Book Review: The South Was Right by James Ronald Kennedy and Walter Donald Kennedy

The South Was Right
by James Ronald Kennedy and Walther Donald Kennedy

I am not an advocate of Lost Cause, but in writing Maelstrom, I needed to understand it. One of the books I read was The South Was Right. The authors claim the Civil War was not about slavery, and the Southern states had a right to secede from the oppressive North. The three points in the preceding sentence encapsulate the Lost Cause and this book.

Anyone who has read 1860 campaign platforms, pre-war congressional speeches, or the proceedings at the state secession conventions doubts that the conflict was about slavery. The Confederate Constitution also makes it clear. If more evidence is needed, read Confederate political and newspaper reactions to the Emancipation Proclamation. Jefferson Davis, before the Confederate Congress, protested the Emancipation Proclamation: “Our own detestation of those who have attempted the most execrable measure recorded in the history of guilty man.” Freeing slaves was the worst action in history? Seems he was a bit miffed.

Second, the Constitution provides for new states but includes no provision for secession. No state successfully conditioned its ratification on a right to secede. New York is the only state that tried, and the measure failed. The Constitution was adopted as a permanent union.

The third leg of the Lost Cause mythology is that the North oppressed the South. For our first seventy years, slaveholding interests dominated our governmental institutions. Ten of our first fifteen presidents owned slaves, and three of the others were sympathetic to slavery. The Senate and House were largely dominated by the Democratic Party, and 26 of 33 antebellum Supreme Court justices owned slaves at some point in their lives. If the national government oppressed the South, then they oppressed themselves.

The Civil War was caused by the secession of seven states after Lincoln was elected but before his inauguration. Secession was caused by a threat to unrestricted slavery. That threat was real. Lincoln and his Republican Party’s position was no slavery in the territories, and if they got their way, eventually there would have been enough free states to abolish slavery. The Confederate states bolted because they no longer exerted enough power in the national government to protect their “peculiar institution.” It was a veto of our national election.

Although the book’s premises are false, it is a good presentation of the Lost Cause, and anyone interested in the subject would benefit from reading The South Was Right. Then you can put it on the shelf next to the books selling Camelot.

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