The Moral Necessity of the Civil War

So, Donald Trump said some stupid and ignorant things about the Civil War. Not much of that is worth discussing: the man says stupid and ignorant things because, well, he's stupid and ignorant, so there isn't much to analyze. The one part we should stop to think about is Trump's conviction that the Civil War should have been avoided. That's not an idea that he came up with on his own. He doesn't come up with ideas on his own. He picks them up from outside. This idea has been around a long time.

Trump regrets the Civil War. He wishes that the Civil War had not been fought. He got those ideas from other people, and those people are very, very wrong.

Let me say, up front, that if there had been a way to free every American slave without bloodshed, that would have been great. I am not for American lives being lost at Gettysburg, any more than I am for American lives being lost on Omaha Beach. But I do not regret that the United States defeated the Confederacy any more than I regret that United States defeated the Nazis. I will say this clearly: the Civil War was a good thing.

Trump is voicing the regret that the Civil War was fought at all, the regret that white Americans had to come to blows with one another over something as trivial as the freedom of black Americans. "No reason" for it, in Trump's words, as if the freedom of millions upon millions of souls were not a reason.

But history, our own history shows us that there was no peaceful bargain that could have freed the slaves, for the simple reason that slave-holders stubbornly refused to release their captives. There was no compromise on the table: the Confederacy rebelled rather than accept any further compromise.

And freeing the slaves, all of the slaves, is not a negotiable demand. Slavery is a terrible crime. It is inexcusable.

Now, somehow all of this has become impolite to say. You are supposed to be considerate of white Southerners' feelings about slavery. It is considered rude to speak about their ancestors' horrific crimes against millions of people without considering the delicacy of their feelings. In fact, you're supposed to say something polite about how awful Reconstruction is, which is like talking about how terrible the GIs who liberated the concentration camps were. I'm through with it. The truth is the truth.

Is this about regional pride? Okay then. As a Northerner, I take enormous regional pride in the defeat of the Confederacy and much deeper human pride in the abolition of slavery. Those are great and precious achievements. If you are an American but are not proud of these things, you cannot call yourself a patriot.

Now, saying this in such a crude way is considered "incivility." That was exactly how it was framed before the Civil War, as certain white people in both the South and the North deplored the rudeness and incivility of the slavery debate. By this, they meant the intemperate rudeness of the anti-slavery side. The same complaint echoes through the 1840s and 1850s: wasn't terrible that people couldn't just put aside their trivial differences and get along in harmony?

"People," in this formulation, means white people. What about the black people? They, and their human rights were the "trivial differences" meant to be put aside in the name of good manners.

Ever since the Civil War there has been a cultural and political project of reconciliation, meaning reconciliation between white Northerners and Southerners. This project, like the antebellum campaign for compromise and civility, focuses on solidarity between white Americans at black Americans' expense. Black citizens' rights are not only ignored, but deliberately kept out of the conversation as a potential obstacle to white people singing Kumbaya with each other.

This can't-we-get-along project fosters the ridiculous lie that the Civil War was somehow not about slavery, the explicit declarations of the Confederates notwithstanding.We're told that the Civil War was "complex" and had many subtle causes, as if the issue of slavery alone did not dwarf every single one of those causes. And the noble cause of white people's harmony requires Northerners to be tactful and nearly apologetic about the war. Northerners are expected to seek Southerners' forgiveness for stopping their ancestors' monstrous crimes against humanity.

To hell with that. The Civil War was about slavery, and it was the slavers' fault. No subtlety or nuance is important enough to change those basic facts. Those are the central truths, and the rest are details around the edges. The Civil War was never going to be fought over tariff policy.

But these are still the unwritten rules of civility in America, especially around discussions of race. No one expressly announces these rules, and no one could, because they are morally depraved. But they are carefully followed: you can observe them in our politics and our media. The unspoken rule is that white people are meant to be polite and respectful to other white people at all costs, and disrespect to a fellow white is mannerless incivility. Defending the rights (and basic humanity) of non-white people is never treated as an excuse for being "uncivil" to a white person, least of all a white man. Rather, "incivility" is treated as yet more offensive when performed on behalf of people of color. To impugn a white person, and disrupt the serenity of American intra-honky harmony on behalf of someone considered lower down the racial hierarchy is treated as a particular insult and outrage.

This is why in some conservative quarters calling someone a racist is considered the most horrendous and unpardonable offense. Not because the accused person is not a racist, but because they are, because (although this can not be stated) they consider it morally outrageous to violate a fellow white person's privilege or to embarrass them on behalf of anyone from another race. The "anti-racists are the real racist" response is built on the deep emotional conviction that blacks, Latinos, etc., are indeed inferior and that it is a mortal insult to be upbraided for the sake of a person that one does not accept as an equal.

Do you think I'm wrong? Watch cable news for a week. Listen to your loud uncle at Thanksgiving. Watch the tape of Mitch McConnell silencing Elizabeth Warren for incivility. The incivility is calling another white person to account for their racist words and deeds. Jeff Sessions's racist words and racist actions are matters of public record  It is treated as the greatest of sins. Shooting unarmed black children is deemed, by some, and honest mistake, but calling other people racist is treated as entirely beyond the pale.

That is the logic that imagines the Civil War an unnecessary tragedy: a world view that imagines white folk as fully alive and human, meant to live in untroubled harmony together, and views the problems -- even the most basic rights and needs -- of other races as insignificant issues that must not be allowed to disrupt white folks' mutual amity.


But the Civil War, although tragic in its means, resulted in triumph. The liberation of millions of human souls from bondage is one of the greatest victories of all time. Would it have been better if those millions of Americans had been freed voluntarily? Yes. But that was not going to happen. And they had to be freed. I thank God for that victory. And I bless the Republican Party that did it, a Republican party that we my never see again.

cross-posted from, and all comments welcome at, Dagblog