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Thread: The Confederacy Was Tyrannical (Interesting Article)

  1. #1

    The Confederacy Was Tyrannical (Interesting Article)

    Written by John Robbins, who was a brilliant Calvinist philosopher and free market economist (and former Ron Paul chief of staff).

    This article really makes me rethink all of my mindless Confederate apologetics. Debating with JMdrake actually made me look into this issue more.


    Excerpt:

    Here is a partial list of the tyrannical policies of Southern governments (to say nothing of slavery itself). The central and state governments of the Confederacy:

    ► instituted military conscription;(5)

    ► used forced labor in their government-owned factories;

    ► preached anti-capitalism in Marxist terms, denouncing the “wage-slavery” of the North;(6)

    ► adopted military aggression as its foreign policy;

    ► carried out untold numbers of warrantless searches, seizures, and arrests, starting early in 1861;

    ► seized guns from civilians beginning in 1861 (after the war, governments of Southern states would enact the first gun control laws in the U. S.);

    ► printed paper money to finance military aggression, leading to runaway inflation;(7)

    ► repudiated lawful debts and contracts;

    ► took political prisoners;

    ► silenced dissent, curtailing freedom of the press, speech, and assembly;

    ► instituted a welfare state;(8)

    ► created, in less than three years, a bureaucracy of 70,000 in Richmond to manage the socialist Confederacy;

    ► regulated agriculture by imposing acreage controls on cotton and tobacco;

    ► nationalized control of foreign commerce, regulating exports, raising tariffs, and banning the importation of all “non-essential” goods;

    ► occupied East Tennessee with thousands of troops to prevent the counties there from seceding from the Confederacy (as the counties of western Virginia did).

    DeBow’s Review, a Southern secessionist journal, wrote in 1862: “Every man should feel that he has an interest in the State, and that the State in a measure leans upon him.... It is implied in the spirit which times demand, that all private interests are sacrificed to the public good. The State becomes everything, and the individual nothing.”(9) The political ideology of the Confederacy was statist and socialist, and that ideology was to become the dominant political ideology of the twentieth century.

    Those Latter Day Confederates who think the North and Lincoln are the sources of modern statism and socialism need to study more Southern history. With the exception of Black slavery, which was ended by the Thirteenth Amendment, the policies of the Confederacy have prevailed throughout the nation in the past century. Now we all live on an unconstitutional, welfare-statist, militaristic, faith-based federal plantation. Our massa in Washington tells us what to do, and his many overseers and drivers make sure we obey.Rather than rejoicing in the spectacular triumph of Confederate ideology in the twentieth century, Latter Day Confederates are resentful of the fact that they are not the masters and overseers they always imagined and presumed they would be.

    It is of course true that the North was not without sin, and I have no desire to portray it as such. The sins of the North are all we read about in the propaganda of the Latter Day Confederates. The North’s “cold, Satanic mills” are contrasted with the idyllic plantations of the South, where one could sit on the veranda and sip mint juleps all day long. That is, if one was a slave master, and not a slave. But had the South not defended slavery, ignored and violated the Constitution, and attacked the United States, the sinful policies of the North – such as a temporary income tax (later declared unconstitutional by an alert Supreme Court when Congress tried it again), paper money (though it was made once again redeemable in gold in 1879), and the temporary suspension of habeas corpus (all of which policies were also adopted by the Confederacy) – would probably not even have been contemplated, let alone temporarily adopted. It was the war the South started that brought all these evils on.
    http://www.trinityfoundation.org/journal.php?id=256
    Last edited by Sola_Fide; 08-04-2011 at 02:18 AM.



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  3. #2
    Neither side was pure and innocent. The CSA was more correct, but still not exactly a bunch of angels (neither was the Northern regime). The author's claims of the CSA's advocation of "Communism" is just empty rhetoric. A lot of people at that time believed in communal property, labor theory of value, etc (and plenty of people still do).

    I'm disappointed Robbins produced such a weak piece. He's done some great work on other things.

    ETA:

    "...My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that. What I do about slavery, and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save the Union; and what I forbear, I forbear because I do not believe it would help to save the Union. I shall do less whenever I shall believe what I am doing hurts the cause, and I shall do more whenever I shall believe doing more will help the cause. I shall try to correct errors when shown to be errors; and I shall adopt new views so fast as they shall appear to be true views." -Lincoln, in a letter to Horace Greely, 1862.
    Last edited by heavenlyboy34; 08-03-2011 at 11:57 PM.
    Quote Originally Posted by Torchbearer
    what works can never be discussed online. there is only one language the government understands, and until the people start speaking it by the magazine full... things will remain the same.
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  4. #3
    Quote Originally Posted by heavenlyboy34 View Post
    Neither side was pure and innocent. The CSA was more correct, but still not exactly a bunch of angels (neither was the Northern regime).
    This. Slavery is an abomination - no man is another man's master. That's what the liberty movement is all about, in my opinion. I guess we're inclined by nature to "pick sides". The fact is, I could pick n/either "side" - take a man like Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain, who left the good life at Boudoin College in Maine to fight against slavery (+), the preservation of the union was also part of his motivation (-), and thus he also fought FOR slavery. Thomas Jackson fought against the usurpers who would force [enslave] the citizenry of the south to acquiesce to the rule of Washington (+), but on behalf of a nascent state which upheld the institution of chattel slavery (-).

    The only side I pick is that of human liberty.

  5. #4
    Both sides were tyranical, despicable, governments guilty of all of the crimes mentioned.

    Though, you're not allowed to bring up the long list of crimes committed by the US government during the war without being called a racist who wants to bring back slavery, so criticizing the North makes more sense to me for those that reason. It is also important to remember that the South was just defending itself.

  6. #5
    All governments suck.

  7. #6
    Well yeah, they instituted martial law at one point. We're not defending the Confederate government just the principal of secession.

    Quote Originally Posted by heavenlyboy34 View Post
    A lot of people at that time believed in communal property, labor theory of value, etc (and plenty of people still do).
    This, subjectivist economics didn't catch on until later.
    -Molinarian-

  8. #7
    Quote Originally Posted by josh b View Post
    Well yeah, they instituted martial law at one point. We're not defending the Confederate government just the principal of secession.
    Oh for sure. I completely agree with nullification, seccession, interposition, etc. The author does too. I think he was trying to put it all in perspective.
    Last edited by Sola_Fide; 08-04-2011 at 05:05 PM.

  9. #8



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  11. #9
    It's no surprise to me since the CSA had a fairly similar Constitution to the U.S.

  12. #10
    Quote Originally Posted by Microsecessionist View Post
    It's no surprise to me since the CSA had a fairly similar Constitution to the U.S.
    Yes, even though the South was totally in the right about seceding their government sucked. There were multiple viewpoints in the Confederate movement and many for secession. Not all of them were beacons of liberty. The South however, in exercising their right to leave the union, was still in the right.
    -Molinarian-

  13. #11
    there was to be no true political parties and any & all hot potatos are thusly tossed to jefferson davis?

  14. #12

  15. #13
    It's a good thing they lost.

    Otherwise we would have had to rename our country to the Disjointed States of America.

    It just wouldn't be the same.
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  16. #14
    [list of bad things Confederates did]
    ...all of which can be understood as emergency measures during wartime, as any government would adopt in those circumstances.

    The fact is that the Southern Democrats, both before and after the war (up to 1896) were staunchly opposed to protectionism, inflation, central banking, federal regulation or subsidization of industry, immigration restrictions, and any other increase in the size and scope of the federal government that the Federalists/Whigs/Republicans were proposing.

    DeBow’s Review, a Southern secessionist journal, wrote in 1862: “Every man should feel that he has an interest in the State, and that the State in a measure leans upon him.... It is implied in the spirit which times demand, that all private interests are sacrificed to the public good. The State becomes everything, and the individual nothing.”(9) The political ideology of the Confederacy was statist and socialist, and that ideology was to become the dominant political ideology of the twentieth century.
    That's an idiotic analysis. The quoted statement is standard wartime propaganda. There's nothing specially socialistic about it.

    I notice that quite a few libertarian authors (ancaps I imagine) throw out the term socialism for anything short of laissez faire; this is stupid and/or intentionally misleading.

    Those Latter Day Confederates who think the North and Lincoln are the sources of modern statism and socialism need to study more Southern history. With the exception of Black slavery, which was ended by the Thirteenth Amendment, the policies of the Confederacy have prevailed throughout the nation in the past century. Now we all live on an unconstitutional, welfare-statist, militaristic, faith-based federal plantation. Our massa in Washington tells us what to do, and his many overseers and drivers make sure we obey. Rather than rejoicing in the spectacular triumph of Confederate ideology in the twentieth century, Latter Day Confederates are resentful of the fact that they are not the masters and overseers they always imagined and presumed they would be.
    Asserted with no evidence, and contrary to the facts of party politics in the 19th century, as explained above.

    It is of course true that the North was not without sin, and I have no desire to portray it as such. The sins of the North are all we read about in the propaganda of the Latter Day Confederates. The North’s “cold, Satanic mills” are contrasted with the idyllic plantations of the South, where one could sit on the veranda and sip mint juleps all day long.
    It sounds like the author has not actually read any revisionist history of the war.

    Our complaints against the North have nothing to do with conditions in Northern factories, or some romantic preference for rural living.

    Both sides undertook the same unsavory policies during the war.

    The case against the yankees is that they had been promoting these policies before the war, and continued to promote them afterwards.

    That is, for the yankees, these were not temporary emergency measures - these were policies they wanted to implement anyway.

    That is, if one was a slave master, and not a slave.
    Ah, yes, such moral superiority in the North, eh? I wonder if the author realizes how small the abolitionist movement was in the North, or that the North practiced segregation that would have made Jim Crow blush, or that the original plan for the slaves post-war was to deport them to Africa?

    But had the South not defended slavery, ignored and violated the Constitution, and attacked the United States...
    I don't have the patience to get into the whole thing (there's a long thread on the subject somewhere), but in summary:

    1. The South did not secede over slavery, it seceded in objection to the federal government's economic policies, esp. the tariff.
    2. The South had no aggressive intentions toward the North; it simply wanted out.
    3. Lincoln would not permit this, and threatened to invade the South to collect the tariff (that being the North's war motive).
    4. Ultimately, the war began because of Lincoln's refusal to negotiate over the evacuation of federal forces from the South (as at Ft. Sumter).

    the sinful policies of the North – such as a temporary income tax (later declared unconstitutional by an alert Supreme Court when Congress tried it again), paper money (though it was made once again redeemable in gold in 1879), and the temporary suspension of habeas corpus (all of which policies were also adopted by the Confederacy) – would probably not even have been contemplated, let alone temporarily adopted. It was the war the South started that brought all these evils on.
    Yea, not so much...

    Again, those were part of the Federalist/Whig/Republican platform throughout the 19th century, before and after the war.
    Last edited by r3volution 3.0; 12-01-2015 at 01:48 AM.

  17. #15
    Wasn't the Union tyrannical AND UNCONSTITUTIONAL too?

  18. #16
    Quote Originally Posted by Ronin Truth View Post
    Wasn't the Union tyrannical AND UNCONSTITUTIONAL too?
    Why can't they both be?

    Whenever I criticize the Confederacy on RPF I'm always confronted with "but the Union did (insert something bad the Union did)." I'm not sure how that's supposed to justify every action of the Confederacy but a lot of people act like it is. I criticize Lincoln on other forums but most people here are well aware of his faults. Ironically, I've been accused of being a Neo-Confederate on those forums for daring to criticize him.
    Stop believing stupid things



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  20. #17
    Quote Originally Posted by Tywysog Cymru View Post
    Why can't they both be?

    Whenever I criticize the Confederacy on RPF I'm always confronted with "but the Union did (insert something bad the Union did)." I'm not sure how that's supposed to justify every action of the Confederacy but a lot of people act like it is. I criticize Lincoln on other forums but most people here are well aware of his faults. Ironically, I've been accused of being a Neo-Confederate on those forums for daring to criticize him.
    What is your understanding of the word 'too'?

  21. #18
    Quote Originally Posted by Ronin Truth View Post
    What is your understanding of the word 'too'?
    I know what it means, and I don't know your intentions, but I was just pointing out something I've observed.
    Stop believing stupid things

  22. #19
    Quote Originally Posted by Tywysog Cymru View Post
    Why can't they both be?

    Whenever I criticize the Confederacy on RPF I'm always confronted with "but the Union did (insert something bad the Union did)." I'm not sure how that's supposed to justify every action of the Confederacy but a lot of people act like it is. I criticize Lincoln on other forums but most people here are well aware of his faults. Ironically, I've been accused of being a Neo-Confederate on those forums for daring to criticize him.
    Because if you decided to vilify both of them, and refused to pick one over the other, then you'd have to eventually apply the same reasoning to elections.
    And you can't do that, because it's the best system in the world and there is no improving on it.
    Or maybe it was that it's that it's the system we live under and there's no sense trying to change it when we could use it.
    Or constitutionalism.
    Or something.

    Just pick one. We don't have time to try to teach people to analyze problems. Brown people are moving in next door and we have to stop it.
    There are no crimes against people.
    There are only crimes against the state.
    And the state will never, ever choose to hold accountable its agents, because a thing can not commit a crime against itself.

  23. #20
    Quote Originally Posted by Tywysog Cymru View Post
    I know what it means, and I don't know your intentions, but I was just pointing out something I've observed.
    Please try to not assume that I have intentions.

  24. #21
    There would have been no secession, and no Confederacy, had it not been for unconstitutional laws passed by Congress. The Confederacy was a necessity because of war. Life in time of war is different.
    #NashvilleStrong

    “I’m a doctor. That’s a baby.”~~~Dr. Manny Sethi

  25. #22
    Quote Originally Posted by Tywysog Cymru View Post
    Why can't they both be?

    Whenever I criticize the Confederacy on RPF I'm always confronted with "but the Union did (insert something bad the Union did)." I'm not sure how that's supposed to justify every action of the Confederacy but a lot of people act like it is. I criticize Lincoln on other forums but most people here are well aware of his faults. Ironically, I've been accused of being a Neo-Confederate on those forums for daring to criticize him.
    I don't get it either. It doesn't matter how secessionist the Confederacy was, they ALSO ENSLAVED 5 MILLION PEOPLE! It doesn't get any more tyrannical than that. And no matter of evil things done by the North excuses this fact. Both sides in the Civil War were tyrannical regimes bent on forcing their will upon others. There are no "good guys" in the Civil War.

    The criticism of the South as being Socialist is interesting. You can argue white people were "free" but blacks were certainly subject to proto-Soviet rule; being forced to live on the land and not leave without government permission, having all their possessions declared their owner's, or "state," property, being forcibly dependent on their owners by state force for all their goods, etc. It is applicable in a lot of ways.
    Last edited by PierzStyx; 12-01-2015 at 07:02 PM.

  26. #23
    Quote Originally Posted by euphemia View Post
    There would have been no secession, and no Confederacy, had it not been for unconstitutional laws passed by Congress. The Confederacy was a necessity because of war. Life in time of war is different.
    No, it isn't. And excusing tyranny with any justification is just engaging in apologetics for statism. Rights are either inalienable or they are not. If they are then it doesn't matter if you're at war or not, violating them is evil.

  27. #24
    Quote Originally Posted by fisharmor View Post
    Because if you decided to vilify both of them, and refused to pick one over the other, then you'd have to eventually apply the same reasoning to elections.
    And you can't do that, because it's the best system in the world and there is no improving on it.
    Or maybe it was that it's that it's the system we live under and there's no sense trying to change it when we could use it.
    Or constitutionalism.
    Or something.

    Just pick one. We don't have time to try to teach people to analyze problems. Brown people are moving in next door and we have to stop it.
    The reactionary statism on these forums amazes and disappoints me.



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  29. #25
    Quote Originally Posted by PierzStyx View Post
    No, it isn't. And excusing tyranny with any justification is just engaging in apologetics for statism. Rights are either inalienable or they are not. If they are then it doesn't matter if you're at war or not, violating them is evil.
    Oh, yes, it was. There would have been no Confederacy without crimes against the Constitution, and the people, by Congress. Slavery was never the issue in Northern aggression.
    #NashvilleStrong

    “I’m a doctor. That’s a baby.”~~~Dr. Manny Sethi

  30. #26
    Quote Originally Posted by euphemia View Post
    Oh, yes, it was. There would have been no Confederacy without crimes against the Constitution, and the people, by Congress. Slavery was never the issue in Northern aggression.
    This^^ No one in the North was fighting to end slavery-not even Lincoln. (except abolitionists on both sides who wrote lots of tracts, ala Lysander Spooner)
    Quote Originally Posted by Torchbearer
    what works can never be discussed online. there is only one language the government understands, and until the people start speaking it by the magazine full... things will remain the same.
    Hear/buy my music here "government is the enemy of liberty"-RP Support me on Patreon here Ephesians 6:12

  31. #27
    Governments are tyrannical when they wish to exert control. That's my take away.

  32. #28
    Quote Originally Posted by euphemia View Post
    There would have been no secession, and no Confederacy, had it not been for unconstitutional laws passed by Congress. The Confederacy was a necessity because of war. Life in time of war is different.
    The secession took place before the war started, and in the Declarations of Causes given by Texas, Mississippi, Georgia and South Carolina (4 of the 7), the matter of slavery was cited numerous times.
    http://www.civilwar.org/education/history/secession/
    Last edited by robert68; 12-02-2015 at 05:36 AM.

  33. #29
    Quote Originally Posted by robert68 View Post
    The secession took place before the war started, and in the Declarations of Causes given by Texas, Mississippi, Georgia and South Carolina (4 of the 7), the matter of slavery was cited numerous times.
    http://www.civilwar.org/education/history/secession/
    How many times was slavery cited, when starting the war? Probably a lot, I would guess

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  34. #30
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    Whatever the alleged faults of the CSA, they don't justify the invading, raping, plundering and forcing it back into the Union.
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