The Union and the Confederacy

When I really began to delve into the causes of the American Civil War, and as my understanding of it was turned upside down, it bothered me that the North was called the Union, and the South, the Confederacy. I did not so much object to the term Confederacy for the South, but did to Union to describe the North. Was it not Lincoln who transformed the Union into a centralized nation? Did he not overturn states’ rights and the Jeffersonian understanding of the Union that the antebellum American polity operated as? If this is the case, as I think history records, then ‘Union’ is the last term that should be used for the North. Instead, National, Central, maybe even Federal—not Federated, but singular Federal—more accurately describe the North, pointing to the central government as the ultimate authority, which would fit better. After all, they already are often referred to by the term ‘federals.’


I used to think the South should carry the term ‘Union,’ as they maintained and fought for its preservation, to save the Constitution, the Union, and Jeffersonianism from the Radical Republicans and Lincoln. And I still think this is very true, as many in the South believed that was precisely what secession was about. However, there is no question that the Confederate Constitution moved away from the original Constitution in some significant ways. The fear of mob rule, or ochlocracy, along with weaknesses and soft spots in the Constitution that could be easily manipulated or interpreted in a specific way to grant more central authority, arose in the South in reaction to the Republican Party and its backers.


And so the Southern Constitution evolved into an even more libertarian, aristocratic, conservative, and decentralized form than the Founders had intended, perhaps interpreted as a return in some measure to the Articles of Confederation. And during its short life the Confederacy continued in this direction.  The Southern States, too, led by South Carolina, moved in a less political, less democratic, more aristocratic and libertarian direction. And more towards a Christendom than the Founders did. Thus, ‘the Union’ would not fit them either.


As the North moved in one direction from the Founders, the South moved away in the opposite direction. The Northern action caused a Southern reaction. The South was reactionary, in the sense of returning to old ideals. And this is why I think the term Union should not apply to the South or the North, Confederacy fits just fine with the Southern movement. It was a decentralized, libertarian reaction to the Republicans’ transformative actions in the Old Union, erecting a true central or federal  government in place of the Founders’ original vision.