever be allowed to leave without a bloddy war of your own?
Even as late as 1929 the Federal government took up about 3% of the economy – so I have a problem with the legend that Republicans like Lincoln created a massive government (after the Civil War – there was a massive government during the war).
Yes the Republicans (especially ones that were Clay Whigs as Lincoln was) had big problems with them – but they were not modern mega government types.
It is like saying that because the Morgans were in favour of the Federal Reserve they would have supported the modern state – they did not, which is why the New Dealers destroyed the House of Morgan (the G.S. Act was basically a Bill of Attainder – as the main bank that was both retail and investment was the bank of the Morgans).
“If you give the government your hand it will take your arm” – yes I accept that, the Morgans were fools (and, yes, wicked fools) to support the creation of the Federal Reserve system (hoping to profit from it) – but they did not intend the modern state to come to pass, and neither did the other Republicans (I would still have been a “Bourbon” Democrat though – as the Canadian J.J. Hill was).
Secession – well Greenland has already left the E.U. (a little thing that hardly anyone has noticed – yet it sets an interesting precident).
America in 1861.
“I President of the United States do note with great regret the leaving of various States from the Union – of course now the futigive slave law is now null and void as these places are not longer States of the Union”.
Let us see the South try to fortfy and keep people in a border that went through forests and mountains and planis and fields for thousands of miles – and all with 1861 tech.
Yes Laird and Mid are correct – the Civil War was not needed to break the back of slavery (and nationalism was mixed up in it).
Although that does not alter the fact that the Civil War did not need to be the horror fest it was (600, 000 dead and so on).
With Lincoln’s overwhelming advantages he should have won that war with far less horror – he did not because of one brutal fact.
Not the genius of Robert E. Lee or whatever (although Lee and others were good soldiers).
There was so much horror because Lincoln simply was not much good as a war leader (he was in a different league to someone like Bismark – a lower league) – he made a mess of things time and time again, by his appointments and by a lot of other stuff.
Of course as Lincoln has been turned into a little plaster saint, one can not publically say the above without being shouted down.
By the way Midwesterner – I once met a very good reenactment society based on a Wisconsin Regiment.
Their tech level (the rifles the soldiers bought privately – and so on) and the different tactics that their better equipment allowed them to use, put them on a different level to a Confederate regiment (when the Confederates even had such things as boots or ammunition).
No disrespect meant to the Confederate soldiers – but regiments like that Wisconsin one could just shoot them to bits (even if it was equal numbers – and the Union had vastly more men). Historians and Confederate reenactors (often reenactors are good historians themselves) have said the same thing.
That the war lasted so long and contained so many Union defeats was an outrage from a military point of view.
Paul, if you haven’t happened to read it yet, I highly recommend Reveille in Washington by Margaret Leech. I knew of but never really understood the spectacular f_-up that was the Union campaign during the war until I read this book. After reading it the incompetence seemed not only plausible but inevitable. I rate the book a ‘must read’ for anyone interested in the American Civil War. If you’ve read it already, I am curious what you think of it.
I have not read the work – I may well do so.
However, I do know that if one’s advantage is firepower (not just in infantry fire – but also in artillery) one has to “train, train and then train some more” to make that advantage effective.
Even after Gettysburg, General Meade (a good commander – but underrated due to his never having written memoirs gloryfying himself) found hundred of Union rifles messed up – because the men did not know how to use them effectively.
Not just weapons training – one also needs extensive tactical training. And all this time spent training is not “wasted” as one is using the time to build up the legistical side of the war. Without ways of moving stuff (as well as people) to where one needs it, all the tactics in the world are a waste of time.
Instead there was endless “why are you not in Richmond yet” nonsense from the politicians (including Lincoln).
Defend, defend, defend – strangle the south simply by being all round it (blockage at sea and counter any move they make to invade the Union States) – only when ready does one move to the attack.
Less haste – more speed.
“Hidesight” – not at all, some Union top brass said all the above at the start of the war.
Well, so where is Bavaria now?
It is still a part of Germany, where the federal government has stripped the states of virtually all authority. While there has been some shuffling in 2006 (“federalism reform”), German states are much less autonomous than US states.
Southern, catholic-ish, conservative states can elect conservative/liberal governments all they want: at the federal level there will have to be compromises with the northern, protestant-ish, progressive, less prosperous but more numerous states.
Even so, calling Bavaria’s ruling government “conservative” is a big stretch. PM Horst Seehofer is rightly known as a “Sacred Heart socialist”. He would get on just fine with the late Sen. Ted Kennedy… tradition matters little when progressivism can take up the mantle of christian democracy so easily.
I would like to be able to argue with you lukas – but I can only dispute DETAILS (not the basic thrust of your comment). For example, I could say that comparing H.S. to Edward Kennedy is going too far – and I could point out that the Christain Democrats in Baden-Wurttemburg include many Protestants as well as Catholics.
However, you would (quite rightly) point out that I am just disputing details – the true horror of the modern world (the comming doom) remains.
Alas!
OK, so I probably did go to far in assimilating Seehofer to Kennedy. But I would ask you to note that he did promote a book written by none other than the leader of the populist hard left, Oskar Lafontaine. He might not be as socially liberal as Kennedy, but on economic issues the two are fairly close to each other.
And yes, Germany’s north-south divide goes beyond religious issues (hence the “-ish”). Still religion is one of its defining components.
I’m not giving up all hope yet, though. Bavaria can survive without Berlin, but Berlin is lost without Bavaria. That alone is enough to keep Bavarian separatism alive and well.
Agreed lukas.
Of course one thing to watch is Bavarian schools.
In the past the left have been very unsuccessful in controlling Bavarian education – but government financed education is very vulnerable (very vulnerable indeed) to leftist control via both teacher training and administrative influence.
With “nonreactionaries” in charge of the CSU and the CSU being in a coalition anyway, the chances of more and more leftist control of education (and hence having influence over the minds and attitudes of the next gereration) grow.