Plantation Architecture: part 2, Arlington House

The following pictures show pieces of the Robert E. Lee plantation home, called the Custis-Lee Mansion or Arlington House. Robert E. Lee married a Custis cousin. They share family with Martha Washington.

The mansion used to overlook orchards. Part of the war reparations (which besides describing payment also describe 'repair' of injury) was that 624 acres of land surrounding this plantation was deeded to the nation for a military grave site, the place we call Arlington National Cemetery. Later, the house was purchased by the Federal Government. The history of the transaction is itself a sign of Northern resentment and shady dealings, later made right with the Custis family in part by Abraham Lincoln's own son, Robert Todd.

It's interesting to note that the first Memorial Service at Arlington National Cemetery was officiated by President Herbert Hoover in 1929, a man that most of the U.S. despised at the time. And interesting that the Lincoln Memorial is sited to architecturally answer Arlington House, starting from 1867 when the site was only swamp. Every single marble slab on the Lincoln Memorial is a specific planned inclusion; every possible message that could be made is reinforced in the execution of it. Just as the Custis-Lee House was meant to advance one family, the Lincoln Memorial was always meant to include every state and every citizen of the United States. It was built to advance Union: to honor the man who stood for Union.

President Lincoln faced off Lee's Army of Northern Virginia in his last, most fateful years. Now the Lincoln Memorial faces and answers Arlington House. The arc between these two historical tacticians calls and answers to victory and defeat, personal sacrifice to personal loss, classical Greek to classical Roman, justice to injustice, a temple in a flat park to a home on a hill. Along this arc rests the costs of victory, defeat, ultimate effort, and ideals in contention: our nation's military casualties.

Arlington National Cemetery is administered by the Department of the Army. The Custis-Lee home is administered by the National Parks Service. It is currently undergoing some renovation, but it needs a lot more.

Yesterday, I posted on my ambivalence to historic preservation of plantation architecture. But for this site, I have none. Because it stands amidst Arlington's hallowed ground, because the Lincoln Memorial answers it in full, I believe it should be restored to the utmost. Every strength we give the building shows what Lincoln was up against. Every trapping we add to its interior gives Lincoln's complex simplicity and stern but compassionate code all the more significance.

The next pictures are not so beautiful. I could have cropped them to be, but I wish to show you what kind of work preservation might entail.

A humidity sensor on a marble mantel with oak-leaf carvings.

Probably much more than a simple paint job required.

Cracking lintel.

The slave quarters have been partially preserved and provide their own answer to the house and to Lincoln himself. The Parks Service exhibit inside shows that they tried to preserve as many memories as possible from these slaves, through the gathering of geneologies and spoken or written accounts.

Mrs. Lee liked to entertain, whether General Lee was home or not. She had a built-in chaperone, a cousin who never married, and whose economic health was therefore precarious. As a family hanger-on, she was apparently irritatingly cheerful. The slave quarters exhibit recalls a slave who used to do a good imitation of her. It called to my mind that the woman's suffrage movement and the abolition movement were entirely linked in their first years--that women could rarely own property, and that no slave could.

But most of all, the story was exceedingly funny. And I think that is also worth memorializing:

Next to the house on the hill, a tiny cabin held a contingent of oppressed people. But even oppressed, they still had intelligence, and opinions, and many tactics for endurance, including humor. These slaves are part of Lincoln's self-perceived care and duty; his Memorial looks to them as well. The slave quarters also represent the Custis-Lee stake in the argument: their right to extract care and duty. The argument expressed in the architecture is therefore three-fold. The slaves were more than a class or concern: They were individuals with wit. The account also recalls that history is full of little moments. The slave's humor under duress is akin to the humor of military men who endure under duress.

Well-built but small, and no amenities inside.

The Custis-Lee Mansion and its slave quarters make Lincoln's memorial complete: they recall the totality of moral argument and military effort, political certitude and uncertain outcomes stated whole in Lincoln's Second Inaugural address. The slave cabin finishes out the Custis-Lee argument in a moral sense, reminding us that grandeur lived through the toil of others. The slave quarters also resonate to that other answer: those that lie all around, out of pain at last and some for over a century, in Arlington National Cemetery. They remind us that those that suffered in war are more than a number. They were individuals who did not attain, for the most part, their full span of years and its expression.

May they rest in peace, along this arc of conflict and care, under flat turf or on the hill. May we care over these questions, and these dead, forever.

The Lincoln Memorial and Inscription

Plantation Architecture, part I

I have cynical feelings about restoring Plantation Mansions. Most of them are depressing indeed: in want of funds, with period wallpaper books open to show what they want donations for, and  a dusty mayonnaise jar for you to put those donations in.

Most of these homes are mouldering faster than John Brown's body. In Louisiana along the (Mississippi) River Road, you can see them gradually cut out from under by river water, industrial development, weather, mold, cockroaches, mice, and human neglect. Most of them have elegant proportions that speak past the shabbiness and decay. They represent a type of architecture which will never return.

European Tradition
If this was Europe, we would prize the chateaus where elegance once reigned at high human cost. Europeans don't raze their architecture just because there were dungeons in the basement full of torture implements, or even though rich young lordlings raped servant girls in the pantry or peed on the marquetry table legs in marble halls. During the French Revolution, they chopped off the heads of the Lords in the palace and those who tried to sell luxury goods to those Very Royal. This scared the hell out of the rest of Europe, but not enough to change central government.  Napoleon showed up, and the Royal Pageant went on. So did war--but it was not a war to free the oppressed. It was a war of Kings against an Emperor. Like his forbears in French leadership, Napoleon sought to control all of Europe with a ruling class, not to abolish central rule.

Our Idea
But in this country, we ended slavery through means not strictly class-driven. It was a regional break, and yes an economic break, but not by class: all classes went to war against slave states or to preserve their 'peculiar institution'. Today I'm not delving deeply into the long but true history of how the slave class had to suffer too long, and never got an even break afterward--that's for another time. But this is where some cynicism lies when it comes to preserving Plantation Architecture.

The American ideal of equality for all, plus a disdain for losing, makes a full-out federal preservation protection of plantation items seem ludicrous. Why would the United States of America revere the homes of its lost oppressor class? Yet those who don't grow up in the South never quite figure out that shabby plantation homes recollect war depredations (Sherman's torch) or reparations (carpetbaggers). Each failing site signifies that an entire economic class was decimated, that they were taxed and driven out of business, that they gave their all (gallantly) and lost. So in the South, preservation of the "highest achievement" is complicated by the fact that their best wasn't good enough. It was too long on grandeur, too short on foundries. Too cruel to sustain, but it propped elegance. A shabby Southern plantation denotes high ambivalence due to unresolved injury and the memory of historical outrage. Pick the injury and the outrage depending on who you are.

Therefore, any restoration of plantation architecture seemingly speaks to a lack of ambivalence: that the North should have left the South alone, and onward to that slavery somehow was acceptable. Onlookers who wish the Confederate flag to disappear distrust the motives of plantation preservation. .In this country, such preservation is a political statement. But I think the statement could  and should be be more complex.

Yes, these plantation homes describe the high living of careless  and cruel rich white people. Maybe some were "good to their slaves". They turned the cruelty over to subcontractors: foremen, patrollers, estate agents, so they could accord themselves this luxury of kind treatment on the face-to-face or escape altogether. And we do this now whenever we buy goods produced by slave labor elsewhere. These homes have the capability of throwing present sins into our faces, too. The ambivalence may be about a present international economy as well.

These homes also describe, just as the Egyptian pyramids do, or Versailles, or any Gothic chapel, the workmanship and artisan craft of the working class. Plantation sites don't just describe a place where whipping posts were used--but a place where black artisans designed and built sugar refineries, timber mills, environmentally suitable homes, levees that held back swamps, defensive avenues of fire, forest fire abatement, and strong buildings for storage and their own, far-lesser habitations. Most of these artisans are not recorded in history, just as the masons of palaces and cathedrals and pyramids are not. Most of them were never remunerated and hardly recognized.

And Just Maybe . . .
Maybe historical preservation can bring out that an enslaved people contributed mightily to American historical infrastructure. That without the unnamed architects of the sugar refinery, the unnamed engineers of the levees, and the faithful work undertaken, we would not be who we are and what we are today.  I think when we preserve mansions and slave quarters, we should preserve technological works as well--less glamorous, far more important. Then we could see that despite every attempt to stifle personality, capital aggregation, and justifiable pride in the slave, their contributions remain. Our very map would be different along the Eastern seaboard and the Southern coastline were it not for these unnamed souls.

We could find a way to honor slaves at these sites as well as deplore their situation. We could advance our understanding of history and the human spirit--gifted and superior, even in slavery. Something past Gone With the Wind, King Tut, European Lords and Medieval Popes. Something that reconciles this historical ambivalence by refusing to bury any part of it. Something that gives shape to current national aspirations.

Still, though I believe this could be achieved, I remain cynical. I wonder, when the last plantation house in the South collapses, will we be done fixing the scars by then? On the other hand, I remember that forgetting history is like being blind to a warning. We have long been blind to the achievements of the unknown laborer, whether we espouse their cause en masse or not. So I do not know the answer.

Tomorrow, a plantation architecture that should be preserved . . . . or at least I think so . . . .

Happy Birthday Clara Barton

Clara Barton (December 25, 1821 -- April 12, 1912) learned medicine at her brother's bedside, starting at age 11. At 22, she was a teacher. And in 1861, she was treating wounded Union soldiers in the U.S. Capitol.

In 1865, Abraham Lincoln put her in charge of finding missing soldiers in the Civil War. But she is best known as the organizer of the American Red Cross. Clara Barton is a symbol of tireless mercy in action. (Although in real life, I'm sure she did get tired.)

Thanks to those who serve our troops and our society through their medical skills--the paramedics, the E.R. nurses, the E.R. docs, the clinic staff.
This Christmas, the troops are on call, and they need your helping hand. People still get sick and injured right here at home--that doesn't stop for the holidays either. And there you are. A lot of times we're too sick, or too scared about someone else, to thank you at the time. So thank you now.

Happy Birthday Clara Barton. Your work lives on.

Related articles

• Red Cross makes treats for the troops and veterans (charlotte.news14.com)

Rita Dove: David Walker, 1785-1830

.

Free to travel, he still couldn't be shown how lucky
he was. They strip and drag and beat us about
like rattlesnakes. Home on Brattle Street, he took in the sign
on the door of the slop shop. All day at the counter--
white caps, ale-stained pea coats. compass: needles
eloquent as tuning forks, shivered, pointing north.
Evenings, the ceiling fan sputtered, like a second pulse.
Oh Heaven! I am full!! I can hardly move my pen!

On the faith of an eye-wink, pamphlets were stuffed
into trouser pockets. pamphlets were transported
in the coat-linings of itinerant seamen, jackets
ringwormed with salt traded drunkenly to pursers
in the Carolinas, pamphlets ripped out, read aloud:
Men of color, who are also of sense.
Outrage. Incredulity. Uproar in state legislatures.

We are the most wretched, degraded, and abject set
of beings that ever lived since the world began.
The jewelled canaries in the lecture hall tittered
pressed his dark hand between their gloves.
Every half-step was no step at all.
Every morning, the man on the corner strung a fresh
bunch of boots from his shoulders. "I'm happy!" he said.
"I never want to live any better or happier than
when I can get a-plenty of boots and shoes to clean!"

--
In this poem, Rita Dove writes about a somewhat less-than-famous (but historically well-known) abolitionist named David Walker. Here are some basics to help with the poem:

Mr. Walker was "free to walk" because he was born free to a free mother and a slave father.
He travelled, gradually moving to Boston and opening a used clothing store that catered to black sailors.
The sailors smuggled his abolitionist pamphlets to parts of the South--the most famous of these including an appeal to violent revolution. These were discovered, and as you see in the poem, uproar ensued. Many black sailors were then forbidden to leave their ship when berthed in the Port of Charleston or similar. The italicized parts are of course excerpts from that pamphlet.

He also was on the abolitionist's speaker's circuit. The jewelled canaries refers to the audience. Both men and women wore gloves in evening entertainments (of which improving lectures was one such, just as History Channel is today).

I actually did not intend this as part of the Lincoln series. The poem has been reminding me of itself prior to that, but I could not find my copy. The verse that was "sticking" in my mind was:

Every half-step was no step at all.

for other reasons.

Yet these are the half-steps I find here:
1. David Walker's freedom did not free him from being concerned with the slavery of his race. Their status affected him too.
2. Writing about abolition is not the same as accomplishing it.
3. The compass might have been better help than a pamphlet to a slave that can't read.
4. The pamphlets never made it anyway.
5. The more adamant he became, the less his lecture circuit understood him-was that a nervous titter?
6. The glove still separates human hands. The glove on one shows a status that the not-gloved don't share.
7. The man on the corner is free and happy. Or is he free? What horizon does he have?

Anyway, are there more? One thing I did not explore is the quotes. Also, their seem to be a lot of circles in this poem, and I don't know why: fan movement, ringworms of salt, compasses . . .
Whatever you see is well worth sharing.
And another question: what do you think Rita Dove is saying about Walker? I don't think she fully admires him, but I can't quite make up my mind.

Lincoln, the Domestic Diplomat

In the three posts about "Lincoln's Political Economy," I tried to show that Foreign Powers were constrained from acknowledging the CSA. First, they did not want to back the wrong side. Second, in the community of nations, sovereignty counts. To assist in a domestic insurrection is the same as waging war on the legitimate government of that country. For this reason among many, Lincoln did not acknowledge, and could not afford to acknowledge, the new nation of the Confederate States of America.
To Lincoln, the federal government retained authority over all thirty-plus states were under his jurisdiction. By holding to the belief of a rightful Union, he continued to exercise some level of authority over all them, even if it was only blockade south of the Mason-Dixon line.

More than once he corrected General Henry Halleck for using phraseology that did not conform to a usage of  a United States: "You know I did not like the phrase, in Orders, No. 68 I believe, "Drive the invaders from our soil." (Letter, July 6, 1863). They were not invaders--they were fellow citizens of the U.S.

The suspension of the writ of habeas corpus in Maryland, April 1861 to 1862, is an early exercise in Lincoln's assumption of that authority, backed up by force. But Lincoln also had to practice diplomacy within his community of individual states: they were turning on each other. And governors frequently wrote Lincoln, telling him exactly how little support they would give for [x] or how much support they needed for [y].

Even More Complicated 

In most formulations of Civil War America, the U.S. map is divided into three useful categories: North, South, and border states. The border states were mostly slave-holding states that held with the Union.

The question of slavery was united with many other issues, red herrings or not. Popular sovereignty and states' rights was a rallying cry in pockets of nearly every state of the Union. The Democratic party was a major party in every state, not just Southern ones; they might decry any Republican measure. Some were anti-war, or at least, anti-Civil War: the Peace Democrats, and more flagrantly in opposition, the "Copperheads". The famous habeas corpus Valladigham Case was in Ohio, a Union state with Clement Valladigham potentially a Copperhead governor. Ultimately, Lincoln declined to hold Mr. Valladigham. Instead, he was allowed to go South, into sympathetic territory.

Local Terrain and Cooperation
With the blue states and the light blue ones above, Lincoln had to work with the Governors and officials that would let him, and make war on those who would not. He needed political and military forecasts, a way to bolster pro-Union officials and to cajole or contain those who would let Union break to pieces.  For every suspension of habeas corpus, there were hundreds, even thousands of efforts to  hold Union together without playing hardball--or, by granting exceptions to hard rules in the name of decency, mercy, or even expediency. 

An Early Diplomacy: Stay on Point. Do Not Speculate.
During the 1859 presidential election, Lincoln wrote constantly to delegates and campaigners about staying 'on message'. The message without variation was contentious enough. He also stayed aloof from personal attacks, devising tactics for countering smear campaigns that left him carefully above. Post-election, the calls for further explanation of his policies continued. Lincoln stayed low-key in Illinois, generally providing only references to his previous record. Along with this demand for explanations, he had to field the calls of patronage. On December 15, 1860, he partly broke his silence to answer a letter containing rumors about "stacking the deck" using patronage:

"As to the use of patronage in the slave states, where there are few or no Republicans, I do not expect to inquire for the politics of the appointee, or whether he does or not own slaves. I intend in that matter to accommodate the people in the several localities, if they themselves will allow me to accommodate them."

This letter came before the second wave of secession or even before Lincoln's inauguration ceremony. He was already attempting to hold onto everyone who would stay. As reported in a  previous post, the attack on Fort Sumter caused Lincoln to break his silence. By calling for militia to defend the Union, he may have precipitated the second wave of secession. Such perilous outcomes only made Lincoln more determined to hang on to what he could. Another look at the map's light-blue states shows you how much strategic territory he was trying to hold.

Under Suspension of Habeas Corpus: Limiting Military Rule
This letter to General John M. Schofield, local commander of Union forces in St. Louis, Missouri
July 13, 1863

I regret to learn of the arrest of the Democrat editor. I fear this loses you the middle position I desired you to occupy.  . . .  Please spare me the trouble this is likely to bring   [.]

A translation: you stupid jerk. Let him go. Another one, a few months later, to the same man:
October 1, 1863

"Your immediate duty, in regard to Missouri, now is to advance the efficiency of that establishment, and to so use it, as far as practicable, to compel the excited people there to leave one another alone."

In other words, Schofield was to let the state take the lead whenever possible in local police matters. Not that there was a police. There was only military and home guard. Lincoln's instructions are explicitly to keep the peace:

 ". . . you will only arrest individuals, and suppress assemblies, or newspapers, when they may be working palpable injury to the Military in your charge; and in no other case will you interfere with the expression of opinion in any form, or allow it to be interfered with violently by others."

This instruction shows that Lincoln did not want to deny Missourians their civil rights, even under the suspension of the writ.  Also important to Lincoln's concerns, however, is a strong with not to alienate state voters used to considering liberty their birthright. Lincoln was constantly on watch to make sure that his local militaries were secure. The civil rights were to be left alone--unless necessary for military security. It also shows that his military, then as ever, were expected to be, partly, diplomats.

There are hundreds of letter where Lincoln listens to personal appeals from the parents of deserters, the wives of fallen Confederate heroes, mothers in poverty whose sons are in stockade for some infraction were not paid, former Senator's sons in Federal prison, et cetera. Each one of these letters, whether giving way or not, is calculated to offer a mercy when it did not interfere with a rational military principle.

These are efforts at diplomacy, to right wrongs and keep state officials happy, newspapers a little more quiet, and citizens calm. But the best example of Lincoln's domestic diplomacy especially concerning the Border States brings us where we started.

The Emancipation Proclamation
My first post on Lincoln was about this important document. There, above, and elsewhere, I said Lincoln did insist he had jurisdiction over all states. With the Emancipation Proclamation, Lincoln paid the secessionist states an economic ultimatum for a political one. For the border states, it is different. It required diplomacy, or, not giving the first ultimatum that would get him an answering one back. Insisting on emancipation there would lose him whatever shred of political or military support he had.

Though Lincoln wrote some adamant letters to Tennessee's governor, and allowed some punitive regimes in Kentucky, et cetera, he was nevertheless at least partly sympathetic to their plight. Missouri's, Tennessee's and Kentucky 's economies were closely tied to other slave states, particularly in regard to shipping their cash crops downriver via the Mississippi. Their existing commerce was essentially ruined by staying in the Union. To take away the last prop of their economy, however heinous that prop might be, would be to lose them forever--and maybe the war.

All states paid heavily in the Civil War. Lincoln's soft-pedal on slavery in the border States via the Emancipation Proclamation acknowledges their particular economic hardship, their uneasy (and sometimes enforced) yet ultimate loyalty. These border states took the brunt in most of the battles of the Civil War: militarily, politically, and economically.

Today, Lincoln's detractors have revived old tired arguments against this great, beleaguered, and frequently unpopular leader. They have counted on our failure to examine Lincoln's historical context in full.  But Lincoln's words reveal the great care he took in his leadership, in both big and small matters. His milieu was one of cantankerous states used to deciding for themselves. The Union was ripping at every seam.  Lincoln had a stiff spine but also a compassionate view. His letters and speeches reveal his profound understanding of lasting and humane principles, military leadership, economic necessity, diplomacy, and the context of his age.

---
I hope you have enjoyed this (12 part) series, which was originally intended to be three posts. :-)
Thanks to Slamdunk for suggesting it! What an adventure!  And especially thank you to all who commented along the way. You kept me going, through many lamps of midnight oil.

References:
Abraham Lincoln, Speeches and Writings, 1859-1865. The Library of America. Available.
The American Civil War: Habeas Corpus, at etym online, especially useful and linked above, here
Shelby Foote, The Civil War, Volume I. Random House. Available.
A fine paper written by C.R. Smith, posted here.
US Government Info at About.com, with Lincoln's 1862 Proclamation suspending the writ of habeus corpus, here. This is short.
Wikipedia, Border States. From that Wikipedia page you can access pages such as "Kentucky in the Civil War" that give more details to what I have quickly glossed. Kentucky is particularly interesting in that it was under a very tough general and under conditions of guerilla war.

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An Impoverished Army

This is from my favorite fiction account of the Civil War. It is written from the South's point of view, in a humanistic and somewhat stream-of-consciousness style: The Black Flower. The author, Howard Bahr, lives in Oxford Mississippi. For a time, he ran William Faulkner's home and museum. He has been acquainted Shelby Foote and other Southern writers and historians of note.  None of that is important compared to how well he describes the near-end of the Confederate effort, through the medium of one man and one woman.

In the book, a single woman, Anna Hereford, has lost two Confederate suitors already to war. She befriends an exhausted and mildly-wounded Confederate soldier in Tennessee in 1864. The plantation house is surrounded by troops about to go into battle. In true Southern style, the Confederate leader brings his compliments, and asks if the house may be used as an infirmary. Thus it is filled with soldiers: exhausted, dragging, hungry.  Some are bent on rape and pillage; others, decent men with no luck at all.

For instance, Bushrod Carter's mild wound is not mild for long.

Bushrod's body was white, hairless, frail, etched with grime . . .  Anna wondered dully how such a slight frame could be a soldier's.

The surgeon offered only a glance at Bushrod's arm. 'It has to come off," he said.

"No!" said Anna.

The surgeon shrugged. "Then he will die. You can see that for yourself."

Anna could, indeed, see that for herself. The arm was beginning to turn the color of blackberries. It was swelling too, and the red streaks coursed through the puffy flesh from the hand to the elbow. It was already beginning to smell.

"It came so fast,' said Anna. 'It was just . . . . . so fast!"

"It is how it happens," said the surgeon, gentler now. "These boys--they live on parched corn and bacon and coffee, they never sleep, never quit, and when somethin happens to em they got nothin to prop em up. It is a wonder any of em can still put one foot in front of another."

The black flower is a bullet wound, and perhaps a symbol of other things. Every page in this book gives some idea of what the culture of the Confederacy wrought, how it withered, and what remained: then, for years after, and into the present day.

I did not enjoy Bahr's sequel quite as much. But I would pick this first novel over Cold Mountain, although with some regrets; I would quickly choose it over Shaara's fictional Killer Angels. Michael Shaara presumes too much into the mind of Lee to please me, and I think he thereby trivialized Lee's intellect and strategy. But that is just another opinion. . . on yet another book.

The Black Flower. Howard Bahr. Available.

Picture below: Dead soldier, near Fredericksburg.

"Varnish is Injurious to Leather"

One of the prizes in my book collection is the "Revised U.S. Army Regulations, 1861". It is somewhat damaged; I can't access the title page and publication information without ruining them. I do know it was published sometime after July 25, 1861. It is available online, too!

I doubt many field copies survived. The book is heavy; stuff such as 'close-order drill', so carefully explained, was useless in the war; each man knew what he was supposed to do; and the pages are a soft newsprint type, excellent for use as toilet paper.

ARTICLE I.

MILITARY DISCIPLINE.

1. ALL inferiors are required to obey strictly, and to execute with alacrity and good faith, the lawful orders of the superiors appointed over them.

2. Military authority is to be exercised with firmness, but with kindness and justice to inferiors. Punishments shall be strictly conformable to military law.

3. Superiors of every grade are forbidden to injure those under them by tyrannical or capricious conduct, or by abusive language.

On page 24, Sections 128-130, it specifies that four laundresses are to be attached to each company; how on pay-day, the laundress would receive monies owed to her by individual soldiers (immediately collected) as well as pay for her company duties.  Other pages detail the number of nurses for camps and hospitals, and the forms required for furlough, recruiting, subsistence, and quartermaster requests.

There is a section on how to handle insane soldiers (send them to Washington!). An order that soldiers be vaccinated (against smallpox, presumably, and a good idea). The book lists the instruments required for amputating limbs, how many for each outfit (Twelve needles per surgeon). How much the sutlers, (supply-entrepreneurs to the common soldier) would be taxed (ten percent).  On page 226, Form No. 46, I see that a Major-General made  $96.00 for fuel allowance plus $120.00 per month. A Brigadier-General only received $30.00 for fuel and $80.00 salary.(p.226).

The title of this post refers to Article XIII, "Companies", where (p. 22):

104. Cartridge-boxes and bayonet scabbards will be polished with blacking; varnish is injurious to the leather, and will not be used."

On page 499, we come to the Appendix; The Articles of War [Approved July 25, 1861].

Art. 7. Any officer or soldier who shall  begin, excite, cause, or join in, any mutiny or sedition, in any troop or company in the service of the United States, or in any party, post, detachment or guard, shall suffer death, or such other punishment as by a court-martial shall be inflicted.

Art. 8. Any officer, non-commissioned officer, or soldier, who being present at any mutiny or sedition, does not use his utmost endeavour to suppress the same, or coming to the knowledge of any intended mutiny, does not, without delay, give information thereof to his commanding officer, shall be punished . . . (etc).

I am sure these articles have been standard in any military handbook through the ages. But they seem to have special meaning, and early placement, in the Articles of War of 1861.

The real value to me, however, is in learning what was considered standard or desirable. For instance,

117. The bread must be thoroughly baked, and not eaten until it is cold. The soup must be boiled at least five hours, and the vegetables always cooked sufficiently to be perfectly soft and digestible.

It might make you laugh, but in two sentences, the regulations have partially destroyed the corrupt preference of working in the camp kitchen (no snitching hot biscuits, everybody gets the same) and in essence ordered the cooks to plan ahead and work with resolution (soup to boil long enough). This last also tended, like the vaccinations, to quell sickness in a time when germ theory was not known. If only they had done that with their surgical instruments.

The phrase "varnish is injurious to leather" applies greatly to Union soldiers in the field. They lived in mud or grit and steamed or froze at Nature's whim; could not wait around for cold bread or digestible soup, or got no food at all. Officers of cavalry with raised swords at the charge were routinely shot first by the enemy, and were, to the rest of the soldiers on both sides of the war, considered pathologically stupid.

The varnish stripped off. The leather was blackened, and then the blacking wore away. The war dragged on, with tools scavenged, repaired, and stripped to bare leather.
--
Picture below: Online Little Rock, of a sutler's tent on the Potomac. Do you think they sold whiskey? You bet they did.

Lincoln, the Constitution, and Habeus Corpus, part 2

The suspension of habeas corpus was an untested measure in Constitutional history. As such, Lincoln had to decide how, in the division of powers, he could ease through the Constitutional question.  This involved either soothing, or ignoring, calls to account from the legislative and judicial branches of government.

Lincoln's circumstances might justly be called an emergency, and I think fit the definition of the stakes required for suspending habeas corpus. His response to the emergency waited neither for Congress nor the federal courts in a. calling for militia without a declaration of war from Congress, and b. the suspension of habeas corpus. Lincoln made them both an Executive function, but not without dissent.

On the same day that Lincoln called for militia, he called for special session:

Congress Convenes its Special Session, July 4, 1861

Lincoln's Special Message to Congress is long. (Sixteen pages worth in my book, too long to summarize in full.) In it, Lincoln refers to the extraordinary measures he has taken, explaining his reasoning and asking for their approval. In today's parlance, we might say he presented it to them as a colleague, alone on watch, who had done what he thought they would do.

As to habeas corpus specifically, and the stretching of Executive Powers in general, he first gives his reasoning for taking that power as President. Then he asks:

  . . .. are all the laws, but one, to go unexecuted, and the government itself go to pieces, lest that one be violated?

In Lincoln's mind, the answer was no. His purpose then, as always, was preservation of the Union in full.

"Our popular government has often been called an experiment. Two points in it, our people have already settled--the successful establishing, and the successful administering of it. One still remains--its successful maintenance against a formidable internal attempt to overthrow it.

Then he gives assurances:

"Lest there be some uneasiness in the minds of candid men as to what is to be the course of the government, towards Southern states, after the rebellion shall have been suppressed, the Executive deems it proper to say, it will be his purpose then, as ever,  to be guided by the Constitution . . . 

But the Courts did not see it this way. Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that judges were individuals, with individual opinions as to the question of slavery, secession, and executive power. Any one of those three might garner opposition to Lincoln's assumption of authority.

Ex parte Merryman

What followed, most famously, was Lincoln's complete and total disregard of judicial orders to free prisoners, a legal suit called ex parte Merryman. In this suit, Judge Taney ordered that Mr. Merryman, a Baltimore citizen taken up by General Winfield Scott, be released. This was on the grounds that Congress was the proper party to issue writs of suspension of habeas corpus. Taney was afraid of military rule:

"I can only say that if the authority under which the constitution has confided to the judicial department and judicial officers, may thus, upon any pretext or under any circumstances, be usurped by the military power, at its discretion, the people of the United States are no longer living under a government of laws but every citizen holds life, liberty and property at the will and pleasure of the army officer in whose military district he may happen to be found."

In a letter (June 12, 1861)  48 days after Lincoln bestowed this power on Scott,  Taney wrote: 

"The paroxism of passion into which the country has suddenly been thrown -- appears to me to amount almost to delirium. I hope that it is too violent to last long -- and that calmer and more sober thoughts will soon take its place -- and that the north as well as the south will see that a peaceful separation with free institutions in each section -- is far better -- than the union of all the present states under a military government & a reign of terror -- preceded too by a civil war with all its horror & which[,] end as it may[,] will prove ruinous to the victors as well as the vanquished."

Lincoln ignored Taney's order. All of this was, in insurrectionist circles and to Jefferson Davis' government, a rallying cry against that monster in the White House. 

Finally, in November 1862, Congress passed a law indemnifying Lincoln in the matter. It passed both houses in early 1863. With the legislative body giving Lincoln permission, it tended to take the Constitutional question of who could issue such a writ, off the table. Lincoln lifted the suspension and granted amnesty on February 12, 1862.

But on and off, Lincoln would suspend the writ of habeas corpus in the war, when things were going badly in particular areas. He had promised Congress a limited application of suspension, and a fidelity to the Constitutional measure: rebellion, insurrection, and public safety. Nevertheless, to constitutional scholars or those who remained concerned over human rights, this on-and-off application was still a measure of grave concern.  Lincoln may have been a stickler to the criteria, but he, and military officers, were the ones to decide. It lends itself to the charge of capricious measures. And we were hell-bent to avoid capricious dictators when we made this country.

The Valladigham Case

Clement Valladigham was running for the office of  Ohio governor. He had outsized Southern sympathies, and his campaign could be a huge rally for anti-Union activity. He was incarcerated. Upon applying for a writ of habeas corpus, the local judge declined, saying that he was not empowered to overthrow decisions made by military tribunals.

On June 12, 1863, Lincoln wrote to a Committee of Unionists who decried the suspension of civil liberties, especially in regard to Valladigham. The letter is another long one, (almost ten pages in my book). I think Lincoln wished to carefully explain, and make them realize, every point at which he was beset. He could not trust a jury, with possible confederate sympathizers, for one thing. Moreover:

. . .in [the insurgent's] own unrestricted efforts to destroy Union, Constitution, and law, all together, the Government would, in great degree, be restrained by the same Constitution and law from  arresting their progress. Their sympathizers pervaded all departments of the Government and nearly all communities of the people. From this material, under cover of "liberty of speech" "liberty of the press", and "habeus corpus", they hoped to keep on foot among us a most efficient corps of spies, informers, suppliers, and aiders and abettors of their cause in a thousand ways. (p. 456).

He also wrote:

"Must I shoot a simple-minded soldier boy who deserts, while I must not touch a hair of a wily agitator who induces him to desert? . . . I think that in such a case, to silence the agitator, and save the boy, is not only constitutional, but, withal, a great mercy."

First Conclusion 

Suspending habeas corpus interfered with freedom of speech and freedom of association, freedom of movement--and maybe even who had the right to bear arms. Where on this list of priorities comes national security? Lincoln said it came first: would you have every other law broken save this one? 

He did not make this opinion from nothing. Thomas Hobbes wrote, early in the philosophy of political science, that the function of a state is to create security within, displacing anarchy to its borders. Before that, Thucydides wrote in the Melian Dialogue that loss and occupation are the miserable fates for nations that do not defend themselves. Lincoln was already aware that the confederacy was seeking outside help. In a worst-case scenario, the United States could have been rent to pieces, not just by inside agitation but interference by foreign powers. The first defense against this was organized force against insurrection and interference.

It is important to view Lincoln's circumstances, and his thinking, before passing judgement one way or the other. I believe Lincoln considered this measure as one specialized power among those he had to preserve the Union. This means he was careful but not reluctant. I do think he was a stickler for applying the Constitutional imperative. So caprice does not apply, nor does dictatorship. He built his reasoning on philosophical antecedents, Constitutional prescription, and practical concern, and he made those part of public record.

Letters such as these may have changed nothing about the Constitutional question. They did tend to reinforce that Lincoln was a careful man, thoughtful but adamant. Such a letter would have been, very quickly, a public property, an open letter to the public. By explaining his reasoning, he made what you might call a personal guarantee that dictatorship was not about to ensue. 

Next I am going to take on how habeas corpus was a weapon for diplomacy and moderation in Lincoln's consistent and agonizing diplomacy with individual states.

Lincoln, the Constitution, and Habeus Corpus, part 1, Revised.

One of the charges against Lincoln, today and in his time, was that he was a rampant believer in big government. Those that say this point to his suspension of the writ of Habeus Corpus.

What is habeas corpus?

Suspending habeas corpus compromises human rights and civil rights. According to Wikipedia, it is a way that prisoners may seek to end an imprisonment for which there is no corpus, or body, of evidence. It is not a way to stop a false arrest, but a way to nullify an imprisonment that has become a kind of warehousing, where accusers have time to find elusive evidence or forget the prisoner altogether.

Article I, Section 9, clause 2 of the U.S. Constitution states "The privilege of the writ of habeas corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in cases of rebellion or invasion the public safety may require it."

In this post, I concentrate more on Lincoln and his rationales or defenses against his accusers and detractors. In the meantime, I think I found that Lincoln's suspension of habeas corpus marks an early determination to be the Commander-in-Chief that a military could actually function under.

Many of Lincoln's letters to generals have suggestions. Others have direct orders. In every case, it seems that Lincoln is determined to assure his military command that he supported them. That he knew life was difficult on the ground. It is a conducted military diplomacy, designed to ensure that his thinking was understood and carried out with regard to the war. It was calculated to the single purpose of preserving Union, through military and non-military means. These first months show his first steps toward that end.

A Short, Eventful Timeline:
In April of 1861, Abraham Lincoln had been president less than two months. The 'First Wave' of states had already seceded from the Union.
April 15:  Lincoln called Congress back in session. He also called for 75,000 militia from the states. This turned out to be, at least in Shelby Foote's estimation, a grand mistake. The call for militia led to the secession of the second wave of states, including Virginia--right next door.

April 18: The first soldiers show up: 500 untrained and unarmed men from Pennsylvania arrive from Maryland. They report a cold reception, but no incidents.
April 19:  The 6th Massachusetts showed up with 21 less able-bodied than when they started. In Baltimore, while on the train, they had been stoned and shot at by Marylanders. Four died; 17 wounded. They had returned fire, killing twelve and wounding more.

On the 19th of April, Lincoln ordered the blockade against the rebellious states.

April 22: a delegation of Marylanders came to Lincoln, protesting the "pollution" of Union soldiers crossing their state. Lincoln told them this would be impossible to prevent. In response, Maryland citizens tore up their railways, cut telegraph lines, and wrecked bridges. Washington was now cut off on all sides. (Foote, I, pp. 52-53).

Popular sentiment in Maryland--a slave state--was running high against Lincoln and for secession. People high in government, such as Baltimore's mayor, were pro-secession.  Governor Thomas Hicks was pro-Union, but sympathetic to slavery; the Legislature was not so inclined. If Maryland had seceded from the United States, the District of Columbia would be completely surrounded on all sides by insurrection.

April 24: Lincoln writes Maryland State Legislator Reverdy Johnson (a Union sympathizer): "I do say the sole purpose of bringing troops here is to defend this capital. I do say I have no purpose to invade Virginia . . ."

Mostly Lincoln is trying to avoid writing people. He wants to avoid making promises that he might break, or saying something else that upsets people all over again. He wants to avoid rumors.

Because Maryland was on the brink.

Fort Stevens on Map shows the site of the District of Columbia.

The situation continued to deteriorate.  Lincoln sent two letters to Lieutenant-General Winfield Scott, the head of the U.S. Army:

April 25, 1861

My Dear Sir: The Maryland Legislature assembles tomorrow at Anapolis; and, not improbably, will take action to arm the people of that State against the United States. The question has been submitted to, and considered by me, whether it would or would not be justifiable , upon the grounds of necessary defence, for you, as commander in Chief of the United States Army, to arrest, or disperse the members of that body. I think it would not be justifiable; nor, efficient for the desired object.

First, they have a clearly legal right to assemble; and, we can  not know in advance, that their action will not be lawful and peaceful. And if we wait until they shall have acted, their arrest, or dispersion, will not lessen the effect of their action.

Secondly, we can not permanently prevent their action. If we arrest them, we can not long hold them as prisoners; and when liberated, they will immediately re-assemble, and take their action. And, precisely the same if we simply disperse them. They will immediately re-assemble in some other place. 

I therefore conclude that it is only left to the commanding General to watch, and await their action, which, if it shall be to arm their people against the United States, he is to adopt the most prompt, and efficient means to counteract, even, if necessary, to the bombardment of their cities--and in the extremest necessity, the suspension of the writ of habeas corpus. 

Your Obedient Servant

Lincoln was faced with a dilemma between national security and civil liberty. He explained his reasoning to Scott. Rather than arrest anyone on mere suspicion, or drive them to conspire in secrecy, Lincoln instructed Scott to wait and find out what the Legislature actually did, first. If events were not favorable, then Scott was empowered for the drastic.

It was an early taste of what Civil War really was: to fire on neighboring cities. To know that people were committed to destroying government, in secret, in public, by harassment and by battle.

Two days later, Lincoln completed the instructions: the last step required for Winfield Scott. And perhaps, a significant step in Lincoln's understanding of his role as Commander-in-Chief of his nation's military. With this letter, Lincoln took the responsibility for suspending habeas corpus:

April 27 1861

To the Commanding General of the Army of the United States

You are engaged in repressing an insurrection against the laws of the United States. If at any point on or in the vicinity of the military line, which is now between the City of Philadelphia and the City of Washington, via Perryville, Annapolis City, and Annapolis Junction, you find resistance which renders it necessary to suspend the Writ of Habeas Corpus for the public safety, you, personally, or through the officer in command at the point where the resistance occurs, are authorized to suspend that writ.

You might note there is no "Obedient Servant" at the end of this letter. Lincoln is taking charge with no ambivalence.

Of the 85,000 Maryland volunteers to soldier in the Civil War, nearly 25% fought for the Confederate side. Maryland, standing so to speak at our capital's back, was a place of unrest and perhaps insurrection. The situation was well within the definition of need specified by the Constitution. Lincoln therefore believed he could suspend habeas corpus.

Or somebody could. The next post is about Lincoln's maneuvers to get the constitutional question out of the way, or, answered, at least in part.

References:
Abraham Lincoln, Speeches and Writings, 1859-1865. The Library of America. Available.
The American Civil War: Habeas Corpus, at etym online, especially useful and linked above, here.
Shelby Foote, The Civil War, Volume I. Random House. Available.
A fine paper written by C.R. Smith, posted here. It pointed the way to things I looked up in Lincoln's letter in re: Valladigham.
US Government Info at About.com, with Lincoln's 1862 Proclamation suspending the writ of habeus corpus, here. This is short.
Wikipedia, Maryland in the Civil War
Wikipedia, also on Habeus Corpus, linked above.

A British View of American Slavery, 1838-1839

Like Fanny Trollope, Fanny Kemble was of British birth, a visitor to the United States. Both came from the middle class. I suspect Mrs. Trollope's status may have been higher than Ms. Kemble's, but that Ms. Kemble's reach in British society may have been a little greater, owing to her cosmopolitan profession. Both of them received good schooling, and were well-inculcated with British abolitionist sentiments.

Frances Ann Kemble Butler

Fanny Kemble was from the famous acting family in London, operators of the Drury Lane and Covent Garden Theatres. The famous Sarah Siddons was her aunt. Fanny was a good actress gaining good reviews, but owing to the steadily decreasing fortunes of the family, she was a bit sick of the whole business. Her family sold their theatres, which were failing, and Fanny came with some of her family to work in New York and other major American cities.

She fell in love with Pierce Butler of Philadelphia, who represented himself as a man of genteel means. They married in 1834; in 1835 Fanny learned that the Butler money came from a plantation operating on the Georgia Sea Islands.  Raised with abolitionist sentiments, she suddenly found she was the beneficiary of slave labor. She then determined that she would go to the plantation, but the family vetoed this. Eventually the trustee to Pierce Butler's estate died, and the estate manager quit. Pierce Butler and his brother had to take charge, starting in 1838.

Her diary for the years 1838-1839 is full of conflict between the regard she had for her husband and her moral compass, her sentiments toward him and her observations of the cruelties of plantation life. To add to this dilemma, she and Butler had children by then. Fanny stuck it out, hoping she could get her husband to change his relationship to the slaves, even perhaps moving the plantation and granting manumission to them.

The Butler Plantation.

In 1840, she consolidated the diary for publication. That year, Pierce Butler, Fanny, and the children sailed to England to visit his father. By 1843 they were separated; by 1849, divorced. Custody of the children went to Mr. Butler. His plantation was sold for debts in 1859. In the meantime, Fanny had returned to the stage.

The diary was not published until 1862, and in England first. The decision to publish at last came at a time when British sentiment was veering toward the Confederacy. Its publication was a sensation, and many, on both sides of the conflict, believe this journal helped turn the tide of public opinion in Great Britain against the South. It was published there in 1863, and in New York some months later.

The following entry is a domestic argument about a flogging of a slave. Pretty much I just opened the book, and there it was. She calls her husband "Mr." in the diary.
--
February, 1839

On my return from the river [outfitting the infirmaries for the slaves around the islands, actually-ATH] I had a long and painful conversation with Mr. [Butler] upon the subject of the flogging which had been inflicted on the wretched Teresa. These discussions are terrible; they throw me into perfect agonies of distress for the slaves, whose position is utterly hopeless; for myself, whose intervention on their behalf sometimes seems to me worse than useless; for Mr., whose share in this horrible system fills me by turns with indignation and pity.  . . . how should he wish to help it? and, of course, he does not; and I am in despair that he does not: et voila, it is a happy and hopeful plight for us both.  He maintained that there had been neither hardship nor injustice in the case of Teresa's flogging; and  that, moreover, she had not been flogged at all for complaining to me, but simply because her alloted task was not done at the appointed time. Of course this was the result of her having come to appeal to me instead of going to her labor; and as she knew perfectly well, the penalty she was incurring, he maintained that there was neither hardship nor injustice in the case; the whole thing was a regularly established law, with which all the slaves were perfectly well acquainted; and this case was no exception whatever. The circumstance of my being on the island could not, of course, be allowed to overthrow the whole system of discipline established to secure the labor and obedience of the slaves; and if they chose to try experiments as to that fact, they and I must take the consequences. At the end of the day, the driver of the gang to which Teresa belongs reported her work not done, and Mr. O ordered him to give her the usual number of stripes, which order the driver of course obeyed, whithout knowing how Teresa had employed her time instead of hoeing. Mr. Mr. O knew well enough, for the wretched woman told me that she had herself told him she should appeal to me about her weakness, and suffering, and inability to do the work exacted from her.

( . . . .)

 . . . to Mr. Butler's assertion of the justice of poor Teresa's punishment, I retorted the manifest injustice of unpaid and enforced labor; the brutal inhumanity of allowing a man to strip and lash a woman, the mother of ten children to exact from her, toil, which was to maintain in luxury two idle young men, the owners of the plantation. I said I thought female labor of the sort exacted from these slaves, and corporal chastisement such as they endure, must be abhorrent to any manly or humane man. Mr. said he thought it was disagreeable, and left me to my reflections with that concession.

You can see that this marriage was not going to make it, even in an age where divorce was hard to obtain. Furthermore, it's very possible that Fanny's presence on the plantation made things mostly worse for those she tried to aid. As soon as any slave was observed entreating her, they may well have been singled out for extra duties or punishments.

Slavery as described here was a system that, it seemed, forced everyone into a regulated system and limited the lives of all involved.  In Trollope's account, slavery seems like a reckless, disordered, and ill-thought-out system. It may be that both are true simultaneously. It may be that differences in their placement (mistress v. observer) privileges different views. Both record slavery's dehumanizing and limiting world view for all concerned.

Diplomacy Influenced by Public Opinion
I have included these accounts to show how close it was, in diplomatic terms, that Britain might have come to disrupting Lincoln's blockade of the South. For any nation to acknowledge the Confederate States of America would have been disastrous to the Union cause: and no nation more so than Great Britain, with the best Navy, at that time, on the planet.

These accounts also explain Lincoln's aversion to the institution of slavery, which he saw on his wife's family's plantation and had already philosophically opposed.

It also helps describe another worldwide market--the market for ideas--that spans borders. It is a part of our globalization today. It is also a part of the globalization of the United States, and the forces at work, in the pre-Civil War and Civil War period. And just as this affects outcomes today, it affected outcomes then, too.

Reference:
Frances Ann Kemble, Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation in 1838-1839. Edited, with an introduction by John A. Scott.  The University of Georgia Press. (pp. 159-160). I am not sure it is still in print, but it is probably available through used book exchanges on the Internet. UPDATE: It IS available from the University of Georgia Press!

photos:  Friends of the Blue Hills dot org and Georgia Pioneers dot com.

A British View of American Slavery, 1832

This is from Domestic Manners of the Americans. In 1827, Fanny Trollope came to the United States to get away from her mad husband (mercury poisoning), her debts, and to start a Utopian community of emancipated slaves.

The Utopian community went bust. Instead Mrs. Trollope traveled throughout the U.S. with her youngest children, starting small businesses, closing them down, and being received everywhere as a genteel visitor from England. Basically, she was in the 1827 version of the rubber-chicken circuit.

She repaid this hospitality by returning to England and describing us exactly as we appeared to her, in that particularly decided tone of writing that the English do so well. The only American of record who thought she was right was Mark Twain: in his opinion, she captured us dead on.  I also have a high opinion of her; she seems to have made her way on two continents, starting businesses, making some money, failing and trying again. She is also very interesting to read on the American diet of the time, and the manners--such as the extreme segregation of the sexes--which she thought not conducive to good behavior or good conversation.
--

"I observed every where throughout the slave states that all articles which can be taken and consumed are constantly locked up, and in large families where the extent of the establishment multiplies the number of keys, these are deposited in a basket, and consigned to the care of a little negress, who is constantly seen following her mistress's steps with this basket on her arm . . .  not only that the keys be on hand, but  . . . should they be out of sight for one moment, that moment would infallibly be employed for purposes of plunder. It seemed to me  . . . that the close personal attendance of these sable shadows, must be very annoying; but whenever I mentioned it, I was assured that no such feeling existed, and that use rendered them almost unconscious of their presence.

"I had, indeed, frequent opportunities of observing their habitual indifference to the presence of their slaves. They talk of them, of their condition, of their faculties, of their conduct, exactly as if they were incapable of hearing. I once saw a young lady, who, when seated at table between a male and a female, was induced by her modesty to intrude on the chair of her female neighbour to avoid the indelicacy of touching the elbow of a man. I once saw this very young lady lacing her stays with the most perfect composure before a negro footman.  A Virginian gentleman told me that ever since he had married, he had been accustomed to have a negro girl sleep in the same chamber with himself and his wife. I asked for what purpose this nocturanl attendance was necessary? "Good heaven!" was the reply, "if I wanted a glass of water during the night, what would become of me?"

I know, it almost sounds like the man was pulling her leg. I think it more likely the nocturnal attendant was there to get rid of the chamber pot.  It would also be an interesting question of household security . . . to go to the kitchen for a glass of water . . . and so forth.

This book is one of the reasons that England believed the genteel South to be full of un-admirable people. Another such author who influenced England's stance in the Civil War was Fanny Kemble . . . stay tuned.

References:
Frances Trollope, Domestic Manners of the Americans, Penguin Books. Available.
Photo: Cincinnnati Library

Lincoln's Political Economy, part Three of Three

Last week, I wrote on Abraham Lincoln and the National Economy, part 1: income taxes, the national bank system, and the first U.S. savings bonds.

There are some other features of international trade, in regard to the "nations vs. markets", where Lincoln exercised "restraint-of-trade" actions. These are what some libertarians and other detractors find against him today.

The first is that Lincoln advocated a strong tariff regime, which was discussed in Lincoln and International Economy, Part 2. The second is that he used national clout and diplomacy to restrain trade for the South. The third is that by curtailing political freedom, in regard to the dis-United states of America, he infringed upon individual rights and individual commercial choices about how and where to conduct business.

Shifts in International Trade During the Civil War

I have already mentioned that Britain was incensed by the Morrill Tariff. Add to that a naval blockade by the Union against maritime trade with the South. Lincoln did not want international war at the same time as he had civil war. Therefore, diplomacy with Britain was key.

In a message to Congress (sweating in Special Session on July 4, 1861, during the stand-off at Fort Sumter), Lincoln noted that:

 . . . this illegal organization, in the character of confederate States, was already invoking recognition, aid, and intervention from Foreign Powers.

Shelby Foote recounts how Jefferson Davis sent a delegation to both England and France, the Confederacy's best trading partners. He did not give his first nor his second delegation sufficient instructions or sufficient powers to cut deals on their own. Trying to get instruction from Davis via Atlantic ship messages, especially during blockade, limited their ability to see important people or revise their strategies.

As Great Britain was the primary world naval power, they were the best hope of the Confederacy to lift the Union blockade, so they went to London first.

But the South had two other major problems in their diplomacy: one, European mills had all the cotton they needed. They had been watching the U.S move toward conflict for a long time and had stockpiled supply. Second, Great Britain and France had already dealt with their own slavery question from the abolitionist point of view. By the time Manchester mills were hurting for supply, the shrugging 'neutrality' of British and French Foreign Offices had left the South with no political allies and no true diplomatic alliances. (I, pp. 135-137). And the laboring class in England did not approve of slavery, even when their factories were shutting down because of war-related shortages. (Letter, Lincoln to the Workingmen of Manchester, England, January 19, 1863).

Both Britain and France watched the war closely, waiting for an outcome and planning diplomatic measures as needed. By September of 1861, after the Battle of First Manassas, Britain was beginning to think they would have to recognize the CSA. They still wanted to wait and see. France, while more friendly to the Confederacy, had essentially the same attitude. (I, p. 666).

But the war dragged on, and so did blockade. The South's capacity to export continued to fall over time as labor went to war, or food became scarce. In the meantime, English and French manufacturers sought other world economies for cotton production: such as Egypt and India. Cotton was sold from Texas into Mexico, making its way to Europe. And a contraband trade in cotton with the Union began to occur, in exchange for currency and foodstuffs.

Lincoln's simple, consistent avowal that the Confederacy was an insurrection and not a state left other nations in diplomatic stalemate. Then Lincoln's active diplomacy was primarily a market-based diplomacy:

In the end, however, no European nation offered mediation nor extended recognition of the Confederacy. Among the reasons undermining active European intervention were several principal considerations. Economically, there were developments that shifted trade relations to emphasize the North's economic ties with Europe. To begin with, huge cotton exports in 1857-1860 had enabled English manufactures to stockpile inventories that carried them through much of the war. Additionally, new sources of cotton in Egypt and India replaced the southern supply after 1862. Furthermore, the Union became a major consumer of British iron, ships, armaments, and woolen uniforms and blankets, which absorbed the decline in the U.S. market for English cotton textiles. At the same time, crop failures in western Europe in 1861 and 1862 increased European dependence on American grain and flour, making King Corn as powerful as King Cotton.

The South financed its war on cotton futures on the foreign exchange at the same time it diminished its acreage for wartime needs (or had it destroyed during battles and occupation). They also added a (smaller) cotton tariff to finance the war. Eventually, according to Foote, they took over all legal cotton sales to Europe. Is that libertarian? No, it is desperate.

Lincoln financed his country on income tax, bond sales to U.S. citizens, and (less important, as it turned out) with tariffs.

Conclusion

Lincoln refused to consider individual liberty for businesses, states, and plantation owners that did not accord that same liberty to its workers, i.e. the slaves. There are examples of him just moving past the "popular sovereignty" campaigners to expose their fatal weakness. "Popular sovereignty" always masked a heinous lack of freedom for the slaves in the United States. Libertarian arguments founded on popular sovereignty, such as the freedom to run your plantation any darn way you choose, are just the same argument in a different century. Lincoln believed in the sanctity of labor, that it contributed to society, and as such, it must be paid labor.

Lincoln's speeches are peppered with references to agricultural and industrial tools, labor, and processes. He was a man with a wide acquaintance with the elements of industry.  In his Lecture on Discoveries (February 11, 1859), he exults in trade diplomacy, where American railroad engineers go to Russia to consult. He praises the patent system as "adding the fuel of interest to the fire of genius, in the discovery and production of new and useful things."

In his First Inaugural Address (March 4, 1861), Lincoln said that secession would not solve the slavery dispute because of the proximity of borders:

 . . . A husband and wife may be divorced, and go out of the presence, and beyond the reach of each other; but the different parts of our country cannot do this.  . .  Is it possible then to make that intercourse more advantageous, or more satisfactory, after separation than before? . . . Can aliens make treaties easier than friends can make laws? Can treaties be more faithfully enforced between aliens, than laws can among friends? Suppose you go to war, you cannot fight always, and when, after much loss on both sides, and no gain on either, you cease fighting; the identical old questions, as to terms of intercourse, are again upon you. 

We were perhaps past the notion of friendship at that point, but Lincoln's concerns about border security and continual conflict are valid. He also believed a nation together would have better efficiencies for trade in the long run. In his Annual Message to Congress (December 1, 1862), Lincoln began by talking about our nation's interior regions, and then expanded:

And yet this region has no sea-coast, touches no ocean anywhere. As part of one nation, its people now find, and may forever find, their way to Europe by New York, to South Americana and Africa by New Orleans, and to Asia by San Francisco. But separate our common country into two nations, as designed by the present rebellion, and every man of this great interior region is thereby cut off from some one or more of these outlets, not, perhaps, by a physical barrier, but by embarrassing and onerous trade regulations.

And this is true, wherever a dividing, or boundary line may be fixed.  . . . These outlets, east, west, and south, are indispensable to the well-being of the people inhabiting, and to inhabit, this vast interior region. 

By calling Lincoln in restraint of trade, his detractors ignore the restraint of trade involved in slavery. They posit that two national governments, with two different bureaucracies and extra borders, would have less trade restrictions, and less customs duties, less tariffs and less tax codes.

The truth is, the question of trade restraint needs most to be answered by the South. On the household level, they denied millions of slaves of the chance to participate in a free economy. On the desperation side, their government took over foreign commodity exchange in a way that the North never even contemplated (nor had to). Lincoln's tariff regime constituted no barrier to his trade diplomacy with Europe. And on the reduction of trade barriers question, which is what free markets is all about, the South erected a political border.  This border would have changed the face of commerce and security on our Continent.

Most of all, Lincoln had heard the first generation of all of these arguments against him in his lifetime. He rejected and prevailed over them all.

References:

Lincoln: Speeches and Writings, 1859-1865. Library of America. Available.

Civil War Home, using the Macmillan Information New Encyclopedia, linked above and here.

Shelby Foote, The Civil War: A Narrative, Volume I. Random House. Available.

The Miller Center, University of Virginia: Abraham Lincoln, part 5, linked above and here.

The Union Pacific Railroad, Lincoln and the Railroad, here. Is that restraint of trade?

William Wunder, The American System of National Republican and Whig Henry Clay, above and here.

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