Curtis Yarvin's Deceptive Account of the Confederate Firing on Fort Sumter, and His "Confederate Racist Fascism"

Curtis Yarvin's deceptive history of the American Civil War is part of his neoreactionary history of what he calls the Three Modern Wars.  As an illustration of his deception, I will concentrate on his explanation of the Confederate firing on Fort Sumter, which initiated the Civil War.

Yarvin identifies the Three Modern Wars as the War of Secession (the American Civil War), the First German War (World War I), and the Second German War (World War II).

Yarvin claims that these three wars share five common features.

"Feature A:  In each Modern War, we see an archaic side (anti-democratic, right-wing, reactionary, etc.) and a modern side (democratic, left-wing, revolutionary, etc.).  It is easy to see which is which: the Confederacy, Wilhelmine Germany, and Nazi Germany are archaic."

"Feature B:  In each Modern War, the archaic side initiated military activity by attacking the modern forces.  The Confederates shelled Fort Sumter, the Kaiser invaded Belgium, Hitler invaded Poland, and the Japanese bombed Hawaii, etc.  This might of course be a mere military coincidence, but I don't think it is."

"Feature C:  In each Modern War, the archaic side was substantially weaker on paper than the modern.  The Union was substantially more populous and industrially productive than the Confederacy, the Triple Entente than the Triple Alliance, the Allies than the Axis."

"Feature D:  In each Modern War, the modern side defeated the archaic, and imposed its own terms of surrender without negotiation.  The defeated political structures were thoroughly liquidated, and replaced by new structures of the victor's design."

"The conjunction of B, C, and D is especially intriguing.  If the archaics always look like they will lose the war, and indeed always do lose the war, why do they always start the war?"

"The obvious theory is that they're so evil, they just can't help it.  Perhaps this works for you, and perhaps it always will.  But we will suggest another solution to this mystery."

"Feature E:  For at least most of the duration of the Modern Wars, the modern side is the plaintiff, and the archaic side is the defendant."

"E.g.:  the North is trying to subdue the South; the South is trying not to be subdued by the North.  Victory for the Confederacy means the survival of the Confederacy.  Victory for the Union means the non-survival of the Confederacy.  The German Wars are slightly more complex, but through most of both wars, it was the Germans who made peace proposals, their enemies who rejected them."

"The combination of features E and C suggests the possibility that predation is the best metaphor with which to explain the Modern Wars.  At least, if we did not find E and C, we could exclude predation.  We do see E and C; so we must still consider predation."

But how is it possible to see the North in the Civil War as the predator, and the South as the prey?  Wasn't it the Confederates who fired the first shots on April 12, 1861, when they shelled Fort Sumter in the harbor of Charleston, South Carolina?

No, Yarvin responds, the North provoked the South into attacking Fort Sumter, and so what we see here is camouflaged predation.  Abraham Lincoln wanted war with the Confederacy in the spring of 1861, but he wanted to cleverly provoke the Confederates into firing the first shots, so that they would appear to be the aggressors, and the North would appear to be fighting in self-defense.

In support of this conclusion, Yarvin quotes a long passage from George Lunt's book The Origin of the Late War (Boston, 1865).  Lunt tells the story of how John Campbell of Alabama, a Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, mediated negotiations between three commissioners representing the Confederacy and Union officials over terms that would avoid war.  Campbell said that in meetings with Secretary of State William Seward, Seward promised that the garrison of soldiers at Fort Sumter would be evacuated.  Campbell was shocked, therefore, when a fleet of Union ships appeared off the Charleston harbor on April 12.  The Confederates in Charleston sent a message to Montgomery, Alabama, asking for orders from Jefferson Davis.  The order was to demand the surrender of the fort, and then if the demand was refused, they should start bombardment.  When the commander at the fort--Major Robert Anderson--refused to surrender, the Confederates launched the attack.

Lunt suggests that Union leaders dispatched the ships to Charleston in order to provoke the Confederates into firing on the fort, so that they would appear to be the aggressors, and the Union would appear to be acting in self-defense.  Lunt observes: "It was generally thought at the North that the attack on Fort Sumter was a desperate, if not a treacherous deed; but it was considered at the South as the repulse of a threatened assault upon Charleston, involving an ostensible breach of faith by a responsible officer and agent of the administration."

Yarvin says that he began reading Lunt's book when he noticed that Carlyle mentioned him in a footnote.  Yarvin says: "Origin of the Late War is simply a wonderful book; it has both judgment and immediacy, detail and passion.  I recommend it highly.  If you only read one primary source on the War of Secession, this should probably be the one."

Yarvin says that this book supports "the conclusion that Lincoln, despite his speeches at the time, wanted a war and was happy to get one."  "The approach is one of camouflaged predation.  Perhaps it can be summarized as: 'kick the dog until he bites, then shoot him.'  Press your target, using blows that hurt but do not draw blood, until he finally snaps and bites back.  Then it's time for the Glock.  The resulting execution appears to the casual observer, who misses the kicks or can be persuaded not to see them, as a simple case of justified self-defense--putting down a biting dog."

Remarably, Yarvin draws this bold conclusion only from his reading of Lunt's book.  He does not refer his readers to any other historical sources.  And his story of what led to the firing on Fort Sumter is a highly simplified narrative of what in fact was a very complex story.  In his history of the Civil War, James McPherson says that Abraham Lincoln's decision about Fort Sumter is "one of the most thoroughly studied questions in American history" (Battle Cry of Freedom, 267).  

It is surprising, therefore, that Yarvin does not convey to his readers the complexity of that scholarly debate over that historical question.  Either Yarvin is ignorant of that scholarship.  Or he knows about it, but he doesn't want his readers to ponder it, for fear that this would weaken his case for the "camouflaged predation" of the North.

Fort Sumter was on an island four miles from downtown Charleston at the entrance to the bay.  At the fort, Major Robert Anderson commanded a garrison of Union soldiers.  Having seceded from the Union, the Carolinians assumed that they would soon take all of the United States property in Charleston, including the fort.  They had hundreds of militiamen in Charleston ready to forcibly take the fort if it was not voluntarily surrendered.  The fate of Fort Sumter was a big news story across the country.  Everyone knew that if the Confederates attacked the fort, that would launch the war.

On March 5, Lincoln was told by Anderson that the garrison at Fort Sumter was running out of supplies, and that within six weeks, Anderson's men would begin starving to death.  So Lincoln had six weeks to decide between three possible courses of action.  He could send ships with supplies and reinforcements that would shoot their way into the bay, but then he would be accused of starting the war, and this would divide the North and unite the South, while pushing the Upper South (including Virginia) into joining the secession.  Another possibility was that he could withdraw the garrison and surrender the fort.  This would keep the peace and probably keep the Upper South in the Union.  But this would divide the North, weaken the Republican Party, and be seen by foreign powers (such as Great Britain) as recognition of the Confederacy's independence, so that foreign governments would give diplomatic recognition to the Confederacy.  A third alternative was to stall for time, hoping that within six weeks some peaceful way could be found to keep the fort in Union hands.

Lincoln received conflicting advice from people inside and outside his administration.  Secretary of State Seward advised him to surrender Sumter, because this could keep the Upper South in the Union and strengthen the unionists in the Confederate states, who were working to bring the South back into the Union.  Seward was an ambitious rival of Lincoln's who was conniving to take the leadership of the administration away from Lincoln.  Without Lincoln's knowledge, Seward told the Confederate commissioners that Fort Sumter would be surrendered, and he leaked this news to the press.  Notice that Yarvin says nothing about this--that Seward was acting on his own without Lincoln's approval, and therefore Lincoln had never promised the Confederates that Fort Sumter would be surrendered.

On April 4, Lincoln gave the orders for a plan that no one had suggested to him.  He had come up with his own solution to the crisis--a fourth possibility--that some historians have identified as a stroke of genius.  Lincoln drafted a letter for the Secretary of War Simon Cameron to send to Major Anderson, which you can find in the Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, vol. 4, 321-22, available online.  He told Anderson that an expedition to relieve his garrison was on its way, and that it should arrive by the 11th or the 12th: "the expedition will go forward; and, finding your flag flying, will attempt to provision you, and, in case the effort is resisted, will endeavor also to reinforce you."  Notice what this means: the garrison will be provisioned, but it will not be reinforced militarily unless the Confederates attack the fort to prevent the provisioning.

Lincoln also drafted a letter to Robert Chew signed by Cameron that was sent on April 6.  Chew was a clerk in the State Department.  This letter is in the Collected Works, vol. 4, 323-24, also available online. Chew was instructed to meet Governor Francis Pickens in Charleston and deliver to him the following message: "I am directed by the President of the United States to notify you to expect an attempt will be made to supply Fort-Sumpter with provisions only; and that, if such attempt be not resisted, no effort to throw in men, arms, or ammunition, will be made, without further notice, or in case of attack upon the Fort."  

So the Governor knew that the provisioning of the fort would be purely peaceful, unless the Confederates attacked the fort and forced the Union soldiers to fight back.  The Governor passed this message to Jefferson Davis in Montgomery and asked for instructions.  Davis called a cabinet meeting for April 9, which endorsed an order to General Pierre Beauregard, commander of the Confederate military in Charleston, instructing him to attack the fort before the relief ships arrived, if possible.  After Anderson refused Beauregard's order to surrender, Beauregard ordered the attack to begin at 4:30 a.m. on April 12.  After thirty-three hours of bombardment, during which the Union relief ships did not intervene, Anderson was forced to surrender the fort on April 14.  On April 15, Lincoln called 75,000 militiamen into national service.  The war had begun.

Notice that Yarvin says nothing about any of this.  He does not mention the letters to Anderson and Chew.  Why?  Presumably, because this would weaken his argument that Lincoln wanted to start a war by forcing the Confederates to shoot first.

From the beginning of the Civil War to the present, people have debated Lincoln's motives for his attempt to resupply Fort Sumter.  People have taken three positions.  The first is that Lincoln wanted war, and he manipulated the circumstances to force the Confederacy into firing the first shot, so that the Union would appear to be fighting in self-defense.  This is what the southerners and their apologists have said.  This is Yarvin's position.  But Yarvin is careful to remain silent about the two alternative positions that have been adopted by most historians.

One alternative is to say that Lincoln wanted to preserve the peace, but he feared that surrendering the fort would demoralize the Union and strengthen the Confederacy, particularly by persuading Great Britain to recognize the Confederacy.  So Lincoln devised his resupply plan so that the Confederates would be free to decide between peace and war.

Another only slightly different alternative is to say that Lincoln hoped the Confederates would choose peace, but he expected that they probably would choose war.  To me, this seems the most plausible explanation.

By refusing to lay out all the relevant evidence and reasoning in the historical debate over this question, Yarvin shows again that he has no interest in serious intellectual debate, because he is only a propagandist for his reactionary authoritarianism.

Yarvin defends the Confederacy because it came close to his model of the best regime as based on black slavery and authoritarian despotism.  But still he criticizes the Confederacy for not going far enough towards this authoritarian best regime.  He says that the Confederates were conservative, but not truly reactionary.  They should have been reactionaries in restoring something like Stuart monarchy and embracing Robert Filmer's argument for patriarchal order.

We should not be surprised when Yarvin tells us that he likes to "flirt" with "Confederate racist fascism."