A Confederate aside
On the subject of daring offence, raised in our last post, we had occasion to be discussing Gettysburg recently with a certain gentleman in Texas. Our great hero from that American Civil War (the Third American Civil War, by a Canadian reckoning) was Robert E. Lee. As a schoolboy we first read of his exploits, presented to us in simplified form through a reader used at Saint Anthony’s School in Lahore, then West Pakistan. He was presented alongside Nelson, & Wellington, & Florence Nightingale & Grace Darling, as a figure larger than life.
It will be recalled that the British, & British North Americans, mostly cheered for the South during that war; though the descendants of the progressive types who had dressed ostentatiously as “American Patriots,” in London after 1776, naturally cheered for Lincoln. But in the main, especially up here in the Canadas, we were “in the bag” for the South; so much that Southern statesmen would come up here, to raise money.
Slavery wasn’t the issue for us, from either side. The Royal Navy had eliminated the slave trade on the open seas, & Governor Simcoe had made it illegal in Upper Canada from the first day. We did not hesitate to receive escaped slaves; for how many escaped slaves had fought bravely beside us as United Empire Loyalists during the First American Civil War; & for God, King, & Country during the Second Civil War, after the Invasion of 1812. Indeed, slavery was, by 1861, illegal throughout the British Empire. The attitude was, “Of course we’re against slavery, everyone is against slavery”; & “everyone” knew it would soon disappear from the U.S. republic. It was unsustainable in a Christian realm. (It had always been illegal in the Papal States, & been condemned by Catholic priests throughout the Western Hemisphere.)
As General Lee himself stated, emphatically, “This war is not about slavery.” One might enter into controversy on what it was actually about: in hindsight, the imposition of a more thoroughgoing “democracy” on an unwilling South, & of central governance on the naive defenders of “States’ Rights” under the U.S. Constitution. Lincoln & company were creating — unknowingly, to be fair — the basic condition for a Nanny State. It is homogenous rule over a vast area, from a single central location, by an agnostic power. (Lincoln himself was only dubiously a Christian.)
In France, as we have argued elsewhere, & will argue again, the major achievement of the Revolution was the transformation of local government. The French nation was changed, overnight in historical terms, from a polity of 60,000 parishes, each under its own unique & long-established customary form of self-government; to one of 36,000 “communes” governed absolutely identically, & answerable directly to an ever-increasing volume of decrees from Paris. Totalitarianism requires no less.
The South had remained agrarian, & varied, & in some respects almost feudal. The North was growing industrial, & urban, & attracting immigrants for its new “working class.” In effect, new forms of “wage slavery” were being invented for new methods of machine production, to replace superannuated forms of plantation labour. There was a clash of cultures deeper than any specific point of public policy, such that “slavery” became the political football. It could be used in the conventional political way: to demonize an opponent & thus avoid having to argue with him on questions that might be subtle.
Or so we were taught by Irish Patrician brothers in a backward school, modelled on British “public” (i.e. private) pedagogic traditions, in what had until recently been British India. And incidentally, this was taught to eight-year-old schoolboys. In retrospect, we feel ever more indebted to those seemingly demented green-sashed Catholics for their acuity. (Our post-Protestant father had sent us to them only because their academic standards were so high.)
As military tactician, General Lee stands accused of commanding Pickett’s Charge, uphill at Gettysburg to the centre of the Union’s forces. For it didn’t work. Our grandfather’s general, Arthur Currie, could equally be condemned for commanding the Canadian charge, up Vimy Ridge to the centre of the German forces. Except, that did work; & grandpa was rather proud of how it worked all the rest of his days, even though his horse was among the casualties. It is indeed surprising how often in history the uphill charge has worked, with the benefit of surprise. Unfortunately, at Gettysburg, General Meade was expecting it.
But we have wandered from our intention, which was simply to provide the following little packet of sayings, from Robert E. Lee. We found them on the Internet, but they made our hair stand, not only because they expound the teaching of the Bhagavad Gita, but because each was first encountered half a century ago, whenas we were a schoolboy at Saint Anthony’s, & first took Lee aboard as one of our biggest heroes.
Item, “Duty is the most sublime word in our language.”
Item, “Obedience to lawful authority is the foundation of manly character.”
Item, “Get correct views of life, & learn to see the world in its true light. It will enable you to live pleasantly, to do good, & when summoned away, to leave without regret.”
Item, “In all my perplexities & distresses, the Bible has never failed to give me light & strength.”
Item, “Never do a wrong thing to make a friend or keep one.”
Item, “It is good that war is so horrible, or we might grow to like it.”
Item, “I have been up to see the Congress & they do not seem to be able to do anything except eat peanuts & chew tobacco, while my army is starving.”
Item, “We failed, but in the good providence of God apparent failure often proves a blessing.”
Your perspectives on democracy in recent posts, as well as this post on the Confederacy, have been very thought-provoking. As an American, my instinctual reaction is to reject both premises (that democracy is a inadequate form of government, and that the Confederacy was in the right), but as a Christian, particularly in our postmodern, post-Christian American culture, I do in fact find considerable wisdom in these perspectives.
Robert E Lee was certainly one of our greatest generals; deeply religious, humble, and a military genius. He was torn between loyalty to the union and loyalty to his state (in other words had to choose between centralized government or local government), and chose the latter.
I would tend to disagree with you that slavery was not a major issue in our Civil War. The cotton and tobacco farming of that era rapidly depleted the land, and was very labor intensive. Therefore the Confederacy had to constantly expand to maintain their economically prosperous agrarian lifestyle. There was considerable pressure on the part of southern states to expand into Cuba and Central and South America, as well as the American West, and while slavery may have eventually died out, it would’ve been prolonged for many decades had they been successful in these undertakings.
It is worth noting, however, that even after the abolition of slavery in the South, sharecropping proved simply another form of slavery both for blacks and whites – and persisted up until the time of World War II, entrapping millions in economic bondage despite being “free”.
Your point about the “wage slave” of industrialization is well taken, as is the natural, and likely inevitable, progress from representative democracy to autocracy or worse – our current state of affairs in the West.
Thank you again for your thoughts, and I very much enjoy your new, “liberated” blog.
“Obedience to lawful authority is the foundation of manly character.”
A point of order is in order. At the onset of the war, Lee was an officer in the Union Army. He, of course, resigned his commission before joining the Confederate Army. But did he not fail to obey lawful authority? Lincoln did not become an “unlawful” authority merely because war broke out.
Our CTC has generously answered his own question, in the words, “resigned his commission.” To the honour of the Unionists, they did not detain him.
Unfortunately the term “lawful authority” is capable of much sophistical interpretation. For two thousand years now, & for some thousands more through our Hebrew “prehistory,” Catholic Christians have wrestled with this.
We refer back to Saint Thomas More; & behind him to an interesting case in Roman Palestine. Was Pontius Pilate not the lawful authority? Was Jesus Christ not the scofflaw?
Incipit vita nuova.
So, Otio, you’re saying “lawful authority” is in the eye of the beholder?
Please note the issue isn’t whether a “lawful authority” should or should not be obeyed. At issue is whether R.E.L. acted contrary to his own maxim. My view is that resigning a commission does not absolve him.
Lee’s “lawful authority” at the time he resigned was the Commonwealth of Virginia, which had seceded from the Union. He could not, nor would not, betray that authority.
“Lee was perhaps the noblest of Americans.”
~ G. K. Chesterton
So you’re saying, My Lord, that Lee had the power to determine which authority was his lawful authority? The upshot of which is that “lawful authority” has no objective meaning.
And from this flows the conclusion the American Revolution was not a revolt against lawful authority.
Lawful authority works this way: it starts with God, then works its way quite naturally from that Source. The man for example is head of the family, and the family is then the determinant of what shall assist its development, with the father setting the proper tone of that development. After that, it’s all subsidiarity, and small is beautiful, because small is closer to the only unit of society that ever accomplishes anything.
Lee was a Virginian before he was an American. But he was a father first.
As we said above, a sophistical argument can always be made, even on behalf of Pontius Pilate, who himself asked the fundamental sophistical question: “What is ‘truth’?”
But Robert E. Lee was not the kind to make sophistical arguments. He, like Jefferson curiously enough, considered his primary loyalty as citizen was to the Commonwealth of Virginia. He did not make this choice lightly, when it had to be made. It wasn’t an argumentative game for him.
Which is not to say the Declaration of Independence was a frivolous act. Nor that our Loyalist ancestors opposed it for frivolous reasons.
“. . . considered his primary loyalty as citizen was to the Commonwealth of Virginia.”
Thereby you admit it’s a subjective determination.
CTC,
I must be missing part of this argument. What determination born of man’s free judgement, or will, is not subjective?
The objective part of “determinations” does not belong to a man. It is only that to which he strives.
Ah! Now, My Lord, we’re getting somewhere!
Oh, no. I think I just lost an argument somewhere. Will have to go and retrieve it somehow.
Where we’re getting, CTC & Lord Jowls, is to the world of the gliberal professoriate, in which there is no God, & every human decision is “merely subjective,” & all is thus finally determined by raw Power alone. (“Survival of the fittest.”) Thus to a world ruled by savage violence, by Nature red in tooth & claw, to the life “nasty brutish & short.” Which takes us back to Hobbes, who sees the problem with this, & who shows the way up & over again to the “social contract” of the “enlightened” salesmen: up, up, & around. It is a treadmill we can spin a million times, like little hamsters with our tiny feet turning the sophistical wheel.
Or as the ancients had it, Ouroborus: the snake endlessly eating his own tail. Eternal recurrence, around & around — the Gnostic original.
Christ beckons us off this treadmill.
But it’s a subjective choice.
We escape the subjective treadmill by a subjective choice?
In truth, despite Canadians’ opinions and Lee’s assertion, the American Civil War was about slavery.
Historian James M. McPherson quotes Emerson’s statement at the outset of the Mexican War that “Mexico will poison us.” McPherson goes on to say that “The poison was slavery, which many Southern politicians wanted to introduce into the new territories” conquered in that war. Northerners opposed expansion of slavery.
Opposition to expansion of slavery was the core theme or tenet of the Republican Party.
It was Robert E. Lee who was sent as the military commander to arrest John Brown after the old fanatic had attacked Harper’s Ferry to seize its arsenal and spark an uprising of U.S. blacks against Washington.
When Lee saw how the writers of the North praised Brown after his arrest, he naturally was quite alarmed and sided with the Southern cause.
The American Civil War was not about slavery, but mainly about states rights versus federal rights.
There was nothing holy about such American heroes as Jefferson or Lincoln. The former owned slaves himself (despite all of his lofty rights talk) and Lincoln was what would be called today a white supremacist.
The sun in Texas must be very strong indeed. Our CTC – like mad dogs and Englishmen seems to have gone out in it. As a chaser (stunning sophistry from the pointy heads) I recommend Ryan T. Anderson’s latest at crisismagazine.com. One could do worse than to anchor in the Lee when it is an ill wind that blows.