In the wake of the southern states’ secession, many around the world put pen to paper covering the causes of the Civil War. But in writing for the German newspaper Die Presse, Karl Marx, yes, that Karl Marx, hit upon a cause which had been overlooked. In his coverage, he struck upon something overlooked by many others during the same period.
The south didn’t vote to secede at all.
Instead, in his meticulous analysis of the votes held, of the south, only Arkansas voted to leave the union and adopt the new Montgomery Constitution which was to guide the Confederacy. The other states instead used vote nullification, simply ignoring the voting results, and in the case of Tennessee they simply stripped all citizens of the right to vote on it at all.
The story repeated all across the south, wealthy men, the slave owners, bought the power of office or the power of arms to shut down opposition. Elections were ignored, the voice of the people silenced. By Marx’s math, only around 300,000 men decided to leave the Union, out of a population of over 9 million.
Former Louisiana Attorney General Christian Roselius called the way the citizens of his state were forced to join the Confederacy under threat of armed force a direct attack on liberty, and went on the record against the Confederacy:
The Montgomery Constitution is not a constitution, but a conspiracy. It does not inaugurate a government of the people, but a detestable and unrestricted oligarchy. The people were not permitted to have any say in this matter. The Convention of Montgomery has dug the grave of political liberty, and now we are summoned to attend its burial.
Marx correctly identified that the Confederacy was not seeking, truly, to secede from the Union, but to usurp it. In 1861 he identified that the South would not engage in simple border security, but would seek to annex the Union states into its whole. And, as predicted, that is what the Confederate generals attempted, with the boldest move being the penetration into Pennsylvania and the battle of Gettysberg some years later.
In looking back on this history, it is easy to get swept up in hindsight. From the view of a contemporary to the action, what we find is not some states rights vs federal argument, but one of voting fraud, voter intimidation and disenfranchisement. The people did not vote for secession. Instead, the wealthy oligarchs stripped the rights of the people for self determination.
And for those who did not obey, the punishments meted were swift, and severe. Even being suspected of being disloyal to the oligarchs could be met with death. To keep the population in line, the Confederacy turned to brutal conscription methods, and was viewed at the time as the path to dictatorship. So much for “States’ Rights.”
For those who idolize the south, they are following a fraud.
