By Hunter Wallace | 5 Comments | 
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The Fire Eaters
I have long wondered why the Fire Eaters have attracted such little attention from American White Nationalists. For those unfamiliar with the term, the Fire Eaters were a small band of Southern secessionists — the ‘revolutionary vanguard’ of the Confederacy — who succeeded in fomenting a revolution against the United States in 1860/1861. They engineered the destruction of the Democratic Party, checkmated the ‘conservatives’ of their day, and set in motion a chain reaction of events that led to the formation of the CSA.
There are numerous interesting parallels. Like White Nationalists, the Fire Eaters spent decades in the political wilderness as a cornered minority. They were dismissed as “extremists,” “hotheads,” “ultras,” and “radicals” by their mainstream contemporaries. They chafed under the rule of conservatives whom they believed sacrificed Southern rights and honor. The Fire Eaters subscribed to a version of the ‘worse is better’ theory and worked to ensure the election of Abraham Lincoln and the defeat of Stephen Douglas. They were convinced that the Union was unsalvageable and only a minority of White Southerners were could be replied upon.
The Fire Eater strategy is of particular relevance to White Nationalism. It tackled an important question: how are the passive, fundamentally conservative masses to be awakened from their slumber? The Fire Eaters invested their hopes in separate state action by a handful of the most radical states. In the context of a national outrage, this would force the moderates into choosing between resistance or submission and allow the radicals to carry the day. The federal government would overplay its hand and the ensuing backlash would lead to a further wave of secession.
Their answer to this problem is worth considering in our times. Will anything short of troops in the streets and boots on the neck suffice to get the job done? In 2009, I seriously doubt even that would galvanize timid suburbanites, but much could change in decades to come. South Carolina wasn’t ready to leave the Union in 1833 over the “Tariff of Abominations.” The principle of secession triumphed in the South long before it was acted upon. The idea that Whites have legitimate interests must be established before a White ethnostate is given a serious hearing.
By 1860, the perpetuation of the Union had become a question mark. It was no longer taken for granted by all parties. A radical milieu had been advocating secession for almost thirty years. Fringe ideas had penetrated the mainstream national conversation. There is profit to be made in studying these precursors of ours.
Occidental Dissent, September 29, 2009
Sounds like a good technique and applicable, but for political recruitment purposes I’m a little hesitant about using failed revolutions as examples.
The principle of secession was not a more radical idea in 1833 than it was in 1865. The right was asserted by Southerners going back to the founding–certainly in the Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions, and the north considered it during the War of 1812.
In fact, I find it hard to believe that there would have been civil war if South Carolina had seceded in 1833. So it wasn’t an idea of action following ideas.
I agree that we need to think of ourselves as radicals, not conservatives today, but perhaps the conservatives were right in the Antebellum Period. What did the fire eaters accomplish? They helped start a war that killed 600,000 people; and ended up with the abolition of slavery in the worst way imaginable, reconstruction, and the 14th Amendment.
Don’t get me wrong, I blame the radical abolitionists more than them, but the two groups fed off each other.
Personally, I sympathize with the moderate abolitionists and free soilers who wanted a peaceful gradual end to slavery with repatriation or colonization of the slaves.
Charles,
It was not my intention to spark a debate about the Civil War. With all this talk of late about forming a revolutionary vanguard and securing an ethnostate, I just found the travails of the Fire Eaters from the 1830s -1860s to have some interesting parallels.
The Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions were quite explicit about the right to secede if the new federal government overstepped its bounds. The New England states repeatedly threatened to secede over such issues as the War of 1812 and the annexation of Texas. No one questioned their right to do so; it was implied through the 10th Amendment. Nor was nullification foreign to Northerners. By 1860 nearly all Northern states were refusing to enforce the fugitive slave laws — in effect, an act of nullification.
Of course, none of that stopped the North from getting into a holier-than-thou huff when the Southern states did the exact same thing. I call it TYH (Typical Yankee Hypocrisy), which is closely related to TYA (Typical Yankee Arrogance).
The “fire-eaters” were right about Lincoln, but perhaps not in the way the author suggests. He was a long-time advocate of “colonizing” (repatriating) blacks. He also submitted a Constitutional amendment to Congress — duly approved by the required 2/3 of both chambers — which would have preserved slavery forever if that’s what the slave states wanted. The fact that the South rejected this overture and seceded anyway tells the logical observer all he/she needs to know about how far down slavery stood on the list of grievances against the DC regime. And it was the Confederate constitution which flatly prohibited all foreign slave trading.
Strider, I see this ‘long-time advocacy’ claim more and more and it disturbs me. While this father of modern politics certainly spewed a lot of racially separatist rhetoric, even joining the comatose colonial league, it was usually fired up around election time. Even then it didn’t equal his calls for emancipation on moral grounds. He never introduced any legislation or directed any policy toward racial separation. His earliest writings attest to his strategy of appearing to be a moderate while working toward abolition (freeing the negroes where they were). The biggest quarrels between Lincoln and those of his party known openly as radical abolitionists was over method.
This is how Americans end up with election victories for presidents who ‘kept our boys out of war’ and who receive phone calls from God.
Southern secession was decided by men who knew Lincoln and who knew what a Lincoln administration would mean. Had they thought that the slaves’ emancipation would mean their purchase and deportation, they would not have left the union.