The War, The New Orleans Bee, May 1, 1861

THE WAR, THE NEW ORLEANS BEE, MAY 1, 1861

By Gene Kizer, Jr.

The War

The New Orleans Bee,

May 1, 1861

The Union is the pretext—the subjection of the South

once for all to the supremacy of sectional foes is the

real object of the war.

[Publisher’s Note, by Gene Kizer, Jr. : In this post are two editorials, one Southern, one Northern, published a week apart in early May, 1861, less than three weeks after Abraham Lincoln called for 75,000 volunteers to invade the South, thus starting a war that killed 750,000 men and mutilated over a million.

The Southern editorial is “The War,” and the Northern is “The Object of the War.”

While these are just two editorials out of hundreds, publishing them together allows one to contrast what each side was fighting for.

The New Orleans Bee is exactly correct that Southerners just wanted to govern themselves and live in peace, while Northerners wanted to conquer and rule for their own wealth and power, which were synonymous with the Union.

It is obvious that the North had such overwhelming advantages against the South, they were going to fight. Most Northerners including Lincoln thought it would be a quick Northern victory.

The North had four times the white population of the South, a hundred times the arms manufacturing, an army, navy, merchant marine, functioning government, solid financial system, and, most importantly, a pipeline to the wretched refuse of the earth with which to constantly feed Union armies. They could always replace their losses. Over twenty-five percent of the Union Army was foreign born.

Lincoln was a man fifty feet tall, armed to the teeth with modern weaponry, facing a man five feet tall carrying a musket.

Of course Lincoln wanted to fight, and he knew he better fight right then because every second that went by, the South got stronger and the North got weaker.

The North was facing the loss of its captive manufacturing market in the South.

At the same time, it faced the loss of its shipping industry when greedy Northerners passed the astronomical Morrill Tariff, which made the entry of goods into the North 37 to 50% higher than entry into the South. Northern ship captains were beating a path to the South.

The South’s vision was as powerful as the North’s was gloomy. The South had 100% control of King Cotton, the most demanded commodity on the planet. They would now have free trade with Europe and soon manufacture for themselves. They no longer had to be in a country with people who had committed terrorism and murder against them for years, who robbed them blind with taxes and tariffs, and who used abject hatred against them to win an election.

Southerners had been paying 85% of the country’s taxes, yet 75% of the tax money had been going into Northern pockets.2 That money would now be turned back inward on the South.

Lincoln could fight right then and use his enormous advantages, or allow the free trade, low tariff South, with 100% control of King Cotton and European trade and military alliances, to compete with the North and perhaps grow to dominance on his Southern border.

The stakes were control of this magnificent country for all time, which meant unlimited wealth and power for the North. It meant huge dynamic cities like New York, Boston, Philly, and a connection with the West. It meant establishing the North as the center of American culture, commerce and technology.

That’s what fifty-foot tall Lincoln and the North were fighting for.

That is why Lincoln sent five hostile fleets into the South in April, 1861, to start a war so he could use his enormous advantages to win it.3

It was certainly not to free the slaves. The one thing you can prove beyond the shadow of a doubt is that the North did not go to war to end slavery.

The Northern editorial below states that an abolition war would not only be unconstitutional, it would be a “wicked and treasonable war,” and “those who seek to turn this war into a crusade against slavery . . . are at heart and in effect as much traitors to their country and its Government as are the rebels . . .”.

This is not surprising since the North was no friend of the black man. Jim Crow started in the North and was there for years before moving South. Before that, the Northern leader, Abraham Lincoln, his entire life, favored sending blacks back to Africa or into a place they could survive.]

The War

The New Orleans Bee,

May 1, 1861