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Case in point: critics of the Mises Institute often imply that it, or various people associated with it, are “pro-Confederate” in the sense of regarding the Confederacy as a legitimate government or regarding slavery as a defensible institution. As Tom DiLorenzo and Tom Woods point out on LRC today, this charge is completely false, and the critics should stop insinuating otherwise.
On the other hand, though, it’s a bit silly to act as though that’s all the “pro-Confederate” charge comes to. Surely it’s true that the overall tone of much that has come out of the Mises Institute on the Civil War has been not just critical of Lincoln and the Union (both well-deserving of criticism) but sympathetic toward and soft-pedaling of the Confederacy. This seems, well, blindingly obvious. To exaggerate this tendency into unproblematic “support” for the Confederacy, as the critics tend to do, is unfair. To downplay it into nothing at all also seems unfair. (And so on, mutatis mutandis, for most of the other issues dividing the “Beltway libertarians” and the “fever swamp.”)
How could the US be considered more of an evil invader of the south than the US would be if it responded military to any country that attacked a foreign US military base? If Cuba attacked Guantanamo (on Cuban soil) would you call the US response an "invasion” or "a war of northern aggression"? In route to Gettysburg, didn't Robert E. Lee capture and send innocent free Negroes into slavery based on its racism? Didn't the Confederacy burn a Union town in Chambersburg, Pennsylvania on 30 Jul 1864?
Anthony Gregory -
2/7/2008
The only way in which the CSA was less evil is it did not launch an aggressive war. But of course, it did invade plenty of places whose people did not wish to be invaded. As an ethical individualist, I see no reason to consider the CSA's centralization and denial of groups within the South to separate as qualitatively any better than the Union's behavior. The CSA conscripted people before the Union. Any Southern conscript who died in the war was murder victim of both Union and CSA. Perhaps the Union murdered more people, it could be argued. But the CSA murdered plenty and had a goal of taking over Latin America. I mostly agree with Charles.
Putting aside the degree of horror, I see the Confederacy as analogous to the USSR and the Union as analogous to Nazi Germany. Both regimes were thoroughly evil. When the Union (Nazi Germany) invaded the CSA (USSR), it was the aggressor, however, so we should have more animus toward that institution regarding that one conflict. But that doesn't mean the CSA wasn't a totally evil and indefensible institution.
Steven Horwitz -
2/7/2008
<python> Ok, well... aside from the slavery, taxation, cartelization, and nationalization...</python>
Charles Johnson -
2/7/2008
"But in terms of the Constitution, the CSA was perhaps less evil than the North, wouldn't you agree."
I can't answer for Anthony. But I certainly wouldn't agree. Why in the world would anybody agree? The Confederate Constitution was deliberately modeled on the U.S. Constitution, and replicates nearly all of its defects. To these it adds new defects, in particular explicit new protections for "the right of property [sic] in negro slaves," in particular explicitly forbidding any "impairment" of this so-called right by the confederate Congress (Art. I Sect. 9), explicitly protecting Confederate slaveholders' ability to pass through or stay in other Confederate states with their slaves (Art. IV, Sect. 2), thus preventing any effective emancipation at the state level, and explicitly requiring that "the institution of negro slavery, as it now exists in the Confederate States, shall be recognized and protected be Congress and by the Territorial government" in all newly-acquired territories (Art. IV, Sect. 3). Alexander Stephens, famously, described the changes (which he regarded as an improvement) as putting "to rest, forever, all the agitating questions relating to our peculiar institution—African slavery as it exists amongst us—the proper status of the negro in our form of civilization."
I can find no particular at all in which the Confederate Constitution is preferable, from a libertarian standpoint, to the existing United States constitution, with the possible exception of its ban on protective tariffs (Art. I, Sect. 8). But the Confederate constitution does allow for revenue tariffs and other taxes, and the Confederates at the time happily implemented every sort of tax, cartelizaton, and nationalization during the few years of their independence. In any case, compared to the massive and obvious evil of perpetuating chattel slavery, swapping on set of taxes for another set of taxes seems like pretty small potatoes.
So what exactly is a libertaran supposed to find "perhaps less evil" in the Confederate constitution?
"And in fact the CSA Constitution banned the slave trade"
Obviously it did not; they went on trading slaves. It did forbid the transnational slave trade (except with the slaveholding states that remained in the Union), which is something different.
Nor is it something especially noble. The prohibition on the transnational slave trade in 1808 was pushed through originally by the Virginian slavers. Not out of any moral scruple about trading slaves, which they continued to do with gusto, but rather because certain powerful slavers profited greatly from the internal slave trade, even while plantation agriculture became increasingly unprofitable for the longer-settled parts of the South. The basic impetus behind both the 1808 ban and the Confederate ban was not emancipatory; it was just another damn protectionist scheme.
Roderick T. Long -
2/6/2008
I agree with Tom W. that there's no problem in "specialising," as it were, in pointing out the evils of one side, particularly when it's the side whose evils have received the least attention in the mainstream. But when I say that a lot of the Mises Institute's research is "sympathetic toward and soft-pedaling of the Confederacy," I don't just mean that it says less about the Confederacy's sins than about the Union's.
But in Mises and LRC publications (and I didn't especially have Tom W. or Tom D. in mind specifically), the Confederate cause is described as the "War for Southern Independence," and Robert E. Lee, Jefferson Davis, and John Calhoun are described (and here at least I do have Tom D. in mind) as great American heroes of liberty (and their birthdays are sometimes commended to us). I've heard "The Bonnie Blue Flag" sung at Mises events. Flying the Confederate flag is defended not just as a free-speech/property-rights issue but as a legitimate expression of "Southern heritage." Rothbard (in his paleo phase) described the Civil War as a just war on the southern side (as opposed to being unjust on both sides, which seems to me the conclusion that better fits Rothbardian principles), and even David Gordon describes him as "embracing the cause of the Confederacy." And so on. I don't think all this adds up to being "neo-Confederate," but surely it counts as positive sympathy for the Confederacy (not just for private citizens invaded by Northern troops, but for the specific institution of the Confederacy), not just lack of time spent in condemnation. I think it's a mistake to exaggerate its significance or take it out of context, as the critics tend to do, but it's not as though there's, as I put it in the cartoon, no hat there at all. (If we described Saddam Hussein and his generals as heroes of Iraqi liberty and sang Ba'ath Party songs around the campfire, the charge that we are pro-Saddam would at least not be completely wrongheaded, would it?)
And it's because there's been this tradition of actual positive sympathy for the Confederacy that I think there's more good reason for Misesvolk to spend some time criticising the Confederacy than there otherwise would be. I agree that there is no inherent reason that anyone who criticises the Union has to spend some time criticising the Confederacy too. But when those who criticise the Union have given some legitimate grounds for the impression that they are pro-Confederate, it seems to me they now have a reason they didn't have before.
Anthony Gregory -
2/5/2008
Well, I did have a rhetorical point. Yes, the CSA is pure evil, and yet, everyone knows how evil it was. . . which is why libertarians focus on Lincoln. Similarly, if libertarians were wondering why other libertarians were criticizing the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union, I would say, yes, the Soviet Union was pure evil, but the Nazi invasion is worth criticizing. (That is, I would make that argument, if anyone didn't know that the Nazi invasion of the USSR was evil!)
I don't think the CSA Constitution was any less evil, really, then the US Constitution, either.
Eric F. Langborgh -
2/5/2008
Okay, I understand better now where you are comning from. But given your explanation, what purpose does it then serve to say the CSA was pure evil? It is said as if it is a special case, but then it is perhaps only fractionally worse than any other government, including the North? I don't mean offense, but to me it seems that use of such terminology is reduced to that of only a rhetorical ploy.
I recognize the evils of both the North and South. But in terms of the Constitution, the CSA was perhaps less evil than the North, wouldn't you agree. (And in fact the CSA Constitution banned the slave trade, though not the practice of slavery). But I am using your terminology here: I don't care to so easily throw words like that around, when it only serves to empty the term when it *should* be applied, a la Stalin, Pol Pot, Hitler, etc.
I think I agree. I mean, how hard should we have to work to demonstrate we're not pro-Commie, pro-Nazi, pro-terrorist, etc? Maybe, strategically, we should be careful in our rhetoric to the outside world, but among libertarians we all know none of us are pro-whatever.
Woods writes: "Of course the Confederacy was a rotten government, but since the whole world knows that, and since the whole world obviously doesn't know about Lincoln's sins, and since the righteousness of that war is part of the official mythology of the current U.S. regime, it should be more than understandable why the bulk of our emphasis is on Lincoln and the Union."
Anthony Gregory -
2/5/2008
All governments are evil. The Confederacy was especially bad in American history, in that it upheld slavery, conscription, income tax, economic nationalization, militarist centralism, censorship, unjust detentions and so on. So did the Union, which was also evil. Perhaps the CSA was a little worse on slavery, overall (though during the war Lincoln enforced the fugitive slave law), but the Union was worse on aggressive war.
Eric F. Langborgh -
2/5/2008
Honest question:
In what way(s) was the CSA "pure evil?" Is it only b/c they were on the wrong side of the slavery issue?
David T. Beito -
2/5/2008
I agree that libertarians are too soft on Lincoln. However, any libertarian tendency to soft-pedal the pure evil of the CSA (even by studied ommission) only serves to undermine any case they make against Lincoln.
People are less likely to give libertarian anti-Lincolnites any credibility if they are seen in any way to give the CSA a free pass.
The historian who has struck the right balance on this is Jeff Hummel who, unfortunately, has not received even 10 percent of the attention given to DiLorenzo's cherry-picking lawyer's brief against Abe.
Anthony Gregory -
2/5/2008
And most people know it. But do they know the same about Lincoln?
I think, if anything, libertarians are often too soft on Lincoln and other US leaders -- people whom conventional wisdom elevates to the pedestal of sainthood.
David T. Beito -
2/5/2008
Well said Roderick. I have been pleased about the changing tone over at the Mises Institute, including the new approach toward Rosa Parks, MLK, etc., but the past tendency of writers there to soft-pedal criticism the CSA is a matter of historical record.
Trying to pretend it never happened won't wash with those of us who have been regular readers of the site over the years.
