“In your hands, my dissatisfied fellow-countrymen, and not in mine, is the momentous issue of civil war. The Government will not assail you. You can have no conflict without being yourselves the aggressors. You have no oath registered in heaven to destroy the Government, while I shall have the most solemn one to ‘preserve, protect, and defend it.’”
What was the Civil War about? This question may be easy to ask, but it is one of the most complicated questions in American history. No matter how long we discuss it, we keep coming back to two popular theories, which are sometimes believed to contradict each other. These are slavery and “states’ rights.” Both of these issues were explicitly discussed in the United States Constitution, so both of them were constitutional issues as much as they were anything else. But we don’t have to choose between these two seemingly-contradictory explanations. This audiobook argues that these two issues were inseparably connected in the Southern mind. Put simply, this audiobook argues that slavery was the root cause of the Civil War, while “states’ rights” was the convenient pretext used by the South to justify their attempts to protect and prolong it. At times, even “states’ rights” would take a back seat to their despicable goal of prolonging African slavery, as this audiobook shows in a number of ways – including by citing the “secession ordinances” of the rebellious states (which are highly incriminating on this score).
They give some in-depth discussion of these prior “states’ rights” controversies, such as the attempts by the states to nullify federal laws deemed “unconstitutional.” This is sometimes known as “nullification.” While I had certainly heard of this doctrine before, this audiobook taught me some things that I didn’t yet know about the history behind it. They also discuss the slavery clauses in the Constitution – such as the Slave Importation Clause, the Three-Fifths Clause, and the Fugitive Slave Clause. They also discuss the delicate balance of power as new free states and new slave states were gradually admitted to the Union over a period of decades. They even discuss the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850, the Lecompton Constitution (which I had never heard of before), and the infamous Dred Scott decision. Finally, they discuss the violence in prewar Kansas, the ill-fated John Brown raid, and other precursors to the eventual carnage of the Civil War.
Dred Scott, a slave whom the Supreme Court refused to free
Inevitably, there will be some comparisons with PBS’s history of the Civil War, directed by Ken Burns – which hadn’t come out yet when this audiobook was first released. Their television history is certainly much longer than this, since PBS’s coverage is some eleven hours long. Again, this audiobook is only five hours long. But the audiobook is telling a different kind of story – perhaps with a more “nuts and bolts” kind of focus. They certainly talk about battles and strategies, but they also talk briefly about the economics of the Civil War – that is to say, how the two sides financed their belligerent actions against the other. This sort of history doesn’t translate well to great television, so I can understand why Ken Burns didn’t spend much time on it in his television history. But it is certainly important, and goes a long way towards explaining the outcome of the war – even if it is not perceived as “sexy” by the general public, since economics seldom is.
They also criticize the Southern strategy of waging pitched battles against the North, arguing that their own cause would have been better served by resorting to guerilla campaigns from the beginning. This is ironic, given the fact that Robert E. Lee’s chosen strategy has admirers in both the North and the South. They are essentially arguing that the strategy didn’t work very well, and thank God that it didn’t. This audiobook talks briefly about Civil War hospitals (as Ken Burns does), showing how bad they were. But they don’t give a battle-by-battle analysis as the Ken Burns history tries to do. They’re interested more in big-picture stuff like the causes of the war, and the explanations of why it ended as it did. They do what Knowledge Products does best: cover the ideas involved, and stay away from topics that are better covered visually.
Civil War hospitals
They also spend more time than Ken Burns does on postwar Reconstruction – including the political battles over the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments. Their coverage concludes with the end of Reconstruction in 1877. They talk about the power of the federal government, and how it increased during (and shortly after) the Civil War. They note that during and after Reconstruction, the Southern states continued to violate both the laws and the federal Constitution to enforce their own infamous “Black Codes.” (But that’s a subject for another post.)
Andrew Johnson, the president who helped to botch Reconstruction, and the first president to be impeached
This is a different kind of history than the Ken Burns history, telling a very different kind of story. But rather than seeing it as conflicting with the Ken Burns history (it doesn’t), I see this audiobook as complementing it, giving coverage of different aspects of the war. They do try to cover both sides; but like PBS, they ultimately show their support for the Union cause (as well they should). They show the conflict within the North over slavery (as Ken Burns does), and the motivations behind Abraham Lincoln’s early Emancipation Proclamations – not to mention the eventual abolition of slavery by the Thirteenth Amendment. But they also show the more “nuts and bolts” aspects of the war, and give you a deeper understanding of what the bloodiest conflict in American history was about.
“I am loath to close. We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.”
– Closing lines of Abraham Lincoln’s First Inaugural Address (March 4, 1861)
If you liked this post, you might also like:
Part of an audiobook series
The United States at War
The Civil War (1861-1865)
Others to be covered later
See also the audiobook series
The United States Constitution
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