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When in the Course of Human Events: Arguing the Case for Southern Secession
Bold and thought provoking.
280 pages, Hardcover
First published December 29, 1999
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226 people want to read
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Charles Adams
166 books7 followersLibrarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.
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July 1, 2016
This book has a not-new thesis, beloved by Marxists and Charles Beard: that economic reasons were the real driver behind the Civil War. Actually, Charles Adams tells us that only one economic reason was the sole driver—increased tariffs dictated by the North. As with all ideologically driven analysis, this ignores that all complex happenings have complex causes. Compounded with Adams’ numerous gross falsehoods, obvious ignorance, and bad writing, the result is Not Fresh.
I cannot speak with any authority to how much economic reasons had to do with the Civil War, although I can say with certainty that was only part of the reason the Civil War erupted. I suspect few rational people would argue that economic reasons were irrelevant. But I can speak with authority on legal matters and the structure of the American legal system, an analysis of which Adams heavily relies on to support his thesis, and in that regard Adams is comprehensively ignorant in a dishonest way.
Adams, at the beginning of the book, spends a lot of time establishing the supposed illegitimacy of Lincoln’s behavior, unoriginally casting Lincoln as a Julius Caesar-type dictator. Adams puts great weight, 10% of the entire book, on a discussion of Ex Parte Merryman. This was an 1861 case in which the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, Roger Taney, acting as a circuit judge (i.e., explicitly not in his Supreme Court role), granted a writ of habeas corpus to a man imprisoned in Maryland by the military for sedition. The military, and Lincoln, refused to comply, with Lincoln explaining the legal basis for his reasons to Congress a month later.
Adams repeatedly and shrilly claims that Lincoln’s failure to obey Taney’s writ meant that Lincoln was undermining the entire system of American constitutional government by “refusing to obey a decision of the Supreme Court.” For many pages, Adams goes on in this vein, comparing Lincoln to Caesar crossing the Rubicon at least ten times and never acknowledging that there could be any doubt about the legal conclusion involved. But Ex Parte Merryman was NOT A SUPREME COURT DECISION. It was the act of a lower court judge acting “ex parte”—that is, without hearing from the parties involved. This is typical for a writ of habeas corpus, but an ex parte opinion from the Supreme Court itself has limited precedence, and the opinion of one justice of several, not even acting as a Supreme Court justice, has no Supreme Court precedential value at all.
But Adams flatly denies all this, or does not understand it, and even bizarrely claims “Today, Taney’s opinion is studied in law school as one of the great decisions on constitutional law, with no dissenters.” Nothing could be farther from the truth—in fact, the core legal question involved (whether it is Congress, the President, or some combination of the two can suspend the writ of habeas corpus, which suspension is explicitly allowed in the Constitution) has never been settled by the Supreme Court. Lincoln, unsurprisingly, took the position that the President had that authority, which was not and is not an illegitimate position. Then Adams tells us that Lincoln’s response was to order the arrest of Taney, who only was not arrested because of the discretion of the arresting officer. But this is a conjecture supported by no historians at all; there is no evidence such a thing ever happened except the word of one man years later. It is the Civil War equivalent of claiming that the government is warehousing aliens at Area 51. Adams doesn’t say that—he treats the supposed arrest warrant as an acknowledged fact, though from his defensiveness you can tell that there is something wrong. In sum, the atrociousness of the facts and analysis in this chapter cannot be overstated.
The rest of the book has some interesting sections—for example, on the British press’s reaction to the Civil War. But given the total falsehoods and biased selection of evidence related to Lincoln’s suspension of habeas corpus, there is no way for a non-expert to tell whether the rest of the book is similarly filled with falsehoods and cherry picking. But the rest of the book is undoubatedly filled with tendentious writing, constant propagandistic phrasing favoring the South, unbalanced analysis, and vitriol unbecoming in a supposed historian.
For supposed historian is what Charles Adams is. He self-describes himself on the blurb of his book as a “the world’s leading historian of taxation.” I am not a slave to academic qualifications, but Adams appears to have none. It is hard to find information on him, but according to a 1993 newspaper article, he is “a former California lawyer who is a research historian at the University of Toronto,” and before that “taught history at the International College of the Cayman Islands.” The book prominently notes that it is the “Winner of the 2000 Paradigm Book Award.” I can find no reference to such an award except in connection with this book. The back cover has positive blurb quotes from four people from Emory, Auburn, USC and Florida Atlantic University. The first two are not from historians, but from a philosopher and a trustee who is not a teacher at all. The third is from an elderly historian who is a founder of the League of the South, a neo-confederate organization. The fourth, a short and anodyne quote, is from a historian about whom I can find little information. But none of this increases my trust in this book. I’m sure there’s a case to be made for some of Adams’s opinions, but he does himself and his positions no favors with this book.
I cannot speak with any authority to how much economic reasons had to do with the Civil War, although I can say with certainty that was only part of the reason the Civil War erupted. I suspect few rational people would argue that economic reasons were irrelevant. But I can speak with authority on legal matters and the structure of the American legal system, an analysis of which Adams heavily relies on to support his thesis, and in that regard Adams is comprehensively ignorant in a dishonest way.
Adams, at the beginning of the book, spends a lot of time establishing the supposed illegitimacy of Lincoln’s behavior, unoriginally casting Lincoln as a Julius Caesar-type dictator. Adams puts great weight, 10% of the entire book, on a discussion of Ex Parte Merryman. This was an 1861 case in which the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, Roger Taney, acting as a circuit judge (i.e., explicitly not in his Supreme Court role), granted a writ of habeas corpus to a man imprisoned in Maryland by the military for sedition. The military, and Lincoln, refused to comply, with Lincoln explaining the legal basis for his reasons to Congress a month later.
Adams repeatedly and shrilly claims that Lincoln’s failure to obey Taney’s writ meant that Lincoln was undermining the entire system of American constitutional government by “refusing to obey a decision of the Supreme Court.” For many pages, Adams goes on in this vein, comparing Lincoln to Caesar crossing the Rubicon at least ten times and never acknowledging that there could be any doubt about the legal conclusion involved. But Ex Parte Merryman was NOT A SUPREME COURT DECISION. It was the act of a lower court judge acting “ex parte”—that is, without hearing from the parties involved. This is typical for a writ of habeas corpus, but an ex parte opinion from the Supreme Court itself has limited precedence, and the opinion of one justice of several, not even acting as a Supreme Court justice, has no Supreme Court precedential value at all.
But Adams flatly denies all this, or does not understand it, and even bizarrely claims “Today, Taney’s opinion is studied in law school as one of the great decisions on constitutional law, with no dissenters.” Nothing could be farther from the truth—in fact, the core legal question involved (whether it is Congress, the President, or some combination of the two can suspend the writ of habeas corpus, which suspension is explicitly allowed in the Constitution) has never been settled by the Supreme Court. Lincoln, unsurprisingly, took the position that the President had that authority, which was not and is not an illegitimate position. Then Adams tells us that Lincoln’s response was to order the arrest of Taney, who only was not arrested because of the discretion of the arresting officer. But this is a conjecture supported by no historians at all; there is no evidence such a thing ever happened except the word of one man years later. It is the Civil War equivalent of claiming that the government is warehousing aliens at Area 51. Adams doesn’t say that—he treats the supposed arrest warrant as an acknowledged fact, though from his defensiveness you can tell that there is something wrong. In sum, the atrociousness of the facts and analysis in this chapter cannot be overstated.
The rest of the book has some interesting sections—for example, on the British press’s reaction to the Civil War. But given the total falsehoods and biased selection of evidence related to Lincoln’s suspension of habeas corpus, there is no way for a non-expert to tell whether the rest of the book is similarly filled with falsehoods and cherry picking. But the rest of the book is undoubatedly filled with tendentious writing, constant propagandistic phrasing favoring the South, unbalanced analysis, and vitriol unbecoming in a supposed historian.
For supposed historian is what Charles Adams is. He self-describes himself on the blurb of his book as a “the world’s leading historian of taxation.” I am not a slave to academic qualifications, but Adams appears to have none. It is hard to find information on him, but according to a 1993 newspaper article, he is “a former California lawyer who is a research historian at the University of Toronto,” and before that “taught history at the International College of the Cayman Islands.” The book prominently notes that it is the “Winner of the 2000 Paradigm Book Award.” I can find no reference to such an award except in connection with this book. The back cover has positive blurb quotes from four people from Emory, Auburn, USC and Florida Atlantic University. The first two are not from historians, but from a philosopher and a trustee who is not a teacher at all. The third is from an elderly historian who is a founder of the League of the South, a neo-confederate organization. The fourth, a short and anodyne quote, is from a historian about whom I can find little information. But none of this increases my trust in this book. I’m sure there’s a case to be made for some of Adams’s opinions, but he does himself and his positions no favors with this book.
January 4, 2016
This is the single best book on the politics surrounding the War of Northern Aggression. This is one of the ten books that every American should read.
There is perhaps no phenomena so perplexing as that of flag-waving, my-country-right-or-wrong Americans who speak reverently of both Abraham Lincoln and the "Founding Fathers" in the same breath. For Lincoln was opposed to nearly every principle that guided the establishment of our republic. In reality, there is a "second founding" that completely usurped the principles of the first, and it happened from 1861-1877, when nationalism triumphed over republicanism, power trumped liberty, and egalitarianism displaced the rugged meritocracy of our first four score and seven years.
There are more books on the so-called Civil War than perhaps any other subject in our history. Nevertheless, I know of none that captures the heart of the matter as succinctly as this one under review. Adams does an excellent job covering just about every aspect of the era that you were never taught in your gummint school history class. Not only are his arguments convincing, but they are well supported by citations from primary sources.
Especially revealing are his quotations of "unfriendly sources" who opposed the Southern cause, but were blissfully unaware of their duty to posterity to toe the party line that would be used to propagandize the generations of Americans to come. Adams demonstrates conclusively that the simplistic view that the War for Southern Independence was a Holy Crusade on the part of righteous Yankees to punish the racist Southerners is a canard. In fact, the typical Northerner was every bit as racist as his Southern counterpart (nearly the whole country, including Lincoln Himself, viewed blacks as inferior in that era) and the principal issues driving the war party in the North were commercial interests.
Space is too limited to rehash Adams' arguments in toto. Suffice it to say that this book is one of those books that no American should miss reading. I have lent it out many times, and it always comes back with an enlightened friend.
There is perhaps no phenomena so perplexing as that of flag-waving, my-country-right-or-wrong Americans who speak reverently of both Abraham Lincoln and the "Founding Fathers" in the same breath. For Lincoln was opposed to nearly every principle that guided the establishment of our republic. In reality, there is a "second founding" that completely usurped the principles of the first, and it happened from 1861-1877, when nationalism triumphed over republicanism, power trumped liberty, and egalitarianism displaced the rugged meritocracy of our first four score and seven years.
There are more books on the so-called Civil War than perhaps any other subject in our history. Nevertheless, I know of none that captures the heart of the matter as succinctly as this one under review. Adams does an excellent job covering just about every aspect of the era that you were never taught in your gummint school history class. Not only are his arguments convincing, but they are well supported by citations from primary sources.
Especially revealing are his quotations of "unfriendly sources" who opposed the Southern cause, but were blissfully unaware of their duty to posterity to toe the party line that would be used to propagandize the generations of Americans to come. Adams demonstrates conclusively that the simplistic view that the War for Southern Independence was a Holy Crusade on the part of righteous Yankees to punish the racist Southerners is a canard. In fact, the typical Northerner was every bit as racist as his Southern counterpart (nearly the whole country, including Lincoln Himself, viewed blacks as inferior in that era) and the principal issues driving the war party in the North were commercial interests.
Space is too limited to rehash Adams' arguments in toto. Suffice it to say that this book is one of those books that no American should miss reading. I have lent it out many times, and it always comes back with an enlightened friend.
June 17, 2009
Great coverage of the Southern War for Independence. As usual in those times, the motive was (as in the Revolutionary War) power, territory, and taxes (slavery was introduced as a motive two years into the war; until then Lincoln had no intention of freeing any slaves). The South paid the bulk of the taxes due to unequal tariffs; Confederate independence would have meant a drastic loss in revenue. As Dickens observed, the "love of money" was the root of the war. Lincoln was simply a dictator, a thug, and a war criminal, ignoring the constitution and jailing or hanging dissenters (including elected legislators and judges), and shutting down newspapers. The Union armies' atrocities and destruction of civilian property during the war also constituted war crimes. Reconstruction made the Ku Klux Klan fight a necessary guerilla war to restore sovereignty to southern states.
April 7, 2011
“When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with one another; and to assume among the Powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect of the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. - That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, - That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish It …” [bold emphasis added] - Excerpt from the Declaration of Independence of the United States of America, 1776
As Americans, we pride ourselves on our love of a good rebel. Whether it’s John Hancock signing his name to the above cited document in a large and sweeping hand “So that John Bull could read it without his glasses”, Geronimo’s infamous leadership of the Chiricahua in open defiance of the US Army or even James Dean’s effortless portrayal of his iconic Rebel Without a Cause; we love ‘em all. Well … that’s not entirely true … we don’t much care for the Confederacy of the Southern States of America in the latter half of the 19th century. And why not? What is it that makes their rebellion so different from our other beloved rebels’? I guess I’m not really sure anymore.
According to Charles Adams in his book When In the Course of Human Events, the South was well within their rights to secede from the union of independent states one century, two score and one decade ago. And he is not alone. At least not alone when it comes to 19th century thought. Many prominent 19th century Americans, and Europeans as well, believed in a states right to secession – especially in an independent union of sovereign states. Keep in mind, America was (at that point in its history) neither an empire nor a commonwealth. The sovereign states ultimately owed no allegiance to any nation, king or monarch. The Federal Government, according to the Declaration of Independence, derived its just powers “from the consent of the governed”. But what happens, as did in 1861, when citizens of those sovereign states no longer granted the Federal Government their consent? Well . . . according to Abraham Lincoln, they were to be imprisoned without trial, they were to have their property unceremoniously seized and/or destroyed and ultimately, they were to be killed as traitors. I would hardly call that “Government of the people, by the people and for the people” as Lincoln so ironically spouted in his sophistic yet revered Gettysburg Address.
Mr. Adams, throughout his book, makes an extremely strong case for the right of southern secession. What’s more, he makes his case based on the founding documents of the United States of America, the laws of the land and even by the words of Abraham Lincoln himself – along with the likes of Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, Chief Justice Chase, Chief Justice Taney and on and on and on. So what went wrong? If secession was an obvious state’s right, why did the War Between the States even take place? Adams has an answer. And it’s not the answer that many may expect. Why did the Civil War take place? Simply put: “The Love of Money” butting heads with a generation “enamored of war”.
Adams’ well researched answer to that often asked question echoes the thoughts of many including respected British writer and thinker Charles Dickens who took an interest in America’s troubles and noted that The American Civil War was, at its heart, “a fiscal quarrel.” It all came down to taxes and tariffs. Sound familiar? It should. Virtually every war in the history of the world can be traced back to disputes over little more than money or property. Why should the Civil War be any different? By 1861, the US government had raised the import tariff to an astoundingly harsh average of 47% (and with commodities such as iron, the tariff rose above 50%) with the passage of the Morrill Tariff. Due to Southern dependence on imported goods, this was effectively a non-uniform tax placed solely upon the South which ran counter to the Constitution itself.
Analysis of the compromise tariffs of the 1830s and 1840s reveal that the total revenues to the Federal Government were approximately $107.5 million. Of that $107.5 million, the South paid approximately $90 million in duties, taxes and fees (over 83%) while the North only paid $17.5 million (17%) per annum. To make matters between the states even more strained, the North received the lion’s share of all Federal subsidies and benefit dollars - In effect, receiving the most while paying the least. That was why Fort Sumter (a tariff collection post) was the first battleground of the War Against Southern Independence. And it was also no coincidence that the businessmen on Wall Street and the wealthy Northern industrial tycoons were the money-men behind Lincoln’s invasion of the South. Southern secession would effectively put a stop to their illicit profiteering off the backs of Southerners. It’s also no wonder that a common saying in the Southern States became, “It’s the rich man’s war, and the poor man’s fight.”
Throughout the pages of When In the Course of Human Events, Adams clearly and concisely makes the case for each and every one of his arguments. He even takes on many counter opinions and provides enough evidence to bring those opinions into serious question. The arguments are all well reasoned and amply discussed. And maybe the most interesting part of Adams’ work centers on the European views of the American Civil War. As outsiders, the Europeans provided an interesting third party view of the events without being blinded by the baggage that Americans brought with them regardless of what side they found themselves on. Many, if not most, Europeans viewed Lincoln in a harsher light than they did Napoleon himself. Each chapter of the book deals with another aspect of the war era whether it was before, during or after the action. And each chapter, while sometimes becoming a bit repetitive, still manages to provide interesting new evidence and fascinating writing pulled directly from the period by which to judge the ultimate reasons behind the penning of that horrible page in America’s still quite short history book.
Adams’ writing is clear, crisp and simple. Having a tax writing background, he comes across as more than comfortable when dealing with the financial aspects of the causes behind the war while handling the history with a modicum of respect, and occasionally, with a touch of well deserved yet bitter sarcasm. It becomes obvious rather quickly that Charles Adams is not a fan of war – any war. That is to be admired. But, seriously, who is? Yet it’s refreshing to hear from a voice who seeks out the truth of things rather than simply swallowing the history as it was written by the victors of the struggle. Adams’ citing of opinion writing of the day, his inclusion of period newspaper articles and political cartoons and quotes from a multitude of key players and participants allows his audience the unique chance to slip inside the heads of those Americans who lived through that dark period and to understand their mindsets and motives as they witnessed the senseless destruction of the lives of some 630,000 of their young countrymen. I came away from this book with a new and interesting perspective on one of the most violent and devastating events our country has ever had the misfortune of suffering and I doubt I’ll ever view the events of that era in the same light again.
In the interest of fairness, I must say there were a few times throughout this read where I found small issues with which I disagreed with Adams’ conclusions - though most of my disagreements stemmed from his moments of personal reflection rather than from his grasp of the history. And overall, I found his work to be a refreshingly honest look at the circumstances surrounding the war and the motives of all the parties involved. His unflinching look into the taboo issues of slavery and US race relations as a result of the Civil War and eventual Reconstruction were both fascinating and troubling – especially given today’s heightened politically correct climate. I won’t pretend to be a big fan of Adams’ prose, but the sheer amount of information, data and history he managed to put forth in this endeavor is, simply put, impressive despite his book’s diminutive size (some mere 230 pages).
So, in conclusion, will this book convince you to ignore what your third grade history teacher taught you about Abraham Lincoln, William Seward, Salmon Chase, Daniel Webster and Union generals Grant, Sherman and Sheridan? Will you find yourself looking at Lincoln as less of a deified benevolent statesman seeking the preservation of democracy at any cost and more of a tyrant trampling the Bill of Rights in a breathtakingly bloodthirsty pursuit of slaughter against the South? Maybe. Maybe not. But I’ll tell you one thing: after reading When In the Course of Human Events, I find it more than just a little fitting that Mr. Lincoln has been memorialized as a larger than life god-king in a Greco-Roman temple of worship, seated high upon his royal throne, looking down his crooked nose upon his lowly American Subjects...
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. - That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, - That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish It …” [bold emphasis added] - Excerpt from the Declaration of Independence of the United States of America, 1776
As Americans, we pride ourselves on our love of a good rebel. Whether it’s John Hancock signing his name to the above cited document in a large and sweeping hand “So that John Bull could read it without his glasses”, Geronimo’s infamous leadership of the Chiricahua in open defiance of the US Army or even James Dean’s effortless portrayal of his iconic Rebel Without a Cause; we love ‘em all. Well … that’s not entirely true … we don’t much care for the Confederacy of the Southern States of America in the latter half of the 19th century. And why not? What is it that makes their rebellion so different from our other beloved rebels’? I guess I’m not really sure anymore.
According to Charles Adams in his book When In the Course of Human Events, the South was well within their rights to secede from the union of independent states one century, two score and one decade ago. And he is not alone. At least not alone when it comes to 19th century thought. Many prominent 19th century Americans, and Europeans as well, believed in a states right to secession – especially in an independent union of sovereign states. Keep in mind, America was (at that point in its history) neither an empire nor a commonwealth. The sovereign states ultimately owed no allegiance to any nation, king or monarch. The Federal Government, according to the Declaration of Independence, derived its just powers “from the consent of the governed”. But what happens, as did in 1861, when citizens of those sovereign states no longer granted the Federal Government their consent? Well . . . according to Abraham Lincoln, they were to be imprisoned without trial, they were to have their property unceremoniously seized and/or destroyed and ultimately, they were to be killed as traitors. I would hardly call that “Government of the people, by the people and for the people” as Lincoln so ironically spouted in his sophistic yet revered Gettysburg Address.
Mr. Adams, throughout his book, makes an extremely strong case for the right of southern secession. What’s more, he makes his case based on the founding documents of the United States of America, the laws of the land and even by the words of Abraham Lincoln himself – along with the likes of Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, Chief Justice Chase, Chief Justice Taney and on and on and on. So what went wrong? If secession was an obvious state’s right, why did the War Between the States even take place? Adams has an answer. And it’s not the answer that many may expect. Why did the Civil War take place? Simply put: “The Love of Money” butting heads with a generation “enamored of war”.
Adams’ well researched answer to that often asked question echoes the thoughts of many including respected British writer and thinker Charles Dickens who took an interest in America’s troubles and noted that The American Civil War was, at its heart, “a fiscal quarrel.” It all came down to taxes and tariffs. Sound familiar? It should. Virtually every war in the history of the world can be traced back to disputes over little more than money or property. Why should the Civil War be any different? By 1861, the US government had raised the import tariff to an astoundingly harsh average of 47% (and with commodities such as iron, the tariff rose above 50%) with the passage of the Morrill Tariff. Due to Southern dependence on imported goods, this was effectively a non-uniform tax placed solely upon the South which ran counter to the Constitution itself.
Analysis of the compromise tariffs of the 1830s and 1840s reveal that the total revenues to the Federal Government were approximately $107.5 million. Of that $107.5 million, the South paid approximately $90 million in duties, taxes and fees (over 83%) while the North only paid $17.5 million (17%) per annum. To make matters between the states even more strained, the North received the lion’s share of all Federal subsidies and benefit dollars - In effect, receiving the most while paying the least. That was why Fort Sumter (a tariff collection post) was the first battleground of the War Against Southern Independence. And it was also no coincidence that the businessmen on Wall Street and the wealthy Northern industrial tycoons were the money-men behind Lincoln’s invasion of the South. Southern secession would effectively put a stop to their illicit profiteering off the backs of Southerners. It’s also no wonder that a common saying in the Southern States became, “It’s the rich man’s war, and the poor man’s fight.”
Throughout the pages of When In the Course of Human Events, Adams clearly and concisely makes the case for each and every one of his arguments. He even takes on many counter opinions and provides enough evidence to bring those opinions into serious question. The arguments are all well reasoned and amply discussed. And maybe the most interesting part of Adams’ work centers on the European views of the American Civil War. As outsiders, the Europeans provided an interesting third party view of the events without being blinded by the baggage that Americans brought with them regardless of what side they found themselves on. Many, if not most, Europeans viewed Lincoln in a harsher light than they did Napoleon himself. Each chapter of the book deals with another aspect of the war era whether it was before, during or after the action. And each chapter, while sometimes becoming a bit repetitive, still manages to provide interesting new evidence and fascinating writing pulled directly from the period by which to judge the ultimate reasons behind the penning of that horrible page in America’s still quite short history book.
Adams’ writing is clear, crisp and simple. Having a tax writing background, he comes across as more than comfortable when dealing with the financial aspects of the causes behind the war while handling the history with a modicum of respect, and occasionally, with a touch of well deserved yet bitter sarcasm. It becomes obvious rather quickly that Charles Adams is not a fan of war – any war. That is to be admired. But, seriously, who is? Yet it’s refreshing to hear from a voice who seeks out the truth of things rather than simply swallowing the history as it was written by the victors of the struggle. Adams’ citing of opinion writing of the day, his inclusion of period newspaper articles and political cartoons and quotes from a multitude of key players and participants allows his audience the unique chance to slip inside the heads of those Americans who lived through that dark period and to understand their mindsets and motives as they witnessed the senseless destruction of the lives of some 630,000 of their young countrymen. I came away from this book with a new and interesting perspective on one of the most violent and devastating events our country has ever had the misfortune of suffering and I doubt I’ll ever view the events of that era in the same light again.
In the interest of fairness, I must say there were a few times throughout this read where I found small issues with which I disagreed with Adams’ conclusions - though most of my disagreements stemmed from his moments of personal reflection rather than from his grasp of the history. And overall, I found his work to be a refreshingly honest look at the circumstances surrounding the war and the motives of all the parties involved. His unflinching look into the taboo issues of slavery and US race relations as a result of the Civil War and eventual Reconstruction were both fascinating and troubling – especially given today’s heightened politically correct climate. I won’t pretend to be a big fan of Adams’ prose, but the sheer amount of information, data and history he managed to put forth in this endeavor is, simply put, impressive despite his book’s diminutive size (some mere 230 pages).
So, in conclusion, will this book convince you to ignore what your third grade history teacher taught you about Abraham Lincoln, William Seward, Salmon Chase, Daniel Webster and Union generals Grant, Sherman and Sheridan? Will you find yourself looking at Lincoln as less of a deified benevolent statesman seeking the preservation of democracy at any cost and more of a tyrant trampling the Bill of Rights in a breathtakingly bloodthirsty pursuit of slaughter against the South? Maybe. Maybe not. But I’ll tell you one thing: after reading When In the Course of Human Events, I find it more than just a little fitting that Mr. Lincoln has been memorialized as a larger than life god-king in a Greco-Roman temple of worship, seated high upon his royal throne, looking down his crooked nose upon his lowly American Subjects...
December 14, 2022
Northerner. Live and grew up in NY state. Just finished my History degree from Syracuse University and took a course about American political thought last semester that went over Lincoln so we read the majority of his collected writings. I thought Lincoln was extremely brilliant after reading and studying him.
Fast forward to reading this book. I NEVER was made aware in any class, documentary or anything else i've come across in my life that went over how President Lincoln arrested basically any person who was critical at any level of a full fledged war on their southern neighbors. The author does not try to make an argument that slavery was not a problem- in fact he does a good job at addressing the evils of the institution, but the disregard for the constitution, legal process, holding people in prison without trials for years sometimes, trying civilians in military court and making up charges because they did not break any laws, the THOUSANDS of newspapers that were raided and shut down by the government... Really opens my contrarian eyes and I am very happy to have discovered and read this great book. The narrative you find yourself believing and buying into without any questions whatsoever throughout your whole life might not always be accurate.
Fast forward to reading this book. I NEVER was made aware in any class, documentary or anything else i've come across in my life that went over how President Lincoln arrested basically any person who was critical at any level of a full fledged war on their southern neighbors. The author does not try to make an argument that slavery was not a problem- in fact he does a good job at addressing the evils of the institution, but the disregard for the constitution, legal process, holding people in prison without trials for years sometimes, trying civilians in military court and making up charges because they did not break any laws, the THOUSANDS of newspapers that were raided and shut down by the government... Really opens my contrarian eyes and I am very happy to have discovered and read this great book. The narrative you find yourself believing and buying into without any questions whatsoever throughout your whole life might not always be accurate.
September 27, 2011
This was a very interesting book, a version of history of which I've not heard. However, the research is well-documented. I especially liked seeing a different side of Abraham Lincoln. People, especially some naive sects like to diefy people in history. This view of Lincoln was more realistic, honest.
May 28, 2017
Adams doesn't always maintain a balance between careful scholarship and sloppy neoconfederate polemic, but his book is generally interesting and sometimes convincing.
Given his background as a tax lawyer, it's not altogether surprising that Adams sees taxation as the fundamental source of antebellum sectional conflict. His treatment of the subject is anything but technical, and these essays were clearly intended for the layman.
Adams is primarily interested in critiquing Lincoln's authoritarian tendencies, and he includes a great deal of fascinating commentary from the contemporary British press, which was largely contemptuous of the North's rationale for conflict; it's particularly nice to have a number of scathing Punch cartoons by John Tenniel, no less.
Adams's deconstruction of the Gettysburg Address is a good idea which isn't fully developed: an essay about Northern "negrophobia" is interesting, but more careful and thorough work on this subject has surely been done by professional historians.
So, it's an enjoyable, sometimes insightful, rabble-rousing read, but not a first choice for the reader undertaking serious research on the subject. Those seeking a similar, non-mainstream approach are directed to Hummel's brilliant Emancipating Slaves, Enslaving Free Men.
Given his background as a tax lawyer, it's not altogether surprising that Adams sees taxation as the fundamental source of antebellum sectional conflict. His treatment of the subject is anything but technical, and these essays were clearly intended for the layman.
Adams is primarily interested in critiquing Lincoln's authoritarian tendencies, and he includes a great deal of fascinating commentary from the contemporary British press, which was largely contemptuous of the North's rationale for conflict; it's particularly nice to have a number of scathing Punch cartoons by John Tenniel, no less.
Adams's deconstruction of the Gettysburg Address is a good idea which isn't fully developed: an essay about Northern "negrophobia" is interesting, but more careful and thorough work on this subject has surely been done by professional historians.
So, it's an enjoyable, sometimes insightful, rabble-rousing read, but not a first choice for the reader undertaking serious research on the subject. Those seeking a similar, non-mainstream approach are directed to Hummel's brilliant Emancipating Slaves, Enslaving Free Men.
July 17, 2020
The Civil War is the most misunderstood event in American history. Lincoln was no abolitionist. At his inauguration, he strongly supported adding a constitutional amendment which would have made slavery a protected institution forever. He first mentioned slavery two years into the war, to court European help and to attempt to destabilize the south. The war was about taxes. It was unjust. We have sanitized history as a way to create a mythological common past and it has backfired immensely. Anyone who reads about Lincoln's blatant trampling of the Constitution in regards to journalists, dissenters and anyone who simply disagreed with him would never be able to call him a good man. He was a tyrant who caused massive death and destruction and destroyed the very plan of government that our forefathers laid out.
May 5, 2015
This was the first book that really opened my eyes to the fact that a story can be told and interpreted many different ways. Until this time, I hadn't viewed history as a story, but fact. This is an interesting read that paints a not-as-heroic portrait of Lincoln and the North at the beginning and throughout the American Civil War. Whether you agree with this side of the story or not, reading this will help question and complicate your own understanding of these events.
January 27, 2015
Liberty and independence is what drove the South to secede... economics played a huge role.
May 9, 2016
Excellent exposition of secession itself and why the secession of the southern states in 1860-1861 was not illegal nor unconstitutional regardless of the issue of slavery.
May 31, 2017
When in the Course of Human Events – Charles Adams
Every now and then I’ll pick up a pro-Confederate book and sample the argument one more time.
As a northerner by birth now living in the South, I try to understand the strong sentiment that the South was right and that it will (or should) rise again.
Charles Adams’ take is an extremely one-sided picture of the war. He jumps right in, asserting in the preface that abolitionists were terrorists. This is like calling pro-lifers terrorists. Some extremists shoot abortion doctors, but most reject such violence while advocating for a legal end to abortion. You can’t blame the radical abolitionists for the South’s refusal to free the slaves. Our author actually attempts to assert this. He holds the North’s oppression of the South after the war responsible for the rise of the Ku Klux Klan. These kinds of wild claims made it hard for me to take the book seriously and finish it.
A key thesis that I acknowledge is that there were economic factors at work, dividing the North and the South, apart from slavery. Adams wants to make that the only motive for secession, while many today believe slavery was the only motive for the war. Neither are right.
Slavery was doomed in the 1860s he says and would go away inevitably.
If so isn’t the South still to blame for resisting the pressure in the North to emancipate? They would rather secede than give in to the inevitable emancipation, making it seem much less inevitable. Lincoln’s “extreme position” only went as far as to not let slavery expand, and this was all it took for the South to secede.
Adams asserts that the issue of slavery was a pretext to unify Southerners to fight. Slavery wasn’t in jeopardy, so it wasn’t the reason to secede, he argues. But slavery WAS in jeopardy in territories headed for future statehood. He doesn’t mention this at all. Southerners viewed the abolition of slavery in territories becoming states as the forerunner to abolition in their states.
Adams tries to make parallels in chapter one to secessions from empires throughout history.
The difference is that few of these voluntarily joined as one nation originally; they were annexed forcibly to start with. These United States of America were not a conglomeration of disparate nations, but arose from a unified English culture, more or less.
Adams relies heavily on English opinion of the war, which favored the South. He colors them as unbiased outside observers, but their opinion had economic reasons. Britain was an economic competitor with the North and traded more with the South. It is a mark of Adams’ extreme bias, to the point of dishonesty, that he argues so strongly the North’s economic motive to keep the union, while muting England’s economic motive FOR secession, in siding with the South in their papers. To Adams, the South’s cause was noble; the North’s was malicious.
Why was secession so intolerable for the North? Why not just let the states go? Adams poses this as a rhetorical question, but there is a real answer. Secession produced a double evil: the division of a nation and the continuance of slavery. Political union makes us responsible for each other.
How could it threaten liberty to let the South secede? the author asks. Wouldn’t it advance liberty to give the states the self-determination they should rightly have? Well, to let the South secede would show that America could not bring about liberty for its citizens, the slaves.
Now, I know the North wasn’t pure as the driven snow, either. There was plenty of racism there, too. Adams makes a good case that there was little support for emancipation in the North.
Adams may be right that there was no huge political will in North or South for freedom and equal rights for blacks/slaves. So what was Lincoln to do? This fuller picture is indeed missing from the standard version of the history.
Was it an injustice to free the slaves without some provision of education or training for them?
Yes. But it would have been a greater injustice to leave them in slavery in a new nation, the Confederate States of America.
The lesson to learn from the war is not, as Adams contends, to let the South secede – to let political liberty trump social evils. It is to have the right reasons for any law or war, imposing government will on a people. His charges against how Lincoln conducted the war legally were new to me. If true (don’t know if I can trust Adams’ historical verity), this is a lesson to learn and not repeat.
In the end, both sides can look back and say, this should have gone differently. But they continue blaming each other. North to South: you should have freed your slaves willingly. South to North: this book. You shouldn’t have forced us to stay for your own economic reasons.
Here is a review from Amazon that summarizes the book and my perspective quite nicely.
“In case anyone doubted Garry Wills' argument in A Necessary Evil that the peculiar myths and distortions surrounding the nature, formation, and meaning of the U.S. regularly stir movements committed to myth rather than reality, Adams, a historian of taxation, delivers a polemic that proves it. The Civil War, Adams argues, was not about slavery or the Union; it was about tariffs! The Southern states had a right to secede. Slavery would have ended at some point, but Lincoln did not particularly threaten it. It was, Adams maintains, the "dueling tariffs" of the Union and the Confederacy that caused the war. Within his states' rights argument, Adams maintains secession's legality should have been determined by the courts, and slaveholders should have been compensated for the property they lost through emancipation. Adams relies heavily on the European press; he asserts, but does not prove, that U.S. abolitionists were a fanatical lunatic fringe. The author clearly anticipates controversy; it should not be long in coming.” Mary Carroll
Marilynne Robinson, Givenness of Things. Pgs. 96-97
“I know causes of the Civil War are widely disputed, but I have been reading the speeches and papers of leaders of the Confederacy, and for them the point at issue was slavery. Slavery plain and simple. They drew up a constitution very like the national Constitution, except in its explicit protections of slavery. Their defense of their sacred institutitons means the defense of slavery. Their definition of state’s rights means their insistence on their right to bring this ‘species of property’ into states that did not acknowledge it, and to make these states enforce their claims on such ‘property’ without reference to their traditions, to their own laws, or to their right to protect their own citizens.”
Every now and then I’ll pick up a pro-Confederate book and sample the argument one more time.
As a northerner by birth now living in the South, I try to understand the strong sentiment that the South was right and that it will (or should) rise again.
Charles Adams’ take is an extremely one-sided picture of the war. He jumps right in, asserting in the preface that abolitionists were terrorists. This is like calling pro-lifers terrorists. Some extremists shoot abortion doctors, but most reject such violence while advocating for a legal end to abortion. You can’t blame the radical abolitionists for the South’s refusal to free the slaves. Our author actually attempts to assert this. He holds the North’s oppression of the South after the war responsible for the rise of the Ku Klux Klan. These kinds of wild claims made it hard for me to take the book seriously and finish it.
A key thesis that I acknowledge is that there were economic factors at work, dividing the North and the South, apart from slavery. Adams wants to make that the only motive for secession, while many today believe slavery was the only motive for the war. Neither are right.
Slavery was doomed in the 1860s he says and would go away inevitably.
If so isn’t the South still to blame for resisting the pressure in the North to emancipate? They would rather secede than give in to the inevitable emancipation, making it seem much less inevitable. Lincoln’s “extreme position” only went as far as to not let slavery expand, and this was all it took for the South to secede.
Adams asserts that the issue of slavery was a pretext to unify Southerners to fight. Slavery wasn’t in jeopardy, so it wasn’t the reason to secede, he argues. But slavery WAS in jeopardy in territories headed for future statehood. He doesn’t mention this at all. Southerners viewed the abolition of slavery in territories becoming states as the forerunner to abolition in their states.
Adams tries to make parallels in chapter one to secessions from empires throughout history.
The difference is that few of these voluntarily joined as one nation originally; they were annexed forcibly to start with. These United States of America were not a conglomeration of disparate nations, but arose from a unified English culture, more or less.
Adams relies heavily on English opinion of the war, which favored the South. He colors them as unbiased outside observers, but their opinion had economic reasons. Britain was an economic competitor with the North and traded more with the South. It is a mark of Adams’ extreme bias, to the point of dishonesty, that he argues so strongly the North’s economic motive to keep the union, while muting England’s economic motive FOR secession, in siding with the South in their papers. To Adams, the South’s cause was noble; the North’s was malicious.
Why was secession so intolerable for the North? Why not just let the states go? Adams poses this as a rhetorical question, but there is a real answer. Secession produced a double evil: the division of a nation and the continuance of slavery. Political union makes us responsible for each other.
How could it threaten liberty to let the South secede? the author asks. Wouldn’t it advance liberty to give the states the self-determination they should rightly have? Well, to let the South secede would show that America could not bring about liberty for its citizens, the slaves.
Now, I know the North wasn’t pure as the driven snow, either. There was plenty of racism there, too. Adams makes a good case that there was little support for emancipation in the North.
Adams may be right that there was no huge political will in North or South for freedom and equal rights for blacks/slaves. So what was Lincoln to do? This fuller picture is indeed missing from the standard version of the history.
Was it an injustice to free the slaves without some provision of education or training for them?
Yes. But it would have been a greater injustice to leave them in slavery in a new nation, the Confederate States of America.
The lesson to learn from the war is not, as Adams contends, to let the South secede – to let political liberty trump social evils. It is to have the right reasons for any law or war, imposing government will on a people. His charges against how Lincoln conducted the war legally were new to me. If true (don’t know if I can trust Adams’ historical verity), this is a lesson to learn and not repeat.
In the end, both sides can look back and say, this should have gone differently. But they continue blaming each other. North to South: you should have freed your slaves willingly. South to North: this book. You shouldn’t have forced us to stay for your own economic reasons.
Here is a review from Amazon that summarizes the book and my perspective quite nicely.
“In case anyone doubted Garry Wills' argument in A Necessary Evil that the peculiar myths and distortions surrounding the nature, formation, and meaning of the U.S. regularly stir movements committed to myth rather than reality, Adams, a historian of taxation, delivers a polemic that proves it. The Civil War, Adams argues, was not about slavery or the Union; it was about tariffs! The Southern states had a right to secede. Slavery would have ended at some point, but Lincoln did not particularly threaten it. It was, Adams maintains, the "dueling tariffs" of the Union and the Confederacy that caused the war. Within his states' rights argument, Adams maintains secession's legality should have been determined by the courts, and slaveholders should have been compensated for the property they lost through emancipation. Adams relies heavily on the European press; he asserts, but does not prove, that U.S. abolitionists were a fanatical lunatic fringe. The author clearly anticipates controversy; it should not be long in coming.” Mary Carroll
Marilynne Robinson, Givenness of Things. Pgs. 96-97
“I know causes of the Civil War are widely disputed, but I have been reading the speeches and papers of leaders of the Confederacy, and for them the point at issue was slavery. Slavery plain and simple. They drew up a constitution very like the national Constitution, except in its explicit protections of slavery. Their defense of their sacred institutitons means the defense of slavery. Their definition of state’s rights means their insistence on their right to bring this ‘species of property’ into states that did not acknowledge it, and to make these states enforce their claims on such ‘property’ without reference to their traditions, to their own laws, or to their right to protect their own citizens.”
August 12, 2025
An excellent and well researched book on the coming of the war from the Southern perspective. In a field increasingly dominated by liberal historians who can shout slavery, but can't distinguish between their anus and a hole in the ground in regards to actual historiography, Adams represents a breath of fresh air. Highly recommended.
July 22, 2019
Adams has compiled an impressive amount of research on the contemporary opinions of not only Northerners and Southerners but even foreigners. He does not try to hide contrary evidence such as John Stuart Mills’ thundering condemnation of the South (although I wish he would have quoted some damning lines from Alexander Stephens’ infamous Cornerstone Speech). His lapses are more in a stubborn refusal to draw the likeliest conclusion from the facts, than in marshaling the facts themselves.
Southern sympathizers sometimes ignore the bold statements of Southerners prior to and during the Civil War, such as the secession resolutions passed by the various state legislatures, or the arguments made by early seceders to persuade other states to also secede (see Apostles of Disunion), in favor of the more dissembling reasons that Southerners later invented to justify themselves after the war. To his credit, Adams acknowledges these earlier statements, but seems to see a “real” reason behind the reason stated by Southerners themselves:
There is something strange, even irrational, about the thesis that the solid South seceded over slavery, even though many Southerners said so.
I have no argument that it was a strategic error to bombard Fort Sumter, but leaders often make illogical moves in volatile and impassioned times. Even a general in charge of a large army or a president at the head of a large country are still subject to human emotions. One might as well argue the Japanese must have secretly had a logical reason to attack Pearl Harbor even though the attack was counterproductive to stop the USA from interfering in their empire-building.
The author protests:
I would reply that if the only way to muster enough Southern support for the secession was to appeal to protection of slavery, then slavery thus became the primary reason for the secession. But for the call to protect slavery, there would have been no secession.
Finally the author seems to be engaging in whataboutism when he spends so much time on criticism of Lincoln making decisions that should have been left to Congress, e.g. Ex parte Merryman. I think it is quite possible to believe that Lincoln set some dangerous precedents regarding executive power, and yet also believe that the South’s primary motive was to preserve slavery and that the “right side” won the war.
Southern sympathizers sometimes ignore the bold statements of Southerners prior to and during the Civil War, such as the secession resolutions passed by the various state legislatures, or the arguments made by early seceders to persuade other states to also secede (see Apostles of Disunion), in favor of the more dissembling reasons that Southerners later invented to justify themselves after the war. To his credit, Adams acknowledges these earlier statements, but seems to see a “real” reason behind the reason stated by Southerners themselves:
There is something strange, even irrational, about the thesis that the solid South seceded over slavery, even though many Southerners said so.
I have no argument that it was a strategic error to bombard Fort Sumter, but leaders often make illogical moves in volatile and impassioned times. Even a general in charge of a large army or a president at the head of a large country are still subject to human emotions. One might as well argue the Japanese must have secretly had a logical reason to attack Pearl Harbor even though the attack was counterproductive to stop the USA from interfering in their empire-building.
The author protests:
Men will not willingly, and with zeal, die for an economic purpose, but they will die for some “cause” that has a noble purpose. Governments, when engaged in war, have to keep a patriotic “cause” alive and motivational, and cover up the economic realities that are the true reason for the conflict.
I would reply that if the only way to muster enough Southern support for the secession was to appeal to protection of slavery, then slavery thus became the primary reason for the secession. But for the call to protect slavery, there would have been no secession.
Finally the author seems to be engaging in whataboutism when he spends so much time on criticism of Lincoln making decisions that should have been left to Congress, e.g. Ex parte Merryman. I think it is quite possible to believe that Lincoln set some dangerous precedents regarding executive power, and yet also believe that the South’s primary motive was to preserve slavery and that the “right side” won the war.
March 12, 2013
Adams contends that it was economic self-preservation that forced the South into secession. As a libertarian economist Adams believes that the North wanted union so that it might continue its oppressive and unjust taxation of the South by means of the tariff. To prove his point Adams insists that the industrialists and bankers who financed the war machine had no interest in fighting secession until they realized that secession would open a virtual free trade zone immediately to their south (63). Lincoln is castigated for his obsessive concern for taxes and his hypocritical manipulation of the slavery issue to obtain victory. Furthermore, Adams claims, Lincoln could scarcely have cared about freedom since he illegally suspended habeas corpus, threatened to imprison Justice Taney, and shut down Maryland’s state government among many other vile deeds. Unfortunately for his arguments, Adams’ passion clouds his case with emotion. Adams also makes broad generalizations, assuming the worst motives for Northerners and the best for Southerners while presenting flawed historical analogies to prove his points (163). His key proof that the South was not fighting to preserve slavery is that secession was unnecessary and illogical to preserve slavery (1-2).
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
April 19, 2019
This is an excellent book concerning the root cause of Lincoln's War. It wasn't a moral cause of freeing slaves, it wasn't anything more than greed that caused a number of financiers up north to urge war. If they didn't, then they would lose what made them wealthy. It's past time to admit this and to admit that secession was and is still legal, and those in that generation didn't fight for slavery, they fought for independence and self government.
February 22, 2008
This is an excellent book that gives a differnt point of view than the one we all learned about in high school. It shows the Ceasarian view of Lincoln and its basic premise is the South did nothing that the colonists had not done when severing ties with England.
June 20, 2011
This book does not make it's case for many of it's arguments. In its attempt to counteract the hero-worship surrounding Lincoln it does not provide a balanced view of events. It would make a better magazine article than a book because of all the padding.
January 15, 2023
I want to give this guy some credit for writing a book back in 2000 going against a prevailing kosher narrative. But a lot of the views expressed in this book are just completely kosher/ignorant/false/ahistorical.
The first red flag was when he mentioned Grotius and how his work was the basis for international law to some extent, especially as it pertains to rules during war. I naturally thought of "Advance to Barbarism", which covers the evolution and devolution of such law, and shows to a large extent how the Germans during WWII honored international law, and of course the Allies did not, etc. But in no time this guy was throwing the Germans under the bus (again, falsely) and mentioning the Nuremberg trials repeatedly without ever mentioning that they were the kosherest of kangaroo courts that ever did concoct.
Another example that struck me as asinine was the following. To set it up, I've recently seen a documentary on the horrifying invasion by the US of Panama. This invasion happened in 1990, and again the book was published in 2000 and the preface to the paperback edition I have was written in 2005. So as I was reading the below, I was literally thinking of Panama, and he ended the whole dumb quote with the word "Panama." Here goes: "The so-called self-determination had to wait for the twentieth century to have meaning in international and domestic affairs. America at that time was no different from the imperialistic British or Germans or any other European power. Indeed, it was believed that it was the destiny of the American people to rule of North America from the Arctic to Panama.
I'll wrap this up here. There's lots of good historical info in this book, but also lots of ignorant, kosher, anti-racialist, anti-white, anti-Western rhetoric, including the below:
"Today we have come full circle and have developed a large sense of collective guilt for our ancestors' ethnic cleansing. We now look upon their [feather indians'] culture, their beliefs, and their love and respect of nature with awe and even reverence, and we are horrified at the way they were treated ..." Speak for yourself, Boomer! And maybe read "Scalp Dance" by Thomas Goodrich and "Empire of the Summer Moon", for starters.
The first red flag was when he mentioned Grotius and how his work was the basis for international law to some extent, especially as it pertains to rules during war. I naturally thought of "Advance to Barbarism", which covers the evolution and devolution of such law, and shows to a large extent how the Germans during WWII honored international law, and of course the Allies did not, etc. But in no time this guy was throwing the Germans under the bus (again, falsely) and mentioning the Nuremberg trials repeatedly without ever mentioning that they were the kosherest of kangaroo courts that ever did concoct.
Another example that struck me as asinine was the following. To set it up, I've recently seen a documentary on the horrifying invasion by the US of Panama. This invasion happened in 1990, and again the book was published in 2000 and the preface to the paperback edition I have was written in 2005. So as I was reading the below, I was literally thinking of Panama, and he ended the whole dumb quote with the word "Panama." Here goes: "The so-called self-determination had to wait for the twentieth century to have meaning in international and domestic affairs. America at that time was no different from the imperialistic British or Germans or any other European power. Indeed, it was believed that it was the destiny of the American people to rule of North America from the Arctic to Panama.
I'll wrap this up here. There's lots of good historical info in this book, but also lots of ignorant, kosher, anti-racialist, anti-white, anti-Western rhetoric, including the below:
"Today we have come full circle and have developed a large sense of collective guilt for our ancestors' ethnic cleansing. We now look upon their [feather indians'] culture, their beliefs, and their love and respect of nature with awe and even reverence, and we are horrified at the way they were treated ..." Speak for yourself, Boomer! And maybe read "Scalp Dance" by Thomas Goodrich and "Empire of the Summer Moon", for starters.
Read
November 28, 2019Just a review of the reviews, much nonsense coming from many viewpoints. As to the causes of the Civil War, one can do no better than to read the extant statements of several of the seceding states as to their reasons and justifications for secession. (https://www.battlefields.org/learn/pr...).
While a number of different rationales are offered, by SC in particular, which endeavours to emulate the tone and style of the original Declaration of Independence, there is not a single cause declared which does not relate to slavery. The Declaration made by Texas is in fact shockingly racist and is an overt statement of white supremacy. Let me repeat -- there is not a single rationale given by any of the rebel states which is not rooted in slavery.
As for secession itself: let us stipulate that secession was indeed a prerogative of any of the states originally, or even subsequently, forming the Union. Let us further consider the long deliberation and the process by which the Constitution was ratified and the Union established. Although the Constitution itself does not prescribe a method by which a state might lawfully proceed, one should consider that the long and deliberative process by which states formed and entered the Union to be a guide for the process by which one might exit the Union. Consider the analogy of the Union of the states to the union of a man and woman in marriage: two sovereign individuals pledge to join and become one, while yet remaining two. This is not mere romantic imagery, anyone who has studied the law knows that a married couple are a legal entity apart from the two comprising it. And yes, there is a studied process for dissolving THAT union. What the South did was analogous to a husband punching his wife in the nose, walking out, and declaring the marriage ended. No matter what your grievances, no matter how legitimate they may have been, opening fire on a Federal facility was an act of war, every bit as much as the farmers of Lexington and Concord opening fire on the Redcoats.
That was the bed you made, Confederates, and you were made to lie in it.
While a number of different rationales are offered, by SC in particular, which endeavours to emulate the tone and style of the original Declaration of Independence, there is not a single cause declared which does not relate to slavery. The Declaration made by Texas is in fact shockingly racist and is an overt statement of white supremacy. Let me repeat -- there is not a single rationale given by any of the rebel states which is not rooted in slavery.
As for secession itself: let us stipulate that secession was indeed a prerogative of any of the states originally, or even subsequently, forming the Union. Let us further consider the long deliberation and the process by which the Constitution was ratified and the Union established. Although the Constitution itself does not prescribe a method by which a state might lawfully proceed, one should consider that the long and deliberative process by which states formed and entered the Union to be a guide for the process by which one might exit the Union. Consider the analogy of the Union of the states to the union of a man and woman in marriage: two sovereign individuals pledge to join and become one, while yet remaining two. This is not mere romantic imagery, anyone who has studied the law knows that a married couple are a legal entity apart from the two comprising it. And yes, there is a studied process for dissolving THAT union. What the South did was analogous to a husband punching his wife in the nose, walking out, and declaring the marriage ended. No matter what your grievances, no matter how legitimate they may have been, opening fire on a Federal facility was an act of war, every bit as much as the farmers of Lexington and Concord opening fire on the Redcoats.
That was the bed you made, Confederates, and you were made to lie in it.
January 14, 2010
This book helped give me a better understanding of states rights. It also explains how we've come to lose many of our constitutional freedoms. My only problem is that I don't know Lincoln's intent. We can discuss his actions and agree that his actions weren't constitutional but part of me can't help feel that possibly his intentions were good. This is not to dismiss his mistakes, and who knows, maybe he did have mal-intent. But without knowing his true intent I feel we can't write off the man as being completely terrible. Maybe he was blinded by the craftiness of men around him and when he came to his senses they tried to silence him by his death...who knows.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
January 30, 2010
This book will by no means settle in the minds of its readers a complete understanding of the civil war but I think it makes the case that Lincoln was a dictator who ignored the constitution and people around him who disagreed with him.
Lincoln is a national hero but after reading this you may begin to think differently about this. Adams goes over, for most of the book, the problems with the reasons offered for war between the states by mainstream historians.
The love of money is the root of all evil and I seriously doubt its anything different with the Civil War. I would give this a 4 or 5 star review if it was more heavily foot noted on many of the quotes and statements.
Lincoln is a national hero but after reading this you may begin to think differently about this. Adams goes over, for most of the book, the problems with the reasons offered for war between the states by mainstream historians.
The love of money is the root of all evil and I seriously doubt its anything different with the Civil War. I would give this a 4 or 5 star review if it was more heavily foot noted on many of the quotes and statements.
August 6, 2008
The victors write history. Here's an interesting perspective of secession from the southern perspective. I don't know the accuracy, but it does provide possible explanations why secession and the civil war was about more than just slavery.
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