CSA vs. USA Constitution

[dave_kelly]

>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 &amp; Hal have already presented it more competently than I could. And I know you are familiar with it. <

Bill:

Well spoke. But I'm certainly not going to simply agree in deferring to a position that exonerates social welfare based on laissez faire slavery.

When Great Britain finally decided to abolish slavery in 1837 they offered slaveholders 20 cents on the dollar in compensation and took the plunge. My understanding is that the exchequer never paid many of the claims but that didn't prevent the state from standing by abolition.

Haiti was the worst example of slave revolt. It vehemence was prompted by the French Revolution first declaring and then defaulting on a pledge of universal emancipation.

In the entire American experience of slavery Nat Turner is the bugbear of uprisings. It hardly amounted to more than a decent sized Indian raid in what damage it did, but it occurred at a time when Virginia was once again considering abolition and was equivalent to a Hamas car bomb in an Israeli market place.

Ethnocentrism is more common behavior than open democracy. America did default on its values in many ways. The Know Nothings evolved into Copperheads and share secessionists aversion to reform.

While you state the intractible problems of race relations and risks to Southern society imposed by their dependency on cotton capital there are other considerations. Southern political leadership dialectic was never defensive. Cotton manifest destiny considered that cotton and slavery should be copartner to national development and slavery and southern empire would increase hand in hand with total national growth. If not on the continent, there was always central america and Cuba.

With international pressure against slavery on the increase public opinion was changing in the US. Martin Van Buren ran as a Free Soil Candidate and got 300,000 votes; nationally insignificant, but far more than a few hundred intellectuals.

Right up to 1864 white americans were still persuaded that repatriation was the only means of dealing with the race issue. No one wanted to pay for it, except for a few pipe smokers who bribed there way into Liberia.

Arguments against slavery usually took the form of stopping its spread by making no more slave states. Even that brought thunderous acrimony from the south that that did not conform to the bi-partate demarkation of the empire according to their understanding of how America was to be shaped.

So the missteps in natioanl development progressed to a coalesced Republican party at least determined to carry a program hostile to the instituton of slavery if not politically strong enough to gerrymander Congress. Was that a guarantee of unilateral action against slavery? Doubtful. Too many interests north and south depended on cotton.

Secession was attractive as an escape from the political conflict. But in a parliamentarian environment the Confederacy was severely in the minority if it acted unilaterally. It couldn't do so materially, but following SC's hysterics, it did so anyway.

Constructively the slaveholding interests had time and public opinion on its side to prolong the slave issue for quite some time.
One also considers what actually happened when forced emancipation happened as a by product of the war. There was no black murderous uprising. The majority of African Americans stayed south, reformulated their relationship with their previous owners and struggled to get what little enfranchisement they could. It makes a lie of American suspicions of inferior races and the futility of the Civil War. We had to kill each other to discover we didn't have to...

[bill_torrens]

David,

Thanks for your thoughts. I don’t want to hog the stage, but I have a few quick points to make in reply to you.

Hindsight tells us that Haiti represented the peak of servile violence in the Americas, but nobody could have known that at the time. Just as they could not have predicted the docility of plantation slaves in the Confederacy during the War (this docility seems to me to suggest the utter foolishness of ante-bellum Southern attempts to recapture runaway slaves from the North….if the most intelligent and energetic slaves managed to escape this was surely a natural safety-valve).

My central point is the unhelpful and irresponsible nature of American anti-slavery sentiment, and the conclusions which Southerners were logically entitled to draw from exposure to it. Let us remind ourselves that the South was an unwitting ethnic experiment: it was the only place in the world where caucasians and negroes intermingled in their millions. There was absolutely no precedent for what would happen if the chains were taken off the servile race. How the British government compensated its slaveholders is hardly relevant, since the British plantation owners were free to return to their homeland and start all over again. Where were Southerners to go? And let us remind ourselves that the typical Southern slave-owner wasn’t swigging juleps on the porch of his own particular Tara; he was a modest farmer who owned a handful of slaves and worked in the fields next to them. He felt that his Northern fellow-citizens were playing a self-indulgent game with his future and my personal opinion is that he was entitled to draw that conclusion.

Bill

[dave_kelly]

Bill:

Civic relativism. I can make an equally strong arguement that the war on drugs is senseless and against global interests. Obviously there is a high market demand. People dote on the stuff. Think of all the otherwise impoverished sods who are becoming comfortable in the trade. Think of all their wealthier factors who are becoming fabulously rich and handing out attractive bribes to feather the nests of those who are supposedly trying to stop the trade. Think of all the lovely tax money to be garnished if we legalized the stuff.

There are better ways of handling a lot of things in the world. Not so sure pinning little yellow stars on negroes and keeping them in perpetual bondage is what Jefferson had in mind, even if he and the other founders choked at five minutes to midnight.

There were millions of sodbusters who didn't have rufus and mammy petunia to help them with the farmstead. Let's leave that factor out.

Reform was in the wind, Bill. The slaveholders answered with denial and unsheathed swords, instead of with a clever political protraction that would have recieved support. Could they have ended the polemical nagging about slavery? About as much chance as a cigarette smoker at an AMA convention...

[hawglips]

Neil: "...a so-called better Constitution that permits [slavery] to never be challenged, changed or amended?"

In order for this to be an accurate statement, these three things must all be true:
1) the CSA constitution could not be amended
2) no free States could join the CSA
3) the CSA constitution's stipulations pertained equally to both the central government and each individual State government, whether so stated or not.

Do you agree that your statement does not meet any of the three? And do you not agree that it is therefore indeed a fallacious one?

And as usual, we've wasted a lot of time talking about secesh slavery, even though the USA's laws and Constitution pretty much did everything the CSA's did regarding that peculiar institution.

What about the reasons the Northern industrialist bloc opposed secession -- protectionist tariffs and redistribution of Southern money northward?

Don't you find it interesting that the CSA constitution totally stamps out any chance of similar injustices happening in their union, and also erases "promote the general welfare" out of the document completely?

Hal

[hawglips]

David: With international pressure against slavery on the increase public opinion was changing in the US. Martin Van Buren ran as a Free Soil Candidate and got 300,000 votes; nationally insignificant, but far more than a few hundred intellectuals.

I don't think we should assume 300,000 abolitionists voted for Van Buren. The Free Soilers were against slavery's extension into the territory we took from Mexico, and we shouldn't read too much into a vote for its candidate. I personally don't believe there was much concern for the rights of negro among the average Joes who opposed slavery's introduction into the territories. Lincoln's speeches show he was always careful to say the right things about keeping the territories as a preserve for the white man in his speeches to those sort of audiences.

David: Reform was in the wind, Bill. The slaveholders answered with denial and unsheathed swords, instead of with a clever political protraction that would have recieved support. Could they have ended the polemical nagging about slavery? About as much chance as a cigarette smoker at an AMA convention...

The north was hardly an anti-slavery bloc. In fact, even without the seven seceders' representatives, congress passed a resolution for a Constitutional amendment to guarantee slavery would never be threatened by the federal government (exactly the same guarantee that had just been put in the new CSA constitution). Slavery was not the primary consideration here. It was more like the straw that broke the camel's back. When the North took that straw off the back of the camel, the camel said, "thanks, but no thanks - the damage is done."

Hal

(Message edited by hawglips on October 01, 2004)

[dave_kelly]

Hal

I think it more appropriate to say that the free soilers wanted the internecine bickering over the territories ended so they could get land west of the Mississippi. The target wasn't the deserts of the southwest; it was the arable land of the upper plains that the free soilers wanted. Jefferson Davis's transcontinental railroad also got stuck in limbo because he wanted it to go from Memphis to San Diego and the Yankees wanted one from St Louis to San Francisco; once again demonstrating the strategic mindsets of the opposing mindsets galloping off to Civil War.

I don't suggest that the north was an anti slavery bloc. I was referring to international cultural tendencies influencing American culture. A 13th Ammendment gauranteeing slavery to slave states was on the floor of congress before Sumter. It went nowhere. It was an 11th hour peace offering, which as you say was too little too late. The Confederacy insisted that the United States must be a slave state and suppress abolition in order to satisfy slaveholding interests.

Since the Confederacy had already forcibly overthrown federal authority in all but 2 or 3 locations and was determined to split the Union permenantly, with sneering insinuations that given time proper white men would see the right of their cause and come join the Confederacy, the threat to the United States was firmly established and the United States acted to preserve the Constitutional Union.

[dawna]

Bill:

I'm late in welcoming you back but I trust that your holiday was full of warm mediterrean sunsets, adventure, and the most beautiful cycling in the world.

In attempting to understand the mind set of antebellum slavery issues, it's still difficult to imagine a morality that was so loosely based on fear. It is a very peculiar logic that condoned slavery on the basis that the black man was incapable of improvement, while at the same time denying access to any kind of education. But this was not much different than the average farmer in the South who was left impoverished and uneducated since only the wealthy could afford the luxury of an education.

It's incredible to think that not only were blacks denied an education, but also the right to religious freedom, marriage, or the ability to even leave their plantation homes without a written pass from their owners. It's also ironic that the same people who were once thought to be too stupid to understand machinery or too careless to be trusted with complex tools, were suddenly shuffled off to the nearest factories when the South found themselves confronted with a manpower shortage.

When discussing slavery issues in her diary and how she thought black people really felt regarding their circumstances, perhaps Mary Chesnut said it best, "They go about in their black masks, not a ripple or an emotion showing. Dick, the butler here, reminds me that when we were children, I taught him to read as soon as I could read myself. But he doesn't look at me now. He looks over my head. He scents freedom in the air."

Dawna

[unionblue]

Hal,

Article I, Section IX, paragraph two of the Confederate Constitution states;

No Bill of Attainder or ex post facto Law, or law denying or impairing the right of property in negro slaves, shall be passed.

Article IV, Section II, paragraph one states:

The Citizens of each State shall be entitled to all Privileges and Immunities of Citizens in the several States, and shall have the right of transit and sojourn in any State of this Confederacy, with their slaves and other property; and the right of property in such slaves shall not be impaired.

Article IV, Section III, paragraph three states;

The Confederate States may acquire new territory, and Congress shall have power to legislate and provide governments for the inhabitants of all territory belonging to the Confederate States lying without limits of the several States, and may permit them, at such times and in such manner as it may by law provide, to form States to be admitted into the Confederacy. In all such territory the institution of negro slavery as it now exists in the Confederate States shall be recognized and protected by Congress and by the territorial government, and the inhabitants of the several Confederate States and territories shall have the right to take to such territory any slaves lawfully held by them in any of the States or Territories of the Confederate States.

The Confederate Constitution created a thoroughly proslavery republic. The Constitution absolutely prohibited any law "impairing the right of property in negro slaves."

The term 'Bill of Attainder' translates to ANY legislative act. The term 'ex post facto' is Latin for 'after the fact' which refers to laws adopted after an act or law is committed or adopted. It reads pretty plain that this part of the Confederate Constitution could not be changed or amended, PERIOD.

The Confederate Constitution affirmed the proslavery holding of Chief Justice Roger B. Taney in the US Supreme Court Dred Scott decision, by declaring that slavery could never be prohibited from any Confederate territory. At the same time, however, the Confederate authors jettisoned Taneys implausible argument that the national government could not regulate the territories. Thus, their territory clause accomplished two proslavery goals. It guaranteed both slavery in the territories and the abilty of Congress to counter ANY antislavery movement that might arise in the Confederate states.

1) the CSA Constitution could not be amended in regard to slavery.

2) ANY Free State joing the CSA would automatically become a Slave State per Article IV, Section III.

3) I agree that the CSA constitution's stipulations pertained equally to both the central government and each individual State government, whether so stated or not. So how does any of it make what I stated incorrect?

As for your assertion that the US laws and Constitution pretty much did everything the CSA's did regarding that particular institution, I disagree. The US Constitution does not mention the word 'slave' but instead substitutes such phrases as other persons, such persons, and persons owing service for the word slave. Part of the reason for this language was in deference in 1787 to some of the Northern delegates who might have opposed the Constitution if the word 'slave' appeared but also with the idea that the institution would eventually die out and not expand outside to new territories. There was that faint hope at the time. Plus, it is against the law in the US Constitution to have ex post facto or Bill of Attainder provisions. The US Constitution can be amended in this particular area and I seem to recall that it was concerning the issue of slavery.

As for much of the other laws and such (i.e. Fugitive Slave Act, etc.), I lay that pretty much at the insistance of Southern lawmakers and compromise with them in order to maintain the Union.

The tariff argument simply will not fly. The amounts claimed by some supporting this theory that the South was sending North are simply not there when you look at the historical record. And I can find historical references where Northern industrialists were begging Lincoln NOT to go to war as it WOULD threaten business.

I find it interesting that according to the CSA Constitutional background page listed along with your link to a copy of the CSA Constitution lists many potential problems, in the area and others you mention above.

I still don't think the document has enough good to outweigh it's bad parts. It may have a nice looking white frosting outer layer, but the cake it covers is burnt by being left too long in the slavery oven.

Sincerely,
Unionblue


(Message edited by Unionblue on October 01, 2004)

(Message edited by Unionblue on October 02, 2004)

(Message edited by Unionblue on October 02, 2004)

(Message edited by Unionblue on October 02, 2004)

(Message edited by Unionblue on October 02, 2004)

[unionblue]

Dear Bill,

What I mean by saying, 'Agreed' is that I agree with you that I would like to have a plain-speaking discussion about the significance of slavery and how it led to secession and the Confederate Constitution.

I also agree to discuss with you that race relations throughout the ante-bellum United States so that a proper context could be presented.

As for the rest of your excellent post, my replies will be better suited in our future discussions on the issues and opinions you presented there.

With your permission, I would like to begin a new thread entitled, 'Slavery; THE Cause?' Would this suit you? Or do you have a better title in mind?

And Bill, I am shocked! Why couldn't I agree with you?

Sincerely,
Unionblue

[unionblue]

Hal,

Thought this might be interesting on this thread. It shows the Letter of Transmittal of the Federal Constitution, Sept. 1787, and ol' George's hopes and thoughts on the matter.

http://www.law.ou.edu/hist/transmit.html

Sincerely,
Unionblue