Was 'Preserving the Union' Our Other Original Sin?

What if the Framers had written rules only for free states instead of trying to keep the slave states on board?

Almost all of America's ills — but not the whole set — stem from a single source, an "original sin" if you will.

America's original sin was not its founding as an elite-dominated republic in the 1780s, but the importation of a large population of enslaved Africans, first to the Spanish colonies in the 1500s and later to the British colonies in the 1600s. It's common to say that if slavery had never touched these shores, we'd be a vastly different nation today. That statement will likely be true forever. 

But America may have committed a second original sin almost as consequential as the first, and it's one that may surprise you. Consider this, from the opening of a good piece on the history of the Electoral College by Justin Fox, published at Bloomberg:

The Many Unintended Consequences of the Electoral College

(Bloomberg Opinion) -- When it came time in 1787 to set the rules for choosing a president of the U.S., three of the principal authors of the Constitution — James Madison, Gouverneur Morris and James Wilson — argued that the best approach, the one most likely to inspire public confidence and national feeling, would be a nationwide popular vote.

All three also understood the prospects of this happening were, as Wilson put it, “chimerical.” It was obvious the method would instead have to reflect the two great (or awful, if you prefer) compromises hammered out at the Constitutional Convention over political representation. To keep the slave-holding states on board, the delegates had apportioned seats in the House of Representatives on the basis of a population count that considered slaves to be three-fifths of a person. And to assuage the smaller states they had created a Senate with two members per state, regardless of population. [emphasis added]

This phrase is key: "To keep the slave-holding states on board..."

We often look back at the American Civil War as a turning point in our history. That war, in essence, was a violent attempt to also "keep the slave-holding states on board," and it succeeded. Yet though the Confederacy lost and its citizens were stripped of their enslaved people, they were not stripped of their race-based animus, their anger, their history of exploitation, and their constant fear of racial retribution and revolt. 

Was all of that effort worth it? What if that war had never needed to be fought? What if America's second sin was this — the attempt, even at the start, to keep the slave states “on board"?

The Founders Had Choices

It was a choice, not a requirement, that the nation should stay united. It’s understandable why that choice was made, but consider the alternative. What if the framers of the Constitution had written rules only for non-slave states? In that scenario, it's entirely possible that every state north of Maryland would have joined the new nation, which would have left states further south to do ... what? Stay separate from each other? Form a proto-Confederacy? 

Who knows what the South would have done? And why should we care, given what they've done to us since the republic was founded, and given their every effort to wreck the "union" we so desperately wanted them part of?

Had slave states rejected the Constitution and never been folded in, the rest of us would have been rid of them from the start, with many immediate benefits. For example, we might not have had the Electoral College — Madison may well have won that discussion — and other "features" of our first Constitution would have been vastly different or never existed at all, including its infamous three-fifths clause.

What If Lincoln Had Just Said, ‘Fine, Go Away’?

Or consider that other juncture in our history when we could have got free of the South and its ways of thinking. What if Lincoln had not been so hell-bent on "preserving the Union," and instead had just announced, "Let the slave states go, and good riddance to them all"? 

By then the slave-induced wounds on the republic had festered — for example, the compromises leading up to the war left a mess in the west — but the massive national bloodletting that started in 1861 would have been avoided, and the new non-slave nation of the North would not have been continuously roiled by the slave-holding South from the day of Emancipation till now. 

We're poisoned today by Lincoln's determination — at least that's one way to look at it.

But What About the Africans Themselves?

The greatest obstacle to this way of thinking involves the slaved Africans themselves. The benefit to them that came from the Civil War should not be understated or underestimated. Freedom is worth a lot.

The history of Africans on the American continent would have been vastly worse had they not been freed in 1862. Men like Frederick Douglass would still have achieved their greatness — he escaped slavery to Pennsylvania well before the war ­— but those who failed to escape would have remained in the wretched condition they were born to. So we cannot consider this new thought casually.

An Alternate U.S. History

Yet we should consider it, at least in an alternative-history sense. What may have happened if the Founders had not bent the Constitution to include the slave states’ demands? What may have happened if Lincoln had placed peace before union?

In the earlier case, a number of possibilities present themselves, among them the non-consolidation, at least for a time, of the slave states into one entity. This would have left each of them vulnerable, considering the smaller size of their economies, to the northern industrial powerhouse that would soon dominate the continent. 

As they watched the Northern Union grow stronger, would individual southern states have sought to join them, holding their hats in their hands? Perhaps some might, Delaware for example. 

More likely, though, they would have eventually banded together. But as the industrial North became the engine it was destined to be, even a United South would have been no match in wealth, and the need to trade with the North would have placed natural restraints on southern power.

In addition, a look at the history of Haiti is instructive. The Haitian Revolution started in the 1790s and concluded with liberation in 1804. Would a weakened South have been subject to similar revolts? And if revolts had occurred, would the Northern Union have found it in its interest to stand aside? I certainly hope so. After all, abolitionist voices were strong, and the issue would have been hotly debated at least.

A war may still have emerged between North and South, the latter united or not, caused by skirmishes launched by the southern states or by battles in the West. But would it have gone the same way as the actual war? It may well have ended earlier, even with the same result. 

In addition, if the North had not tried to force the defeated South into the Northern Union, the terms of victory could have been much more simple — the winners could have declared all enslaved people free, given them citizenship and right of passage to the non-slave North, then left. 

Thus no Reconstruction, and no myth of the "war of Northern aggression" with its constant theme of Yankee imposition. Would the post-war outcomes of that have been better for us? Food for thought.

The Sum of Misery

Life in the South for African descendants was miserable before the War, and after the hiatus of Reconstruction, ended by the corrupt bargain of 1876, their lives turned terrible again. The South simply changed the means and methods of torture, going from slave cabins, whips and chains to lynchings, poverty and fear.

This wasn’t an even trade for African Americans — life as a slave was worse than life after Reconstruction — but it wasn’t a good trade either. And their new bad life lasted another full century, if it ever ended at all.

Would the sum of their misery been less in our alternate scenarios? Possibly not, but the answer isn’t a given.

The New Secessionists

Today many dream of a type of new secession, one where California and the Pacific states are free of rules imposed by Alabama and Idaho; where Texas doesn't write creationist textbooks for Vermont; and where one small-minded, power-hungry conservative from Kentucky can't put gay-hating climate deniers on the U.S. Supreme Court, to rule us from the bench for most of the rest of our lives.

Was the price of our "union" worth this? Do we even have a "union" at all, after all our pain and effort?

Or would it have been better for everyone concerned if the North were rid of the South from the very start?

Food for thought.

(An early version of this piece appeared at DownWithTyranny.)