The Other Side

Everyone is taught the basics of history in school. If you made it past the fifth grade you know about the long ago battles of the American Civil War. You may have heard that the battles were fought over slavery and the war brought an end to that despicable practice. However, you have not heard the whole story. Edited down and made acceptable, the history most children are taught is incomplete. It does not address the real issues important in either that time or today. The Confederacy fought because of its trust in the foundations of the United States and its conviction that the federal government twisted those foundations to take away the rights of the states and their people.

Although slavery was an issue of the time, it was not the only issue that drove the secession or the fight afterwards. The beginning of the War Between the States started long before guns were blazing. Even during the revolutionary war, the northern states and the southern states had many arguments as to how bound they were to each other, how much one’s needs affected the other. All saw then that without a strong reason to stay together the union they had forged would fall apart. The question of how to bind thirteen sovereign states was a delicate balance they maintained between fear of strong central power, and need of unity. In the end, a constitution was forged, voted and signed between them. Before understanding why this compact ended it must be understood how it could be allowed to.

Each state within the union saw itself as free, sovereign and independent. Moreover, they had good reason to. The treaty with Great Britain at the end of the war names each state as free and more importantly sovereign. “His Britannic Majesty acknowledges the said United States, viz., New Hampshire, Massachusetts Bay, Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia, to be free sovereign and independent states” (Treaty of Paris). At the end of the war for liberty, they had it.

To protect their rights and guide this new nation of independent states a constitution, or charter, was composed. This agreement was then amended to reserve all “powers not delegated to the United States by the constitution, nor prohibited by it” (Constitution of the United States) to the states or the people. In the constitution, it enumerates ways to be inducted into the union but no ways to be expelled or to secede. The states have the right to come or go through both this absence and the amendment. If through a republican form of government they decided to leave, each state had a right to do so.

Within the constitution, a balance of choice and obligation was key to shaping the union. Each chose to be there through its obligation to fulfill its duties to the other states and the government that had protected it. Consent and choice were much in their minds when shaping and later interpreting this document. “Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed” (Declaration of Independence). Years before the constitution was written Thomas Jefferson used these wise words to justify the rebellion of the colonies against their official king and government. This text states that it is sometimes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands connecting them and to assume a separate and equal station. If a government becomes destructive to the ends for which it was conceived then the governed have the right to alter or abolish it and institute a government that will protect the people and their rights. It fact he states that it is their duty to do so. Since the states are free and sovereign entities then the federal government needs the consent of the states and their citizens to rule. What happens when the consent of the governed is lost?

The south had always been sectional and inclined to her people but it wasn’t always just the “wrong- headed” southerners who wanted to secede. When Jefferson’s ambassadors made the Louisiana Purchase through a treaty with France, Massachusetts saw this as an overstepping of the bounds of the federal government since no provision had been made before to allow it. Massachusetts passed an act of declaration naming the Louisiana Purchase as unconstitutional and therefore worthy of secession from the union by her member states. Massachusetts never carried through with the threat but she did set the precedent that would later allow the south to withdraw.

The southern states had many political, social and economic reasons for wishing to leave the union and each of these reasons added up to one thing; tyranny of the north over the south. If you look at our nation today, you may think you see an equitable nation with rights and responsibilities for each of its citizens and member states but even now, there are glaring inequalities