South Was Right! Book

When I moved to South Carolina, I wanted to broaden my horizons and at least appreciate the Deep South's self-vision. All I got out of this book was a series of logical fallacies based on some historical and moral arguments that were more desperate justification than concrete proof.

Before the southern masses jump down my throat, let me say that the South certainly had some reasoning in their decision to succeed: the greatest being a threat to their economic interests and what they perceived as their individual freedoms. However, what the Kennedy Brothers claim beyond that is merely their interpretation superimposed on historical fact.

They would have you believe that "Southern Culture" is a distinct, cohesive culture juxtaposed against an antagonistic "Northern Culture." They would have you think that the decision to succeed was unanimous and popular. They would be argue that the South's crusade was not about slavery at all but states' rights. And they would be wrong.

As excellently described by Christopher Collier in Decision in Philadelphia, each part of the colonies before and after the Constitution Convention were equally distinct but geographically limited (Georgia would be worlds different from Virgina, Virgina from Pennsylvania, Pennsylvania from Connecticut, etc.) - limiting the extent of a unified southern culture. The decision to succeed was ultimately widely supported only when Lincoln called a draft to put the Southern Insurrection - in fact, Tennessee never actually voted to join the Confederacy and Kentucky tried to maintain neutrality as best it could. Finally, if the Civil War was truly about states' rights, I ask you why no other states that had previously lost either power or territory succeeded outside of the slave states - New England had suffered early in the nation's history under federalism as had the plains states later on.

The question comes down to this: what legitimately justifies the succession of a state or group of states from the Union? I'm sorry to say that the Kennedy brothers have presented no such framework.