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I wanted to wait to post this until Jackson's birthday (January 21) but I figured the 17th was close enough and that AP needed another post up. :) Before you start reading... I've lived in the North almost my whole life (I was born in Florida, but have no memories of living there). I grew up in Washington State and Michigan, thinking that the South was evil. My dad organized various history curricula to give us a primary-source, politically incorrect history program. We read BOTH sides of the story and form our own conclusions... this is mine. Enjoy!

            As a child, I remember hearing about Thomas J. “Stonewall” Jackson and thinking that he was the villain in the Civil War. After all, chattel slavery was wrong and should be abolished! How could anyone fight to defend it?  However, the American “Civil War” was not as simple as people often make it seem. It has been said that “he who wins the battle writes the history,” and the so-called Civil War is no exception to this saying. The Civil War was not actually fought over slavery. Yet was it even a civil war? Thomas E. Woods writes in his book, The Politically Incorrect Guide to American History, “There never was an American civil war. A civil war is a conflict in which two or more factions fight for control of a nation’s government” (Woods, pg. 61). At the time when war broke out, the United States of America had split into the Union and the Confederate States. The latter had its own constitution and government, and was thus an independent nation, which had seceded because of abuse of their rights, superior virtue of their worldview, and a different way of life. If not the American Civil War, then what should we call this brutal war that tore apart our nation after less than one hundred years of independence? Some suggest “the War Between the States.” This is misleading, as the war was not fought between individual states, such as Rhode Island against Virginia, but between the Confederate States and the United States of America. What, then, is an accurate name for the conflict? Although most of America, perhaps even the world, would disagree, the most fitting title is “The War of Northern Aggression.”

            Northern Aggression? Did not Southerners bring this terror upon themselves by refusing to abolish slavery? No. Contrary to what the majority of Americans believe, the so-called “Civil War” was not over slavery. While majority of slaves were in the south due to its agrarian economy, the South did not secede to protect slavery.  In 1827, the South had four times as many anti-slavery societies than did the North (Woods, pg. 44). Stonewall Jackson and Robert E. Lee both called slavery a “moral and political evil” (Woods, pg. 69).

            If not slavery, then what was this terrible struggle over? President Lincoln himself said that his “paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union and is not either to save or destroy slavery” (Dwyer, pg. 87). The President continued to say that if reuniting the Union meant freeing all, some, or none of the slaves, he would do it. Although the South was wrong in the slavery issue, that was not what the war was fought over. The war  “was at root a debate over geographical equality and superiority in the Union… the slavery debate masked the real issue – the struggle for power and dominion” (Woods, pg. 43, 48). While North fought to preserve the Union, the South sought to keep their rights and heritage. Keep their rights? One may ask. Was not the South claiming false rights by seceding? By no means. When ratifying the Constitution, New York, Rhode Island, and Virginia refused to ratify unless a provision was made that “if the rights they granted to the Union were misused… it was proper for the offended state to resume its right of self-governance and withdraw from the Union” (Dwyer, pg. 27). What of the other states? If three states could secede, did that allow others to secede? The constitution “is based on the principles of co-equality – all states are equal in dignity and rights… the right of secession cited by these three states must extend equally to all the states” (Woods, pg. 63). Thus, the Southern states, later known as the Confederate States of America, had a constitutional right to secede.

            .When New York, Rhode Island, and Virginia asked for this allowance to secede, they said that the provision was for when “the rights they granted to the Union were misused.” How did the Union harm the Southern states? The answer lies in the issue of tariffs. The North protected its industry from foreign competition through tariffs, but they “were a terrible burden to the agricultural South, which had little industry to protect” (Woods, pg. 53). Instead of the booming, low-cost industry of the North, the South relied on small but abundant natural resources. Southerners could not produce finished products on their own, and were “dependent on foreign products” (Dwyer, pg. 38). The tariffs established by the North were protective tariffs, which were on imports. These taxes protected the North from foreign competition within the United States, but it caused Southerners to pay more for the supplies they needed. This took its toll on the economy, because when “planters paid more, that expense was passed throughout the rest of the economy.” (Dwyer, pg. 39)

            Northern Industry. Southern agriculture. The worldviews and cultures of the two sides went much deeper than they appeared at the surface, because they manifested themselves in daily living. These two ways of life made it difficult for the North and South to cooperate as a nation.  Was this entirely the fault of the South? Were not the Southerners a rebellious, uncivilized people deserving to be forced back into submission? While this may be the popular belief today and the notion left by the rhetoric of northern leaders, a contrast of the worldview of North and South gives one a very different impression. Perhaps the clearest way this evidences itself is in the lives of Confederate General Thomas Jonathan “Stonewall” Jackson, and Union General John Pope.

            John Pope was a “brash, courageous, cocksure Midwesterner” (Dwyer, pg. 267). Upon assuming command of the Union army, he told the soldiers that he had come from the West, where “we have always seen the backs of our enemies.” Later in an address to the army, he told his men “success and glory are in the advance, disaster and shame lurk in the rear” (Pope). This worldview was the same as that of Northern culture, which one author described as “assiduous” (Dwyer, pg. 10). An assiduous culture is “a culture that is progressive, on the move, and in a hurry.” As the North became more industrialized, its vision “involved supplying… power and capital to drive the engines of commerce.” With its mindset toward the future, the North lost traditions and multigenerational vision. Conservative religion was “ill-fit for the opportunities that lay before the North” (Dwyer, pg. 11). The way that Pope treated the Confederates reflected this loss of Christianity. He encouraged men to live off the food and supplies of Virginia farms, and, among many other things, “vowed that all homes in the area of any Confederate resistance would be burned” (Dwyer, pg. 267). This demonstrates the new theory of total war. Woods writes, “the American war between the states [is] a historical watershed in that it broke deliberately and dramatically from the European code of warfare that had developed since the seventeenth century and that had forbidden targeting the civilian population” (Woods, pg. 71). Later in the war, General Sherman would break the traditional code during his March to the Sea. The total war mindset of Pope and Sherman illustrates what Jackson meant when he said, “Christianity makes man better in any lawful calling” (Dwyer, pg. 174). During so-called “revivals,” the North turned to philosophies like Unitarianism and transcendentalism, rejecting biblical truth. They sought to follow the worldview of those who encouraged the European revolutions of 1848, revolutions desiring to overthrow the old order that had been based on a biblical worldview.   

            Confederate General Thomas J. “Stonewall” Jackson received his name for encouraging his men to stand as a “Stone Wall” at the battle of Manassas. Jackson had unwavering faith in his Creator, and so even though the outcome of the war was not known, the only thing that gave him “apprehension about my country’s cause is the sin of the army and people” (Dwyer, pg. 291). Stonewall tied his faith into every part of daily life - “thinking when he washed himself, of the cleansing blood of Calvary; as praying while he put on his garments that he might be clothed with the righteousness of the saints; as endeavoring, while he was eating, to feed upon the Bread of Heaven” (Dwyer, pg. 174). Although he finished “dead last” in his class his first year at WestPoint, Jackson ranked in the top few at graduation.  “That he did not flunk out was a harbinger of the iron will and unshakable determination that would mark him all his life,” says R.L. Dabney (Dwyer, pg. 271). In the same way, the Southern states held fast to preserving their heritage and land throughout the war. Jackson loved his wife, Anna, dearly. His love for her reflected aromatic Southern life – aromatic meaning “a more covenantal or community-oriented approach to relationships.”  Rather than pushing aside tradition and heritage as the North did, the South tied “the destiny of families and communities… into the land” (Dwyer, pg. 12). The president of the Confederate States, Jefferson Davis, sought to study the “old world order” out of which the Founding Fathers’ principles grew. While false revival reigned in the North, "a true revival continued" in the South (Dwyer, pg. 129). The men who led the Southern revival were orthodox and Reformed in their theological perspectives. Jackson himself poured out much of his time and effort into providing pastors to guide the soldiers, pastors that had sound theology and could teach the men biblical Truth He spent much time in prayer, believing that “prayer aids any man, in any lawful business… by bringing down the divine blessing” (Dwyer, pg. 174). The faith of Stonewall encouraged his men, as “the fear of God… made him so fearless of all else” (Dwyer, pg. 234).  

            “You are not content with the vast millions of tribute we pay you annually under the operation of our revenue laws, our navigation laws… you are not satisfied that we the South are almost reduced to the condition of overseers of northern capitalists. You are not satisfied with all this; but you must wage a relentless crusade against our rights and institutions,” (Dwyer, pg. 48) said John H. Reagan, a Texas congressional representative around the time of the War of Northern Aggression. The conflict of the war went much deeper than slavery. Disputes over slave states and territories may have started some of the conflict, but in truth, the American “Civil” War was about the rights of states in the Union. When the United States government took away liberties that were supposed to be “secure… to ourselves and our posterity” (Constitution), then offended states had every right to secede.

            Was there a way to stop the Civil War? Perhaps there was. There are many “what-if’s” involved in the causes and outcomes of the war. If the North and South had worked together to come to terms on foreign imports for Southern industry,  if the worldview differences had been resolved, if instead of separating when trials came North and South bound together – maybe then the war could have been stopped, and once these issues were decided, then the problem of slavery could be solved. In his novel, Les Miserables, Victor Hugo writes “War is modified only by its aim. There is neither foreign war, nor civil war, there is only unjust and just war.”  With the intent of the Union solely to preserve the Union, the war was unjust. However, for the Confederate States to defend their rights, heritage, and the generations to come, was justifiable and even commendable. The Southerners’ defense of their livelihood mirrors that of the Israelites in the time of Nehemiah, when they were commanded to fight “for your brothers, your sons, your daughters, your wives, and your homes” (Nehemiah 4:14b, ESV). In doing so, the Southerners justified their side of the war, and made the American Civil war truly a war of Northern Aggression.  

Works Cited:

“The Constitution of the United States of America.” Law.emory.edu. 1787. Emory Law School.            1995. <http://www.law.emory.edu/index.php?id=3080>

Dwyer, John J., The War Between the States: America’s Uncivil War.     Texas: Bluebonnet Press, 2005

Hugo, Victor Les Miserables.   London: Signet, 1987

Pope, John,  “To the Officers and Soldiers of the Army of Virginia.” Sonsofthesouth.net   Sons of the South.2008. <http://www.sonofthesouth.net/leefoundation/civil-war/1862/general-john-pope.htm>

Woods, Thomas E., Jr., Ph.D. The Politically Correct Guide to American History. Washington D.C.: Regnery Publishing Inc, 2004