How the Pro-Democracy Forces Won the Civil War

The Confederate States of America only existed for four years, but the kind of society it embodied — the absolute, unquestioned rule of property holders — has been a permanent feature of American politics. The Confederacy was a failed attempt by a small but powerful segment of the nation’s ruling class — the Southern planters — to secede and create their own explicitly white supremacist slave empire. This aristocratic slaver class was a small slice of the population, but it had successfully leveraged its economic power to shape every level of the US political system in its own interests.

Before the Civil War, they were easily the most politically dominant group in the country — ten of the fifteen presidents before Abraham Lincoln hailed from this tiny group of wealthy slave owners. These were the oligarchic billionaires of their day able to deploy racism, nationalism, and patriarchy as organizing principles to build a formidable enough base of support, while also using legal and extralegal methods to disenfranchise millions of opponents and entrench minority rule.

Despite the planters’ immense power and wealth, which was near its apex in the 1850s, the unprecedented mass politics of anti-slavery — led by free and enslaved black people, women, and a committed core of radically democratic abolitionists — was able to first defeat the planters electorally in 1860, just six years after the founding of the anti-slavery Republican Party. When the planters responded with the secession of eleven slave states and the first shots of the Civil War, the Union Army — led by the Republicans — was able to defeat them on the battlefield as well.

How were the pro-democracy forces able to prevail and what lessons can their victories and shortcomings teach us today as we battle a New Confederacy? In short, as the old socialist slogan says, the leaders of the anti-slavery forces educated, agitated, and organized millions of Americans to see their own self-interest — morally, politically, and economically — in the destruction of the Slavocracy.

It took hundreds of years of incredibly brave and dangerous resistance by countless enslaved people themselves — escape, work stoppage, learning to read and write, armed rebellion, and many other forms of disruption to the system. It took a militant abolitionist social movement that redefined the national common sense around slavery and polarized the country on the question. It took the creation of a new political party and building the broadest possible united front to oppose the planter class — a united front that included enslaved and free black people, staunch abolitionists, Northern industrialists, white workers, and homesteaders. Some were more reformers than revolutionaries, but the key point is this: millions of people engaged in various tactics, all united in their shared self-interest in ending the planters’ domination of economic and political life in this country.

The story after Appomattox is less triumphant, but just as important to remember, critique, and celebrate. Lincoln was assassinated on April 14 — just five days after Lee’s surrender — leaving Andrew Johnson, a Southern Democrat, in charge at a critical juncture. The victorious, pro-democracy forces were still able to initiate Reconstruction, but the united front broke down by 1877, eroding the progress that had been made — a devastating but crucial reminder that freedom is a constant struggle.

Though insufficient and incomplete, Reconstruction nevertheless saw some of the most genuinely democratic years our country has ever managed. Equal citizenship, voting rights, thousands of black legislators elected nationwide, the Freedmen’s Bureau, and public education in the South — one of the first demands of newly freed black people and one that benefited everyone across the South — were just some of the victories worthy of joyful remembrance as well as solemn reflection.

We Must Celebrate April 9

Fast-forward 160 years, and a new antidemocratic, white supremacist oligarchy is in power. Just as their Confederate forebears did, they have used race, a warped version of Christianity, nationalism, patriarchy, and culture war to build a formidable united front of their own. They champion freedom of the individual above all — but what they really mean, just as the Confederacy did, is the freedom of capital and the propertied few to absolutely dominate and exploit working people in order to enrich and entrench themselves beyond imagination.

So, we must do as our forebears did. We must educate, agitate, and organize our way to a new majority that sees their own self-interest in defeating this New Confederacy and beginning a new Reconstruction. A new majority ready to stand up to the oligarchs who want to exploit us, divide us, and disenfranchise us so they can enjoy unlimited power and profits. Just as slavery was incompatible with freedom and democracy, so too is the outrageous wealth inequality that this twenty-first-century oligarchy stands for. We have a tremendous amount of work to do to build our movement, yet we must always remember that it has been done before and thus can be accomplished again.

So on April 9 next year, let us commemorate the glorious victory of 1865 with food and drink and stories. Build a bonfire for freedom and democracy. Shoot off fireworks. Sing a medley of “John Brown’s Body,” “Solidarity Forever,” and the “Battle Hymn of the Republic.” Toast and salute the triumphant revolutionaries who crushed the Confederacy and others who have advanced the struggle more recently. Commit to another year of struggling for collective liberation. Then do it again the next year, and the year after, and on and on until we have a victory of our own to celebrate.