In an interview in 2017, U.S. President Donald Trump said he
wondered why the issues leading to the U.S. Civil War “could not have been
worked out” to prevent the republics from exiting the U.S.[1]
“People don’t realize, you know, the Civil War, if you think about it, why?”[2]
In particular, “People don’t ask . . . why was there the Civil War? Why could
that one not have been worked out?”[3]
The reigning assumption has been that President Lincoln could not have resolved
the dispute short of going to war. Trump then suggested that had President
Andrew Jackson been president rather than Lincoln, we “wouldn’t have had the
Civil War.”[4]
Aside from the point that Jackson was a Southerner, his feat in resolving the
Nullification Crisis without a shot being fired suggests that Trump had a
point; the war between the C.S.A. and U.S.A. could have been averted. More
importantly, the mentality that won
the war may not be as salubrious as we suppose.
In 1828, when John Quincy Adams was the federal president, a
tariff—a tax on imported manufactured goods that originally went into effect in
1816—was increased even beyond the increase in 1824. The intent was to protect
the nascent American manufacturing sector, which was mainly in the Northern
states, from cheaper European imports. As a result of the tariff, Southern
plantation owners had to pay more for manufactured goods from Europe, and
Europeans had fewer dollars with which to buy Southern exports, of which cotton
and rice were particularly important to the Southern agrarian economy.
In 1829, Andrew Jackson became the U.S. President and John
C. Calhoun became the Vice President. The latter, who was from South Carolina,
proposed the doctrine of nullification, wherein a state government could
constitutionally nullify any federal law injurious to the state’s interests. Even
from the standpoint of a loose federation, or a confederated Union of mostly sovereign republics, the doctrine was
specious; for it would eviscerate virtually any federally-agreed-to constraint
on the states. The former president John Quincy Adams argued more practically that
the U.S. Supreme Court, not the state governments, had the ultimate authority
to declare federal law unconstitutional. For his part, President Jackson sided
with Adams out of fear that state-nullification could potentially lead to the
break-up of the Union.
Meanwhile, South Carolina’s government declared the tariff
to be unenforceable in the state. European firms could export their goods to
buyers in South Carolina without having to pay the tariff. Hence, the buyers
would get the lower prices, and the sellers and their compatriots would have
more dollars with which to buy South Carolina rice and cotton. The tariff would
remain in effect in the U.S. where the toll on economies was less.
Interestingly, Calhoun also argued that the federal government had
constitutional authority to use tariffs only as a means to raise revenue for
that government, rather than to favor certain economic sectors; such picking
and choosing—essentially between states—was going too far, especially as a
certain region of states was losing power in Congress as the Union added new
states. I submit that South Carolina’s government officials and Calhoun pushed
their favored confederal approach or
interpretation of American federalism too far in incorporating the
nullification doctrine precisely because the plantation economy was becoming
less and less, proportionally speaking, of the American economy, and the
Southern states, less and less, also proportionately, of the total number of
states in the American Union. This dynamic,
not its symptom of slavery, was the underlying cause of the war between the
C.S.A. and the U.S.A. How this interpretation differs so from the victor’s moralistic,
almost apolitical narrative! How bound we are, without even realizing it, to the narrative!—alternatives being deemed
nothing short of heresy! Abominations!
President Jackson diffused the changing dynamic—shifting regional
power in the Union in the midst of two starkly different preferences of federalism
(confederalism and modern federalism, respectively)— by signing tariff
legislation in 1832 and again in 1833 that lowered the tariffs even as he
stated that South Carolina’s nullification law was null and void and sent
federal troops down to the state to enforce the law. The deal, in other words,
was a much lower tariff in exchange for the state’s repeal of its nullification
law. Because the president pressed Congress to repeal its increased tariff,
essentially giving that one to Calhoun’s point on the federal use of tariffs
for revenue only, Jackson cannot be said to have been staunchly on the side of
the federal government—which is something, considering that Jackson headed one
of its three branches! Rather, the president gave something to South Carolina—putting
the state’s interests ahead of the other states and the federal government. Yet
the state’s government had to pay a price—giving up on its cherished, albeit
over-extended, doctrine of nullification.
South Carolina’s legislature had prepared a secession, or
“exit,” document—Calhoun himself was involved in crafting it. The same document
would be used in 1861 for the “SoCarexit”—to borrow from the E.U. secessionist
state’s lexicon. Interestingly, Congress had again just enacted a tariff increase
in 1858. It is possible that this old issue, as much as new free states being
admitted to the Union, sparked renewed impetus to divorce from the U.S.[5]
The threat to the Southern plantations in 1861 was not the
imminent end of slavery there. The threat was indirect and more diffused,
coming in the form of new states with different economies being admitted to the
Union. The theory of confederalism insists that the enumerated and residual
sovereignty of each state is protected—hence the balance of power resides with
the states. The Southern fear was that the balance was already shifting in
favor of the federal head, and this made the decreasing proportion of the
Southern states in the enlarging Union particularly worrisome. In other words,
the “nationalist” variant of federalism (modern federalism) was gaining over
confederalism, and the interests of the Southern states—political, economic,
cultural, religious—were becoming more of a minority in an increasingly heterogeneous,
larger empire: the United States. The tariff and slavery were only symptoms.
Jackson’s peaceful resolution of the Nullification Crisis lays
in stark contrast to Lincoln’s “take it or leave it” approach to the Southern
secessionist states. Whereas Jackson had the federal government retreat
voluntarily on its tariff, Lincoln’s approach can be seen as being one-sided
because he did not even offer to have the federal government step back at all
from its position. When all the political heavy-lifting is put on the other
side—for it to do the backing down—it is no wonder that resistance is
encountered and a long, bloody war results. I submit that Lincoln could reasonably
have compromised and yet save the Union in the sense of retaining all of its
existing states.
For example, Lincoln could have assuaged the Southerners’
fears by proposing a qualified majority voting system in the U.S. Senate and
perhaps even in the U.S. House of Representatives. Such a system would be
designed such that legislation could not pass without at least some Southern
support. The federal government would thus not be able to turn on the South—which
I submit was the underlying fear. In the E.U., for instance, qualified majority
voting in the federal legislative chambers—the European Council and the
European Parliament—requires at least 55% of population of the Union and 55% of
the states be represented on the yes side of votes for the bills to become law.
Lincoln and Congressional leaders could have entertained novel ideas on how to
craft such a system. A Council of Regions, for instance, wherein only the major
regions of the U.S. were represented—each region having a veto--could have been
added as a third legislative chamber, or perhaps even to replace the U.S.
Senate! Even beyond Jackson’s fine job in 1832, thinking outside the box in
such occasions is invaluable in thwarting violent conflict from engulfing all
other possibilities of resolution.
For the slavery-reductionist advocates, I submit that the
Southern states were a significant portion of the Union and so were justified politically
in wanting to feel that they would not be rolled over in federal chambers—even though
the institution of slavery was squalid, especially to our modern sensibility in
the twenty-first century. The institution is for us unthinkable, undenkbar, vorbotten even in retrospect
(i.e., in a historical context). For us, to think of other human beings as wild
animals or property is nothing short of pathological. Even so, we must allow
ourselves to admit that because the Emancipation Proclamation did not occur
until 1863 (and did not apply to the five slave states that remained with the
Union, and had no effect in the rebel states), the immediate point of
contention in 1861 was not slavery itself where
it existed. The fear was more future-oriented,
and generalized, and the anger was informed by political theory—namely, two
contending versions of federalism—and declining political power. Accordingly, the conflict at hand could have
been resolved short of war without the South having to give up the institution
of slavery. The demand that Jackson's approach applied back in 1861 include the abolition of slavery where it then existed is unfair, for not even the new Republican Party was demanding then that the South give up its sordid institution!
Had Lincoln adopted Jackson’s approach at that time, the South
might then have moved years later to put its slavery in play. Perhaps the Southern states would have
accepted federal financial help with a new plantation labor system in exchange
for a repeal of the 1858 tariff, combined with the region having a veto on
federal legislation in a Council of Regions or a stiff qualified-majority
voting system in the U.S. Senate—either of which could have been enshrined as a
constitutional amendment. To be sure, any of these items could have been used in 1861 to walk back from war. At any rate, ensuing incremental
agreements, progress without war, might have been possible once cooler heads could again prevail. My point is that we
cannot assume that were Jackson’s approach put in place in 1861, slavery would
have endured for decades. But I digress.
Jackson was able to resolve his “either/or” by putting
together a deal in which both sides—the federal government and the state—gave something
and got something in return. Such an approach is superior to Lincoln’s “my way
or the highway” stance—that of making demands of the other side without any
accommodation or retreat on his side. Rigidity begets rigidity, and much harm
came ensue when two pieces of sandpaper are rubbed against each other. Even
beyond Jackson’s paradigm, however, of resolving a seemingly intractable “either/or”
within itself is the ability to see a third, fourth, and even fifth alternative
that may never be even thought of in holding fiercely onto the typical
“either/or” paradigm. In short, I think we make things more difficult than they
need be, even in assuming that the Civil War had to be fought. We do not even
recognize our own mental cages, so we go on making the same mistakes over and
over. To arrest this pattern, revisiting even “sacred cows” can be invaluable.
[5]
The use of the term divorce is incorrect as it assumes two equal or equivalent parties.
A state is not equivalent to a union of such states, hence the use of the term
for the secession of a state involves a category mistake. In the context of “Brexit,”
for example, “divorce” can be read as presumptuous for the secessionists.
