All right, y'all.
Welcome back to the show.
It's anti-war radio.
I'm Scott Horton and we're celebrating Patriots Day today, April 19th, 2011.
And our next guest on the show today is Kirkpatrick Sale.
He's an American nonfiction writer, journalist, editor, and environmental activist.
Uh, in his nonfiction works, he focuses on political, economic, and ecological problems of contemporary society.
And, um, explores environmental and sociological issues from both historical and modern perspectives.
He's published seven books, including Human Scale, The Conquest of Paradise, Christopher Columbus and the Columbian Legacy, and The Green Revolution.
His most recent book is Rebels Against the Future, The Luddites and Their War on the Industrial Revolution, Lessons for the Computer Age.
Wow.
How interesting is that?
Welcome back to the show.
How are you doing?
I'm doing well.
Uh, actually it's 12 books now.
Oh, 12 books.
12 books.
I need to update my bio I have for you.
Right.
Well, I'm very happy to have you here.
And, uh, you have this very interesting article today at LewRockwell.com.
It's reprinted from a website called Vermont Commons and it's called the sesquicentennial is upon us, uh, referring to the 150th anniversary of the war between the states here.
And, uh, well, maybe that's where this interview ought to start the proper name, at least in your eyes for, uh, the war in America, uh, between 1861 and 65.
Well, I, there are several good names, but what clearly is the wrong name is civil war.
A civil war is a war in which one, um, part tries to take over, um, the power of another part, uh, as in all classic civil wars, as in, for example, Libya right now.
Um, but that's not what happened, uh, in 1861 at all.
Uh, the South wanted out.
They didn't want to conquer Washington.
They didn't want to take over the North.
They didn't want to preserve the union.
They weren't interested in anything like that.
Uh, it was a war of secession, just as our original war in 1775 was a war of secession.
The colonists didn't want to take over London, uh, Parliament.
Uh, they just wanted to be shed of it.
And the same thing with, uh, the seven states, uh, in 1861.
And so, uh, I, I would most, uh, aptly call it the war of Southern secession, but the war between the states is all right too.
And, uh, around here, uh, I'm, I'm living in the South now, around here, there are people who like to call it the war of Northern aggression.
That's not too far off either.
Certainly, uh, certainly true.
Well, and as you write, uh, the trouble started just about 150 years ago, I guess, uh, April 12th was really the beginning of the conflict at Fort Sumter.
Can you tell us about that a little bit for those who don't know?
Yeah, it was, uh, it was not quite then that it all started because, uh, in 1860, December of 1860, when South Carolina declared its independence, uh, it asked the federal government to, uh, give up, uh, the forts that they commanded in Charleston Harbor, one of which was Fort Sumter.
And, uh, in fact, the people of South Carolina sent a delegation up to Washington to deal first with Buchanan and later on with Lincoln to, uh, try to work out some terms by which, uh, they could, um, take over the forts in their territory where the, uh, Union soldiers were stationed and the North, uh, Lincoln particularly refused to have anything to do with them whatsoever.
He was pretty determined to have a war.
He had said in his inaugural speech that he wasn't going to invade any states because of secession, because secession was perfectly legal.
And he had, uh, uh, because of slavery, I mean, because he had, uh, slavery was legal, it was in the constitution, and, uh, he had no intention of dealing with slavery, but he said that if, uh, any, uh, any more than interferes with the tariffs and imposts that, uh, the federal government, uh, got all of its money from, uh, then he would, uh, consider invasion.
Well, that's exactly what, uh, the people of South Carolina were talking about.
They wanted to take over Fort Sumter, which is what guarded the Charleston Harbor and where the taxes and tariffs were collected.
They wanted to get the, uh, the, the Northerners out of there and then they offered to money to do it or other kinds of negotiations, but Lincoln refused.
And he sent down seven warships loaded with maybe as many as 1400 men into Charleston Harbor to resupply and reprovision Fort Sumter, the, uh, the Union soldiers in Fort Sumter.
Well, uh, South Carolina was having none of that and they regarded that as an act of war and so on the night of April 12th, uh, their response to that act of war was to show Fort Sumter and, uh, force it to surrender, uh, within hours.
And the next day, uh, the, uh, Union flag was lowered and a South Carolina flag was raised.
Nobody was killed except the, on the 37th cannon salute for the Union army.
About, uh, celebrating the, the, uh, taking down of, of the Union Jack, uh, the, uh, the cannon exploded and two, uh, Northern soldiers were hurt.
One was killed.
Uh, but the, the South did not start the war as is, uh, usually claimed.
And, uh, it was not the cause of the first casualties of the war either.
It was a, it was Northern, uh, aggression, the Northern act of war that, uh, began this terrible civil war so-called.
All right.
Now, um, there's really so much to go over there, but I guess one of the important points, uh, that should be said here is that, and I don't really know the numbers.
You probably know them better.
Uh, the, the numbers, uh, the number of states that seceded at the very beginning, it was really just the very deep South along the Gulf coast in South Carolina.
And then after Lincoln called up the rest of the Southern states militias to invade those states is when those governors and state legislatures said, no way we'd rather join them.
Exactly.
So exactly.
So, uh, the, there were just the, the, the five bold states of the deep South that declared secession originally.
Um, but a place like, uh, Virginia and North Carolina, they, they were not about to send troops, uh, for Mr.
Lincoln's cause against, uh, their brothers.
If, uh, they, uh, they joined the cause, not in any particular way because of slavery, although, uh, they were slave state, but they joined because, uh, because of, um, Lincoln amassing an army to invade them.
Uh, I really want to know if it wasn't about, uh, liberating all of the slaves of the South, why would not the North allow the South to go?
You mentioned tariffs there.
I wonder if you'd elaborate as to how much of a role that played federal revenue, that kind of thing, Northern revenue at the expense of the South, for example, uh, other economic, uh, motivation and so forth.
And also why is it so important?
Uh, why did you feel it was so important, for example, to write this piece, to try to set the record straight about what, what did and didn't really happen back then?
Well, you're absolutely right.
That, uh, the, um, the North, uh, invasion, uh, was not about slavery at all.
Uh, and nobody in the North, uh, ever said that it was, uh, in 1861, uh, or 62 for that matter, uh, it was not that it was, uh, basically to keep the union intact, um, that's a complicated issue there because, uh, why were they interested in keeping it intact?
And why would they go and fight a bloody war to make sure that it was intact?
Largely this is because, uh, the Republican party and the industrial interests of the North wanted to move, uh, the United States from being a, um, a sort of a, um, minor, uh, agricultural power to being a major industrial power, uh, capable of, uh, expanding its, uh, empire to the West and, uh, beyond if necessary, it was a time when in, in Europe, uh, states were modernizing in that fashion.
They were, they were, um, they were, um, centralizing, um, France, Germany, Italy, they were centralizing and industrializing, uh, in, in a way that was, was recognizably modern.
And in the United States, the Northern interests wanted to do that same thing.
Um, part of that meant that they needed to keep the supplies of the money coming in to the South and they could not afford to have the South be independent and a free trade zone, uh, which the Europeans, uh, would use and bypass the Northern ports.
They could not afford to have that happen.
So there were solid, uh, philosophical as well as economic reasons that the North insisted on keeping, uh, the union together.
Slavery was not an issue.
In fact, uh, uh, Lincoln said in his inaugural in 1861 that he had no intention of doing anything, uh, about slaves.
It wasn't until late in 1862 that the North was having a considerable hard time fighting the war and, uh, they, uh, could not get enough soldiers, uh, volunteering.
So, uh, they, they first, uh, insisted on a draft, uh, that, that was inaugurated to great protest, uh, particularly in New York city where there was a incredible, uh, riot for days.
Um, but when that didn't work, they said, well, here's a war measure, war measure.
That's the term that Lincoln used.
And so they proclaimed the emancipation proclamation in January of 1863 as a war measure, which would create, uh, slave rebellions in the South.
And, uh, those slaves would be allowed to come into the union army and they would get their freedom if they did so.
Uh, this was not something designed to free black people because in fact, in all of the Northern states where there was slavery, they were untouched by this emancipation proclamation.
They continued to have slavery.
Uh, it, it, it applied only to the South and it was intended only to create, uh, rebellions on the Southern plantations and to get troops, uh, for a faltering Northern cause.
Uh, there's so much for the emancipation proclamation and it was, uh, uh, it, it, it never was intended to free the slaves.
It, it applied only to, uh, Southern states where the North had no power to free the slaves.
And in those states in the North where it did have the power to free the slaves, it didn't do that.
Uh, and, uh, what's worse, uh, as the North, um, began to win and as, as it, um, pushed on the victory, uh, with that emancipation proclamation, uh, they were, uh, allowed to go in and destroy, uh, by, by the principles of Lincoln's war, allowed to go in and destroy civilians and the, the plantations, uh, where people had been living.
Uh, and there was no provision for what to do with these black people who were suddenly, uh, emancipated.
Uh, other schemes in other parts of the world, uh, had, uh, uh, worked out ways of trying to, uh, create a post emancipation society, uh, where blacks would have education, where they would get integrated into the labor force, uh, and where the slave owners would be compensated.
Uh, but none of that applied to Lincoln's emancipation proclamation.
It was just a declaration that the slaves in the South would be free.
And if they join the army, uh, the union would welcome them.
Yeah, it really wasn't until the 13th amendment that, uh, they really outlawed it.
Well, you know, um, but, but then, but then you see what, what had been caused by them, uh, was, was a, uh, a devastated society without any provision for either the whites or the blacks to, uh, be able to, uh, run a, uh, peaceful civil society in the future.
And that's why it didn't happen.
Right.
Absolutely.
I mean, the Ku Klux Klan was really a guerrilla army fighting the occupation during reconstruction of the Northern army.
And it ended up being the Klan that existed ever since then to varying degrees and has committed horrible crimes against, uh, you know, the weakest, not against the Northern occupiers who eventually left, but against the newly free blacks.
But it was purely a reaction to the military occupation of the North is where they really rose from.
The so-called reconstruction was, was a period that was, uh, almost designed to create a, uh, good, uh, white society, uh, in the, in the South, uh, didn't do much to create a thriving black society either.
Uh, you know, Jeffrey Rogers Hummel in his book, uh, emancipating slaves and slaving free men makes the case that if only the North had just let the South go, then none of the Northern States would be bound by the fugitive slave law.
And, uh, for that and, uh, numerous other reasons, slavery would have, uh, very quickly become economically, you know, irrelevant anyway, and would have been on the road to abolition in the South anyway.
Well, I think that's probably true.
He's a, he's a smart fellow.
Uh, the, uh, the interesting thing is that, uh, if, if the South was all about slavery, uh, by seceding, they could no longer, uh, have a fugitive slave law because that would be a, uh, that was a, a national law, uh, by seceding, then, uh, slaves could get to the North and there would be no provision, uh, for their return as there was, uh, before then.
Uh, so, uh, clearly, uh, the South was not all about, secession was not all about slavery.
And, uh, there is much to think that, uh, the, for economic reasons that slavery was gradually becoming an inefficient, uh, instrument.
It probably would, uh, apply to cotton production, but in other areas, uh, it was, uh, it seemed to be increasingly inefficient and expensive.
All right.
Well, we'll have to leave it there, but I really appreciate your time on the show, uh, Kirkpatrick.
Well, we have to start looking at our history and getting it straight.
Absolutely.
All right, everybody.
The article is the sesquicentennial is upon us.
It's at LewRockwell.com today.
See y'all tomorrow.
