The South's Greatest Blunder

The South's Greatest Blunder

Thomas Allen, editor

In The United States Unmasked: A Search into the Causes of the Rise and Progress of These States, and an Exposure Of Their Present Material and Moral Condition (London, Ontario: J. H. Vivian, 1878), pages 100-102, G. Manigault identifies the South greatest blunder at the outbreak of Lincoln’s War:

The people of the South and their leaders committed many and great blunders. But we will only name one which we think the first and greatest of all. The politicians, urging on the people the necessity of seceding from the Union, universally pronounced secession to be a peaceful right. And so it was. The terms of the treaty which had united the States into a confederation having been grossly, repeatedly, and notoriously violated by the Northern States, to the injury of the Southern, any one or all of them had a right to declare the treaty null and void, and withdraw from the Union. This was a peaceful right and no act of hostility. But the politicians went beyond this and assured the people that secession would prove a peaceful remedy for their wrongs. This was as gross an absurdity as any man, calling himself a statesman could utter. The people of the Northern States had control of the Federal government and of all its powers and resources; they had been for years in the enjoyment of large contributions or rather tribute from the industry and fertility of the South; their prosperity had been largely, we think chiefly built upon these contributions, and must decline on their withdrawal. Now it is flying in the face of all history and all experience in human nature to suppose that any people or government, with large means of waging war, will abandon possession of rich tributary territories without first striving to retain them by force of arms. It matters not whether the tribute is the result of robbery or of right. They will fight rather than give it up. 

Some individuals in the South uttered earnest warnings that secession meant war, for it must lead to it; and urged prompt preparation for it. But they had not the ear of the people. If the South had any statesmen, their counsels were not heard amid the harangues of politicians; and the States which seceded went out of the Union, with the most flimsy preparations for maintaining in arms the step they had taken. The most important provisions made for defence were due to the foresight and activity of a few individuals.

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