Civil War History - Secession and PoliticsWas it Slavery, or was it States Rights? Perhaps it was the election of Lincoln? What were the real reasons for Southern Secession and what were the political issues in this time of war? Find your answers here in the Secession and Politics Disussion.
Hal, I believe you are correct, without the shots fired at Ft Sumter there would not have been a Civil War as we know it... though I believe the powder keg could have as easily been lit elsewhere... that's the problem there were so many loacales where the violence was just waiting to explode. Could there have been peaceful secession? I don't know... I really doubt it but it is a what if that didn't happen.
As to the politicians gaining power, think about it... less politicians to argue w/ inherently increases the power of those remaining. W/out the "drain of taxes to the North" more money would pour inward to other Southern States... it makes sense I just don't see the reason of starting a war over it. Which as I've said before, most of those who got the ball rolling survived the War and were never themselves in danger. Let the masses do the fighting and dieing... that said Northern politicos were no different.
__________________ Shane Christen
American Legion Post 352
SUVCW Camp Abernethy# 48
Lifetime NRA member
3rd MN VI
For in much wisdom is much grief: and he that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow. Eccl 1:18
Bill, you're spot on. Reparations for something that happened so long ago that no one is alive who even had parents that remembered it... Is there a statute of limitaitions or not?
Dachau, Auschwitz, Bergen Belson... America is innocent of EVER having manufactured such horror. Despite claims to the contrary, slavery in the US was no Holocaust. Though as my wife just pointed out, it wasn't profitable to kill your slaves.
That said I've grown weary of the US repeatedly being regarded as the basis of all evil. I could not likely have survived your trip to France as my first reply to a Frenchman insulting the US would have been "Parle vous L'allemand?"... "Merci, de rien." If my French is off, my apolgies. Though I may have been saved too much bodily harm by a timely "Viva La Legion! Garcon, Cognac pour tout le monde."
__________________ Shane Christen
American Legion Post 352
SUVCW Camp Abernethy# 48
Lifetime NRA member
3rd MN VI
For in much wisdom is much grief: and he that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow. Eccl 1:18
How does this excuse US slavery? It doesn't. But I do not recall any of the states who had slavery and who stayed in the Union did not leave said Union over that institution. The South did.
Why is it that Lincoln is forgotten when he said that he and his party did not have the right to interfere with slavery where it already existed, that it is somehow neatly forgotten that the South, because it could not radically EXPAND Federal power for the protection and expansion of that institution is kept off stage in the guise of a so-called better Constitution that permits it to never be challenged, changed or amended?
Thank God it NEVER had a chance to survive, under what ever guise you find comfortable.
Unionblue
__________________ "The American people and the Government at Washington may refuse to recognize it for a time but the inexorable logic of events will force it upon them in the end; that the war now being waged in this land is a war for and against slavery." Frederick Douglass
"Loyalty to our ancestors does not include loyalty to their mistakes." George Santayana
As to your comments concerning Coonie Boone, I cannot agree. It is such a shame that you disliked her so intensely that you did not debate her with your knowledge on labor contentions. An opportunity lost for this entire board.
After numerous emails with her, I found her quite charming and knowledgeable and considered her a dear friend. No offense at your contention she was 'way over her head' on this subject, but we'll never know, will we?
What part of the compact was being broken in order for the South being justified to leave the Union? What State's Rights were being violated? Where and in what branch of government was the South being denied representation? What were some of the many facets of State's Rights where this inequality was taking place?
I'm listening.
Unionblue
__________________ "The American people and the Government at Washington may refuse to recognize it for a time but the inexorable logic of events will force it upon them in the end; that the war now being waged in this land is a war for and against slavery." Frederick Douglass
"Loyalty to our ancestors does not include loyalty to their mistakes." George Santayana
Representation? Where was it? In the previous administration with the so called Democrat controlled congress this was who ran the business. Each of these committees were controlled exclusively by the Republicans and Banks.
William Kelsey NY Engraving
Edwin Morgan NY Patents
George Simmons NY Judiciary
Samuel Benson ME Naval Affairs
Aaron Cragin NY Expenditures in the War Dept.
David Holloway IN Agriculture
Israel Washburn ME Elections
Alvah Sabin VT Revisal and Unfinished Business
James Pike NH Joint Committee on Enrolled Bills
Ezra Clark CT Manufacturers
Sidney Dean CT Public Expenditures
Benjamin Pringle NY Indian Affairs
Henry Bennett NY Public Lands
Elihu Wasburne IL Commerce
Alexander Pennington NJ Foreign Affairs James Knox IL Roads and Canals
Joshua Giddings OH Claims
James Meacham VT District of Columbia
Galusha Grow PA Territories
Henry Waldron MI Expenditures in the Treasury Dept.
John Petit IN Expenditures in the Post Office
David Ritchie PA Revolutionary Claims
Lewis Campbell OH Ways and Means
Edward Ball OH Public Buildings and Grounds
John Kunkel PA Militia
Benjamin Thurston RI Accounts
Daniel Mace IN Post Office and Post Roads
Andrew Oliver NY Invalid Pensions
Matthias Nichols OH Joint Committee on Printing
Jacob Broom PA Revolutionary Pensions
--------------------------
These were the committees that those who opposed Banks had the Chairman seats.
Gilchrist Porter MO Private Land Claims
Thomas Harris IL Expenditures in the Navy Dept.
William Sneed TN Mileage
William Aiken SC Joint Committee on Library
John Quitman MS Military Affairs
Preston Brooks SC Expenditures in the State Dept.
Fayette McMullen VA Expenditures on Public Buildings
Bear in mind, under Lincoln the choice was John Sherman, instead of Banks. The man who endorsed Helper’s book to the tune of 100,000 copies. 68 members of the elected Republican party endorsed the book. In fact, calling it their manifesto. But I guess that was just another red herring issue too.
21005 miles of railroads vs 9512 miles in ten years. That is equality. Tariffs, railroads, canals, dredging of rivers, and more. But more is Never enough is it? They have all been mentioned and ignored.
Yeah ok Neil. I give up. You win. These are facts. Not my opinion. If it doesn’t matter ok. This is not first time these facts have been presented and ignored. In fact several times. I give up ok. You win.
(Message edited by aphillbilly on October 01, 2004)
EXCELLENT! Pick up grains of sand and throw them in the debating eyes so that all are blinded by the real power that was held by the South in the nation for 2/3 of its existence.
Even now, you won't directly answer the questions posed to you. You have to try the endless end runs of non-issues. You're right, I've seen it before and its even less in impact now.
Who was in the White House the majority of the time? Who picked the most federal judges, appointments, etc? Who was the speaker the majority of the time? Who controlled the Senate? Who was on the bench of the Supreme Court? In fact, until the South walked out, it had NOTHING to fear from federal legislation and could have tied up the House and Senate in knots if it so desired.
Nit-pick it, but at least wrap it up in new paper.
Go ahead, give up, but at least give up in a new way. We're done here.
Unionblue
(Message edited by unionblue on October 01, 2004)
__________________ "The American people and the Government at Washington may refuse to recognize it for a time but the inexorable logic of events will force it upon them in the end; that the war now being waged in this land is a war for and against slavery." Frederick Douglass
"Loyalty to our ancestors does not include loyalty to their mistakes." George Santayana
'Where and in what branch of government was the South being denied representation? What were some of the many facets of State's Rights where this inequality was taking place? '
I answered the questions. Again. Done. indeed. I believe I'm dead as you put it. Enjoy the victory.
(Message edited by aphillbilly on October 01, 2004)
But WHY did the South leave the Union? What did it want above all else? What was the major issue dividing the country before the war? What subject would not and could not be resolved to the point the South felt it HAD to leave the Union? We can dart, dodge, ignore or bring up anything else, but the words, the documents, the main issues keep returning to the same point, the same subject, the same cause.
On many occasions you have suggested that you would like to have a plain-speaking discussion about the significance of slavery and how it underpinned both secession and the Confederate constitution. I am happy to talk about slavery and I hope I won’t indulge in equivocation or rationalisation to avoid ugly truths about Southern society.
But in return I would ask that you accept that there is no point in discussing slavery unless we simultaneously discuss race relations throughout the ante-bellum United States. To do otherwise is to rob the Peculiar Institution of its proper context. What we have to try to do is to adopt the racial mindset of a 19th century American, and this is not merely difficult but also distasteful because most of these views are anathema to civilised people in 2004. Nevertheless we have to try to do it.
As I have argued before, I believe that the simple truth is that all white Americans in this era (bar perhaps a few hundred) believed implicitly in the moral and intellectual inferiority of negroes; they also believed that it would be quite impossible for the two races to co-exist unless negroes were forcibly kept in a condition of subordination. The steps taken to enforce subordination varied, and the main variable appears to have been the ratio of blacks to whites in the population of each region.
New Englanders had almost no contact with negroes and no practical knowledge of slavery; they were the likeliest to favour abolition because they had absolutely nothing to lose if the great social experiment backfired. A Princeton chum of Marylander McHenry Howard admitted to him: “certainly if this slavery question is to be the touch stone in our political battles, I am tired of it. In the first place not one man in a thousand with us knows any thing about it except by hearsay and in the abstract.” [Ruffner, Maryland’s Blue & Gray, pp.49-50.] Midwesterners often favoured abolition because they thought their indigenous negro population would then move south; and they opposed slavery in the territories mainly because they did not want any social interraction with a race they loathed. As the Illinois State Journal put it, “we have, in common with nineteen twentieths of our people, a prejudice against the n---er.” [Voegeli, Free But Not Equal, p.28.] Southerners were the most conservative on this issue for the good and simple reason that they had the most to lose: not merely money but also – potentially – their homes and their very lives.
Here’s the rub. If you accept the premise that Negroes have to be kept in a subordinate role if you wish to avoid murderous anarchy, slavery is the most logical way of subordinating several million of them. Indeed, it is difficult to see any viable alternative. And that is why Garrisonian Abolitionism caused such terrible harm: the zealots in Boston never did suggest a viable alternative. Private David Holt of the 16th Mississippi wrote that “the abolitionists never showed a way to get rid of slavery, nor a way to provide for the negroes after they were free.” [Holt, A Mississippi Rebel in the Army of Northern Virginia, p.62.] From a Southern perspective, mindful of Nat Turner and the massacres in the Caribbean, Garrison stood over a metaphorical open barrel of gunpowder and spent thirty years trying to strike a match. So when you criticise Southerners for their stubborn refusal to compromise over slavery, you are criticising ordinary Americans for refusing to take huge risks with their future livelihood and safety at the behest of people who were risking precisely nothing. Not only were these other people risking nothing but – and this is what made it absolutely insupportable – they also had the gall to strike a pose of sanctimonious moral superiority.
I have no difficulty in accepting that slavery was the short-term cause of secession in 1861. As you and others have pointed out, it is mentioned often enough in the primary source materials of the time. I simply state that, on this issue, the South was genuinely the aggrieved and injured party. Because over the course of thirty years an increasing proportion of the Northern population came to favour making a change in Southern society that they would never have stomached in their own states. They would not live cheek by jowl with large numbers of Negroes themselves, but they were largely indifferent to the problems and dangers which this experience might cause their Southern fellow citizens. That is the fundamental hypocrisy of Northern anti-slavery sentiment. In one debate Representative Albert G. Porter of Indiana argued that his state had “elected in favor of the white race by prohibiting slavery” while Missouri had chosen slavery and thereby agreed to accept its disadvantages. If any “inconveniences” should follow emancipation, “the duty to be just to the freedmen is yours, and you cannot fairly shift either the burden or the duty to us.” [Voegeli, Free But Not Equal, p.20.] And so Pilate washed his hands.
Accepting that slavery was the main short-term cause of secession in no way invalidates the argument that the long-term causes were issues which were, quite frankly, much more important than slavery. I won’t rehash that argument here, because people like Tommy, Thea & Hal have already presented it more competently than I could. And I know you are familiar with it.
Unionblue
PS I know I have said it once before, but welcome back and thanks for asking about my health earlier on. I am recovered and feeling much better. I look forward to hearing more about your trip and cycle ride.
__________________ "The American people and the Government at Washington may refuse to recognize it for a time but the inexorable logic of events will force it upon them in the end; that the war now being waged in this land is a war for and against slavery." Frederick Douglass
"Loyalty to our ancestors does not include loyalty to their mistakes." George Santayana
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