SGACW Conclusion

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SECOND-GUESSING THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR:
A Reassessment of Revisionism and Repressibility

This study has attempted to salvage the Revisionist perspective from several major criticisms that have led to its slow decline since the early 1960s. The bottom line proposed here is that insufficient evidence exists for an outright dismissal of the basic premise that the American Civil War was a "repressible" conflict. Moreover, it has not and cannot be proven that the violent course taken was the only possible chance for emancipation, its sole claim to justice. When faced with the reality that neither "repressibility" nor "irrepressibility" are verifiable beyond doubt and without resorting to counterfactualism, it is inappropriate to dismiss either. If the recent trend toward writing "synthesis" history merely means fusing compatible interpretations while silencing the opposition, perhaps a more dignified goal would be "comprehensive history." The price being paid for the confusion of connotations is high.

The attack on this perspective has been four-pronged, and hardly concerted at that. Ramsdell's "natural limits" thesis was greeted with the ideological determinism of Genovese, who contended that a pervasive slaveholding ideology in the South, based on precapitalist economy and the social relations of a slave society, made confrontation with the modernizing, free-labour North a virtual certainty. These two cultures held radically opposed views of America's destiny. However, Genovese failed to portray Slave Power ideology as a cultural sentiment effective across both time and space. Instead he presented essentially a class hegemony that he admits possessed dubious influence in a frugal, predominantly "free soil" culture emergent in the territories. So with the ideology's potency constrained geographically, at least in practical terms, his argument for "irrepressibility" rapidly comes to rest on the contention that slaveholders in the older, established slave areas would never have relinquished their master class status. But even here the certainty of his assessment is undermined by historical realities in the oldest slaveholding region of all--the Chesapeake--where for almost a century reluctant masters had been manumitting slaves in response to changing economic and even ideological circumstances. And the change had been peaceful.

The second mode of attack was also against Ramsdell, springing from the economic arguments of Fogel and Engerman. They maintained that Southern slavery was dynamic and profitable, even capable of evolution to accommodate industrializing economies. This enticing challenge to "natural limits" was novel at the time and attempted to redefine the issue as something more aptly labelled the "creative limits" of slaveholders. For them the master class was comprised of flexible, innovative capitalists whose prime directive was generating wealth. Because slavery was lucrative, its application, expansion and perpetuation was limited only by the imagination of its practitioners as they strove to multiply its utility without undermining profitability.

However, Fogel and Engerman failed to see how a focus on flexibility, innovation, and the pursuit of wealth raised the possibility that economically-sound decision-making and experimentation might lead to slavery's decline. Profitability per se is little guarantee that a more profitable alternative will never arise. As well, they neglected a distinction between using small numbers of slaves in limited types of industry and actually establishing an industrial society based on a slave mode of production. In the end their argument for "irrepressibility" was damaged by its very emphasis on unlimited possibilities for Southern transformation. But most importantly, their format for rejecting "natural limits" actually hinted at a recognition that any significant expansion into the territories would have required slavery's metamorphosis, which paradoxically supports Ramsdell's opinion that climate and geography were substantial inhibitors.

Stampp expressed a common concern that formed the third type of critique, claiming Revisionists failed to appreciate the "temper of an age." Aimed at charges of agitation and crisis mismanagement, the objection displayed a reluctance to accept that sentiment can be manipulated and majorities forged where none may otherwise have existed. Craven might have agreed that a certain spirit prevailed but would have questioned both its nature and how it came to dominate, recognizing the complexities involved. To be sure, his conception of Northern society in particular was not very far removed from Eric Foner's. Both saw a dynamic, pluralistic society brimming with myriad competing interests: bankers, immigrants, preachers, refugees, raised hopes, broken dreams, and optimism still. But in assessing Civil War causation, Foner forgot this very picture and attempted to construct monolithic purpose out of fragmentation. And while his assessment of "free soil ideology" and the Republican synthesis is fascinating, like Stampp he fails to find the ignition in this great machine--agitation!

By contrast, Craven understood how fragmentation may have been manipulated into "resolve" not by some innate sense of common interest among abolitionists, industrialists, workers, and settlers, but by blatant distortions of reality of which slavery's alleged status in the territories was merely one. Chapter three's look at ethnocultural issues provides a framework for deconstructing this illusion of consensus, for understanding how the Republican synthesis and the "temper of an age" could easily be viewed as far less profound, and frankly more boring, than Foner and Stampp wished.

The final criticism addressed was Pressly's scolding of Randall for not appreciating the "rationality" of war in a given set of circumstances, bringing the focus back to the Revisionist premise that appropriate circumstances for risking, then justifying, war did not exist. The Randall position suggested "rational" decisions for peace at any step along the way might have undermined the proposed "rationality" of war in April of 1861 by reducing the likelihood of secession and the related crisis at Fort Sumter. In fact moderates and peace advocates, with compromise proposals dedicated to buying time for resolution, were present and highly vocal in the North and South throughout the 1850s and notably during the acute crises of 1860 and 1861. As shown, his claim is verifiable and renders contemporary agitators and war hawks account able for the results of their actions. Clearly there were options for both sides. Free will still has a place in Civil War causation.

If there are clear deficiencies in these four critiques of Revisionism, two objections less easily resolved are the perspective's alleged amorality regarding slavery and the controversial nature of counterfactual history, both of which involve value judgements. In regard to the first of these, however, it must be stressed that Revisionists claim war was unnecessary because slavery's expansion was doubtful and its long-term survival in the South unlikely. This inherently suggests force might have been justifiable under reverse circumstances, the existence of which is difficult to verify. The alleged evidence remains subject to interpretation, hardly sufficient grounds for the moralistic condescension of recent decades. In fact it is the slavery-culturalists who perhaps fail to see the deeper moral dilemma of defending violent action in the name of objectives that may well have been obtained with continued patience and mediation. Therefore even if one rejects Revisionist arguments it is irresponsible, possibly even hypocritical, to question their morality.

Some historians judge the counterfactual nature of the premise inappropriate to academic discipline. This paper has attempted to deflect this controversy by linking Ramsdell's twentieth-century perspective to the vision and awareness of Douglas. Had Douglas somehow survived to read the "natural limits" thesis, he might have contested the copyright. Craven also draws plenty of evidence from the antebellum era. While the claim that war was avoidable undeniably counters historical events, it is not as dependent on counterfactualism as commonly assumed.

Interestingly, it tends to be the critique of "repressibility" that raises "what if" scenarios. Genovese refers to the potential for slave-mines in the Rockies. Fogel and Engerman hint at the potential for widespread industrial slavery. But these scenarios distort actual antebellum circumstances. There were no slave mines in the Rockies, and very few slaves in the territories period. Moreover the South was an agricultural society with an economy based predominantly on cotton, which is the way it is approached by Revisionists.

Nevertheless there is no denying the counterfactual flavour of Revisionism. Any perspective condemning the outcome of historical circumstances must demonstrate that preferable alternatives existed. The only way to do this is through supposition, simply because all the evidence in the world presented in support of hypothetical proposals will still lack the power of historical precedent engraved on past events. Yet clearly one of the more purposeful exercises of historical scholarship is the weighing and judging of past decisions and the course of human experience in general. Denying the relevance of the counterfactual argument denies the historian the tool for undertaking this enterprise.

Moreover, the rejection of counterfactual speculation over Civil War causation is especially misdirected. Nowhere is supposition more appropriate than when judging the merit of past decisions that were themselves based on hypothetical musings. Lincoln based Republican party policy on a prediction that, in regard to slavery, the nation would become "all one thing, or all the other." 1 He had not the slight est hope of knowing this for certain. He later retracted the comment in the face of criticism, stating simply: "I only said what I expected would take place. I made a prediction only--it may have been a foolish one perhaps."2 Assumptions that the Dred Scott decision would secure slavery in the territories were also based on supposition quickly proven wrong by Minnesota's admission to the Union as a free state. Even Douglas could not know for certain that "popular sovereignty" would end the crisis merely because it was proving effective. William Seward's coining of the phrase "irrepressible conflict"3 was pure speculation at the time and therefore not proven visionary by the simple fact of war in 1861. It was too easy for men of his persuasion to allow this prediction fulfillment rather than work for a solution to a conflict already deemed "irrepressible."

In the end one wonders why Revisionism's "repressibility" concept has been sidestepped--"repressed"--by slavery-culturalists. It appears to be a viable position, standing up reasonably well to criticism despite some minor flaws. And its counterfactual spirit has undeniable value as a historical tool. Yet the notion that war may have been a colossal mistake, the result of irresponsible agitation, is avoided like the plague. Is this due to the overwhelming logic of "irrespressibility," of humanity's enslavement to fate? Or is it simply that it amounts to bad news? Randall notes that "in the sense of full realism war cannot be discussed" because "the human mind will not stand for it."4 Half a million dead, and that many again wounded,5 is difficult to contemplate indeed, let alone in the belief that such waste may have been unnecessary. It is not surprising therefore that the one definite benefit of the war--political freedom for African-Americans--is highlighted so desperately. When determinists decribe the conflict as the "second American Revolution," they feed this selective memory by conjuring the War for Independence, the birth of the nation and something called "freedom." Inevitably a sense of destiny is instilled in the collective psyche, as surely as Lincoln's "House Divided" speech imbued a providential sentimentality upon rather ordinary circumstances, by nineteenth-century standards.

But for those outside the paradigm the meaning behind Richard Shryock's fear of "optimistic" history crystallizes ominously against a metaphor offered by Craven, who defined sectionalism as "the First Cold War,"6 with all the trappings: propaganda, myth-making and political adventurism. To expand on this, consider the following comparison of catch-phrases from the 1850s with similar ravings a century later: "the Slave Power" and "the Red Menace," "slavery's westward expansion" and "the domino theory," "the Missouri Compromise Line" and "spheres of interest," "Beecher's Bibles" and the "Berlin Airlift," "ultimate extinction" and "containment," "the evil empire" and "the evil empire" revisited.

What gets lost in this destructive repetition are the ordinary people of both sides in both centuries who probably would have demanded peaceful solutions from their leaders had they been informed of certain realities. It is fascinating to note that in the early 1980s the eventual demise of the Soviet Union was virtually unforeseeable--unthinkable --until psychological and physical walls started crumbling. What is predictable, however, is the prevailing American interpretation of the event as the inevitable triumph of capitalism over socialism, the vindication of "the American way of life." But perhaps it reflects instead the statesmanship of Mikhail Gorbachev, a Soviet politician who believed accountability was best redeemed before the deluge. He pulled the plug on the cycle, something America should remember from Viet Nam but appears increasingly willing to forget in the wake of escalating "victories" in Grenada, in Libyan skies, in Panama and the Persian Gulf. Like it or not, the twentieth-century foreign policy of the United States suggests a broad pattern of militarism, made more palatable with appeals to "freedom" and "national mission," rallying cries which occasionally fit the context, but far more often ring hollow.

Whether various actions have been justified or not, it is the pattern which raises the concern. The problem is that whether British, South Carolinian, Spanish, German, Russian, Korean, Chinese, Viet Namese, or Iraqi, the United States--a.k.a. the Union!--seems to have required an "enemy" to help define national identity. What might loosely be called the "New England mentality" of 1776 and the 1850s has resurfaced in the latter half of the twentieth-century, a period so obsessed with defining what is "un-American" that few appreciate the tragic irony of what this mutation requires "the patriotic American" to become. All too often elaborate cases have been made as to why compromise must be sacrificed to ultimatum in the name of "freedom" and "tolerance" and "democracy."

Occasionally circumstances have justified this, but the overarching pattern remains suspect. From "self-evident truths" to "ultimate extinction," "unconditional surrender" and "mutually-assured destruction," Americans have railed in succession against King George, the Slave Power, Fascists and Communists in apocalyptic terms. It has seldom been remembered that the proverbial "Fort Sumters" smoldering across the historical landscape had complex causes which transcend, both in relevance and clarity, the traditional default allusion to the aggression and immorality of others. (How often do accounts of Pearl Harbour mention the nineteenth-century battleship-diplomacy of Commodore Matthew Perry, whose coercive commercial exploits helped to draw Japan out of its self-imposed cocoon?) For those interested in the causes of the American Civil War, the Revisionist perspective is a worthwhile reminder that historical accounts ought to begin with a comprehensive analysis of diverse contributing factors before one becomes too accepting of feel-good explanations which may not bear scrutiny quite as effectively as one would hope. We have been taught that the singular truth was "marching on," when in fact we find there were (and there remain) many truths.

1. From Lincoln's "House Divided" speech given at Springfield, Illinois, June 16, 1858. Fehrenbacher, p. 426.

2. Johannsen notes this revealing admission in Lincoln, The South, And Slavery, p. 82. For the original context, see Lincoln's speech at Chicago, July 10, 1858, in Fehrenbacher, p. 446.

3. William H. Seward's speech at Rochester, New York on October 25th, 1858 marked the birth of "irrepressibility" theories. What is often forgotten is that this rhetoric was merely a prediction that happened to come true, rather than legitimate evidence that the difficulties preceding the war could only have been "solved" viol ently. Stampp offers an excerpt from this speech in The Causes Of The Civil War, pp. 137-138.

5. According to figures presented by Randall and David Donald, war dead numbered close to 620 000. See J.G. Randall and David Donald, The Divided Union, p. 531.