ęēØæé”å„: č±ā½åÆ«ä½é”
ēÆå:
Lincolnās Leviathan:
An Essay on American Race, Economics and Politics, 1850-1877
ä½č
: ęā½ē„ŗ ćčÆēé ā¾¼ē“äøåøćā¾¼ā¼ 8ē
ęå°ā½¼åø«: Matt Zahn
Prepare for your exams
Study with the several resources on Docsity
Earn points to download
Earn points by helping other students or get them with a premium plan
Guidelines and tips
Prepare for your exams
Study with the several resources on Docsity
Earn points to download
Earn points by helping other students or get them with a premium plan
The essay analyzes the way the federal government of the United States increased dramatically in size following the Civil war.
Typology: Essays (high school)
2020/2021
1 / 11
This page cannot be seen from the preview
Don't miss anything!
Related documents
Partial preview of the text
Download Lincoln's Leviathan and more Essays (high school) History in PDF only on Docsity!
Lincolnās Leviathan: An Essay on American Race, Economics and Politics, 1850- ä½č : ęā½ē„ŗ ćčÆēé ā¾¼ē“äøåøćā¾¼ā¼ 8 ē ęå°ā½¼åø«: Matt Zahn
I. Introduction The complication surrounding the race issue has haunted the United States since the time of the founding fathers. Newspaper headlines report demands and agitations of equality voiced by radical racial groups such as Black Lives Matter against the white supremacy and fascist inclinations they claim purportedly threaten the nation. The George Floyd protests and the accompanying iconoclastic demonstrations generated renewed debates on the slavery issue and the civil war, glorifying president Lincoln as the great hero of the black nation. It is the contemporary turmoil and the need of an historical awareness that inspires the thesis of this essay. The essay focuses extensively on the period spanning the political debates of the 1850s to the era of Reconstruction (1865-1877), with its final ending culminating in the controversial election of 1876 and the national developments that lead to it. The paper analyzes and questions the extent to which disagreements between the north and south over slavery, the āpeculiar institutionā, figured prominently in precipitating a national emergency. In sharp contrast to the common narrative that slavery, the brutal economic foundation of the agricultural South, is the one and only cause of the conflict known as the Civil War, what the essay seeks to claim is that slavery no doubt played a role in the unfolding of the war but what provoked the southern secession crisis was more of economic considerations involving tariff and monetary policies. The Civil War, supposedly waged over slavery, gave a strong impetus to the creation of a new American state, one that emphasized a powerful interventionist government that supervised and sponsored actively the affairs of the numerous states that constitute it. This Yankee Leviathan, a mythic Hobbesian monster that became the embodiment of America, emerged from these ashes of the battlefield into one of the most powerful imperialist states in the world by the end of the century. āThe purpose of American government was transformed from the defense of individual liberty to the quest for empire" (Dilorenzo, 2003). The story of this monster will be traced in the following pages. II. Body A little more than a decade following the capitulating retreat of the capable chief commander of the Confederate states, Robert E. Lee, in the famous courthouse at Appomattox 1 , the nation was threatened once again by political disputes involving the two opposing parties, severely aggravated by the resurfacing issues of slavery and the ever-sharpening economic disparities between the industrial north and agrarian south. The year was 1877, and the country was yet again plunged into a fractured state resulting directly from the controversial 1876 presidential election, where the two popular candidates engaged in advertisement campaigns intended to attract enthusiastic voters anticipating a change of the modus vivendi. The high voter turnout rate of 81.8 percent yielded the highest participation ratio in the history of American presidential elections. The disputed results of the election stemmed from the competition between the Democratic nominee Samuel J. Tilden, a (^1) The Battle of Appomattox Courthouse took place in April, 1865. Confederate general Robert E. Lee, after surrendering to Union forces, reached an agreement with the Union commander in chief and later president Ulysses E. Grant in their last military engagement.
and I will say in addition to this that there is a physical difference between the white and black races which I believe will for ever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality (Fehrenbacher, 1989). Lincoln was also one of the most prestigious lawyers of the nation. He made frequent appearances in the Illinois Supreme Court throughout his 23 year career as an attorney but he never defended a slave (Dilorenzo, 2003). He did, however, defend a slaveowner. The case involved smuggled slaves whose master wanted to retain them to work on his plantations. Lincoln was employed to defend the master, the prosperous farmer Robert Matson, who brought the lawsuit against his slaves. Lincoln lost the suit and the Illinois court proclaimed the slaves legally freed on October 17th, 1847 (Dilorenzo, 2003). He once wrote to a friend: āI confess I hate to see the poor creatures hunted downā¦ but I bite my lips and keep quietā (Zinn, 1999). As can be seen, Lincoln, before elected president, was in no favor of introducing the racial equality eagerly demanded by radical northern abolitionists. Instead of pursuing the course of emancipation and civil rights legislations in favor of equality, Lincoln, who was disliked by several prominent abolitionist, was denounced by a particular one, the leading black activist William Lloyd Garrison, as āThe President of African Colonizationā. Lincolnās solution to the black problem was one shared by a high proportion of the white population and several abolitionists: the systematic deportation of blacks back to Africa. He once invited and held a meeting in the White House with black leaders and requested āthem to lead an exodus of blacks out of the countryā (Dilorenzo, 2003). Garrisonās bitter comment was indeed justified, mocking the presidentās ill-noted resolution to the troubling issue. Taking inspiration from the experiment of Liberia, Lincoln was infatuated with establishing his own black colony near Panama named āLinconiaā. The colonization/deportation scheme reflected the racist perspectives against the black slaves commonly held by northern whites as it offered a simple plan to get rid of ,or cleanse, another racial ethnic group through direct expulsion and relocation. Lincolnās views on slavery were further expressed in his exchange of letters with the editor of the New York Tribune, Horace Greeley: Dear Sir:ā¦.I have not meant to leave any one in doubtā¦. My paramount object in this struggle (referring to the civil war) is to save the union, and is not either to save or destroy Slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave, I would do it; and if I could do 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 it helps to save this Union (Zinn, 1999). This excerpt, written in 1862 in the midst of a devastating conflict, preceded the Emancipation Proclamation, the culmination of Lincolnās āparamount objectā which, as implied, had nothing to do with his humanitarian concerns in regards to the slaves suffering under the āpeculiar institution of the southā. The painting of an altruistic, all-caring Abe whose primary goal was to remove the institution that sustained the backbone of American economy simply blurs the focus of the causes of the war. A month after his letter exchange with the prominent newspaper editor, Lincoln laid out his preliminary Emancipation Edict, which, according to historian Howard Zinn, āwas a military move, giving the south four months to stop rebelling, threatening to emancipate their slaves if they continued to fightā (Zinn, 1999). The imposition of a legislative edict extending throughout the nation, including the seceded south without any Congressional approval, was by most means an
unconstitutional act. It was an unprecedented exercise of federal authority that would establish a powerful precedent for the future United States, one where the states no longer figure much in making political decisions on the national platform. The declaration that was supposed to emancipate the slaves was nothing but a pragmatic political maneuver in a desperate situation when the Union had severe troubles sustaining the war front against an advancing well-trained Confederate army. 3 The practicality of the edict, as many historians and scholars speculate, could have been Lincolnās trump card āintended to incite a violent slave rebellion against the women and children left on the plantationsā, menacing and damaging the southern home front (Dilorenzo, 2003). Analyzing the results and impacts of this āfreedomā decree, Lincoln was ridiculed by his secretary of state William Seward, exclaiming, āWe show our sympathy with slavery by emancipating slaves where we cannot reach them and holding them in bondage where we can set them freeā (Randall & Donald, 1969). Seward pointed out that Lincolnās plan to emancipate the slaves from the rebel lands of the south was ill-conceived and an item of mockery. According to the newspaper World: āIt has none... the freedom declared by this proclamation is a dormant, not an actual, freedomā (Dilorenzo, 2003). The liberation of black slaves as guaranteed by the emancipatory proclamation was therefore a political and military strategy devised by the anxious president out of desperation, aiming not to free the blacks but to instigate a slave revolt to collapse the Confederate government and its home front. The edict extended to rebel territory and was perceived in both the north and south as a useless measure passed unconstitutionally by a president who seemed to be losing the war. Abraham Lincolnās views on slavery and his measures to deal with it form, however, only one wide aspect constituting the factors leading to the national crisis in the 1860s. The clash behind the secession of the south āwas not over slavery as a moral institution ā most northerners did not care enough about slavery to make sacrifices for itā but over differences in opinion between the elites (Zinn, 1999). The conflict was, bluntly said, about economics. Histories written revolving around the civil war must also include a topic concentrating on economics, the crucial determinant which, although commonly deemphasized, starting from the pre-war consensus to the post-war reconstruction era, played an instrumental role in precipitating the tumult. B. Abraham Lincoln and the Tariff If Lincoln and the Republicansā outlook on the black nation was not out of humanitarian concerns, what then motivated their opposition to slavery and its extension to the new territories? Lincoln had in his spirit a free soil blood, a racist ideology reinforced by the expansion of the national market and labor force. The northern elites were eagerly looking for āeconomic expansion ā free land, free labor, a free market, a high protective tariffā¦, a bank of the United Statesā, all provisions opposed by the agrarian south where cotton was king (Zinn, 1999). Free Soil indicated a soil without black settlement and involvement, one that deliberately excluded their representation (^3) After failing to gain a decisive victory over the Confederate forces in the Battle of Antietam (1862), Union armies were entrenched in Fredericksburg, Virginia, ending the struggle in a military deadlock.
characteristic of the Yankee nation today. What provoked the southās secession was not wholly about slavery but over a congressional passage of an external duties law disapproved by the vast majority of the antebellum population. C. Money and the Rise of Leviathan Not only was Abe Lincoln a proponent of tariff protection, his internal improvement plans also entailed the creation of a centralized monetary system. The characterization of the Civil War as a war of nation-building, mirroring the process of national consolidation in Europe in the late 1860s and 1870s, is an accurate description. The United States only became a nation-state following five years of destruction āwith 600,000 dead on both sides in a population of 30 millionā (Zinn, 1999). One of the mechanisms that sped up the process of nation-building was a central monetary system capable of transferring money and attracting investment and a supporting taxation program. Fitting in with the agenda of the āAmerican Systemā of the moneyed elites, the introduction of a federal banking and taxation system achieved major inroads under the leadership of the president. From the Internal Revenue Act (1862) 5 to the Legal Tender Act (1862) 6 , the government, under the pretense of war emergency, centralized the resources and legitimacy to print and get paid with money, also known as āGreenbackā currency. The National Currency Acts of 1863 and 1864 accelerated the accumulation of financial resources, draining the supplies of the states and concentrating them to a central agency under the command of the Leviathan government. āNationally chartered banks that could issue bank notes supplied to themā relegated private banks to ambiguity (Dilorenzo, 2003). War bonds sold like wildfire in the Union while the southās financial resources were on the brink of disastrous collapse. Lacking a functioning treasury and bureaucracy to accomplish the same deeds achieved in the north within a few months, the excess issuing of money brought the southern nation to inflation. The inflationary effects were aggravated by Union naval blockades, known as the Anaconda Plan and high tariffs, which the south was expected to contribute. The Civil War quickly turned into a total war, a war hinged on sustenance and the potential of financial financial resources running out. By the end of the conflict, the concentrated financial supplies never returned to their original pre-war state. Instead of saying that the Civil War led to this vast accumulation of resources, it might well be said that the Civil War was fought to serve this centralizing purpose; a war of nation-building indeed. D. Reconstruction and The Gilded Age As the previous passages suggest, the five years of bloody infighting was caused not so much by slavery but economic disagreements that created a āHouse Dividedā. Whereas wealthy northern industrialists favored the implementation of external duties and a centralized monetary agency, their (^5) The Internal Revenue Act (1862) created a revenue service to implement a new income tax (Tindall & Shi, 2013). (^6) The Legal Tender Act (1862) led to government issuing of Greenback currency and the establishment of nationally chartered banks throughout the nation.
southern counterpart sought to preserve their statesā rights against the northern aggressors. Military aggression quickly turned into an imperialist model of economic and political subjugation of the conquered southern territory. It was an experimental prototype that, through emulation and slight modification, later proved successful in colonial possessions such as the Philippines. The Reconstruction era, lasting from the end of the war to the disputed election results in 1877, oversaw enough drastic changes within a decade that the meaning and identity of the war becomes skeptical. Radical Republicans, following Lincolnās death, took the active role and decided to militarily and economically subdue the remnants of a defeated side. The tremendous sensation of triumph could not be opposed, neither by remaining southern plantation owners nor the new president from Tennessee. It was to be maximized for exploitation and punishment of the former rebels, a warning against disloyalty and treason. The visible manifestations of this northern pride came with the Civil Rights Act (1866), which gave blacks equal rights and the Reconstruction Act (1867), which divided the conquered land into five military districts while removing former confederate leaders and commanders from office. The thirteenth, fourteenth and fifteenth amendments were enacted into the constitutional framework of this new nation, a Hamiltonian revival with a grotesque facade of slavery as an excuse. All the legislative acts passed by the Union disregarded southern opinions and excluded southern leaders from the rights of habeaus corpus. The vast concentration of both resources and power to the government under Lincolnās presidency eventually overwhelmed Lincolnās hand-picked successor, the moderate Andrew Johnson from Tennessee. For the first time in history, a sitting presidentās veto power was discredited and he was impeached by congress. Applying Immanuel Wallersteinās world-systems approach where resources flow from the dependent periphery to the rich core nations, the south was the former while the northeast the latter. The southās capabilities of self-development were hindered, flooded with railroad corporations eager to make a profit off the vast lands both south and west. The internal improvement program envisioned by Lincoln was realized in a matter of four years after his death. The resulting transcontinental railway and its smaller constituents gave the first signs of a united America focused on utilizing its industrial facilities and becoming a world power of a magnitude comparable to their former colonial ruler. Corporate giants were formed to accompany the second industrial revolution, which could not have been possible without the funding of a centralized political system. The first big businesses grew from railroad finances and natural resources and later advertisement and retailing services. As active participants driving the economy forward, these corporate owners inevitably assumed a leading role in the political affairs of the gradually corrupting nation. The consolidation of corporatism at the political level raised questions about democracy and led to popular demands of reform. The Gilded Age was no misnomer. It was the direct consequence of the Leviathan, an absolute sovereign government depending on the corrupt spoils system, a type of clientelism with a veneer of democracy. An action force always fails to escape the experience of a reaction force. Beginning immediately after the war, local massacres of blacks were recorded, with black codes being established to reinstate the prejudicial treatment against the blacks. The apogee of this reactionary trend was with the formation of racist secret societies such as the Ku Klux Klan, aggressive groups
with the Republicans with the consent that the Leviathan be preserved and further cemented. Elections after the 1876 election, continuing until the present, have alternated between Republican and Democrat candidates. The relationship between the parties, although still cutthroat, lost the unique tension that prevailed during the Reconstruction era. Capitalism was the new vision. The federal government, after reuniting the two regions, āassure[d] the dominant whites political autonomy and non-intervention in matters of race policy and promised them a star in the blessings of the new economic orderā (Zinn, 1999). Raceās significance was redefined, having always been the veneer of elite struggle for economic power and dominance along a north-south divide. III. Conclusion Was slavery the cause of the Civil War? There is no way denying the involvement of the issue of slavery in leading up to this national emergency. However, to speak of this involvement as one of humanitarianism and altruism coming from the saviors and emancipators from the north distorts and neglects the factual evidences. Excluding the few radical abolitionists whose firm determination is not to be understated, most northerners by no means favored the abolition of the slave institution. The population of the north either supported the free soil heritage or the colonization schemes of expulsion which Lincoln was a strong proponent of. Slavery and the blacks were never really the priority of the American political system and it clearly revealed itself within a matter of a decade. Tariff duties and the creation of a federal banking system were the prerogatives of the expanded and consolidated Yankee Leviathan. The government gathered resources and authority at the expense of the statesā jurisdiction on the basis of Abraham Lincolnās āAmerican Systemā. Radical Republicans, Lincolnās masked successors, sought to promote the image of an equal nation but eventually surrendered to the powerful lure of economic gains. The Gilded Age and the arrival of big corporations manifested this tendency. The unconstitutional passage of law after law by a greedy federal state disregarding the natural rights of opposition marks the modern-day American empire, eager for power and control. By 1877, the black nationās betrayal was self-evident. Lincolnās agenda of economic centralization was a massive success, only achievable through the subjugation and later reconciliation with the agrarian south. Black were taken advantage of by northern industrialists and Republican politicians harkening back to their Hamiltonian hostility to Laissez Faire free-hand. The black nation was never a player on the stage but puppets at the Leviathan sovereignās arbitrary disposal, as the bargain of 1877 illustrated. Lincolnās dreams were fulfilled. He built the nation in his own visions and it today continues to thrive as the Yankee Leviathan. IV. References Dilorenzo, T. (2003). The Real Lincoln: A New Look at Abraham Lincoln, His Agenda, and an Unnecessary War. Three Rivers Press. Fehrenbacher, D. (1989). Lincoln: Speeches and Writings 1832-1858. The Library of America.
Murrin, J., & Johnson, P. (2008). Liberty, Equality, Power: A History of the American People (Fifth Edition). Thomas Wadsworth. Taussig, F. (1910). The Tariff History of the United States (Fifth Edition). G.P. Putnamās Sons New York and London and The Knickerbocker Press. Tindall, G., & Shi, D. (2013). America: A Narrative History (Ninth Edition). W.W. Norton & Company. White, R. (2017). The Republic For Which It Stands: The United States During Reconstruction and the Gilded Age. Oxford University Press. Zinn, H. (1999). A Peopleās History of the United States (Fourth Edition). HarperCollins Publishers.