A ‘Lincoln Scholar’ Comes Clean
2/12/2009
Historian William Marvel is a past winner of the Lincoln Prize and the Douglas Southall Freeman Award for his scholarship. The author of Lee’s Last Retreat, Andersonville, and A Place Called Appomattox is described by the renowned Steven Sears as “The Civil War’s master historical detective.” He is also unique among all the “Lincoln scholars” who I have read in that his books do NOT read like defense briefs in The War Crimes Trial of Abraham Lincoln, filled with hundreds of bizarre rationalizations for every odious or barbaric act. Instead, they read like they are written by a man searching for historical truth.
Marvel’s 2006 book, Mr. Lincoln Goes to War, says this on the inside cover: “Marvel leads the reader inexorably to the conclusion that Lincoln not only missed opportunities to avoid war but actually fanned the flames – and often acted quite unconstitutionally in prosecuting the war once it had begun.” This is obviously not how to win another “Lincoln Prize.”
The book is about Lincoln’s entire first year in office. It accurately portrays Lincoln’s henchman William Seward not as some Great Statesman but as “a coward & a sneak.” Marvel does not hide the fact, as most other Lincoln “scholars” do, that Seward, on Lincoln’s instructions, orchestrated the passing through the U.S. Senate of a “constitutional amendment specifically prohibiting congressional interference with slavery” in the South. The Amendment, known as the Corwin Amendment, did pass the House and Senate before Lincoln’s inauguration. In his first inaugural address Lincoln explicitly pledged his support for the amendment. In that speech Lincoln also said that there need be “no bloodshed” unless a state refused to pay the tariff tax, which had just been doubled (the Morrill Tariff) two days before Lincoln’s inauguration. Since the Southern states that had seceded had no intention of paying taxes to the U.S. government any more than they intended to pay them to the British government, this was an explicit threat of war over tax collection.
Harold
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