Is Secession Treason?

One of the problems with The Civil War is that those states that seceded should be considered traitors. This treats the situation far too simply, and needs to be looked at in a bigger scope.

At the time there was some debate whether or not the states could even secede. The states were loosely organized, and a lot of states on both sides did not really consider themselves part of an actual country so much as a loose confederation of independent states. The government had very little power, and it usually stopped at the state level; while the United States government had power it was decidedly limited. There was just nothing to really give the government some real bite to its bark.

When the states did secede there was a debate on whether or not they should be just be let loose or not. By then the Southern states had no serious political power, the Northern states could easily do without them, and they were considered an embarrassment by other countries. Outside of some possible affront to the country's honor, there was no real reason to pursue the option of going after them. If the Confederate armies had not fired on Fort Sumter, odds are good they would have been allowed to fizzle out on their own.

However, that loose nature needs to be considered. At the time, countries world-wide were seen more as small states and their colonies. England was about as organized as it got, and they were quickly losing their colonies. More typical were the Germanic and Italian states, which were organized more as federations of loosely organized states; they would only get together when it came time to ally together for purposes of mutual defense, but otherwise pretty much ignored each other outside of their parties.

The United States was between the two of them, where the individual states worked together for common purposes and interstate trade but otherwise were pretty much on their own. The new territories were an issue as they could alter the balance of power once they came into their own and petitioned for statehood, but the point is that the states were not as linked as they were today. This created the problem that individual states could, in theory, split off whenever they wanted to without issue; they had united for a common cause but if they no longer had that same cause then they should be able to split off.

That's where things get interesting. Treason is usually defined as acts that act against the interest of the state as a whole, usually acts of extreme disloyalty to the state. Acts against the government as well as espionage that give out state secrets are obviously treason, as well as acts that encourage sedition. A state, like any other organization, requires that its members be loyal to the state; it only operates when everyone is one the same page. While protests and such are acceptable as long as they merely allow expression of that protest; actually obstructing that state from operating is something that needs to be avoided.

When the various states that made up the Confederate States of America split off, there was no question that their actions constituted lack of loyalty to the state in question. However, there is the question of whether or not the act of seceding itself constitutes treason. When someone leaves a country due to a dislike of the country's policies, it's not treason; no one blames the person for staying in what they see as an untenable situation. When companies decide to part ways, no one blames either company; it's considered good business sense to separate from a business partner that has decided to go another direction.

Secession is pretty much the same thing, but on a bigger level. It's the political version of a split-up: One or more state decides that the partnership is no longer working and so decides to split from the larger union. The North no longer needed the South's drama, and told the South to grow up; the South felt it was being picked on and decided to pack up and leave. The South decided it had had enough and decided to go on to what it thought were greener pastures.

As such, it's debatable on whether or not secession can be legitimately called treason. Although there is no doubt that there was some disloyalty shown, there is the issue that it was because the various states decided that they could no longer do business with the other states as part of the same union and that it made sense to separate. If anything, it's probably the best thing that could have happened, as the writing was on the wall: Slavery had overstayed its welcome and was on the way out, and there was no way to predict what would have happened to the South or what it would have done when slavery was finally abolished.

In essence, there's just not enough legal ground to say that secession should be considered treason or not, especially as none of the states had really decided that the membership in the United States had to be a permanent thing. Although the Civil War decided that particular matter, until that war and the ensuing legal storm the Southern states should have been able to split off with no problem. They no longer wished to work under the same framework as the rest of the states, so it was probably a good thing, politically, that they decided to do so. On pretty much every other level, however, they should probably have just dropped the whole slavery thing.....

How Slavery Weakened the American Pre-Civil War South

Interestingly, slavery would have eventually destroyed the Old South. Ignoring that it was a powderkeg that would eventually go off, based on the number of slave revolutions in other countries, slavery was sapping the strength of The South:

Expense: By the time of the Civil War, a healthy male black slave was going for $1100, based on handbills of the time. Putting that into perspective, they could have bought a healthy male Irish slave for $15 and a Native American for $5. Keep in mind that the average plantation could have 50 to 200 slaves on it, the majority of whom were young black males, and that represents a major expense on the part of the plantation owner. Throw in the expense of owning a slave, as they had to be fed, clothed, and otherwise maintained, not to mention the overseers and other associated personnel to deal with the slaves, and those slaves represented a major drain on resources. While the owners could hire them out in order to recoup some costs, this was rarely as profitable as it needed to be.

Technology: The South pretty much sucked as far as technology was concerned. The cost to update the technology is just part of the equation, but so was the dependence on slave labor. Be keeping to what they knew the Southerners were slowly falling behind the North in terms of technology. Worse, their plantations were not as efficient as Northern farms due to the lack of technology, so that was another additional cost that The South had to bear.

Education: The South had a love-hate relationship with education. The problem is that, with no real technology to maintain and being a primarily agrarian society, there was no real need for an education. Even women probably didn't stay in school as long as they did up north, especially as there was plenty to do at home. The rich were more likely to use tutors, whether it was for giving potential belles of the ball their manners and basic skills or for preparing boys for the military academies. This lack of education among its lower classes meant that the South was able to maintain its status quo, remaining a static society far longer than necessary.

Equality: While it needs to be noted that the 19th century is hardly the bastion of equallity, the South was far worse than the rest of the nation. While others were willing to ignore the gender and race under the right conditions, the South had managed to develop its own caste system based on gender, race, and economic status and vertical mobility was virtually impossible, at least less likely than other areas. This additional stratification added to the other stultifying effects of Southern society and ensured that the South would fall well behind the North.

The basic gist of the situation is that whenever someone says that slavery was ever a good thing, the deserve to be slapped down. By the 19th century slavery had long outstayed its welcome and needed to fade into the past. It had become a millstone around the neck of progress and needed to disappear into the annals of history, allowing the world to advance rather than keeping it where it was, like a fly in the amber of history. The damage wrought by slavery is going to be with us for a while longer, but hopefully we will eventually overcome it. 

The Other Causes of the Civil War

The current debate over the Confederate battle flag has got to be driving historians crazy. If most of them had to list the causes of the Civil War, slavery would maybe be in the #7 or #8 slot; slavery may have been the final straw, but it was hardly the only thing going on. It's one of those things that while everyone used it in their speeches, it was a stand in for everything else was going on. It needs to be realized that this was a war that was more than 80 years in the offing, and it was going to come to a head at some point. Here's some of the "other reasons" why.

1) Industrial Revolution: The South was primarily agricultural; it relied pretty much on its agriculture to fuel its way of life. When the Industrial Revolution hit, The South resisted it with every fiber of its being, even when it came to using inventions that could have helped it. There were exceptions, such as the cotton gin, but in general The South was extremely resistant to change. There was just no reason for it change, and Southern society had pretty much calcified. This meant that The South would fall behind The North on pretty much every level, and it's lack of ability to adapt would keep it there.

2) On The Wane: It needs to be realized that the US Government hasn't always relied on taxes to raise funds. In the century after the Revolutionary War, the government was loathe to create any taxes, and although there were some taxes and other income such as tariffs, the whole thing was more like a high school club than an actual government. Because of this, the government relied on private donors in order to finance a lot of its endeavors (for the Louisiana Purchase, for example, the government only paid $3 million of the price, with over $8 million coming from bonds, although there were other sources).

This meant that a lot of the money for a lot of government spending came from private citizens, giving those citizens a number of dispensations, such as military commissions and favorable bills. Originally a lot of this money came from rich plantation owners, but as the North became more industrialized it was able to line political pockets. Combined with the gains in territory with its resultant gains in senators, representatives, and electoral votes, the South was losing political power even as the North gained.

3) Imports/Exports: The South had a few products, such as cotton, tobacco, and a variety of fruits and vegetable, and they did them well. However, they were limited to those products, and little else; they lacked a lot of mineral wealth. On the other hand, the North had forests, a wide variety of furred and feathered animals, room for cattle, and a lot of fertile plains, as well as easy access to metals ranging from iron to gold. This meant that the South was dependent on the North for a variety of products, while the North was virtually independent of the South. Overseas, this situation was magnified; the South imported a lot more than it exported, so it ended up with a trade deficit, while the North usually profited, As the South had to deal with the situation, as the majority of the imports were necessary for daily life, they were lucky that cotton and tobacco were so profitable.

These factors ensured that a war between the states was bound to happen. The South was in an untenable long-term situation and had to gain more territory at some point, but the North had already pretty much laid claim to all of that territory. Taking over islands or Latin America territory was problematical at best. This meant that southerners had to buy up northern territory, but they then had to deal with the slavery issue, which was not a favorite topic in the North.

In essence, the South was running on fumes but figured that they would be able to get more territory to feed their hunger for expensive items, and had to do so using an unpopular form of labor. Thus, while slavery was an issue, it was just the obvious one; The South was doomed to fall at some point and no one wanted to restructure out of pride.

Ultimately, slavery was just the final match that would eventually burn the house of straw that was the Old South....

Horus, Mithras, and Why Not Everyone Is Jesus

One of the more interesting attacks on Jesus is comparing him to some mythological characters. It seems that the easiest way to attack the Bible is to prove that it is nothing bad fiction, and the easiest way to do that is to apparently show that the Bible does nothing but retread older stories. Of course, Jesus makes a great target because he is so obvious. It seems funny until you see how little research they put into the attack.

The most common characters used are Dionysus, Mithras, and Horus. Given the miracle at Cana where Jesus turned water into wine and the resurrection, Dionysus is probably the better fit. Dionysus also had an entourage, and frequently came into town on a donkey spreading the word. However, that word was "wine", and he hardly had a virgin birth. The closest he comes to a resurrection is that he was "twice-born"; he was killed as an infant, but Zeus put him into his thigh where he was born a normal childd, so to speak. However, that was pretty much.

Conversely, Horus is probably the furthest. Horus' connection is simply that he was part of a trinity of closely-linked deities (Osiris, Isis, Horus), but otherwise there is no other link. Not only was he hardly the product of a virgin birth, but he was also never killed (therefore no resurrection). He was also a god of war, compared to Jesus being a messiah of peace. While it can be argued that he had twelve followers, it was simply because the stars, and therefore the twleve signs of the zodiac, followed the Sun, which Horus represented. Horus didn't even have a ministry; in fact, he rarely interacted with humans at all. at one point he was even replaced as sun god by Aten.

Mithras is the fun one of the lot. There are plenty of similarities to Jesus, but only if you seriously do not do your research. Most of the similarities appear to be the result of misinterpretations (his "twelve disciples" were from a picture of him with the twleve signs of the Zodiac, for example) and later additions (attributes of Jesus were tacked on after the 4th century AD as the two personages were combined by some Mithras devotees). He did have a ministry, and while Jesus and he did preach much the same things, a certain perspective needed to be allowed for; while both preached community, there were some differences in how they perceived peace, Mithras being a warrior god and all.

The bottom line is that it's an interesting form of attack to go after religion by going after the origin of its stories. We as human like to recycle a lot of things, and that includes stories that we find powerful and motivational. We'll continue to do so and we'll even add more stories as we find stories we like, that resonate with us. As that allows us to adapt,to grow, to become greater, I'm not so sure that that's something that needs to be discouraged. It should be interesting to see which stories become important over time, and last to the next generation or the generations beyond that.

The synthesis of those stories gives a very interesting look at who we are, and it should be interesting to see where we go from here. 

Why The War On Poor Defenseless Christmas?

A lot has been said about the War on Christmas, and how it doesn't exist. The catch is that it's an interesting conflict in ideologies, and one that can make for some interesting cultural anthropology. The problem is one of semantics, and how one defines "war".

A "war" doesn't need to mean something involving guns and bombs. It can be a revolution, where one ideology seeks to supplant another. While some revolutions have been big and obvious, some have been much smaller, as one idea attempts to subvert the other. This can make life interesting for those at the extremes of either side of the battle as they try and figure out how to win a victory for their side. It's entirely possible that most people involved don't even realize that a war is even being fought, or that those that fighting it are being downright silly. The so-called "War on Christmas" is one of the latter.

At one extreme there are some atheists that are attempting to stop Christmas as a way to slap down religion. These are usually the ones that enforce the law when it comes to the separation of Church and State, usually when it comes to some sort of religious celebration around the holidays. Some file complaints at work at the slightest mention of a "Christmas party", while others move into school districts so that they can stop the relevant schools from celebrating Christmas on the school grounds, especially if one of the schools has a widely-known tradition of celebrating Christmas. Some atheists have even resorted to court cases in support of their cause.

And then there are the idiots on the other side who see every new judgement as a nuclear strike on Christianity. This has proven great for ratings, and makes filling church coffers that much easier, as every rating point and dollar raised is seen as a defense against the heathen hordes. Fox News is especially good at using the "War on Christmas" to secure ratings, and has even used countdowns to foster some sort of panic mode in order to make themselves look that much better. It can, and has, gotten silly to the point that even Colbert and Stewart have had fun with it.

While religion and government need to remain separate, there needs to be some gray area. This is not to say that the government should become an advocate of religion, but rather that it should allow for the beliefs of those in the immediate area, and that local celebrations should be allowed in the buildings in question in the same sense that other organizations are allowed in, with the same restrictions. Obviously this should not apply to buildings that do not rent out spaces to the general public, such as court houses and most office buildings, but if the organization does, such as schools and some office buildings, it should be as long as space is rented out as normal. As long as it doesn't break any rules and they have paid for the space, there should not be problem in what they do with it.

At some point the religious and non-religious extremists need to just let things go. It should be easy to broker a piece between the two sides, far easier than it seems sometimes. Hopefully that is one the horizon...