Lord Acton was one of the greatest classical liberal historians of the nineteenth century, but his view of the War in between the States has in some circles occasioned dismay. Acton, in a letter of 1866 to Robert E. Lee, said, “I considered that you were combating the fights of our liberty, our progress, and our civilization; and I mourn for the stake which was lost at Richmond more deeply than I rejoice over that which was saved at Waterloo.“
For example, the political theorist Jacob Levy, who admires Acton’s pluralism, says that Acton’s insights “led him to analyses of the U.S. Civil War that were not simply wrong, however thoroughly and thoughtfully wickedly wrong. He identified the cause of the Confederacy as the cause of liberty, even knowing slavery to be wicked, and he thought this with firm dedication, for many years.” (As we’ll see below, “wickedly” is a parody of something Acton states.)
If slavery is evil, how could Acton safeguard the cause of the Confederacy as the reason for flexibility? Acton’s case for doing so is well argued and does not at all depend upon doubting the badness of slavery. The case begins from the reality that a totally free society can not be run by an absolute power but should include the rights of individuals. In saying this, Acton not only condemns outright monarchy but endless bulk rule as well. If anything, majority guideline is worse, because it is much more difficult to withstand. Much of the Founders, in specific those in the Federalist Party, acknowledged the threats of democracy. As Acton explains in a lecture given in 1866,
[T] he authors of the most well known Democracy in history respected that the most formidable dangers which menaced the stability of their work were the really concepts of Democracy itself. With them the establishment of a Republican federal government was not the result of theory, but of need. They had no aristocracy, and no king, however otherwise they acquired our English laws, and strove to adjust them as faithfully as possible to a society made up so in a different way from that in which they had their origin. The earliest interpreters of the Constitution and the laws strove to be guided by English precedents, and to approach as almost as they could to the English model. Hamilton is the primary expounder of these concepts: “It has actually been observed that a pure Democracy, if it were practicable, would be the most best federal government. Experience has actually proved that no position in politics is more false than this. The ancient Democracies, in which the people themselves pondered, never possessed one function of good federal government. Their extremely character was tyranny, their figure deformity. If we incline too much to Democracy, we shall soon shoot into a monarchy. Those who suggest to form a solid Republican government should proceed to the boundaries of another government. There are certain conjunctures when it may be essential and proper to ignore the opinions which most of individuals have formed. There should be a concept in government efficient in withstanding the popular existing. The principle chiefly meant to be developed is this, that there should be a long-term will.”
When Thomas Jefferson pertained to power, the concept of democracy relocated to the fore, but the venture to limit democratic absolutism was not lost. Now the hope lay in the independent power of the states that formed the union. Acton takes John C. Calhoun to be the terrific theorist of federalism and concurs with him that a state should be able to nullify laws that promote the interests of one section of the nation over another.
The thinker of the South, Mr. Calhoun, of whom it was said, to explain his influence, that as frequently as he took a pinch of snuff all South Carolina sneezed, put forward what was called the theory of nullification. He kept that if an interested bulk passed a law harmful to the settled interests of any State, that State had a right to interpose a veto. He was addressed by Daniel Webster, the most eloquent of Americans, who asserted the outright right of a legislature where all were relatively represented, to make laws for all. Then Calhoun insisted that if a State might not avoid the execution of a law which it considered unconstitutional and harmful, it can withdraw from the Union which it had conditionally signed up with.
In his letter to Robert E. Lee, Acton says:
I saw in State Rights the only availing check upon the absolutism of the sovereign will, and secession filled me with hope, not as the destruction but as the redemption of Democracy. The organizations of your Republic have actually not exercised on the old world the salutary and liberating impact which should have belonged to them, by factor of those defects and abuses of principle which the Confederate Constitution was specifically and wisely computed to treat. I thought that the example of that great Reform would have blessed all the races of mankind by developing real flexibility purged of the native risks and conditions of Republics.
The election of Abraham Lincoln in 1860 and his policy of waging war on the South meant the triumph of mass democracy over liberty. The Thirteenth Modification ended slavery, though it left the slaves in bad conditions, but the result of the war was a disaster for liberty. In a striking solution, Acton says:
[S] lavery was not the cause of secession, but the reason of its failure. In almost every nation and every clime the time has actually come for the extinction of yoke. The very same problem has sooner or later been required on many governments, and all have actually bestowed on it their biggest legislative skill, lest in recovery the evils of forced however certain labour, they need to produce incurable evils of another kind. They tried a minimum of to moderate the impacts of sudden genuine change, to conserve those whom they despoiled from ruin, and those whom they freed from destitution. But in the United States no such design seems to have commanded the work of emancipation. It has actually been an act of war, not of statesmanship or humanity. They have treated the slave-owner as an enemy, and have utilized the slave as an instrument for his destruction. They have actually not protected the white guy from the revenge of barbarians, nor the black from the mean ruthlessness of a self-centered civilisation.
If, then, slavery is to be the requirement which will figure out the significance of the civil war, our verdict ought, I believe, to be, that by one part of the nation it was wickedly protected, and by the other as wickedly removed.
This passage contains the expression “wickedly removed” that led Jacob Levy to his parody. Whether Acton took adequate account of the evils of slavery I’ll leave to readers to judge; however his thoroughly argued position merits mindful research study and verifies his standing as an intense analyst of liberty.