"And The War Came"

The Center for Civil War Research

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Dear Dr. Neff,

I cannot help but remember a speaker at a symposium pointing out that Lincoln’s statement - “...and the war came...” was, in fact, a deliberate lie. Lincoln used that phrase to obfuscate the actual causes of the war and which side began it! The war didn’t “come”; the war was the direct result of Lincoln and the Republican’s refusal to permit certain states in the Union exercising their constitutional right of secession and the actions they took to prevent that from happening.

On the other hand, the states of the South were driven to secession for economic, political, religious and even cultural reasons (yes, even but not mainly, slavery) and in at least two cases by an illegitimate demand from the federal government for troops with which to wage an unconstitutional war on sovereign states in the South.

Therefore, to use the phrase “and the war came” as the title of your conference is to validate the claim that the war was inevitable (it wasn’t) or, in the alternative, that the war was a result of unprovoked Southern actions which culminated in a justifiable Northern response in an effort to “save the Union”. In other words, the phrase is a lie which conceals and/or excuses a lie. For the actions taken by South Carolina and her sister States in the South were definitely provoked - and over a long period of time - while the response to those actions was not only legally “unprovoked” but were, in fact, illegal, immoral, inhumane and unconstitutional.

Certainly, a study of the issues leading to the war is a noble effort, but if you begin that study with a false premise by virtue of your “motto”, it will be very hard to do anything other than further validate that premise. The book North Over South is an excellent study of the efforts of many outside of Dixie to prevent the South from having any influence in the developing “American” character as the nation moved west. As well, there abound many studies regarding the vilification of the South by the North long before Sumter. The technique of demonizing your enemy or potential enemy so as to be free to make war upon him is as old as war itself.

I would hope that you reconsider your “theme”. The war didn’t “come” as some sort of natural catastrophe. It came because the adherents of the philosophy of Adams and Hamilton wanted to supplant the adherents of the philosophy of Jefferson and Madison; they succeeded and the Republic with its limited government and power residing in the states and the people gave way to an Empire with a strong central government, impotent states and an almost direct democracy (see Amendment 17 of the Constitution). A northern historian, Jay Hoar acknowledged what was wrought by the War of Secession (it wasn’t a “civil war”) when he told authors Walter Kennedy and Al Benson, “The worst fears of those Boys in Gray are now a fact of American life – a Federal government completely out of control.”

Unless you want this conference to be just another rubber stamp of what passes for “history” these days, I strongly suggest that you find another motto.

Valerie Protopapas

Huntington Station, New York