Secession, part 2: The U.S. Civil War

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This podcast uses government documents to illuminate the workings of the American government, and offer context around the effects of government agencies in your everyday life.

Announcer: Welcome to civil discourse. This podcast will use government documents to illuminate the workings of the American government and offer context around the effects of government agencies in your everyday life. I am your host, Nia Rodgers, Public Affairs Librarian, and Dr, John Aughenbaugh, political Science Professor. Hey, Aughie.

J. Aughenbaugh: Good morning, Nia. How are you?

N. Rodgers: I'm good, how are you?

J. Aughenbaugh: Once again, I'm thinking about leaving.

N. Rodgers: Are you, you're not leaving me, are you?

J. Aughenbaugh: No.

Nia Rodgers: It sounds you're not leaving me.

J. Aughenbaugh: Sorry, listeners, bad joke.

Nia Rodgers: Immediately, I respond with my psychological terrorism childhood, you're not leaving me, are you, abandon me.

J. Aughenbaugh: Listeners, this is our follow-up episode to the topic of secession. In the previous episode, we explored it Nia from a theoretical sense. We had some examples of how it plays out and why groups want to secede and how nation-states respond, usually not all that well, to secession.

N. Rodgers: Because if they're willing to let you go, you got bigger problems. You know what I mean? It's if you say to your spouse, I want to divorce, and that person says, okay. This went south quick.

J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah, because if you bring that up as a conversation piece with your spouse.

N. Rodgers: They're okay with it.

J. Aughenbaugh: You're perhaps for some leverage and negotiation, so you can address some problems in their responses. That's not a bad idea, hey, let's roll with that.

N. Rodgers: Bigger problems.

J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah, you get bigger problems.

N. Rodgers: But the biggest example I think of secession, and the one that we were going to talk about today, is what we call the United States Civil War.

J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.

N. Rodgers: For listeners outside the United States, which we know there are a few of you. The United States write 50 states, well, at the time, not 50 states that the West did not exist at the time. It existed, it wasn't on a different, Astra plain or whatever, but it didn't constitute just states in the United States.

J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah, it had not been incorporated into what eventually became the 50 states, yes.

N. Rodgers: But the South basically said, peace out, we're out of here. I'm pretty sure they worded it differently, and then the response of the rest of the states was, no, we can't allow that, and then there was a war. There's a lot more detail, and so that's what we're going to get into today is a lot more detail of the secession part of the Civil War.

J. Aughenbaugh: Officially, and again, a lot of what we're going to be discussing in source material that we're using is a book that I referenced in the previous podcast episode, a book entitled The Readers Companion to American History, which was edited by Eric Foner and John Gardy, who were the editors and was published in 1991.

N. Rodgers The other place that we'll be sending you to will be the National Archives, which has a lot of documents. All of these documents are in the National Archives. Things like when you send letters to the president saying, peace, I'm out of here, except that's not what it says, but anyway.

J. Aughenbaugh: Officially, according to historians, the American Secession Movement that eventually led to the Civil War, basically was about a six-month period. It was a six-month period.

N. Rodgers: It took a while.

J. Aughenbaugh: Well, I was actually going to say it didn't take all that long, but there were a whole bunch of events that led up to it. But you're basically talking about December 20th, 1860 through June 8th of 1861. The American Secession Movement was composed of 11 states in what's referred to today as the South. The first seven states were in what historians referred to as the Lower South and that included the states of Alabama, Arkansas, Tennessee, and their provisional government was set up in Montgomery, Alabama, initially. The big event that really led to the Civil War and if you will be cementing of the secession movement was the hostilities at Fort Sumter outside of Charleston, South Carolina, in April 12th, 1861. Nia, you are smiling.

N. Rodgers: I'm smiling because Fort Sumter is still a huge tourist.

J. Aughenbaugh: My goodness, it is.

N. Rodgers: It's an interesting place to go to see when you think of, wow, this is really where it got rolling, as the kids would say, popped off.

J. Aughenbaugh: But popped off, so you had 11 states that seceded and formed the Confederate States of America. There were 21 Northern and border states that remained part of the union. However, some of the border states were definitely sympathetic to the Confederacy. Border states like Maryland, Delaware, Kentucky, Missouri, all officially remained as part of the union, but they had elements, both in terms of people, but also geographical areas that we're definitely sympathetic.

N. Rodgers: Isn't that a part of secession is that it's not usually a neat geographical between this river and this river and this mountain and this mountain are the people who are living, and everybody else? Because in the same way that Native American tribes can sprawl across multiple states, or you have people with similar cultural ideas, similar social ideas, and political ideas that aren't neatly tied to the lines.

J. Aughenbaugh: Political beliefs don't necessarily comply with geographical boundaries.

N. Rodgers: People who live in Martinsville, Virginia, which is nine miles above the North Carolina border. Many of them drive to Greensboro, North Carolina to work. Those cities are tied rather tightly by the fact that they are about a 30-minute drive apart. Ignoring completely the Virginia North Carolina State line, which is not relevant to them. Also, you get something in the Civil War, you get something like Virginia, a whole chunk of western part of Virginia was like, no, we're good. We'd like to be part of the union, and that became West Virginia.

J. Aughenbaugh: That's correct.

N. Rodgers: Because they just broke off. That's why Virginia has that weird shape at the edge of it. It's because a chunk of it is missing that became West Virginia and has remained West Virginia.

J. Aughenbaugh: That happened in 1863 during the Civil War.

N. Rodgers: It's not a tight neat.

J. Aughenbaugh: No, it's not.

N. Rodgers: What do you get, if I may ask a question briefly here, I know we're talking about the civil war, but I want to bring up Texas and every so often rumblings about secession, aren't there cities in Texas that wouldn't want to secede? Are you just stuck, if your place secedes?

J. Aughenbaugh: Again, that's one of those questions that arises. Excuse me, listeners, for the hiccups, but that's a question that arises. Nia, to your example about the State of Texas today, Dallas, for instance, and I have to imagine Austin would not want to secede.

N. Rodgers: They're pretty liberal Democratic-leaning at least, for Texas, especially.

J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah, but even from my home State of Pennsylvania. The major urban areas are extremely democratic. If the state of Pennsylvania, during a Republican administration. Said we wanted to go ahead and leave the Union, the central part of the state would be we don't want any part of that.

N. Rodgers: Which sucks because it's in the middle, if great at the end. Well, then you go off and be part of, I don't know.

J. Aughenbaugh: Ohio, or New Jersey.

N. Rodgers: Oklahoma.

J. Aughenbaugh: Whatever, I mean, you could hang out with other states. But I mean.

N. Rodgers: Hanging out with other states, in the places where states hang out.

J. Aughenbaugh: But that's the thing about political ideology. I mean, you see this after wars when the Victors, start restarting.

N. Rodgers: Just call up places.

J. Aughenbaugh: Restart redrawing map. There are people that all of a sudden are now part of a different nation state, and they're like we have more in common with.

N. Rodgers: Germans than the Austrian.

J. Aughenbaugh: Austrians.

N. Rodgers: Why are we part of Austria because that's how we drew you?

J. Aughenbaugh: Then there are some Germans who are, I have more in common with France than I do Germany. Well sorry, dude, you're part of Germany. Sucks to be you, but that's the way we're drawing this up.

N. Rodgers: But look, you get to have October 1st. I mean, try to find the positives. How long has this been brewing?

J. Aughenbaugh: Well, this gets to your point about secession being a long process. In terms of it actually happening, it happened quickly once the states wanted to leave. But in terms of how long it had been in your words brewing, and I always appreciate when you use.

N. Rodgers: Coffee reference.

J. Aughenbaugh: Coffee reference, God bless you. Hat tip to you if I was wearing a hat. The term succession was used as early as 1776.

N. Rodgers: Also, at the very beginning, the South was already starting to say. I don't know about this Union thing.

J. Aughenbaugh: Again for our North American listeners, 1776 is when the crap hit the fan metaphorically. In regards to the colonies wanting to go ahead and secede from Great Britain, but even within the ranks.

N. Rodgers: South Carolina, it was well we know if we want to be part with you all or not. We're not sure who we want to be connected to. We might want to be connected to the United States, we might want to be our own thing. We might want to hang out with Britain, how?

J. Aughenbaugh: In South Carolina's objection was that of the Continental Congress, which was created as a form of government to handle the revolution. The Continental Congress decided to tax all of the colonies on the basis of total population, including slaves.

N. Rodgers: Hence, the compromise.

J. Aughenbaugh: South Carolina was just, hey, wait a minute here. We don't consider slaves citizens, so our taxable population should be dramatically lower than what the Continental Congress billed us for. Theoretically, you already begin to see, near to your point. That there were elements in the South that were concerned that the oppressive British crime was going to be replaced by an oppressive national government in the United States. I mean, that's where you already begin to see this. This is 1776, this is 80-plus years before the actual secession occurred.

N. Rodgers: Well, they're worried about despotic rule. The Americans in general are worried about that, but the South in particular is worried about that. From its own people, meaning the Union. Its own people, in addition to other parties.

J. Aughenbaugh: Real quick history, the colonies fight the Revolutionary War. They eventually win, and they set up the first form of government is the Articles of Confederation. The articles of Confederation didn't work all that well, in large part because the national government had next to no authority to force the states to work together.

N. Rodgers: Which makes sense from the point of view of we just got rid of a despotic ruler. We're not to certainly not going to have another one.

J. Aughenbaugh: That's right, fool me once I'm a fool, you ain't fooling me a second time. However, you get the Constitutional Confederation in Philadelphia in 1787. At the Confederation, James Madison actually proposed that there be language in the New Constitution. That would prohibit states from seceding. However, he did not get enough support, and it took them all summer just to come up with the rather small US Constitution. That the Confederation actually did produce.

N. Rodgers: That's where you get the three-fifths compromise that the South to bring in the South. You don't have to count each enslaved person as a person, you can count them as three-fifths of a person.

J. Aughenbaugh: They get no political and legal rights. You get the advantage of them three-fifths of a person for representation purposes in the house, but you still get to consider them to be property.

N. Rodgers: Your tax burden is not super high?

J. Aughenbaugh: Well, it's more than just tax, because the North was just, well if you're going to count them at all for representation purposes. You have to give them the same legal and political rights as every other citizen. The slave states were, but they're not citizens they're property. The North, well the South called the North bluff. The South basically said, If you don't compromise. We're not going to go ahead and ratify the Constitution. We're not going to be part of this new country anymore in the North caved.

N. Rodgers: We head off secession in 1887, we head off secession with.

J. Aughenbaugh: 17.

N. Rodgers: 1787, sorry thank you. We head off secession with that compromise, and we go along for quite a number of years.

J. Aughenbaugh: You're jumping ahead, almost immediately. Madison's concerned that regional differences might create successional pressures, took root because political parties formed. You had the Federalists that represented primarily Northern states. You had the Democratic-Republicans representing Southern states. In Madison's fear played out almost immediately, because you see this in the first couple of presidential elections. You see the divide between having a strong federal government against a desire by the Democratic-Republicans to have strong state governments. A lot of the things that got papered over with the Constitution, didn't go away. You get the three-fifth compromise, but you still had a divide about the issue of slavery.

N. Rodgers: You turn that boil down to a simmer?

J. Aughenbaugh: That's right.

N. Rodgers: It keeps simmering.

J. Aughenbaugh: Almost immediately, the Democratic-Republicans got upset, because the Federalists passed the Alien and Sedition Acts. During the Washington Administration, which made it a crime to criticize the federal government.

J. Aughenbaugh: Which would seemingly violate the First Amendment, but the Supreme Court said the law was constitutional. The Democratic Republicans were just like, wait a minute, here. This led Madison to write the Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions, which would allow Southern states to ignore not just Southern states, but all states to ignore Federal Government interpretations of the constitution that the states believed were wrong. That's nullification. Why have a union.

N. Rodgers: If people can just say, I'm not going to do that thing.

J. Aughenbaugh: If individual components of the union can basically go ahead and say, you're wrong, and we're going to ignore you.

N. Rodgers: That new law you made doesn't apply here.

J. Aughenbaugh: Yes. But then a huge catalyst for the Secession Movement of the 1860s was the nation's economy was beginning to change. Farming, which was slave dependent, became less and less of the dominant, if you will, economic sector in the United States, as we move through the 1830s. Manufacturing and banking become much more important to the American economic success. Well, now you have growing vibrant parts of the country, primarily in the North, who are like, why do we need slavery?

N. Rodgers: Let me ask a clarifying question here. This Northern movement towards manufacturing and will eventually become the industrial revolution. It's not about the moral and ethical side of slavery. It's about the economic side of slavery. It's as much about that as it is.

J. Aughenbaugh: Let's be very clear. There were plenty of abolitionists who had strong moral reasons to oppose slavery.

N. Rodgers: But your average individual role.

J. Aughenbaugh: They're just like I'm in the North. I'm doing a crafts person's job. I'm beginning to work in a manufacturing, if you will, set up. They didn't call them plants back then. But nevertheless I'm engaged in trade with foreign nations. I really don't care for slavery. This economically, my livelihood doesn't depend on it.

N. Rodgers: Slavery been outlawed at that point in Britain?

J. Aughenbaugh: That I don't know.

N. Rodgers: Because I know they outlawed it first, and I'm wondering if also there's an effect there, but anyway.

J. Aughenbaugh: But the reaction of the South was, the North, and potentially the Federal Government was attacking the Southern way of life. For them, it wasn't just economics it was the fact that it was political.

N. Rodgers: It was cultural it was political.

J. Aughenbaugh: This goes back to your previous point Nia. This, once again, appears as though the national government, led by Northern money industrial interests, were at oppressing, what the people of Southern states actually wanted. Now, mind you, again we're only talking about a percentage of the people in the South. Enslaved people were not being consulted were not getting to vote. Had no access to courts or property, but for many Southerners, and the most prominent defender was South Carolina Senator John Calhoun.

N. Rodgers: John C. Calhoun.

J. Aughenbaugh: John C. Calhoun who was in the Senate for decades. Calhoun was a big believer in the Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions. He thought that the country was a compact of states the federal government got their authority from the states, not the people. Therefore, as far as Calhoun was concerned, not only could states nullify a federal law or a federal court ruling they didn't like, but Calhoun was clear. If eventually the situation became untenable, any state that wanted to leave the union should be able to because again, the constitution was ratified by states.

N. Rodgers: That makes sense if the states like this deal is no longer good for us then we should be able to to leave.

J. Aughenbaugh: It's like we discussed in the beginning of the podcast about a divorce.

N. Rodgers: Can't make somebody stay married to you.

J. Aughenbaugh: That's right.

N. Rodgers: Well you can, in some cultures, but you can't in the United States.

J. Aughenbaugh: Because in the United States a marriage is a contract.

N. Rodgers: Both people have free will.

J. Aughenbaugh: That's right.

N. Rodgers: The argument here is that states should have free will. By the way, Britain outlawed slavery in 1834. I just checked the date. It is around this time. You're getting interesting news from other places where these things are happening.

J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.

N. Rodgers: But also, that's actually a really interesting question for me that comes up to my mind that I'd like to ask you. Basically, Madison and at el. because at this point, Madison's probably no longer living. People like Madison are like, no, the union has to be the union or it doesn't exist. You can't just leave when you're crabby, or you're unhappy or you're whatever because we can't have that be a constant threat over the United States, over the union. We can't have there be a constant threat of well, if I don't like it, I'm going to vote to leave. Calhoun is saying, no, it is not a union it is a group of people who have agreed to all go in one direction. But if somebody says, look, a side road to the beach. Let's go off and do that, they're allowed to just get off the highway and go do what they want to do, and that should be no harm, no foul. That's more or less the dichotomy here?

J. Aughenbaugh: Well, you get a lot of conflicting theories as to what is the United States.

N. Rodgers: What is Spain?

J. Aughenbaugh: You had nationalists like John Marshall, Joseph Story, Daniel Webster, who went ahead and said, it was the people of the states that ratified the Constitution. The federal government gets its power to act from the people. But if you agree with Calhoun, that the Federal Government gets its authority from the approval of the states well, if a state no longer approves, because each state has its own free will, then a state should be able to leave.

J. Aughenbaugh: Again, this is still debated.

N. Rodgers: That's why I went to Spain. The Basques are constantly talking about secession. They want to leave Spain. But the rest of Spain argues, but you're Spanish.

J. Aughenbaugh: You don't even have to go overseas. Again, as I mentioned in our previous podcast episode. We have had state legislature. This millennium that have considered legislative proposals to secede from the union.

N. Rodgers: Thank you. It's still an ongoing discussion.

J. Aughenbaugh: Their underlying logic is one that never really truly got resolved at the time the Constitution was written.

N. Rodgers: Which is who does the Union rise out of? Does it rise out of the people?

J. Aughenbaugh: People or the states. Because if you are a secessionist proponent, the ratification process was nine out of 13 states. It doesn't say the people of those states. It says nine out of 13 states have to ratified. Likewise, when the Constitution is amended, it is the states who approve it, and it's the state legislatures, the people's representatives. Not the people themselves. It's not like the states go ahead and you have a referendum it's the people.

N. Rodgers: They could.

J. Aughenbaugh: They could, but it's the people's representatives who do so.

N. Rodgers: Generally.

J. Aughenbaugh: When we move into the 1840s and 1850s, slavery becomes the proxy for all of this underlying tension between the North and the South. I'm not going to get into a debate. I think there are people who make the argument Civil War was completely about slavery. Well, it wasn't completely about slavery. But slavery was a significant issue because many people in the North felt as though slavery had to be abolished. There were many people in the South who were like, but they're not citizens. But it was more than just slavery. Again, there's an underlying theory here about the nature of democracy. Is it a compact among states or is it a compact among people? That becomes really difficult as the United States after the Civil War grows and expands. Because if you talk to the people of Wyoming their view of democracy is not the same as the people of New York City.

N. Rodgers: Well, and some people went West to get the heck away from a country?

J. Aughenbaugh: That's right.

N. Rodgers: They didn't want to be part of some big conglomeration of whatever where somebody else gets to tell you what to do.

J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.

N. Rodgers: The Wild West was.

J. Aughenbaugh: Wild for a reason.

N. Rodgers: It existed because people were looking to make a different life.

J. Aughenbaugh: Yes. But the slavery issue ends up becoming the political impetus. In particular, as you move into the 1850s, the issue of admitting new states to the Union.

N. Rodgers: It becomes the hot burning issue.

J. Aughenbaugh: You see this most specifically with Kansas. This became known as the Kansas question. Should Kansas be admitted into the Union as a free state, no slavery or a slave state. It just absolutely destroys Congress because in part the Democrats, which had a stronghold in the South, were like no, it should be a slave state and the Whig/Free Soil Party was like no. Which eventually becomes the Republican Party. The Republican Party was just like, no, it's a free state, no slavery. This really shapes the 1856 presidential election. Because who ends up getting picked was Buchanan. Buchanan just wanted the slave issue to go away.

N. Rodgers: Well, I'm sure. It's thorny, it's difficult, it's deep. There's a lot of history on both sides and while it is easy for modern folk for us to look back and go, slavery, bad. That's really super easy for us to say now because we know the horrifying implications of slavery.

J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.

N. Rodgers: In the time when persons of African descent were not considered to be human, let alone having rights. But again, women didn't have rights to vote. Children didn't have rights, and they could be forced into labor. Is just a different time with different views of the world.

J. Aughenbaugh: Different values etc.

N. Rodgers: How will this giant farm survive if I don't have enslaved people to do the work. I cannot do the work by myself. I'm going to have to have.

J. Aughenbaugh: I don't have enough progeny to go ahead and also do free labor etc. Then let's not forget the Supreme Court's role in fomenting secession and the Civil War. Because 1857, the Supreme Court takes the Dred Scott case. Now, the reason why Dred Scott actually brought the case was Dred Scott was a slave, whose owner took him to a free state, then went back to a slave state. Dred Scott said, once my owner took me to a free state I became free. Well, the Supreme Court said, sorry Dred Scott, you can't claim your freedom because as an enslaved person, you have no legal rights to bring a lawsuit in federal court. Now, that was the question brought by Dred Scott. That was a horrifying decision, but it answered that particular constitutional question. But then the court majority couldn't help themselves. They went ahead and answered a question that wasn't even posed by either party in the case. The Supreme Court in Dred Scott. This is where the Court's decision in Dred Scott gets claimed as activist. The Court went ahead and said, Congress has no constitutional authority to pass any law about slavery. Not only was the compromise of 1850, about new states entering as free or slave not only was that law unconstitutional. But the compromise of 1820 was also unconstitutional. The court issues that decision, and immediately, Northern state said, well, if Congress can't pass any laws about slavery, guess which laws we no longer have to comply with. The fugitive slave laws. Federal laws that forced Northern states to return those slaves that escaped from their owners from those plantations in the South.

N. Rodgers: Supremes weren't expecting that, were they?

J. Aughenbaugh: Well, no, they weren't. Then when Southern states were like, well, if they're not going to comply with the fugitive slave laws, we're out of here..

J. Aughenbaugh: Because we now are in a country where.

N. Rodgers: Where if you can run away far enough.

J. Aughenbaugh: Enough.

N. Rodgers: You're done.

J. Aughenbaugh: Our property, in many Southerners viewed in terms of contract law. If they are unwilling to honor the contract to return our stolen property, because again, the view in the South was, slaves were property.

N. Rodgers: I find it interesting that the property could steal itself.

J. Aughenbaugh: But I mean-

N. Rodgers: But essentially, that's what's happening.

J. Aughenbaugh: Well, they weren't stealing themselves, there were people in the North who were helping that property-

N. Rodgers: Stay gone.

J. Aughenbaugh: Stay gone. Be transferred, they were aiding and abetting. For many Southern states, they were it's clear that a majority of the states will no longer respect our culture, our economics. We're out of here and, this is what foments, if you will, the secession. Of course, the 1860 presidential election was pretty much the closing chapter, because the 1860 presidential election, the Republican Party won, and the Republican Party had made it very clear that they didn't want to have anything to do with the Institution of slavery.

N. Rodgers: That's Lincoln.

J. Aughenbaugh: That's Lincoln.

N. Rodgers: Then the South basically says, I, we're done, we're out of here, we're gone. They send a letter, don't they send a letter saying, If it please you, Mr. Lincoln? Whatever. I'm sure they didn't spit on the letter, but whatever.

J. Aughenbaugh: When Lincoln was traveling by train to Washington, DC for his inauguration, he was told by his advisors that a number of states were going to meet in Alabama to draft a secession motion, a secession letter, if you will. That he should expect to receive it within days if not weeks of him taking office. I mean, the Southern states didn't wait for Lincoln to be inaugurated for listeners who don't know the inauguration date was still March. I mean, the Southern states did not let any grass metaphorically grow under their feet, and they basically laid out, much like the Declaration of Independence, a list of complaints about the current state of political affairs in the United States.

N. Rodgers: Isn't that basically how you secede?

J. Aughenbaugh: Pretty much.

N. Rodgers: Here's a list of things I really don't like and peace, I'm out of here. Do you think the South thought that it was going to end up in a civil war? Or do you think that they thought the North would be like, you know what bunch of trouble making idiots, you all just go on and do whatever it is you're going to do on your own?

J. Aughenbaugh: Many proponents of Secession thought that there was not any appetite in the North to fight the states that wanted to secede. I mean, they were counting on it, so much so that after they sent the secession, motion or letter, many Southern states immediately seized federal forts, arsenals, and other national property, basically assuming that President Lincoln would not respond militarily. I mean, they were they were counting on it, and in to a certain extent, I could see why they thought that because the Lincoln in his Inaugural address, pledged only to hold federal property that was in the possession of the Union on March 4th. All of the federal property that the seceding states took control of between the election and the inauguration, Lincoln was willing to go ahead and give up.

N. Rodgers: He was going to give up forts and-

J. Aughenbaugh: Arsenals.

N. Rodgers: All stuff like that?

J. Aughenbaugh: Because the Lincoln Administration thought that border states would view that concession as a reason to not join with the seceding states.

N. Rodgers: He's trying to keep together as much of the union as he can at the outset by saying, You know what, we're not going to fight every stuff that's already gone.

J. Aughenbaugh: Yes. But the seceding states overplayed their hand, because the bombing of Fort Sumter, taking control of it and responding, militarily, really galvanized Northern sentiment. They really overplayed their hand.

N. Rodgers: They're trying to win the edge states and the edge states are like, you're willing to kill people? Let it now.

J. Aughenbaugh: I mean, for many Northerners, I think they would have been very willing to just go ahead and tell the Southern States, you can leave, I don't care if you go home or where you go, but you just got to leave. It's like, bartenders at clubs.

N. Rodgers: You can't stay here. You don't have to go home, but you can't stay here here.

J. Aughenbaugh: But when the seceding states responded militarily, they lost a lot of Northerners.

N. Rodgers: Basically the South fired the first shots.

J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.

N. Rodgers: If they hadn't done that, if they had just waited it out, we might have two countries now.

N. Rodgers: Where the United States is.

J. Aughenbaugh: They miscalculated in regards to how much nationalism and patriotic sentiment would take root in the North. Nationalism today gets a bad rap, but nationalism in a war feeds into patriotism and a willingness to sacrifice. Succeeding states did not think that many Northerners were willing to make sacrifices to keep a part of the country that they were openly dismissive of.

N. Rodgers: You don't like us anyway. Why don't you just let us go?

J. Aughenbaugh: You think we're backwards.

N. Rodgers: What they didn't realize is it's the principle of the matter. I don't have to like you, but you have to stay. They also probably in the South, it probably did not occur to them that people in the Union would be moved by the plight of slaves and would say. Hey, that's just not right. There is some of that in not every union soldier, but some of them came specifically to say. No, those are people, so treat them like people.

J. Aughenbaugh: But again to your point Nia at the beginning of this episode, secession is not something that just happens overnight. Oh, we have a bad experience. We're gone.

N. Rodgers: Usually a build-up.

J. Aughenbaugh: This was nearly 90 years in the making and it exposed fractures that were present at the time of the Revolutionary War that were present during the Constitutional Convention.

N. Rodgers: Well and in some places are still present today. It didn't settle the question entirely.

J. Aughenbaugh: No.

N. Rodgers: Although it is more settled now than it was in the 1860s. Because a whole bunch of states now are like. Well, I guess we're in it. We're in the end. They've accepted and embraced the fact that they are part of the union. When you talk about the few that have talked about leaving, that's not in any way a majority.

J. Aughenbaugh: We talked about it in the previous podcast episode. The costs of seceding.

N. Rodgers: Are enormous.

J. Aughenbaugh: Are enormous.

N. Rodgers: Ask the South.

J. Aughenbaugh: Even if there's no war, the costs are still exorbitant. Because you basically got to replace everything that the national government already provides.

N. Rodgers: I was thinking about this after when we took our break between episodes. You got to rebrand everything. You know how expensive that is? You got to get all new stationery. Dude, you got to come up with your own flag. You got to come up like that is complicated stuff right there. I'm just saying

J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah and you got to hope that those efforts don't divide your citizenry.

N. Rodgers: Exactly. Now you're even worse off because now you're a country of the size of Texas, but you've got people who are like, I don't like the loan star, I don't want the loan star. No, we should not only should we have loan star, we should have big branding, where we have it as.

J. Aughenbaugh: Then they start second guessing because they're like. Hey, the Feds used to provide this and now the service provided by the state government.

N. Rodgers: Look as good.

J. Aughenbaugh: It isn't as good. Can we come back.

N. Rodgers: That's the last question I'd like us to end on if we could. Is the idea of what happens after when it doesn't succeed? Because the South was burned. Sherman's March through the South was off. The payment paid for that. I was enormously high. While I am not trying to defend slavery in any way, I am not. That is an immoral thing from start to finish.

J. Aughenbaugh: It was wrong as an institution from day one.

N. Rodgers: From biblical times. It's always wrong to enslave other people. The price that the South paid for getting out of its lane the South is still poor. Many of the poorest states in the Union are in the South. Many of the poorest education systems are in the South. They're still 50 years on.

J. Aughenbaugh: The South's economy according to one historian, that I looked at, the South's economy took nearly a half a century to recover after the Civil War. In part, because the Northern states in the 14th Amendment after the Civil War, refused to allow the federal government to repay the debts incurred by the South just to fight the war. That's what a lot of people don't understand. Losers in wars

N. Rodgers: Have to pay reparations.

J. Aughenbaugh: Reparations and you see how.

N. Rodgers: What are reparations, Aughie?

J. Aughenbaugh: Reparations are where you basically have to go ahead and pay damage awards, if you will to the winners.

N. Rodgers: You cost us this many people, this much material.

J. Aughenbaugh: Jobs, you ruined our city.

N. Rodgers: You bombed our cities and so we're going to make you pay.

J. Aughenbaugh: In regards to the Confederate States, they got almost all their materials from foreign nations and they signed contracts. Which meant that contractually, they had to continue to pay those debts after they lost the war, but their economy was in tatters. Their free labor was gone because slavery was constitutionally removed by the 13th Amendment. Now they had to go ahead and pay people to do the work. Many of the people who previously worked for them for free as slaves now could go ahead and get their own property. The South's economy was destroyed, for nearly half a century and it animates and motivates, even to this day, many Southerners believe, that the South would be better off removed from the Union.

N. Rodgers: In the instance of the American secession from Britain, the Union secession from Britain, that went pretty well in terms of America finding its feet and getting foreign investment. We end up with relationships with France, and we ended up relationships with other parts of the world.

J. Aughenbaugh: But you may be overstating that. Because one of the reasons why we had to go ahead and create a national bank.

N. Rodgers: Was the debt.

J. Aughenbaugh: Was the debt. Because again, the colonies were now free from Great Britain, but the colonies were created through charters, which were considered contracts in terms of international law. Many of the colonies still owed Great Britain payment for services and previous contractual obligations after the Revolutionary War. Well into the 19th Century, the federal government through the creation of the federal bank was repaying debts of the states. Even though they won.

N. Rodgers: I overstated. But I guess really what I'm saying is winning gives you one set of problems and losing gives you another set of problems.

J. Aughenbaugh: That's right.

N. Rodgers: Losing can give you a whole lot more problems.

J. Aughenbaugh: Problems.

N. Rodgers: In the sense of, you're probably going to be punished.

J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.

N. Rodgers: In some way that when you win, you're not punished.

J. Aughenbaugh: That's right.

N. Rodgers: You really have to stop and think about secession carefully. Can you pay the price of losing if you don't manage to get free?

J. Aughenbaugh: You got to be careful when you are the winner in a secessionist movement, because if you exact too great of punishment, too severe of reparations, it can continue to foment the conflict, the animosity that led to the secession in the first instance.

N. Rodgers: Similarly with World Wars. World War I, the reparations that were forced for on Germany directly brought about World War II. There's a straight through line there. Secession works the same way you're saying, that if the South is so beaten down that it can't recover, then it's like, "You know what? We might as well keep trying to leave. We might as well keep."

J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah. It leads to the political divisions that we still see today to a certain extent in the United States. There was a tension within the Republican Party post Civil War as to what extent the North should punish the South. Lincoln had indicated, when he ran for re-election, that if the North won the war, that the North should be gracious to the losers. In part, because he didn't want a fractured nation for decades after the war. But he dies. He gets assassinated, and many of the "radical Republicans" in United States Congress were like, "They need to be punished. They're bad people. They engaged in slavery for decades, they wanted to leave the Union. They forced us to fight this costly war. They need to be punished." For non-Americans, well, maybe even for some Americans, recall that federal troops remained in the South for nearly a decade and a half. There are southerners even to this day that bring this up as a point of contention. We're talking about a century and a half, greater than a century and half, and they're still talking about that. There are still southerners that refer to the Civil War as the war of Northern Aggression, as though the Southern states had nothing to do.

N. Rodgers: That's revisionists history. This is a whole separate issue. But you do get some of that on the losing side of any succession.

J. Aughenbaugh: That's right.

N. Rodgers: Is that there's going to be people who are so crabby that they rewrite that history as, "We were just standing around, mining our own business and the North walked in here and stomped all over us. You're not cool any more."

J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah. The last point of this episode is, and again, for our listeners who are just like, "boohoo", seceding states or seceding groups. Well, think about, for instance, what South Africa engaged in after Apartheid ended. They did a Truth and Reconciliation Commission, in part, designed to go ahead and mitigate some of the harms and conflicts and animosities that Nia and I just referenced, that you secede with secession movements. If you ever hope to go ahead and have any unified country, you can't just focus on punishing those who created the harm in the first instance. If we've learned nothing after World War I, World War II, etc, is, if you punish the losers, they won't forget.

N. Rodgers: Severely enough.

J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah. They won't forget. It's not like you're back to square one, but there's a lot of issues. We still see this in the United States today where you have regions of the country that are just like, "We can't work with the South, or the South can't work with those liberal elites on the coast." You're just like, "Well, they're people, too." "They're not. No, because they don't like us."

N. Rodgers: Yeah, because some of it still carries through today.

J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah. But anyways, interesting discussion. Thanks, Nia. I learned a lot about secession, probably more than I ever wanted, but nevertheless.

N. Rodgers: No. Thank you, Aughie. I think it's interesting when people just throw it around like it's a casual. Like, we're just going to leave. I bet you haven't really thought that through.

J. Aughenbaugh: True. Right. [LAUGHTER].

N. Rodgers: Because there's a lot more to that than you think.

J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah. It's like, every parent has had conversations with their kids, where you're like, "Okay, I know that sounds like a really good idea right now, but if you thought this through." Of course, the child was just like.

N. Rodgers: "I'm going to take my gab gear and I'm going to walk up the Himalayas." "You have not walked through a park [LAUGHTER] in six weeks. How are you going to walk up to Himalayas?" Anyway.

J. Aughenbaugh: "I'm going to hike the Appalachian Mt. trail."

N. Rodgers: "Oh really? Okay."

J. Aughenbaugh: "You're going from Northern Georgia the whole way up to Maine? Have you given any thought to what that might entail?" "No, but it sounds like a really cool idea."

N. Rodgers: Exactly. Texas thinking, "It sounds like a really good idea for us to be a country of our own." You might want to slow your role and think about that.

J. Aughenbaugh: You do that. Get back to me.

N. Rodgers: Exactly. Thanks, Aughie.

J. Aughenbaugh: Goodbye, Nia.

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