The
War Between the States was triggered by the ongoing process of the old
giving way to the new, and where traditional principles were felt to be
incompatible with existing circumstances and in this case, Republican
party revolutionary goals. The Republican’s pursued war as a necessity
for saving the territorial Union and their dominance of it, not to save
the Declaration of Independence or Constitution of 1787.
Bernhard Thuersam, Chairman
North Carolina War Between the States Sesquicentennial Commission
"Unsurpassed Valor, Courage and Devotion to Liberty"
"The Official Website of the North Carolina WBTS Sesquicentennial"
The New American Principle of Temporary Dictator
“Granting
the right in the President to decide when war was technically begun,
both the powers in question spring naturally from the recognized
authority of the commander-in-chief. In the interval between April 12
and July 4, 1861, a new principle thus appeared in the constitutional
system of the United States, namely, that of temporary dictatorship.
All
the powers of government were virtually concentrated in a single
department, and that the department whose energies were directed by the
will of a single man.
The
dictatorial position assumed by the President was effective in the
accomplishment of two most important results, namely, the preservation
of the capital and the maintenance of Union sentiment in the wavering
Border States. Congress labored with the utmost energy to fill the gaps
which the crisis had revealed in the laws. Small heed was given to the
demands of the [conservative] minority for discussion of the great
constitutional questions that constantly appeared. The decisive
majorities by which the Republicans controlled both houses enabled work
to be transacted with great vigor.
[The]
executive had declined to recognize the State organizations as elements
of the uprising against the general government [and] Congress
necessarily adopted the same policy. Its measures were made to refer
primarily to combinations of individuals against the laws of the United
States.
War
is the negation of civil rights. Granting the power in Congress to
designate certain citizens as public enemies in the technical sense, the
exercise of that power puts in the hands of government a control over
the life, liberty and property of all such citizens, limited only by the
dictates of humanity and a respect for the practice of nations.
From
the moment that they assume the character [of belligerents their]
constitutional guarantees of civil liberty lose their effect as against
the executive. It becomes authorized to enforce submission to the laws
by bullets, not by indictments.
The
first step taken by Congress toward confiscation [of Southern property]
was the act of August 6, 1861. This made it the duty of the President
to seize, confiscate and condemn all property used in aiding, abetting
or promoting the present of future insurrection against the government
of the United States. For the purpose of freeing the slaves [to deny the
South agricultural labor], the ultra-slavery men were perfectly willing
to sacrifice their old scruples about regarding men as property . . . “
(Essays
on the Civil War and Reconstruction and Related Topics, William
Archibald Dunning, The MacMillan Company, 1898, excerpts pp. 21-28)
