The Confederate Catechism was written by Lyon Gardiner Tyler, the son of President John Tyler. Lyon Tyler was a prominent educator and a well-known critic of Abraham Lincoln and Black equality. His mother was Julia Tyler Gardiner, She was born on Gardiner’s Island off of the East End of Long Island in New York. When Lyon was eight his father died in 1862. His mother moved to Staten Island with her children until the Civil War ended. The family returned to Virginia and Lyon studied law at the University of Virginia.
In 1888, Lyon was named head of the College of William and Mary. He rebuilt the college after its decline during the Civil War and he became a leading educator in the South. Later in life he attracted attention for his criticism of Abraham Lincoln which included his denunciation of the Virginia legislature for honoring Lincoln in 1928. In 1929 he published The Confederate Catechism in which he said: “Both from the standpoint of the Constitution and sound statesmanship, it was not slavery, but the vindictive, intemperate anti-slavery movement that was at the bottom of all the troubles.” Both the Sons of Confederate Veterans and the United Daughters of the Confederacy reprinted it and supplied it to school children to recite.
Here is the Confederate Catechism. My notes are in BOLD TYPE.
1. What was the cause of secession in 1861? It was the yoking together of two warring nations having different interests which were repeatedly brought to the breaking point by selfish and unconstitutional acts of the North. The breaking point was nearly reached in 1786, when the North tried to give away the Mississippi River to Spain; in 1790, when the North by Congressional act forced the South to pay the Revolutionary debts of the North; in 1801, when they tried to upset the presidential ticket and make Aaron Burr President; and in 1828 and 1832, when they imposed upon the South high protective tariffs for the benefit of Northern manufactures. The breaking point was finally reached in 1861, when after
flagrant nullification of the Constitution by personal liberty laws and underground railroads, resulting in John Brown’s
assassinations, a Northern President was elected by strictly Northern votes upon a platform which announced the resolve never to submit to a decision of the highest court in the land. This decision (the Dred Scott Case, 1856), in
permitting Southern men to go with their slaves into the Territories, gave no advantage to the South, as none of
the territorial domain remaining was in any way fit for agriculture, but the South regarded the opposition to it of
the Lincoln party as a determination on the part of the North to govern the Union thereafter by virtue of its numerical majority, without any regard whatever to constitutional limitations. [Personal Liberty Law were passed in Northern states to prevent African Americans from being kidnapped by slave catchers from the South and taken into slavery. Tyler combines personal liberty laws, the Underground Railroad, John Brown’s militant actions, and the election of Lincoln as the cause of the Civil War.]
The literature of those times shows that such mutual and mortal hatred existed as, in the language of Jefferson, to “render separation preferable to eternal discord.”
2. Was slavery the cause of secession or the war?
No. Slavery existed previous to the Constitution, and the Union was formed in spite of it. Both from the standpoint of the Constitution and sound statesmanship it was not slavery, but the vindictive, intemperate anti-slavery movement that was at the bottom of all the troubles. The North having formed a union with a lot of States inheriting slavery, common honesty dictated that it should respect the institutions of the South, or, in case of a change of conscience, should secede from the Union. But it did neither. Having possessed itself of the Federal Government, it set up abolition as its particular champion,
made war upon the South, freed the Negroes without regard to time or consequences, and held the South as conquered territory. [As Tyler says, the North “set up abolition as its particular champion, made war upon the South, freed the Negroes…” which sounds like slavery was the cause of the war.]
3. Was the extension of slavery the purpose of
secession?
No. When South Carolina seceded she had no certainty that any other Southern State would follow her example. By her act she absolutely shut herself out from the Territories and thereby limited rather than extended slavery. The same may be said of the other seceding States who joined her.
4. Was secession the cause of the war?
No. Secession is a mere civil process having no
necessary connection with war. Norway seceded from
Sweden, and there was no war. The attempted linking of
slavery and secession with war is merely an effort to
obscure the issue — “a red herring drawn across the trail.”
Secession was based (1) upon the natural right of
self-government, (2) upon the reservation to the States in
the Constitution of all powers not expressly granted to the
Federal Government. Secession was such a power, being
expressly excepted in the ratifications of the Constitution
by Virginia, Rhode Island, and New York. (3) Upon the
right of the principal to recall the powers vested in the
agent; and upon (4) the inherent nature of all partnerships,
which carries with them the right of withdrawal. The
States were partners in the Union, and no partnership is
irrevocable. The “more perfect Union” spoken of in the
Preamble to the Constitution was the expression merely of
a hope and wish. No rights of sovereignty whatever could
exist without the right of secession.
5. What then was the cause of the war?
The cause of the war was (1) the rejection of the
right of peaceable secession of eleven sovereign States by
Lincoln, and (2) the denial of self-government to
8,000,000 of people, occupying a territory half the size of
Europe. Fitness is necessary for the assertion of the right
and Lincoln himself said of these people that they possessed as much moral sense and as much devotion to law
and order as “any other civilized and patriotic people.”
Without consulting Congress, Lincoln sent great armies to
the South, and it was the war of a president elected by a
minority of the people of the North. In the World War,
6. Did the South fight for slavery or the extension
of slavery?
No; for had Lincoln not sent armies to the South,
that country would have done no fighting at all.
7. Did the South fight for the overthrow of the
United States Government?
No; the South fought to establish its own
government. Secession did not destroy the Union, but
merely reduced its territorial extent. The United States
existed when there were only thirteen States, and it would
have existed when there were twenty States left. The
charge brought by Lincoln that the aim of the Southerners
was to overthrow the Government was no more true than
if King George III had said that the secession of the American colonies from Great Britain had in view the destruction of the British Government. The government of Great
Britain was not destroyed by the success of the American
States in 1783. Nor would the government of the United
States have been destroyed if the Southern States had succeeded in repelling the attacks of the North in 1861-1865.
Had the North refrained from conquest, its example would
have been felt by Germany and there would have been no
World War costing millions of lives. A group of Northern
States in 1861-65 assumed the imperialistic attitude of
Great Britain in 1776 and Germany in 1914, and substituted the armed fist for the American principle of self-gov-
ernment. Universal peace will never ensue till the principle
of self-government, which requires no armies to maintain
it, is recognized throughout the world.
8. What did the South fight for?
It fought to repel invasion and for self-government,
just as the fathers of the American Revolution had done.
Lincoln himself confessed at first that he had no
constitutional right to make war against a State, so he resorted to the subterfuge of calling for troops to suppress
“combinations” of persons in the Southern States “too
powerful to be suppressed by the ordinary” processes. It
is impossible to understand how the Southern States could
have proceeded in a more regular and formal manner than
they did to show they acted as States and not as mere
“combinations.” It shows the lack of principle that characterized Lincoln when later he referred to the Southern
States as “insurrectionary States.” If the Federal
Government had no power to make war upon a State,
how could it be called insurrectionary?
9. Did the South in firing on Fort Sumter begin the
war?
No. Various hostile acts had been committed before this took place. The first hostile act was committed by
the Federal Government when Major Robert Anderson
secretly removed his garrison at night from Fort Moultrie,
a weak fort in Charleston harbor, to Fort Sumter, a very
strong fort. Shortly after, the government, under James
Buchanan, sent the Star of the West with troops and supplies to Fort Sumter, but she was driven off. If South
Carolina had a right to secede, she had a right to all the
public buildings upon her territory, saving her responsibil-
ity for the cost of construction, which she readily recognized. She took over Fort Moultrie and other buildings
and she was joined by other Southern States. Nevertheless
no one was hurt, there was no war, and Virginia interposed with her Peace Conference, originated and presided
over by John Tyler.
After Lincoln came in, the peace apparently continued for four or five weeks, but secretly Lincoln took
means to bring on war. Despite the assurances of Seward,
the Secretary of State — assurances made with Lincoln’s
full knowledge — that the status would not be disturbed 1
at Fort Pickens, and in violation of a truce existing there
between the Federals and Confederates, Lincoln sent secret orders for the landing of troops, but Adams, the Federal commander of the squadron before Fort Pickens, refused to land the troops, declaring that it would be a
breach of faith to do so, and that it would bring on war.
This was before Fort Sumter was fired on, and it was fired
on only when an armed squadron, prepared also with great
secrecy, was dispatched with troops to supply that fort
also.
But firing upon Fort Sumter did not in any case
necessarily mean war. No one was hurt by the firing, and
Lincoln knew that all the Confederates wanted was a fort
that commanded the Metropolitan city of South Carolina
— a fort which had been erected for the defence of that
city. He knew that they had no desire to engage in a war
with the United States. Not every hostile act justifies war,
and in the World War this country submitted to having its
flag filled full of holes and scores of its citizens destroyed
before it went to war. Lincoln, without any violation of
his views of government, had an obvious alternative in
putting the question of war up to Congress, which could
have been called in ten days. But he did not do it, and assumed the powers of Congress in making laws, besides
enforcing them as an executive. By his mere authority he
enormously increased the Federal army, marched it to the
South, blockaded Southern ports, and declared Southern
privateersmen pirates. Every clause of Jefferson’s tremendous indictment against King George in 1776 was true of
Lincoln in 1861-1865.
10. Why did Lincoln break the truce at Fort
Pickens and precipitate the war by sending troops to Fort
Sumter?
Lincoln did not think that war would result by
sending troops to Fort Pickens, and it would give him the
appearance of asserting the national authority. But he
knew that hostilities would certainly ensue if he attempted
to reinforce Fort Sumter. He was therefore at first in favor
of withdrawing the troops from that fort, and allowed assurances to that effect to be given out by Seward, his Secretary of State. But the deciding factor with him was the
tariff question. In three separate interviews, he asked what
would become of his revenue if he allowed the government at Montgomery to go on with their ten percent tariff.
He asked, “what would become of his tariff (about 90 per
cent on the cost of goods) if he allowed those people at
Montgomery to go on with their ten percent tariff.” Final 2
action was taken when nine Governors of high tariff States
waited upon Lincoln and offered him men and supplies.
The protective tariff had almost driven the country to war
in 1833; it is not surprising that it brought war in 1861.
Indeed, this spirit of spoliation was so apparent from the
beginning that, at the very first Congress, William
Grayson, one of our two first Virginia Senators, predicted
that the fate reserved to the South was to be “the
milch-cow of the Union.” The New York Times, after
having on March 21, 1861 declared for separation, took
the ground nine days later that the material interests of the
North would not allow of an independent South!
11. Did Lincoln carry on the war for the purpose
of freeing the slaves?
No; he frequently denied that that was his purpose
in waging war. He claimed that he fought the South in
order to preserve the Union. Before the war Lincoln declared himself in favor of the enforcement of the Fugitive
Slave Act, and he once figured as an attorney to drag back
a runaway Negro into slavery. When he became President
he professed himself in his Inaugural willing to support an
amendment guaranteeing slavery in the States where it
existed. Wendell Phillips, the Abolitionist, called him a
“slave hound.” Of course Lincoln’s proposed amendment,
if it had any chance at all with the States, did not meet the
question at issue. No one except the Abolitionists disputed
the right of the Southern people to hold slaves in the
States where it existed. And an amendment would not
have been regarded by the Abolitionists, who spit upon the
Constitution itself. The immediate question at issue was
submission to the decision of the Supreme Court in
relation to the Territories. The pecuniary value of the
slaves cut no figure at all, and Lincoln’s proposed amendment was an insult to the South.
12. Did Lincoln, by his conquest of the South, save
the Union?
No. The old Union was a union of consent, the
present Union is one of force. For many years after the
war the South was held as a subject province, and any
privileges it now enjoys are mere concessions from its
conquerors, not rights inherited from the Constitution.
The North after the war had in domestic Negro rule a
whip which England never had over Ireland. To escape
from it, the South became grateful for any kind of government. The present Union is a great Northern nation based
on force and controlled by Northern majorities, to which
the South, as a conquered province, has had to conform all
its policies and ideals. The Federal authority is only Northern authority. Today the Executive, the Cabinet, the Supreme Court, the Ministers at foreign courts are all Northern men. The South has as little share in the government,
and as little chance of furnishing a President, as Norway or
Switzerland.
13. Could Lincoln have “saved” the Union by
some other method than war?
Yes. If he had given his influence to the resolutions
offered in the Senate by John J. Crittenden, the difficulties
in 1861 would have been peaceably settled. These resolutions extended the line of the Missouri Compromise
through the Territories, but gave nothing to the South,
save the abstract right to carry slaves to New Mexico. But
most of New Mexico was too barren for agriculture, and
not ten slaves had been carried there in ten years. The resolutions received the approval of the Southern Senators
and, had they been submitted to the people, would have
received their approval both North and South. Slavery in
a short time would have met a peaceful and natural death
with the development of machinery consequent upon
Cyrus H. McCormick’s great invention of the reaper, The
question in 1861 with the South as to the Territories was
one of wounded pride rather than any material advantage.
It was the intemperate, arrogant, and self-righteous attitude of Lincoln and his party that made any peaceable
constructive solution of the Territorial question impossible. In rejecting the Crittenden resolutions, Lincoln, a minority president, and the Republicans, a minority party,
placed themselves on record as virtually preferring the
slaughter of 400,000 men of the flower of the land and the
sacrifice of billions of dollars of property to a compromise
involving a mere abstraction. This abstraction did not even
contemplate a real object like New Mexico, for Lincoln in
a private letter admitted that there was no danger there.
Lincoln stirred up a ghost and professed to find in the annexation of Cuba a pretext for imperiling the Union. It is
needless to say that no such ghost could ever have
materialized in the presence of Northern majorities in both
the Senate and the House of Representatives.3
14. Does any present or future prosperity of the
South justify the War of 1861-1865?
No; no present or future prosperity can make a
past wrong right, for the end can never justify the means.
The war was a colossal crime, and the most astounding
case of self-stultification on the part of any government recorded in history. The war itself was conducted on the
most barbarous principles and involved the wholesale destruction of property and human lives. That there must be
no humanity in war was, according to Charles Francis Adams, “the accepted policy of Lincoln’s government during
the last stages of the War.”4
15. Had the South gained its independence, would
it have proved a failure?
No. General Grant has said in his Memoirs that it
would have established “a real and respected nation.” The
States of the South would have been bound together by
fear of the great Northern Republic and by a similarity of
economic conditions. They would have had laws suited to
their own circumstances, and developed accordingly. They
would not have lived under Northern laws and had to conform their policy to them, as they have been compelled to
do. A low tariff would have attracted the trade of the
world to the South, and its cities would have become great
and important centers of commerce. A fear of this prosperity induced Lincoln to make war upon the South. The
Southern Confederacy, instead of being a failure, would
have been a great outstanding figure in the affairs of the
world. The statement sometimes made that the Confederacy “died of too much States Rights,” as instanced the
opposition to President Davis in Georgia and North
Carolina, fails to notice that Lincoln’s imperialism did not
prevent far more serious opposition to Lincoln in Illinois,
Indiana, and Ohio. And yet at the time the South was under much greater pressure than the North.
16. Were the Southerners “rebels” in seceding
from the Federal Union?
The term “rebel” had no application to the Southern people, however much it applied to the American colonists. These last called themselves “Patriots,” not rebels.
Both Southerners in 1861 and Americans in 1776 acted
under the authority of their State governments. But while
the colonies were mere departments of the British Union,
the American States were creators of the Federal Union.
The Federal Government was the agent of the States for
the purposes expressed in the Constitution, and it is absurd
to say that the principal can rebel against the agent.
President Jackson threatened war with South Carolina in
1833, but admitted that in such an event South Carolinians
taken prisoners would not be “rebels” but prisoners of
war. The Freesoilers in Kansas and John Brown at
Harper’s Ferry were undoubtedly “rebels,” for they acted
without any lawful authority whatever in using force
against the Federal Government, and Lincoln and the
Republican party, in approving a platform which sympathized with the Freesoilers and bitterly denounced the Federal Government, were rebels and traitors at heart.
17. Did the South, as alleged by Lincoln in his
messages and in his Gettysburg speech, fight to destroy
popular government throughout the world?
No; the charge was absurd. Had the South succeeded, the United States would still have enjoyed all its
liberties, and so would Great Britain, France, Italy,
Belgium, Switzerland, and all other peoples. The danger
to popular government came from Lincoln himself. In conducting the war Lincoln talked about “democracy” and
“the plain people,” but adopted the rules of despotism and
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