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Book Review
| Silvana R. Siddali, From Property to Person: Slavery and the Confiscation Acts, 1861–1862, Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2005. Pp. x + 298. $44.95 (ISBN 0–8071–3042–7).
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| Although the Civil War has been extensively studied from almost every perspective, the confiscation acts of 1861 and 1862 have received relatively little scholarly attention. Silvana R. Siddali illuminates this important topic in this provocative volume. Historians have long known that the acts themselves produced only a small amount of actual confiscation of southern property. Nonetheless, Siddali maintains that the far-ranging debates surrounding the acts reflected changing attitudes about private property and particularly about the legitimacy of slavery as a form of property. |
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It is often overlooked that the Confederates initiated the policy of property confiscation in the spring of 1861. They seized federal government property across the South and repudiated private debts owed to northern creditors. Enraged northerners pictured these actions as theft and called for retaliation. According to Siddali, a growing body of northern opinion favored a "hard" approach toward the Confederacy and backed an aggressive confiscation plan to punish the rebels, make them pay for the cost of the war, and reimburse loyal unionists in the South. Yet these goals were largely frustrated by conservatives in Congress who feared that wholesale interference with property rights would destroy the constitutional fabric and hamper sectional reconciliation. Consequently, both the 1861 and the 1862 acts were compromise measures with limited scope and unclear enforcement procedures. The Lincoln administration, moreover, demonstrated no enthusiasm for implementing these measures. The confiscation acts therefore failed to achieve the radical goals of redistributing property and overhauling southern society. |
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Although largely ineffective with regard to land and personal property, Siddali points out that the confiscation acts did portend the end of slavery. Slave labor aided the Confederate war effort, and the 1861 act was crafted to confiscate any property used to assist the rebellion. The 1862 act was broader, declaring that all slaves of persons supporting the rebellion who escaped to Union lines were free. The confiscation acts paved the way for eventual emancipation, but were dictated more by strategic considerations of winning the war and punishing slaveholders than concern for the welfare of slaves. |
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Boldly argued and carefully researched, this book nonetheless presents a number of problems. There are some questionable assertions. John Marshall was not chief justice in 1796 and did not write an opinion in Ware v. Hylton (136). A procedure authorizing the confiscation of property through an in rem proceeding would not "have obviated any need for a court proceeding" (141). Americans have rarely treated land "as a static possession" (158), preferring to buy and sell land as a commodity. |
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More troublesome, however, are some of the contentions advanced by Siddali. The author consistently characterizes northern public opinion as more prepared for severe measures toward the Confederacy than either Congress or the Lincoln Administration. Yet one cannot fairly conclude that Congress did not in the main reflect northern opinion. As the author's evidence demonstrates, harsh wartime rhetoric was often at odds with reality. Northerners, for example, were torn and hesitant about the emancipation of slaves and were unenthusiastic about a black presence in their region. Moreover, Congress overwhelmingly defeated a proposal in 1865 to redistribute the land of convicted traitors in the South to loyal citizens and freed slaves. Congress likely mirrored the prevailing attitudes toward property ownership. |
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Nor is it easy to reconcile Siddali's various statements about property rights. At several points in the book she states that wartime stress caused northerners to reconsider their reverence for private property. "The era of the Civil War," we are told, "brought about a crisis in American ideas regarding property rights" (4). But the evidence presented supports a contrary thesis. The abiding attachment to the rights of property owners in the face of bitter civil conflict is striking. There was in fact little sustained appetite for a sweeping confiscation policy, aside from slaves. Stepping away from her earlier suggestion of changed attitudes about property, Siddali cogently concludes "that even the many radical social changes brought about by the Civil War had not prepared Americans to overturn private property rights" (249). |
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Saddali would have strengthened her study by considering the treatment of confiscation cases by the Supreme Court during the 1870s and 1880s. The Court, guided by Justice Stephen J. Field, upheld confiscation only on narrow grounds and minimized its impact. Similarly, the author might have profitably contrasted the vacillating northern confiscation policy with the aggressive Confederate program of seizing property owned by northerners. |
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These reservations aside, Saddali's volume will be of high value to scholars of the Civil War era. She enriches our knowledge of an often overlooked aspect of the sectional struggle and the place of private property in the nineteenth-century polity. Saddali leaves readers with much to ponder. |
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| James W. Ely, Jr.
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| Vanderbilt University Law School |
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