by Jeffrey Rogers Hummel, (Open Court, Chicago and La Salle, Illinois, 1996).
reviewed by Brian Schwartz
Hummel, a history and economics professor at Golden Gate University, describes his work as a "narrative history of the Civil War that transcends the confines of popular literature." As an economics professor, he includes technical analysis of the economics relevant to his historical narrative
At the end of each chapter Hummel includes an in depth bibliographic essay, where he credits past historians as well as to contrast his views with theirs. Hummel advises "the general reader" to skip the bibliographic essays. Yet aside from the very technical essay on the economics of slavery, his essays give the reader incentive to reread the chapter. Hummel provides this incentive by telling what he thought he had established in the chapter. In the bibliographic essays, Hummel relates his and other perspectives on the data, why he presented it as he did, and why he thinks his is correct. I recommend his essays as starting points for anyone interested in an overview of any aspect of the Civil War he covers.
I first learned about this work in the Laissez Faire Books catalogue, which praises it as the "best book on the Civil War from the standpoint of liberty." Hummel acknowledges the help of radical pro-capitalists such as feminist Wendy McElroy, and economist David Freidman, as well as people at the Smith Center for Private Enterprise Studies at California University. His citing Austrian economists Ludwig von Mises and Murray Rothbard further reveal his ideolological orientation
Hummel often favorably cites Kenneth Stampp (The Peculiar Institution, and The Imperiled Union: Essays on the Background of the Civil War). The respect is mutual, as Stampp describes Hummel's work as "lucid," "edifying," and his interpretations to be "thoughtful, often provocative, and always well worth considering."
To a Classical Liberal like Hummel, the concept of slavery does not just include obvious bondage of forced labor, such as the black plantation workers of the South. Slavery is any form of compulsion in which one person, or group of people, threatens to initiate force upon those who do not comply with his wishes. One must keep in mind, then, that military conscription, taxation, government regulations, and other forms of extortion are, in Hummel's few, a form of slavery.
Hummel frames his narrative by following the advice of Eric Foner on how to understand the causes of the war: To investigate why the southern states wanted to secede, and why the northern states refused to let them go.
Asserting that the southern states wanted to secede because of slavery, Hummel starts his narrative with slavery in the late 18th Century America. Hummel notes that historians well research statesı rights as a sectional issue, their "nationalist bias" makes them take as a given the North's dedication to Union
On ideological grounds, the rift between North and South came in response to outright condemnations of slavery by the likes of William Lloyd Garrison. To Southerners, the abolitionist movement, though small in the North, and the emancipation of slaves in European colonies were a threat to their way of life.
In response to the perceived threat, says Hummel, Southerners bolstered their moral defense of slavery. It was no longer a necessary evil, but as Calhoun wrote, a "positive good," and "the most safe and stable basis for free institutions in the free world." Yet, the South was more concerned that the abolitionist movement would encourage slave insurrections rather than moral condemnation. Southern governments increased their use of threat power by restricting manumission and censoring any ideas that could stir rebellion among the slaves.
The rift was over slavery, however, and not racism. Northern states mandated discrimination, and abolitionists were condemned for concerning themselves more with human freedom than the sanctity of the Union. Yet after anti-abolitionist violence against Garrison, Tappen, and Lovejoy, the abolitionist movement gained popularity in the late 1830's. Hummel writes that Northerners feared the slave holders were against not only freedom for blacks, but for whites also. While this is an interesting assertion, Hummel does not show how he came to this conclusion.
Hummel's discussion of tthe economics of Southern slavery revolves about the concept of deadweight loss resulting from the coercive nature of slavery. One loss is the production of those blacks who whose skills were wasted on the plantation. Citing Frederick Douglassıs My Bondage and My Freedom and an 1850 issue of De Bows Review, Hummel raltes that more skilled a slave's job required, the more freedom he had, as it was required for him to perform it. Yet laws stood in the way of freeing the blacks to be as productive as they could.
The enforcement of slavery introduced more deadweight loss, as had the slaves been paid for their work, their resources would be used in further trade. This would be a loss to the slaves only, had the planter not had the political power to get both the state and federal government to subsidize the capture of runaway slaves. This subsidy drove up the price of slaves and gave people incentive to own them.
Hummel pronounced the economy of the American South a failure. Compared to the North, the South had and lower per capita output and wages. Even while plantation owners directly enslaved blacks, and indirectly enslaved non-slave owning whites (through government subsidies), their rates of return did not exceed those of northern merchants and manufacturers.
The per capita income data, collected by the Fogel and Engerman (Time on the Cross), include slaves as part of the Southern population. I believe a more compelling case could be made, at least to slave owners of the time, with figures that do not include slaves in per capita income calculations. Hummel draws much upon Fogel and Engermanıs work. He also discusses the vast criticism it has spawned, compares his views to theirs, as well as many others, and anticipates criticism of his conclusions about the economics of slavery.
Hummel cites Northern secession, as proposed by Garrison, as a real threat to slavery. The lack of federal subsidies for enforcing the Fugitive Slave Law would increase costs to the planters. Slaves in the upper south would have great incentive to escape north, despite the region's racism. Hummel asserts that "market forces and a black thirst for liberty" would spread turmoil in the upper south would spread to the rest of the slave states.
On this last point Hummel could have elaborated. He sites Charles James Faulkner of Virginia, in a letter to Calhoun: "An attack upon [slavery] here (Virginia) is an attack upon it in South Carolina and Alabama. Whatever weakens and impairs it here weakens and impairs it there...We must stand or fall together." Clearly, the South perceived what Hummel called a ³fatal domino effect," but he could have shown better that their fears were warranted.
The narrative of the chapter titled "The Emergence of the Republican Party" includes the Kansas-Nebraska Act, the Election of 1856, the Dred Scott Decision, Lincoln-Douglas Debates, and John Brown's raid on Harper's Ferry. Only at the start of the bibliographic essay following the chapter does Hummel reveal his motives in writing it: to establish the cause of the collapse of the second-American party system.
Such a separation from facts and evaluation permeates Emancipating Slaves, Enslaving Free Men. As a scientist, I view this technique as analogous to keeping separate the "Results" and "Discussion" sections of a scientific paper. The purpose of this style is to remain objective, and let facts stand on their own without the author's interpretation of their meaning. The effect is the same in both science and history: the reader does not know why the author chose to present the facts he did. Skimming the bibliographic essays before reading the chapter will provide the reader a context in which to assimilate the material, and evaluate Hummel's conclusions.
Nonetheless, Hummel explicitly makes his case that the fundamental cause of the collapse was "ideological conflict over slavery," as Eric Foner established, not the "ethnic conflict over immigration," as William E. Gienapp proposed. Hummel succinctly relates the two views, and concludes that Foner and those who stress ideology over slavery have a better case.
On the issue of secession, Hummel frames his discussion on whether the Southerners were revolutionaries or counter-revolutionaries. He finds both views, typified by E.M. Thomas, and Charles Beard, respectively, "incomplete." He agrees with Beard on two revolution counter-revolution pairs: the American Revolution and the Constitution, The French Revolution and Napoleon's terror. Hummel acknowledges that the Confederate Revolution's ideas of "self-determination, decentralization, and laissez faire" echoed the American Revolution. Yet, as Joseph R. Stromberg observed in "The War for Southern Independence: A Radical Libertarian Perspective," reluctant secessionist Jefferson Davis being the president of the Confederacy was the counter-revolution to the secessionist revolution.
Hummel frames the Civil War battles in terms of strategies used in the east and west. Generally, the Confederacy lost the war because it fought on the Union's terms of using traditional (not guerilla) battle tactics. For this account of why the South lost, Hummel relied primarily on Robert L. Kerby's Why the Confederacy Lost, and McWhiny and Jamieson's Attack and Die: Civil War Military Tactics and the Southern Heritage.
In the bibliographic essay, Hummel cites what he calls the "new military history," which takes into account a battle's political, economic, and social context to evaluate tactics used in it. He also notes the controversy over the efficacy of "Stonewall" Jackson, and whether Robert E. really depended on James Longstreet. Lincoln's ability as Commander-in-Chief also evokes controversy.
The development of new rifle technology changed Civil War battle styles. No longer did regimens line up to achieve great fire power, as the new rifles were quick loading and had better range than anything else of its time. Typical battle losses rose from the normal 10% to 25%, as battlefield tactics had not caught up with the new technology. Hummel consulted an 1864 Harper's New Monthly Magazine, which quoted a Northern captain on the carnage of battle.
Disease was the greatest killer in the Civil War, as in previous wars, Hummel notes. This gave rise to many women risking their lives by volunteering their medical service, which Hummel proudly cites as a "moving testimony to the unmatched courage and efficacy of private action"
While the Confederacy was clear that it was fighting for independence, Hummel notes that the North's ambiguous motives. Was this a war to preserve the Union, or to abolish slavery? Hummel writes that most radical abolitionists "sold out to the crusade for Union," as exemplified by William Lloyd Garrison's slogan changing from "No Union with Slave-Holders" to "Union without Slavery." Abolitionists, said Hummel, began their careers as social conservatives, but as anti-slavery became popular, opposed government coercion at all levels, but returned to Statism by looking to war to stop slavery. Hummel cites that even pacifists who supported the war.
Even Lincoln, who had explicitly stated, as quoted in an 1862 New York Daily Tribune, that his ³paramount object in this struggle, is to save Union, and is not either to save or destroy slavery,² promised federal assistance to slave holders in border states who freed their slaves. Hummel regards this as Lincoln's drift to the Radical Republican camp.
Hummel cites the irony of the Emancipation Proclamation: that it freed slaves in still rebellious states beyond Union authority and did nothing for slaves in states where Union armies had achieved victory. Hummel concludes that "it was not military conquest but the fugitive slave who brought down the South's peculiar institution. Liberation, so often presented as something the Union did for blacks, was as much something they did for themselves." Hummel could strengthen this point by showing whether the fugitive slaves became significant independently of Union action, or at least Union victories.
The North used mercantilism and the South socialism to find their war efforts. Before the war, the national government raised money through a "very low" tariff and sale of public lands. After the war, the United States had the highest taxation per capita than any other country. The government also grew into fields such as railroad and education subsidizing. The Civil War yielded a close relationship between the military and industry, and with it the 17th Century mercantilism that had been abandoned and discredited by the Founding Fathers.
Since the pre-war South lacked the industry to produce war supplies, the government created and ran them. This central planning lead to vast inefficiency and misallocation of resources akin to a socialist economy, and eventaully to the South's defeat. Hummel cites David Donald's Why the North Won the Civil War as typifying the popular thesis that the South's clinging to liberty (rather than the slavery of socialism) during the war led to its defeat.
The war stagnated the economy, and the country lost five years of wealth creation. Real per capita income fell by 3%, and industrial output suffered. Hummel cites the Beard-Hacker thesis (after Charles and Mary Beard, and Louis M. Hacker), that the Civil War promoted prosperity, as an instance of a general economic fallacy about wars.
Union fundraising involve the introduction of the income tax, excise taxes on raw materials, and taxes for licensing. Further, the federal government regulated the banking system, circulated its own soft money, Greenbacks, and created a government enforced monopoly on currency. Hummel cites Radical Republican Charles Sumnerıs opposition to paper money in an 1862 Congressional Globe. These currency measures lead to inflation and the creation of another government agency, the Secret Service, to stomp out counterfeiters. Hummel makes a case that the unregulated banking system of Jacksonian America, that the Civil War financing measures destroyed, was "probably the best monetary system the United States had ever had."
Both the Union and Confederate governments aroused opposition to the war by violating citizen's civil liberties. Hummel notes that this war involved the first 'centrally administered conscription" in US history. The Union and Confederate governments censored mail and newspapers and arrested civilians for antiwar activities.
Hummel emphasizes Lincoln's abuse of presidential authority and disregard for individual liberty. He refers to Lincoln's defenders on this issue as part of the "Not as Bad as Hitler-Stalin-Mao" school, and that "[d]espite his military incompetence, Lincoln was a consummate politician, well aware that overt tyranny might redound to his political disadvantage. That he was only as ruthless as necessary to stay on power and crush rebellion is hardly an excuse."
The Northern victory at Atlanta secured Lincoln's victory in the election of 1864. By the time Lee surrendered at Appomattox in April 1865, Confederate leaders had agreed that the Southerners had lost their will to fight. Hummel cites two common theories: the fight for independence cost the South their goals of preserving slavery (the institution was crumbling) and state's rights; and that the highly Protestant South viewed Confederate military defeats as the wrath of God.
Hummel, again disclosing his perspective in the bibliographic essay, cites that historians attribute the Southıs loss of morale to their lack of Southern nationalism. Citing an unpublished work by a John M. Murrin of Princeton, Hummel notes that the South had a stronger national identity than the American Colonies, and the colonies had more opposition than the Confederacy to their respective revolutions. Again, referring to Stromberg's "Radical Libertarian" article, Hummel asserts that it was not lack of nationalism that caused the morale problem, but "too vigorously coerced loyalty." The Confederate despotism "alienated the southern people from the cause of independence."
Hummel devotes a chapter to Reconstruction and discusses its historiography in the bibliographic essay. He defends, prominent libertarian Murray Rothbard did, the morality of Thaddeus Steven's proposal to give all adult freeman "forty acres and a mule," as true application of laissez faire principles.
After the war, blacks were gaining wealth and real estate, in some cases faster than whites. Hummel credits their market for rewarding their virtues, and the government for giving them troubles It was not soon before the government served the special interests of a group and imposed anti-black regulations such as segregation.
Americans had a new sense of nationalism, symbolized by people using the term "United States" to refer to one State than several states. The size and scope of the post war federal government was orders of magnitude higher than that before the war. Total armed forces and tax levels, both increased in war time, never returned to prewar levels. The government became involved in monopoly promotion by chartering licensing agencies for lawyers and doctors, and regulating railroads.
Hummel describes how the new centralized banking had made the economy more vulnerable to panics than before regulation. This system also caused a currency shortage which hindered agricultural prosperity.
Post-bellum America marks the start of people looking to government to solve social problems. Hummel cites the Chicago Tribune (January 5, 1865) where Illinois Governor Richard Yates smugly states that the war destroyed Jefferson's vision of a frugal government, and that "[t]he war, has not only, of necessity, given more power to, but led to a more intimate prevision of the government over every material interest of society."
In the Epilogue, Hummel summarizes his positions that slavery was politically and economically doomed. Southern secession was a realistic option because at the time, as States raised revenues from internal taxes, while the small national government used tariffs and land sales to raise revenue. Nonsense was Lincoln's sentiment that a peaceful session would represent the failure of the American experiment for liberty. Hummel cites an 1862 London Times which noted that the United States government valued their power over liberty, and tried to retain its Empire with force, and in doing so, destroyed democracy.
Citing the "ratchet effect," that government extortion and violation of liberties during wartime never return to prewar levels, Hummel begins to drive home his thesis. He shows that most New Deal policies were rehashed of World War I measures. These measures, he says, are rooted in Progressivism, "the country's first dominant mindset to advocate government intervention over the free market and personal liberty at every level and every sphere."
Can Hummel trace the Progressive movement back to the Civil War? Women's reactions to the 14th and 15th Amendments changed the their movement from one for equal rights under the law to an obsession for rights to vote. This shift placed them in the same camp as progressives and prohibitionists. The "Yankee Leviathan," with its policies, had transformed both abolitionism and feminism from unified movements against slavery, government, and war into progressive pro-war movements.
The Civil War marked the end of victories of liberty over power, i.e., the American Revolution against England, Jeffersonian democracy against Federalism, Jacksonian Democracy against government banking, and the abolitionists against government enforced slavery. "In contrast to the whittling away of government that had preceded Fort Sumpter," Hummel concludes, "the United States had commenced its halting but inexorable march toward the welfare-warfare State of today."