Lincoln Was the Traitor, Not Lee
Was Abraham Lincoln a traitor? The question may jar some people who regard Abe as a semi-divine being. But the events of recent years are making it a relevant question, particularly to traditional Southerners who value their heritage. Following the War Between the States, the North and South, for the sake of reconciliation, came to a tacit agreement. Its general terms were something like this: Southerners would concede that it was all for the good that the North won and saved the Union under the guidance of Lincoln, while the South got acknowledgement that Confederates were honorable men who did their duty as they saw it—even if their view of that duty was perhaps mistaken. In retrospect, it really wasn’t a great bargain for the Southerners, but the agreement promoted harmony between the sections. It substantially lasted through the 1980s, which saw a couple of made-for-TV movies about the war which were fairly even-handed.
The deal started to unravel around 1990 with the airing of Ken Burn’s “The Civil War.” This series recycled the Righteous Cause Myth (RCM) of Northern partisans during the war, namely that the North, from the purest of motives, waged holy warfare against evil and traitorous Southerners. The RCM allows no possibility that slavery could have ended without war—as it did in most places in the 19th century--or that the South had legal justification for leaving the Glorious Union. The RCM has gained powerful momentum during recent decades, which has culminated with the removal and destruction of many Confederate monuments. The RCM now fervently contends that Confederate General Robert E. Lee, once respected by Northerners as well as Southerners, was a villain and a “traitor.”
Now that the North-South tacit bargain is broken, Southerners have no obligation to abide by it. That being the case, it’s time for a critical look at Abraham Lincoln. The truth is that he, rather than Lee, deserves the title of traitor. The issue with Lee is simply this: If secession was lawful, then it was not treason. In antebellum America the right of states to secede was the overwhelming consensus. President and Founding Father Thomas Jefferson endorsed this right, and as late as 1848, so did Abraham Lincoln.
So why did Lincoln change his mind? To answer briefly, his concern for the Union trumped all other principles. And what was the source of that concern? Mainly it was his desire to serve the monied people of the North who wanted economic advantage over the South and viewed secession as a threat to their commerce and profits. Robert E. Lee had a very different perspective. He properly understood that the Union involved a voluntary compact among sovereign states, and that this decentralized arrangement was a primary safeguard for liberty. When the Constitution was being considered, its leading architect James Madison said the federal government should not have authority to deploy military forces against the states. Lee upheld this view when he stated that he had no affection for a Union ”maintained by swords and bayonets.”
Lincoln unfortunately had that affection, and with it he betrayed the ideals of the American Revolution, as expressed in our Declaration of Independence. That document affirmed the right of a people to form an independent government of their choosing. By denying this option to the South, Lincoln played the role of King George III of Britain, as he opposed the American colonists. Lincoln’s betrayal also fit the legal definition of treason as defined by the Constitution. Article III, Section 3 states that “Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying war against them [the states].”
The upper tier of Southern states, Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Arkansas initially rejected secession. What prompted them to withdraw was Lincoln’s demand that they provide troops for an invasion of the states of the lower South that had left the Union. This action confirmed the worst fears of the South, namely that they were in a Union which threatened their political liberty, their economic well-being, and social peace. With respect to the latter, Southerners were alarmed by a shrill abolitionist movement, typified by the fanatic John Brown, which advocated insurrection and race war as the preferred way to end slavery.
The reason for Southern secession was not complex at all. Southerners saw no point in a union with a large body of people who disliked them and wished them harm. That intention became even more undeniable after the war, as the excesses of Reconstruction unfolded.
The Confederates were patriotic Americans who revered the Founding Fathers. Their country, the Confederate States of America, aimed to uphold the intent of the Founders to safeguard political liberty with decentralized government, grounded in state’s rights. Lincoln betrayed that vision with his consolidated authoritarian government. The Righteous Cause mythologists claim that he went to war to end slavery, even as he acted to enslave free men in a Union they wanted to leave. Also, it was this “great emancipator” who—to discourage secession-- endorsed a constitutional amendment to safeguard slavery where it already existed. Only much later did he embrace abolition to give his power-seeking cause the appearance of a moral crusade.
Lincoln’s betrayal has had lasting consequences. After the war, Robert E. Lee predicted that the Union victory would create a government which would be “aggressive abroad and despotic at home.” Today, our federal government is fulfilling that prophecy as it entangles us in endless foreign conflicts, while at home it subverts the rule of law and threatens the liberties of citizens. In modern America the unitary state forged by Lincoln forces a top-down political and legal conformity on a country growing ever more diverse and divided. Against this restraint antagonisms are rising. One way to diffuse this time bomb is to reject Lincoln’s legacy by allowing states and localities more leeway on how they govern themselves. In other words, we should concede that the South was right about the need for decentralized government.
This concession could lead to a new reconciliation agreement, one more balanced and just than the first. This one would acknowledge that the righteous cause wasn’t so righteous, and that “honest Abe” wasn’t so honest—or loyal to the vision of our Founders.
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