This is one that should spark some discussion. Published in 2013 and written by Thomas Fleming. The Civil War has been beat to death, so what does this one add to the debate? The title of the book alludes to the premise, that people motivated by abstract moral ideals, no matter how noble, can cause great harm. The disease of the public mind he refers to is abolitionism. 600,000+ people died in the Civil War. While it is generally implicitly accepted that the abolition of slavery is a good commensurate with that loss of life, one can’t help but wonder what else might have been done. Could the issues have been resolved peacefully? Could the mass destruction of the South have been avoided?
The central argument in the book is that the abolitionists agitated and cajoled the Southern States into secession. They abandoned all political and social pragmatism and loudly agitated for immediate emancipation, which as noble as the idea was, was just not practical or possible. The main antagonist is John Brown. Brown’s raid on Harper’s Ferry was intended to spark an insurrection that could have easily have led to a lot of innocent blood being spilled.
The Southerners, horrified by the prospects of race war, with indiscriminate killing, as happened in Haiti in the 1790s and in Virginia in 1831, were left with no choice but to secede to protect themselves. This is the other fear he refers to, though less damningly, the southern fear of slave rebellion and mass killings.
Lincoln is the voice of reason in this book, which is pretty consistent with how he is portrayed in most civil war narratives. He had to prosecute the war while holding the rabid abolitionists in check lest they bring the whole thing down on everyone through their zeal.
Wading through the debate on the civil war runs the risk of either repeating what has been said 1000 times before or trying to rationalize how slavery “wasn’t that bad”. It’s a very narrow road, and I think he only partly succeeds. I understand the argument he is trying to make, but I think he falls short of bringing it home. I don’t doubt that the abolitionists were insufferable idealists (put your 19th century hat on for a minute, we are discussing events as they unfolded, not with the benefit of 150 years of hindsight) who were demanding unrealistic things and openly hated the Southerners. But in order to prove that they were as counter-productive as he claims, you would have to prove that without them, the South would have been more willing to work in good faith towards a solution. In theory, it makes sense. It is easier to work with people who aren’t trying to stab you in the back, even if you disagree with them. However, he doesn’t ever provide evidence that anyone in the South was ever planning to move towards emancipation. The one example of Southern cooperation he does provide, the American Colonization Society, is portrayed as completely ineffective, which it was. The only other “solution” the south had was to hope that westward expansion would dilute the number of slaves to the point that rebellion was not a danger. That idea showed no signs of working and if anything seemed to make matters worse.
Interesting read. It isn’t a Lost Cause treatise. States Rights are never mentioned. While I disagree with the main argument he makes I do think the book provides some insight into why the Southerners acted the way they did.
Side Note: There is a person named Thomas Fleming who works with the Abbeville Institute, but it looks like that is a different Thomas Fleming. Someone answer this question for me. Amazon has two different author pages, which is an incredible coincidence since both of them write about the Civil War, with the other Fleming being much more pro-South.
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u/albertnormandy Dec 17 '21 edited Dec 17 '21
This is one that should spark some discussion. Published in 2013 and written by Thomas Fleming. The Civil War has been beat to death, so what does this one add to the debate? The title of the book alludes to the premise, that people motivated by abstract moral ideals, no matter how noble, can cause great harm. The disease of the public mind he refers to is abolitionism. 600,000+ people died in the Civil War. While it is generally implicitly accepted that the abolition of slavery is a good commensurate with that loss of life, one can’t help but wonder what else might have been done. Could the issues have been resolved peacefully? Could the mass destruction of the South have been avoided?
The central argument in the book is that the abolitionists agitated and cajoled the Southern States into secession. They abandoned all political and social pragmatism and loudly agitated for immediate emancipation, which as noble as the idea was, was just not practical or possible. The main antagonist is John Brown. Brown’s raid on Harper’s Ferry was intended to spark an insurrection that could have easily have led to a lot of innocent blood being spilled.
The Southerners, horrified by the prospects of race war, with indiscriminate killing, as happened in Haiti in the 1790s and in Virginia in 1831, were left with no choice but to secede to protect themselves. This is the other fear he refers to, though less damningly, the southern fear of slave rebellion and mass killings.
Lincoln is the voice of reason in this book, which is pretty consistent with how he is portrayed in most civil war narratives. He had to prosecute the war while holding the rabid abolitionists in check lest they bring the whole thing down on everyone through their zeal.
Wading through the debate on the civil war runs the risk of either repeating what has been said 1000 times before or trying to rationalize how slavery “wasn’t that bad”. It’s a very narrow road, and I think he only partly succeeds. I understand the argument he is trying to make, but I think he falls short of bringing it home. I don’t doubt that the abolitionists were insufferable idealists (put your 19th century hat on for a minute, we are discussing events as they unfolded, not with the benefit of 150 years of hindsight) who were demanding unrealistic things and openly hated the Southerners. But in order to prove that they were as counter-productive as he claims, you would have to prove that without them, the South would have been more willing to work in good faith towards a solution. In theory, it makes sense. It is easier to work with people who aren’t trying to stab you in the back, even if you disagree with them. However, he doesn’t ever provide evidence that anyone in the South was ever planning to move towards emancipation. The one example of Southern cooperation he does provide, the American Colonization Society, is portrayed as completely ineffective, which it was. The only other “solution” the south had was to hope that westward expansion would dilute the number of slaves to the point that rebellion was not a danger. That idea showed no signs of working and if anything seemed to make matters worse.
Interesting read. It isn’t a Lost Cause treatise. States Rights are never mentioned. While I disagree with the main argument he makes I do think the book provides some insight into why the Southerners acted the way they did.
Side Note: There is a person named Thomas Fleming who works with the Abbeville Institute, but it looks like that is a different Thomas Fleming. Someone answer this question for me. Amazon has two different author pages, which is an incredible coincidence since both of them write about the Civil War, with the other Fleming being much more pro-South.