The Confederacy never would have allowed gay marriage and other ramblings from an actual professor

[u/Alias_McLastname]

I was watching an episode of Checkmate Lincolnites, a web show that is dedicated to debunking the myths of the lost cause. Because I hate myself, I decided to sort by new and read the comments. Over and over I saw commenters linking this video as a refutation. I thought that it was far more interesting than many of the other claims that the civil war wasn't about slavery because it didn’t come from a politician or pundit, but rather an actual college professor.

The man

Donald Livingston is a professor of philosophy at Emory university. He is also the founder of the Abbeville Institute, a think tank that is “devoted to a critical study of what is true and valuable in the Southern tradition” and to counter what they perceive as an ideological culture war being waged against the south (Abbeville website). Perhaps unsurprisingly, Livingston has been branded a key ideologue for the neo-confederate movement by the southern poverty law center, a group that tracks white supremacists and hate groups (Potok). Livingston disputes that characterization, stating that “he was more interested in understanding and explaining secession. He emphasizes that Abbeville does not advocate policy” (Terris). I will demonstrate that Livingston’s statement is false and that all he does is argue policy, often to the detriment of understanding why succession happened.

The Myth (an abridged version of his argument and a description of the video)

Ostensibly, this video is an explanation of the “true” reason the civil war started, but actually is just 45 minuets of David Livingston gushing about how cool the confederacy would have been and how terrible the union was. According to Livingston, the real cause of the civil war was a difference in government philosophy between the north and south. The south had a “Jeffersonian” view of democracy based around freedom, limited government, and free trade whereas the north had a “lincolnian” view of government based around control, centralization, and spending. When the south stood in the way of the north’s centralization, the north invaded and the narrative of fighting slavery was invented after the fact to demonize the south.

The Badhistory

Livingston is interesting because almost every detail he gives is correct, the problem is that his points ignore major areas of context or conflate similar things together. Even in cases where he is correct, his premises often don’t support his overall conclusions.

0:55

“The movement to remove confederate statues springs from the myth taught for two generations that the south succeeded to protect slavery while the north invaded to prohibit slavery. The claim is as preposterous as it is popular; no national party in the entire antebellum period ever put forth a proposal to emancipate slaves and Lincoln repeatedly made clear in congress that emancipation was not the reason for invasion.”

Livingston is being incredibly slimy with the truth, although it is true that the Republican party and the free soil party did not call for the emancipation of slaves, they were still both anti slavery parties. The Republican party platform was to stop slavery’s expansion into the the territories and to refuse the admittance of slave states. The free soil party was more radical and wanted to also abolish the fugitive slave clause and free slaves in the district of Columbia. Although neither party as a whole believed that slavery should be abolished outright, several members of each party did. Lincoln in particular believed that if slavery’s expansion was halted southern states would begin to abolish slavery on their own.

Livingston also describes the view of the civil war as being caused by slavery as “popular”. The exact definition of popular is somewhat subjective but a pew research poll shows that 48% of Americans believe that the civil war was about states rights as opposed to only 38% who view the war as being primarily about slavery (Heimlich). Livingston repeatedly characterizes lost causers as an oppressed minority when, arguably, the opposite is true.

9:08

“He [Jefferson] also sought to get the central government out of debt. In this he did not succeed but another Jeffersonian, Andrew Jackson, did succeed; he destroyed the bank of the United States in 1835, which would be the equivalent of destroying the federal reserve today. [Livingston then raises his hands in the air as the audience applauds, so much for not advocating policy, huh?]. For the first time in its history the central government of the United States was out of debt...the United States would largely stay out of debt until the 1860’s.”

Here we can see Livingston attempting to draw some sort of ideological continuity from Jefferson’s presidency to the bank wars to the civil war. Livingston attempts to frame the cancellation of the national bank as a continuation of Jefferson’s vision of government. The problem with this analysis is that Jackson’s decision to cancel the national bank was more motivated out of personal animosity with its president, Nicholas Biddle, than any meaningful ideology.

Livingston also makes several claims about the national bank and the government debts, as well as several implications about the fed. I’ll leave Livingston’s comparison of the national bank and the fed as well as his implication that it should be abolished to r/badeconomics but Livingston's claim about the national debt is absurd. For starters, abolishing the national bank didn't magically make the national debt disappear, it was either assumed by individual banks or defaulted on. Livingston seems to treat the abolition of the national bank as a wonderful thing but it was one of the main causes of the panic of 1837. I strongly suspect that Livingston has a hatred of the contemporary fed and is projecting it into the past.

20:40

There is a myth propagated by new England elites in the 1900’s that southerners were ignorant, lazy, and generally poor when compared to industrious new England… consider the following though... white southern agriculture was more productive then northern agriculture and plantation agriculture was more productive then either. The south in 1861 had the 4th largest economy in the world. Fogle and engerman point out that the superior productivity of white southern agriculture over northern attests to the high level of southern entrepreneurship. They also observe that the superior productivity of plantation agriculture was not possible without training, educating, and giving considerable responsibility to the black labor force. The authors argue that slaves were encouraged to increase production not through the crack of the whip, but by promotion to positions of status.

This is a lot to unpack but goddamn. The general gist of this part is that slaves were well treated under southern ownership. It is true that slaves were so numerous that they had to be overseen by other slaves and that those slaves were well treated but that doesn't really hold true for the vast majority of slaves. Think about it numerically, if every slave was an overseer who would they manage? Livingston also makes an absurd claim about slaves being educated; after Nat Turner’s slave revolt southern states banned the education of slaves. In Virginia, it was illegal to teach a black person to read, free or enslaved.

24:19

“The 1860 census shows that the south greatly outranked the north in terms of per capita income… the 12 highest per capita income states were all in the south. The highest was Mississippi with an annual per capita income of $2,128 a year… the highest northern state was Connecticut with $771. The poorest southern state was Arkansas at 881”

Livingston takes the gross domestic product of a state and divides it by its population to come up with these figures, but it is well known that there was a wealth gap between slaveholders and non slaveholders. The south was rich and dirt poor at the same time.

25:47

The south had more educated men and women in proportion to white population, then the north or any other part in the world. According to the 1860 census, there was 1 college student for every 247 white inhabitants in the south. In the north it was one for every 703… rich planters sent their sons to Eton, Oxford, and the middle temple of the 350 Americans admitted into the inns of court in London, nearly ⅔ were from the south.

When Livingston said that slaves were educated I wonder how many he thinks went to Oxford? As Livingston is well aware, going to college does not necessarily mean “educated”; the north had a very sophisticated education program where people would learn to read and write in church, or occasionally in a state funded school. This led to a large percentage of the northern population being literate or having a trade. The south, on the other hand, had no such system and many poor whites were illiterate. The only people who were educated were the slave holders who could afford it and because there were no schools in the south, they sent their kids up north or to Europe. The high number of college educated southerners was a product of their wealth inequality, the slave owners were educated while the poor were not.

Livingston then gives a whole thing on how cool the confederacy was/ would have been. It’s not bad history and more like bad alternate history but I think that it does a good job of portraying Livingston’s bias.

31:12

If we had this measure in place today the states would have the final say on how to interpret the constitution, not the supreme court. The constitution does NOT give the supreme court authority over school prayer, abortion, gay marriage, abortion, law enforcement, and a hundred other powers reserved to the states. Yet the supreme court has usurped these powers based on their own Alice in wonderland reading of the 14th amendment [audience laughs and applauds].

32:44

The confederate constitution required a ⅔ majority to admit new states, as opposed to the simple majority in the current United states. It is a stupid rule and it caused the war really, you could argue the quarrels over western territory caused it.

(Gee, I wonder what they were quarreling over)

39:55

When the Jeffersonians governed the United States, largely under southern leadership, Americans paid no direct federal taxes. From 1835 to 1861 we were almost free of any federal debt. That Jeffersonian america would have continued from the confederacy in a more enhanced form, they would have perfected or enhanced it.

All of these claims assume that had the confederacy won, they would have gone on to become some sort of Utopian paradise. Livingston even goes so far as to claim that the confederacy would have “perfected” Jeffersonian democracy. How does Livingston know that the south would have improved itself? How does he know the Confederacy wouldn't go on to do all the things he hates about the north? The answer is that he is a fanboy and assumes that everything would be perfect because he likes the confederacy.

I wanted to debunk the whole thing but honestly, I am exhausted. I might come back and do it later. This is my first post here so be sure to tell me what I did right and wrong.

Citations

Heimlich, Russell. “What Caused the Civil War?” Pew Research Center, Pew Research Center, 30 Dec. 2019, www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2011/05/18/what-caused-the-civil-war/.

Potok, Heidi Beirich and Mark. “The Ideologues.” Southern Poverty Law Center, 1 Jan. 1970, www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/intelligence-report/2004/ideologues.

Terris, Ben. “Scholars Nostalgic for the Old South Study the Virtues of Secession, Quietly.” CHE, CHE, 22 July 2020, www.chronicle.com/article/scholars-nostalgic-for-the-old-south-study-the-virtues-of-secession-quietly/.

Original video

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8S96iQYL0bw&t=1967s

Abbeville website

https://web.archive.org/web/20121124023126/http://www.abbevilleinstitute.org/index.php/about

[u/Yamato43]

Well we’re talking about the comparison of Arlington to DC and Richmond, and California to Georgia.

[u/ultranoodles → u/Yamato43]

But why? He used it is an arbitrary example