Isegoria

I remember visiting Independence Hall in Philadelphia, where the tour guide asked, “How many British colonies were there in America?”

The older kids on the tour enthusiastically answered, “Thirteen!”

“No,” he said, “thirteen went on to become the United States,” but the rest went on to form Canada:

At the outset of the U.S. Civil War, collective memories remained alive of the French and Indian War when, in the late 1750s and early 1760s, New York State, the Ohio Valley, Nova Scotia, Montreal and Quebec City were battlefields.

Britain’s myopic handling of the war’s aftermath bred resentments and misunderstandings that grew to rebellion. In an attempt to keep Quebec loyal, Britain instituted the 1774 Quebec Act. Quebecers saw it as protecting their French/Catholic rights within a system of government they understood. American rebels, on the other hand, considered the Quebec Act as among what they called the Coercive or Intolerable Acts, because it was yet another example of Britain denying democracy to its colonies and, consequently, another precursor to revolution. Quebecers were invited to send delegates to join those representing the thirteen colonies who were defining the new America at the First and Second Continental Congresses in Philadelphia. Both invitations were ignored. With those rebuffs, patriot and later America’s second president, John Adams, explained to his fellow delegates that, in order to defend the northern flank, Quebec would need to be attacked and liberated Quebecers should be persuaded to join the revolution. In November 1775, Montreal fell to American troops, and Benedict Arnold’s men tried but could not take Quebec City.

Congress dispatched three delegates, one of whom was Benjamin Franklin, to woo Quebecers to the rebel cause. They failed. The Québécois had little interest in joining a ragtag group of rebellious colonies, only two of which allowed the practice of their religion, and whose army mistreated civilians, and stole property and food.

The Revolution was America’s first civil war. About a third of the American colonists wanted nothing to do with what Adams, Jefferson and the others were selling. With every British military defeat, more of those loyal to the Crown left or were driven out. Some fled to Britain while others went south, but most escaped to what remained of British North America. Eventually, about thirty thousand moved to Nova Scotia and ten thousand to Quebec. A number of freed Blacks emigrated.

Britain had lost thirteen of its North American colonies and did not fancy losing the others. Wary of allowing demographic and economic growth to create a new powerhouse such as wealthy and populous Virginia, it split Nova Scotia to create New Brunswick. It divided Quebec into Upper Canada (Ontario) and Lower Canada (Quebec). A new political system was installed that afforded a semblance of self-rule with British-appointed governors in charge. A border was loosely drawn, and American fishers were granted inland rights. Those long established in the suddenly growing British colonies shared with the revolution’s refugees and the newcomers from the British Isles a deep respect for British political values and an abhorrence of the ideals and aspirations upon which the American Revolution had been based. They were determined to remain separate from the United States.

That determination was tested a generation later in the War of 1812. Relentless American expansion had led to Native resistance and then to uprisings inspired and led by Shawnee chief, Tecumseh, and his brother, known as the Prophet. So-called War Hawks in Congress convinced themselves that Britain was behind the Native unrest and was supporting piracy and the impressment of Americans into British naval service. The United States could only be safe and prosperous, they argued, if Britain was pushed out of North America.

Americans saw the struggle as a war of liberation; Canadians believed it was a war of survival. It was a cousins’ war — and it was horrible. When it finally ended, Britain’s flag was still there — Canada remained. Border tensions eased as the 1817 Rush-Bagot Agreement led to the demilitarization of the Great Lakes. The war had given Americans a national anthem and the symbol of Uncle Sam. It afforded Canadians the pride born of having defended their land and the un-American ideals in which they believed. A new, unifying and unique nationalism was taking root.

In 1837, rebellions erupted in Upper and Lower Canada. Gunfire echoed and blood stained the streets of Toronto and French Canadian towns. Britain sent Lord Durham to see what the fuss had been about, and his recommendations led to the creation of a more responsible and representative government in a unified colony called Canada. He hoped that Canada East (Quebec) would soon be subsumed by Canada West (Ontario). Nova Scotia and New Brunswick remained separate. Britain appointed a governor general to oversee all of its North American colonies. The Canadian government was ostensibly subservient to him, as were the Maritime governments to their lieutenant-governors who reported to him. It was with this political structure and its deep-seated suspicion of the United States that Canada and the Maritimes faced an increasingly belligerent America that was tearing itself apart.

Shortly after the U.S. Civil War began in April 1861, Britain declared itself neutral. The Canadian and Maritime governments dutifully echoed that official line and informed their citizens that it was against the law to support North or South, and for individuals to join in the fight. One would expect that Canadians and Maritimers would abide by their government’s wishes and that public opinion would overwhelmingly support the North. After all, they were by and large law-abiding folks, loyal to Britain and nearly unanimous in their abhorrence of slavery, which had been banned in British North America a generation earlier. Further, Canadians and Maritimers were geographically closer to the North and for years thousands more had travelled to those Northern states for work than to the distant South. Business people enjoyed more commerce with Northern than Southern industry. Canadians travelling to Britain often went by way of New York and Boston. Despite such familiarity, however, public and popular opinion of the North and South was divided, volatile and multi-dimensional. It was coloured by class, ethnicity, religion, ideology and region.

(Hat tip to Kalim Kassam.)

Once again, I wish you a happy Secession Day! I’ve discussed the colonies’ secession from the motherland more than once over the years:

• A Second English Civil War
• The Lenin of the American Revolution
• What If… The USA had lost its War of Independence?
• Worst of the Old World and the New
• The American Revolution, 1763-1783
• The True History of the American Revolution (Revisited)
• Secession Day
• Empires of the Atlantic World
• How the War of Secession Came About
• True History of the American Revolution
• The Declaration of Independence

The arrogance of the South Carolinians and their followers in the six Deep South cotton states would not have plunged the nation into a war that killed 750,000 Americans, Steve Sailer says, if not for Abraham Lincoln’s Hicksville unpreparedness:

Indeed, Lincoln’s worldly Secretary of State William Seward came up with a brilliant plan to avert civil war at the last moment, only to have it shunned by a jealous Lincoln.

The 16th president has been so sanctified that we’re not supposed to notice that Lincoln’s insularity left him unready to lead during the great crisis of secession in 1860-1861. Conversely, Lincoln’s detractors like to portray him as a power-mad dictator. Yet his actions during the crucial months in which the Civil War might have been averted are most redolent of a crafty small-town lawyer who was badly in over his head in his new role. Lincoln worked hard and learned fast, but by the time he was ready for his job, the worst catastrophe in American history was underway.

In early October 1860, the experienced Democratic candidate Stephen Douglas conceded to his secretary, “Mr. Lincoln is the next President. We must try to save the Union. I will go South.”

But Lincoln took few steps to ready himself for this task. His main response to his election in November 1860 was to hire a second secretary to help answer his increased mail from politicians seeking patronage.

During the interregnum, Lincoln kicked around the notion of maybe adding one Southerner to the Cabinet, what with the secession and all, but nothing came of the idea. After Lincoln finally took the oath of office on March 4, 1861 he devoted much of his first six weeks to conscientiously interviewing the long line of Republican job-seekers that stretched out of the White House and down Pennsylvania Avenue to determine which would make the best local postmasters.

But could anything have been done to avert the Civil War?

Perhaps. A glance at a map showing the dates of secession suggests that it might have been contained at the brushfire stage.

The 15 slave states can be thought of as comprising three tiers from south to north. The first tier to secede was the southernmost, led on December 20, 1860 by South Carolina, home of the ideological spokesmen of the pro-slavery “King Cotton” interests. English mills’ demand for cotton had created vast wealth and self-righteousness in the six Deep South cotton states. Inspired by South Carolina’s Fire-Eater orators, the states of Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Texas soon followed.

But then, secession ground to a halt.

It is unknowable whether a seven-state Confederacy would have survived the next downturn in world cotton prices, or, disheartened, would have asked for readmission to the Union. We can see now that King Cotton proved to be a bubble. With the North declaring a blockade and the South an export embargo in 1861, the British ramped up cotton growing in Egypt and India, leaving the South impoverished after the war.

A rump Confederacy confined to the Deep South might have eventually been bought off by the plan Lincoln floated in the middle of the war for ending slavery voluntarily by compensating slave-owners with the proceeds from the sale of Western lands. At minimum, a seven-state Confederacy would have been easier to defeat on the battlefield than the eleven-state South that fought for four years.

The next tier of states northward—North Carolina, Tennessee, and Arkansas—didn’t secede until May or June, well after the outbreak of fighting at Fort Sumter, South Carolina on April 12, 1861.

Finally, in the northernmost tier of slave states, above 36.5 degrees latitude, four states never seceded—Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky, and Missouri. Legend has it that Lincoln wittily replied to a well-wisher who assured him God was on his side, “I hope to have God on my side, but I must have Kentucky.”

Historically, most states have been monarchies, headed by absolute or constitutional kings or princes, Hans-Hermann Hoppe notes, and democratic states, including so-called parliamentary monarchies, headed by presidents or prime-ministers, were rare until the French Revolution and have assumed world-historic importance only after World War I:

While all states must be expected to have aggressive inclinations, the incentive structure faced by traditional kings on the one hand and modern presidents on the other is different enough to account for different kinds of war. Whereas kings viewed themselves as the private owner of the territory under their control, presidents consider themselves as temporary caretakers. The owner of a resource is concerned about the current income to be derived from the resource and the capital value embodied in it (as a reflection of expected future income). His interests are long-run, with a concern for the preservation and enhancement of the capital values embodied in “his” country. In contrast, the caretaker of a resource (viewed as public rather than private property) is concerned primarily about his current income and pays little or no attention to capital values.

The empirical upshot of this different incentive structure is that monarchical wars tended to be “moderate” and “conservative” as compared to democratic warfare.

Monarchical wars typically arose out of inheritance disputes brought on by a complex network of inter-dynastic marriages. They were characterized by tangible territorial objectives. They were not ideologically motivated quarrels. The public considered war the king’s private affair, to be financed and executed with his own money and military forces. Moreover, as conflicts between different ruling families, kings felt compelled to recognize a clear distinction between combatants and noncombatants and target their war efforts exclusively against each other and their family estates. Thus military historian Michael Howard noted about 18th-century monarchical warfare:

On the [European] continent commerce, travel, cultural and learned intercourse went on in wartime almost unhindered. The wars were the king’s wars. The role of the good citizen was to pay his taxes, and sound political economy dictated that he should be left alone to make the money out of which to pay those taxes. He was required to participate neither in the decision out of which wars arose nor to take part in them once they broke out, unless prompted by a spirit of youthful adventure. These matters were arcane regni, the concern of the sovereign alone. [War in European History, 73]

Similarly Ludwig von Mises observed about the wars of armies:

In wars of armies, the army does the fighting while the citizens who are not members of the army pursue their normal lives. The citizens pay the costs of warfare; they pay for the maintenance and equipment of the army, but otherwise they remain outside of the war events. It may happen that the war actions raze their houses, devastate their land, and destroy their other property; but this, too, is part of the war costs which they have to bear. It may also happen that they are looted and incidentally killed by the warriors — even by those of their “own” army. But these are events which are not inherent in warfare as such; they hinder rather than help the operations of the army leaders and are not tolerated if those in command have full control over their troops. The warring state which has formed, equipped, and maintained the army considers looting by the soldiers an offense; they were hired to fight, not to loot on their own. The state wants to keep civil life as usual because it wants to preserve the tax-paying ability of its citizens; conquered territories are regarded as its own domain. The system of the market economy is to be maintained during the war to serve the requirement of warfare. [Nationalökonomie, 725–26]

In contrast to the limited warfare of the ancien regime, the era of democratic warfare — which began with the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars, continued during the 19th century with the American War of Southern Independence, and reached its apex during the 20th century with World War I and World War II — has been the era of total war.

In blurring the distinction between the rulers and the ruled (“we all rule ourselves”), democracy strengthened the identification of the public with a particular state. Rather than dynastic property disputes which could be resolved through conquest and occupation, democratic wars became ideological battles: clashes of civilizations, which could only be resolved through cultural, linguistic, or religious domination, subjugation and, if necessary, extermination. It became increasingly difficult for members of the public to extricate themselves from personal involvement in war. Resistance against higher taxes to fund a war was considered treasonous. Because the democratic state, unlike a monarchy, was “owned” by all, conscription became the rule rather than the exception. And with mass armies of cheap and hence easily disposable conscripts fighting for national goals and ideals, backed by the economic resources of the entire nation, all distinctions between combatants and noncombatants fell by the wayside. Collateral damage was no longer an unintended side-effect but became an integral part of warfare. “Once the state ceased to be regarded as ‘property’ of dynastic princes,” Michael Howard noted,

and became instead the instrument of powerful forces dedicated to such abstract concepts as Liberty, or Nationality, or Revolution, which enabled large numbers of the population to see in that state the embodiment of some absolute Good for which no price was too high, no sacrifice too great to pay; then the ‘temperate and indecisive contests’ of the rococo age appeared as absurd anachronisms. [ibid. 75–76]

Similar observations have been made by the military historian and major-general J.F.C. Fuller:

The influence of the spirit of nationality, that is of democracy, on war was profound, … [it] emotionalized war and, consequently, brutalized it; …. National armies fight nations, royal armies fight their like, the first obey a mob — always demented, the second a king, generally sane. … All this developed out of the French Revolution, which also gave to the world conscription — herd warfare, and the herd coupling with finance and commerce has begotten new realms of war. For when once the whole nation fights, then is the whole national credit available for the purpose of war. [War and Western Civilization, 26–27]

And William A. Orton thus summarized matters:

Nineteenth-century wars were kept within bounds by the tradition, well recognized in international law, that civilian property and business were outside the sphere of combat. Civilian assets were not exposed to arbitrary distraint or permanent seizure, and apart from such territorial and financial stipulations as one state might impose on another, the economic and cultural life of the belligerents was generally allowed to continue pretty much as it had been. Twentieth-century practice has changed all that. During both World Wars limitless lists of contraband coupled with unilateral declarations of maritime law put every sort of commerce in jeopardy, and made waste paper of all precedents. The close of the first war was marked by a determined and successful effort to impair the economic recovery of the principal losers, and to retain certain civilian properties. The second war has seen the extension of that policy to a point at which international law in war has ceased to exist. For years the Government of Germany, so far as its arms could reach, had based a policy of confiscation on a racial theory that had no standing in civil law, international law, nor Christian ethics; and when the war began, that violation of the comity of nations proved contagious. Anglo-American leadership, in both speech and action, launched a crusade that admitted of neither legal nor territorial limits to the exercise of coercion. The concept of neutrality was denounced in both theory and practice. Not only enemy assets and interests, but the assets and interests of any parties whatsoever, even in neutral countries, were exposed to every constraint the belligerent powers could make effective; and the assets and interests of neutral states and their civilians, lodged in belligerent territories or under belligerent control, were subjected to practically the same sort of coercion as those of enemy nationals. Thus “total war” became a sort of war that no civilian community could hope to escape; and “peace loving nations” will draw the obvious inference. [The Liberal Tradition: A Study of the Social and Spiritual Conditions of Freedom, 251–52]

The doctrine of democratic peace claims that democracies do not go to war against each other, and thus, to create lasting peace, the entire world must be made democratic:

With the end of World War II, essentially all of — by now: democratic — Western Europe (and democratic Japan and South Korea in the Pacific region) has become part of the US Empire, as indicated by the presence of US troops in practically all of these countries. What the post World War II period of peace then “proves” is not that democracies do not go to war against each other but that a hegemonic, imperialist power such as the United States did not let its various colonial parts go to war against each other (and, of course, that the hegemon itself did not see any need to go to war against its satellites — because they obeyed — and they did not see the need or did not dare to disobey their master).

Moreover, if matters are thus perceived — based on an understanding of history rather than the naïve belief that because one entity has a different name than another their behavior must be independent from one another — it becomes clear that the evidence presented has nothing to do with democracy and everything with hegemony. For instance, no war broke out between the end of World War II and the end of the 1980s, i.e., during the hegemonic reign of the Soviet Union, between East Germany, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Romania, Bulgaria, Lithuania, Estonia, Hungary, etc. Was this because these were communist dictatorships and communist dictatorships do not go to war against each other? That would have to be the conclusion of “scientists” of the caliber of democratic-peace theorists! But surely this conclusion is wrong. No war broke out because the Soviet Union did not permit this to happen — just as no war between Western democracies broke out because the United States did not permit this to happen in its dominion. To be sure, the Soviet Union intervened in Hungary and Czechoslovakia, but so did the United States at various occasions in Middle-America such as in Guatemala, for instance. (Incidentally: How about the wars between Israel and Palestine and Lebanon? Are not all these democracies? Or are Arab countries ruled out by definition as undemocratic?)