The Southern Cause: What Led to Secession

It is correct, analytically and logically, to distinguish secession from war. Many states secede peacefully, and it does not logically follow that secession must occasion war. The Southern states of America seceded peacefully, and Lincoln’s subsequent war which followed four months after secession was entirely unnecessary. Hence, Murray Rothbard wrote in his memo to the Volker Fund in 1961 that,

The road to Civil War must be divided into two parts:

• • the causes of the controversy over slavery leading to secession, and
  • the immediate causes of the war itself.

The reason for such split is that secession need not have led to Civil War, despite the assumption to the contrary by most historians.

Nevertheless, in understanding the Southern Cause it would be historically misleading to isolate secession entirely from the war, or to treat the two events as hermetically sealed off from each other. It is important to split them for the purpose Rothbard stated, namely, to debunk the assumption that secession must involve war, because many people wrongly view calls for secession as calls for war. But it does not follow that in understanding American history, the two events must be treated, for all purposes, as if they were not in any way historically, causally, or morally connected.

The Southern Cause found its expression in both secession and war, and it would be quite wrong to pretend that secession and war had nothing to do with each other as many libertarians attempt to do. They leap from one assumption—that secession and war need always be bound together—to the opposite assumption, that secession and war had nothing to do with each other. Their reason for clinging to this second assumption is that they wish to depict the Southern Cause as having two morally-distinct elements, one of which was just while the other was unjust.

Secession is seen as having been motivated primarily by a wicked cause, namely slavery, while the war itself is seen as motivated by a just cause, namely self-defense. In essence, they view the Southern Cause as containing two distinct moral elements: the morality of secession and the morality of war. They presume that the wickedness of the first would in no way taint the justice of the second, since they view the two as morally distinct. For libertarians who agree with Rothbard that the war of defense against Northern aggression was just, the morality of secession still remains contested.

In his article, “A Moral Accounting of the Union and the Confederacy,” Donald Livingston argues that secession was morally sound. He begins by establishing the foundations of his moral premise, namely, the right to secede:

Libertarians are and must be sympathetic to secession, for secession is nothing other than an exit right, a right internal to the very idea of liberty. Secession is not always justified, but, for libertarians, it is presumed morally justified unless compelling reasons to the contrary exist.

The question that must then arise is how secession could be morally sound if the aim of secession was to defend slavery. In Livingston’s view, the claim that secession was motivated by a desire to defend slavery is not based on historical analysis but on the mythology surrounding the righteousness of Lincoln’s War. He calls this the “Battle Hymn of the Republic” myth:

First, the founding myth of American nationalism is that the South seceded to protect slavery while the North invaded to abolish it. The vast resources available to the central government and its cultural elites have been used to drum this “Battle Hymn of the Republic” myth into the public consciousness for over a century. This myth, however, is false.

As we are here concerned with a moral defense of secession, it is significant to note that Livingston’s defense of the morality of secession does not depend on denying the immorality of slavery. It is often supposed that those who insist that the South seceded for liberty and independence must necessarily hold the view that slavery is moral. The perennial retort of those who insist that secession was about slavery is: “Liberty to do what? Independence to do what?” Their argument is that any claim to value liberty must be rejected if the person who seeks to defend his liberty is wicked and immoral, or seeks to use his liberty for wicked and immoral purposes. Livingston observes that the same accusation was made against the American revolutionaries, as slavery was legal in all colonies at the time:

One is reminded of Dr. Johnson’s irritation at the American colonists who threatened secession from Britain: he wondered why he had to hear constant yelps about liberty from the drivers of slaves. It is impossible not to feel the force of this argument, and we must acknowledge that slavery was a moral stain on the seceding American colonies, all of which allowed slavery in 1776, as well as on the seceding Southern states, all of which allowed slavery in 1861.

Livingston is highlighting the tendency to forget that slavery was legal in the American colonies when they seceded from the British Crown. Moreover, since there was an abolitionist movement well underway in the British Empire at the time—with slavery in the English common law

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Lew Rockwell

LewRockwell.com is a libertarian website that publishes articles, essays, and blog posts advocating for minimal government, free markets, and individual liberty. The site was founded by Lew Rockwell, an American libertarian political commentator, activist, and former congressional staffer. The website often features content that is critical of mainstream politics, state intervention, and foreign policy, among other topics. It is a platform frequently used to disseminate Austrian economics, a school of economic thought that is popular among some libertarians.