Despotism & Civil Liberties in the North Compared with the Confederacy: Thoughts by Edward Alfred Pollard, 1865

One of the infamous chapters (and there are many) of the Civil War is the suspension of habeas corpus and the imposition of martial law. In this post, readers will find the opinion of Edward Alfred Pollard as it pertains to the North and South.

Pollard was a prolific writer, newspaper editor, and Southern sympathizer. The Lost Cause contentions in the history and writing about the War originated with his works. He was arrested off of the British steamer, Greyhound, by the Yankees while attempting to sail to England through a blockade. As a consequence, he was imprisoned for a time. He was finally paroled in January 1865.

The arguments and recriminations between the North and the South are, to say the least, both entertaining and enlightening. This post is no exception. Certainly, the hostile camps (both then and now) will see things differently and put themselves in the best light. That's a given. But the way Pollard characterizes civil rights violations in the North and why there was not a parallel in the South is an interesting read. What readers believe or disbelieve is certainly their own choice.

August Glen-James, editor

It is, however, to be confessed, with pain, that the Confederate Congress of 1863-64, marred the work of this legislative year by a base imitation of the Washington despotism in a suspension of the habeas corpus. It was an act of criminal stupidity, the fruit of an inferiority of mind in our legislators that aped the precedents of the Yankee. It is true that the law authorizing the suspension of the great writ of liberty was qualified by a stringent bill of particulars. But what can be most said, to wipe from the record of the Confederacy the statin of this infamous edict, is, that it was never put into practice. It was not put into practice for the simple reason that there was no occasion for it; no one doubted the integrity and patriotism of our judiciary; that branch of the government was practically permitted to continue its dispensation of law and justice; and the worst that can be said of the law suspending the habeas corpus was, that it was a stain upon our political history. It was an uncalled for libel upon the Confederacy; but although it might blacken or reputation, yet it is a satisfaction to know that it did not practically affect our system of liberties.

In contrasting the political systems of the North and South in this war, we find an invariable superiority in the latter with respect to all questions of civil liberty. This, indeed, is to be taken as the most striking and significant moral phenomenon of the war.

Despite the conscription and other harsh necessities of legislation, the principles of liberty were yet substantially secure in the Confederacy. The spirit of the devotion of the people was, in most instances, in advance of the demands of the government. The people of the Confederacy were more heartily willing than the Yankees to contribute of their substance and convenience to the war, but mush less willing than they to sacrifice their civil liberties to its fancied necessities. In the Confederacy the impressments of property were, in fact, in the majority of instances, voluntary contributions. In the confederacy, the conscription was not, in effect, a measure of force, but was rather to be regarded as a measure to organize the proffer of patriotic devotion, and to equalize its service. It was the purer spirit and superior motives of the Confederacy in the war that made its administration so superior to that of the enemy, with regard to the constitutional standards of liberty, and the well recognized principles of conservatism.

The North presented a different picture. The process by which the Yankee Government had developed itself into one of the vilest despotisms on the earth is one of the most interesting problems of the history of the war. In an address of the Confederate Congress, which met in the spring of 1864, a reference was made to Yankee despotism as “engendered in a desperate warfare upon the liberties of another and kindred people.” The language of this reference contains the key of the problem. The unholy passions of this war, its hate, its greed, its dire revenge, its desperation, induced the people of the North to compromise their constitutional rights. They were willing to purchase the gratification of their passions at the expense of their liberty, and those who gainsayed [sic] the price were denounced as disloyal persons, and threatened as traitors.

Personal liberty was no longer a thing of any account in the eyes of “the best government the world ever saw.” There was a law on the statute-book of the Government at Washington, which not only undertook to deprive the judicial tribunals of the States of all cognizance, civil and criminal, over proceedings instituted against persons who had done any act injurious to a citizen, by order of President Lincoln, but which also made the order of the President, or of any one acting under his authority, a full and perfect defence, in all courts, in any civil or any criminal proceedings in which the act was drawn in question. This law annihilated the liberties of the citizen; perfected the despotism at Washington; and gave Abraham Lincoln a power above all judicial redress in the country, and as irresponsible as any autocracy on earth.

Pollard, Edward Alfred (1865). Southern history of the war. The third year of the war. New York: Charles B. Richardson. PP. 229-233.