Comments (10)

• TGGP

  Being the only Stirnerite around here (as far as I know), I'd like to stick up for Ben Tucker and the gang. Does anyone really think they would have accomplished anything if they had promoted natural law/rights instead of egoism? In the context of today, does the former ethical system seem less old-fashioned than it did in the 19th century or the latter moreso? Those all strike me as doubtful.

  I was interested to see that Rothbard included "orthodox Calvinists" in the non-pietist camp. Who is included in orthodox Calvinism? Would the Puritans be? Calvin and Zwingli themselves?

  Published: July 12, 2007 5:23 PM

• RogerM

  TGGP:"I was interested to see that Rothbard included "orthodox Calvinists" in the non-pietist camp. Who is included in orthodox Calvinism? Would the Puritans be? Calvin and Zwingli themselves?"

  I don't think Rothbard would include Puritans and Zwingli because they existed a couple of centuries before the period he writes about. Also, Calvin and the Puritans were very much in favor of government enforcing morals for centuries. If you read about Calvin's Geneva, the Calvinists in the Dutch Republic, and the early Puritans in the US, you'll see them try to use government ruthlessly. The Purtians in early America would public whip merchants who earned a profit greater than 5%.

  On another issue, I'm a little confused (honestly, not facetiously). Rothbard writes "only Spooner realized that it would be compounding crime and error to try to use government to right the wrongs committed by another government."

  The wrongs committed by the Southern states were crimes, not moral infringements, as Rothbard confirms later: "But it takes firmness in libertarian principle to make sure to confine one's pietistic moral crusade to crime (e.g., slavery, statism)..."

  I'm wondering what Rothbard would have considered the appropriate way to go about ending slavery in the South, since it was a crime against life and property. Surely the slaves would have the right to armed rebellion, but since they would be too weak to defeat the Southern States, it would be almost pointless. Would it then be against libertarian principles for the Northern States to aid the slaves? Or is Rothbard arguing from the anarchist position that all government action is evil, even state action to stop a crime? If so, what would be the proper anarchist method for ending slavery?

  Published: July 13, 2007 9:40 AM

• tarran

  Roger

  If the north had stopped supporting slavery, the system would have collapsed.

  An underground railroad terminating in Pennsylvania and Ohio would have been far more devastating than the one that terminated in Canada.

  Additionally, I don't think Rothbard would have opposed those who would have fought slavery of their own accord.

  The problem is that the Norther invasion had little to do with ending slavery. The slaves they found were often put to work building fortifications for the Northern army. Throughout the war, slaves labored on the construction of the U.S. Capitol.

  The civil war was one more example of the U.S. army being fielded against those who were tired of paying taxes (the Whiskey rebellion being the first). The justification of the war as being needed to end slavery is very much post-war justification, much like the current U.S. government's justification of occupying Iraq as being needed to fight Al Queda.

  Published: July 13, 2007 10:51 AM

• tarran

  Roger

  If the north had stopped supporting slavery, the system would have collapsed.

  An underground railroad terminating in Pennsylvania and Ohio would have been far more devastating than the one that terminated in Canada.

  Additionally, I don't think Rothbard would have opposed those who would have fought slavery of their own accord.

  The problem is that the Norther invasion had little to do with ending slavery. The slaves they found were often put to work building fortifications for the Northern army. Throughout the war, slaves labored on the construction of the U.S. Capitol.

  The civil war was one more example of the U.S. army being fielded against those who were tired of paying taxes (the Whiskey rebellion being the first). The justification of the war as being needed to end slavery is very much post-war justification, much like the current U.S. government's justification of occupying Iraq as being needed to fight Al Queda.

  Published: July 13, 2007 10:51 AM

• Stefan Jovanovich

  I can understand Rothbard's resentment against the New Englanders' self-regarding authoritarian pietism (some of us continue to feel that way about their modern successors on the Harvard faculty), but he let that distaste affect his reading of American history. The Republican's most solid base in the 19th century were the beer-making and beer-drinking German-Americans of the Corn belt. Prohibition grew out of the Baptist South, not the Catholic/Lutheran Mid-West. The New Englanders - like Spooner and Garrison - talked a great deal (as always), but they were never the center of the Republican party. The only Republican President from the Northeast was Coolidge, and he succeeded to office only after the death of a Mid-Western President. Rothbard's notion that the party of the South - the Democrats - were "the party of personal liberty" is even more flawed. The Democrats were the party of slavery and racial classification, and they were fully comfortable with having the local, county, state and Federal lawmen enforce their ideology. Plessey v. Ferguson, it should be remembered, was a suit brought by the State of Louisiana against a private company - the railroad - to enforce racial classifications in the seating of passengers.

  Published: July 13, 2007 12:04 PM

• Nat

  Stefan Jovanovich,

  In the History Channel's recent documentary "The Presidents", one of the historians discussing the Reconstruction Era called the Ku Klux Klan the "terrorist wing of the Democratic Party.

  Published: July 13, 2007 2:43 PM

• pb

  The answer to what would have been the appropriate method to get rid of slavery in the south is better answered by Spooner than by Rothbard.Fortunately he answered the question for you in an essay called "A Plan for The Abolition of Slavery (and) To The Non-Slaveholders of the South (1858)." It can be found in its entirety at the Lysanderspooner.org website.

  Published: July 14, 2007 5:34 AM

• RogerM

  So Lysander encouraged the non-slave-owning whites to assist the slaves in gaining freedom. That's very noble, and it may have worked, but I doubt it. It's impossible to construct credible alternative histories, but if you look at the fanaticism with which the southern soldiers fought, most of whom did not own slaves, and with the general treatment of blacks after the war, it seems unlikely that a sufficient number of anti-slavery whites would have heeded Spooner's call. After all, from the Civil War to Civil Rights, blacks experienced de facto slavery.

  But let's suppose that a huge number did respond and act as Spooner suggested. Could they have withstood the military might of the Southern states? Had the South enjoyed the North's wealth and industry, it would surely have defeated the North in the war; the South almost defeated the North early in the war without those resources. I doubt a mob of poorly armed and poorly trained whites could have stood up to the Southern military.

  On the other hand, it's possible that terrorist activities, such as murdering slave owners and their families and destroying their property, might have persuaded the majority of white voters to grow tired of slavery after 30 or 40 years. But who knows?

  Lysander's proposal seems pretty weak when you consider the enormity of the crime of slavery.

  Published: July 14, 2007 10:20 AM

• TGGP

  f you look at the fanaticism with which the southern soldiers fought
  I'm not an expert on the civil war, but it seems apparent to me and many other mainstream historians that they were no more fanatical than most others defending what they saw as their homeland. The real question is why union soldiers were as dedicated as they were!

  After all, from the Civil War to Civil Rights, blacks experienced de facto slavery.
  You're off your freaking rocker. Jim Crow was awful, but it sure as hell was not slavery. Chattel slavery is hard to match. I look at the foot vote and see that the real population movement of blacks from the south to the north was the Great Migration, which was due to the industrial jobs available thanks to world war and its aftermath. Compare to the lengths slaves went to in order to escape on the Underground Railroad. There's really no serious comparison. Also, the economic situation among blacks improved at the same rate as it did for whites between the Civil War and Civil Rights. It is right before the latter that blacks progressed the most (due to the great migration) and afterward that things got stagnant or declined. You can read either Thomas Sowell or Charles Murray on this.

  On the other hand, it's possible that terrorist activities, such as murdering slave owners and their families and destroying their property, might have persuaded the majority of white voters to grow tired of slavery after 30 or 40 years. But who knows?
  That's what Spooner was in favor. He was a backer of John Brown, which in my view does not speak well of him. Brown was all religious passion and no sense. His actions didn't really help slaves, but just idiotically got a bunch of people killed. At the same time, I think an ongoing campaign of terror by more sensible John Brown could have really wreaked a toll. Think of how screwed up Spartan society was due to the need to keep the Helots in check. The southerners had real fear of slave uprisings for good reason (what happened in Haiti was pretty scary), and if some northerners had started a network capable of facilitating them who knows what might have happened. Importantly, the north would have provided a safe haven for them (a vital resource as Britain was to the peninsular guerrillas and North Vietnam was in the U.S' intervention in that neighborhood). It would have put the onus on the south to invade the north to get at them, which would have been ridiculous given the population and industrial base of former compared to the latter.

  Lysander's proposal seems pretty weak when you consider the enormity of the crime of slavery.
  The Civil War itself was quite fitting of the label "enormous".

  Published: July 14, 2007 11:57 PM

• RobertR

  While on the Lysander Spooner site, I read one his works "A New System of Paper Currency (1861)" (A New System of Paper Currency). I would be interested in seeing a critique of it by the Mises Institute and see if I spotted or sensed the same strengths and weaknesses that Mises would identify. I wonder if his system would be likely to head off the inherent problems of fractional reserve banking that we see hitting these days, or if the part of "maintaining a plentiful and abundant currency" would create the same problems of monetary inflation. Might it be a step toward 100% reserve banking?

  Published: August 13, 2008 2:57 PM