On February 4th, 1861, delegates from six states that had seceded from the Union joined to form the Confederate States of America. Secession and the US civil war is a far more complex matter than the oversimplified version generally taught in schools. Unfortunately, anyone who questions this official narrative is usually branded a "neo-confederate" before any actual facts or reasoning are considered. This flawed understanding leads to flawed analysis and flawed conclusions. Nationalists are also often quick to say the Civil War somehow disproved the idea of secession, even though "War does not determine who is right — only who is left."

As an anarchist, I also see a different level of complexity than most. I will do my best to explain my perspective below. It is unfortunate that even in this day and age I must clearly state up front that I endorse neither slavery nor racism. It is also unfortunate that this disclaimer will mean nothing whatsoever to those inclined to making such baseless accusations against dissenters.

Lincoln and the Union

The usual Civil War narrative states that Lincoln fought against the Confederates to end slavery and restore liberty to a downtrodden people. This is objectively false. Lincoln was a white supremacist who stated repeatedly that federal authority over the states was far more important than the abolition of slavery, and even in his first inaugural address, he said,

I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so. Those who nominated and elected me did so with full knowledge that I had made this and many similar declarations and had never recanted them...

Lincoln also held to the philosophy that the Constitution of the United States was a binding contract that forbid any reconsideration once accepted. As he stated in the same speech,

I hold that in contemplation of universal law and of the Constitution the Union of these States is perpetual. Perpetuity is implied, if not expressed, in the fundamental law of all national governments. It is safe to assert that no government proper ever had a provision in its organic law for its own termination. Continue to execute all the express provisions of our National Constitution, and the Union will endure forever, it being impossible to destroy it except by some action not provided for in the instrument itself.

In other words, a handful of men long since dead could somehow rightfully bind their own descendants and the offspring of total strangers to a contract without their consent. This is patently absurd. It is no different in kind to binding the offspring of slaves into chattel slavery, and lays bare the hypocrisy of the narrative that Lincoln was somehow an icon of liberty. This is even before we consider his blatant violation of the Constitution he claimed to respect in his push for war, his imprisonment of dissenting newspapermen, and his conscription of soldiers. The result of abolishing chattel slavery is tainted by the argument that the end justifies the means employed.

Lysander Spooner, the anti-Union abolitionist, wrote a thorough deconstruction of the premises behind the arguments by Lincoln and his apologists in his essay No Treason, especially Volume VI. Political hagiography triumphs nonetheless in popular culture, and Lincoln is deified as a patron of freedom.

Of course, the false dichotomy of politics leads many to the erroneous conclusion that if the Union was bad, then the Confederacy must be good. After all, someone must be the good guy, right?

The Confederacy and secession

I support the principle of secession as an extension of freedom of association. No one can rightly be bound to an involuntary contract, whether an unsolicited magazine subscription or the imposition of a national government. However, the Confederacy secession movement was built at least in part on protecting the "peculiar institution" of slavery despite other more laudable claims against the Union government.

The secession of the South was massive hypocrisy, and the matter of slavery does remain a stain on that secession movement even though the issue of slavery is slightly more nuanced than usually portrayed. Repugnant as it is to consider another human to be property akin to livestock due to his ancestry, the paternalistic racism of the planter class was often portrayed in almost humanitarian terms. Meanwhile, Jim Crow was already alive and well in many parts of the North. One could almost plausibly argue that some Southerners had a more enlightened view of race than some Northerners. None of this can justify chattel slavery as an economic or social institution, or the portrayal of blacks as subhuman, incompetent, or otherwise worthy of subjugation though.

The conclusion of secession, while fundamentally correct by any rational and moral basis, was arrived upon by a flawed chain of reasoning that betrayed a fundamental misunderstanding of liberty, and its consequence was a new government of usurped authority. Indeed, the Union was taxing the South in order to fund the interests of its corporate cronies in the North, but the CSA taxed the South to fund the interests of its planter aristocracy instead, and that is hardly an improvement even without considering the aspect of slavery.

Abolition in whole, not in part

Whether your heroes are Jefferson Davis or Abraham Lincoln, perhaps you should reconsider placing such people on pedestals until after you have set aside the hagiographic pseudo-histories we have been given, and dissected the arguments both sides actually made. Unfortunately, this will mean critical analysis of people you have been told to respect, and criticism of heroes can lead to disillusionment. People don't want to abandon mythology for reality. This shouldn't overturn the idea of heroes, though. It just means you need to set your own standards for heroism and discover the forgotten true heroes. Read the works of the abolitionists and escaped slaves. History is more complex than you imagined, and filled with more interesting people than you can possibly comprehend, once you step past the superficial story served in schools and the media.

Meanwhile, the goal of abolishing slavery is not yet achieved. If 100% ownership of another individual is unconscionable, at what percent is it no longer slavery, and thus moral?

April 15th is coming. That is the annual income tax filing deadline in the United States. How much of your productivity does the government claim to own, and what informed positive consent have you actually given to this claim? We condemn Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union for their heavy-handed control schemes, but in what way is "license and registration, citizen," different from, "Papers please, comrade?" No economic activity is allowed unless you first gain the permission of a government official, or it is illegal, and will be punished by theft, kidnapping, or murder under color of law if you are discovered. Marriage licenses today are little more than a vestige of the anti-miscegination laws from the Jim Crow era and earlier, so how can a cultural tradition from prehistory now require political assent?

We are not free. What do you call such a state of subjugation to arbitrary authority?

Secession is neither discredited nor inherently racist. Abolition is not an accomplishment 150 years old. They are both ideas we need to continue to explore and pursue. Cryptocurrency is one possible weapon in our arsenal. The internet allows us to virtually bypass artificial national boundaries and the gatekeepers of approved media. Liberty is a dangerous frontier, but government authority is far more dangerous still. It isn't consistent anarchists who codified slavery into law or continue to wage total war, manipulate the economy for the benefit of corporate cronies, impose prohibitions on trade, and otherwise employ violence on a global scale against peaceful people. I trust my neighbors with liberty far more than I trust distant strangers claiming political authority. Where do you stand?

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