Guest Post=> Doctor Walter Williams=> The Burning Platform=> Were Confederate Generals Traitors?

This is an older Opinion Column, written by the renowned Columnist Walter E. Williams, Ph.D. way back in June, 28, 2017.  It's still important to me though as a Southern Partisan, a History Buff and as a fan of all things having to do with the "Civil War."  

You see, the United States, a rebellious, break-away colony of Great Britain, only became a great nation because of the Civil War.  Until that time, we were just an outpost too far away to defeat and control.  The US was England's Vietnam, a war that cost them lives and resources, which only diminished their power and put them on the slow path toward oblivion, which they've nearly reached, with the final nail in their coffin being the inability to leave the European Union.  It's only when we were willing to fight each other and die (killing a significant part of the country's male population) over who we were as a country, that other countries began to understand that we were serious and a force to be reckoned with.  But I digress.

Some say that "History repeats itself," while others say  "It doesn't repeat, it rhymes," between the past and present.  Which ever statement is more correct, the study of History is important and it should be studied,  as by understanding it, we can hope to recognize and avoid mistakes that others have made.  And while a small very vocal minority demand that we eliminate ALL TRACES of the scourge and shame of slavery on America as a nation, do they really believe that we, as a nation couldn't ever forget and couldn't go there again (with a different social, demographic or ethnic group)?  And though, once again, I restate that the Civil War was not fought over slavery, the winners of the war, in order to justify illegal actions from defying the Constitution and declaring war on the states that withdrew from the Union to what would be considered war crimes to include theft, arson, and defacto murder (by taking all of the food southern citizens had, with the effect of starving the remnants of families) in the looting and destruction of farms by union Soldiers, during Sheridan's campaign throughout the Shenandoah Valley and Sherman's march to the Sea through Georgia and into both South Carolina and North Carolina, the winners of the conflict got to write the history, covering up their actions at the expense of those who rebelled, fought and lost or died.

So without further ado, I preset Dr. Walter Williams view on whether the Generals of the South, who defended their homelands against enemy invaders, were in fact traitors and deserve to have their statues removed, destroyed and relegated to the dust bin of history.

Were Confederate Generals Traitors?

Guest Post by Walter E. Williams

My “Rewriting American History” column of a fortnight ago, about the dismantling of Confederate monuments, generated considerable mail. Some argued there should not be statues honoring traitors such as Robert E. Lee, Stonewall Jackson and Jefferson Davis, who fought against the Union. Victors of wars get to write the history, and the history they write often does not reflect the facts. Let’s look at some of the facts and ask: Did the South have a right to secede from the Union? If it did, we can’t label Confederate generals as traitors.

Article 1 of the Treaty of Paris (1783), which ended the war between the Colonies and Great Britain, held “New Hampshire, Massachusetts Bay, Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia, to be free sovereign and Independent States.” Representatives of these states came together in Philadelphia in 1787 to write a constitution and form a union.

During the ratification debates, Virginia’s delegates said, “The powers granted under the Constitution being derived from the people of the United States may be resumed by them whensoever the same shall be perverted to their injury or oppression.” The ratification documents of New York and Rhode Island expressed similar sentiments.

At the Constitutional Convention, a proposal was made to allow the federal government to suppress a seceding state. James Madison, the “Father of the Constitution,” rejected it. The minutes from the debate paraphrased his opinion: “A union of the states containing such an ingredient (would) provide for its own destruction. The use of force against a state would look more like a declaration of war than an infliction of punishment and would probably be considered by the party attacked as a dissolution of all previous compacts by which it might be bound.”

America’s first secessionist movement started in New England after the Louisiana Purchase in 1803. Many were infuriated by what they saw as an unconstitutional act by President Thomas Jefferson. The movement was led by Timothy Pickering of Massachusetts, George Washington’s secretary of war and secretary of state. He later became a congressman and senator. “The principles of our Revolution point to the remedy — a separation,” Pickering wrote to George Cabot in 1803, for “the people of the East cannot reconcile their habits, views, and interests with those of the South and West.” His Senate colleague James Hillhouse of Connecticut agreed, saying, “The Eastern states must and will dissolve the union and form a separate government.” 

This call for secession was shared by other prominent Americans, such as John Quincy Adams, Elbridge Gerry, Fisher Ames, Josiah Quincy III and Joseph Story. The call failed to garner support at the 1814-15 Hartford Convention.

The U.S. Constitution would have never been ratified — and a union never created — if the people of those 13 “free sovereign and Independent States” did not believe that they had the right to secede. Even on the eve of the War of 1861, unionist politicians saw secession as a right that states had. Rep. Jacob M. Kunkel of Maryland said, “Any attempt to preserve the union between the states of this Confederacy by force would be impractical and destructive of republican liberty.” The Northern Democratic and Republican parties favored allowing the South to secede in peace.

Northern newspapers editorialized in favor of the South’s right to secede. New-York Tribune (Feb. 5, 1860): “If tyranny and despotism justified the Revolution of 1776, then we do not see why it would not justify the secession of Five Millions of Southrons from the Federal Union in 1861.” The Detroit Free Press (Feb. 19, 1861): “An attempt to subjugate the seceded States, even if successful, could produce nothing but evil — evil unmitigated in character and appalling in extent.” The New-York Times (March 21, 1861): “There is a growing sentiment throughout the North in favor of letting the Gulf States go.”

Confederate generals were fighting for independence from the Union just as George Washington and other generals fought for independence from Great Britain. Those who’d label Gen. Robert E. Lee as a traitor might also label George Washington as a traitor. I’m sure Great Britain’s King George III would have agreed.

Walter E. Williams is a professor of economics at George Mason University. To find out more about Walter E. Williams and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate webpage at www.creators.com