Slavery; THE Cause?

[ole]

Unionblue:

Thanks for the clarification. Wasn't suggesting "right," just that it was another one of those political games that many seem to play.

In full agreement that, except for tariffs, slavery cannot be separated from any of the causes. However, as tariffs appear to have had little to do with secession, the finger has pointed.

Hope you had a nice Christmas.

Ole

[unionblue]

Ole,

Had a very nice Christmas, thank you, and hope you had the same.

A bit more on why the South left the Union over the institution of slavery.

From the book, The Gray And The Black, The Confederate Debate On Emancipation, by Robert F. Durden.

Chapter IV, on page 113, in a public letter (Charleston Mercury, November 19, 1864) to William Aiken, a former governor of South Carolina, the senior Rhett wrote;

"When the people of South Carolina, in Convention assembled, seceded from the Union of the United States, they put forth in justification of their course, as its proximate or immediate cause, the various acts of the people of the Northern States, interfering with their institution of slavery..."

Chapter IV on page 118, a letter-writer ("Q") in the Macon Telegraph (January 6, 1865) wrote:

"Amid the storm of revolution, governments are apt to forget the principles to secure which they were institutied, and by which they should be controlled. All history admonishes us of this truth...

It should be constantly kept in view, through all the bloody phases and terrible epochs of this relentless war, that slavery was the casus belli--that the principle of State Sovereignty, and its sequence, the right of secession, were important to the South principally, or soley, as the armor that encased her peculiar institution--and that every life that has been lost in this struggle was an offering upon the alter of African Slavery."

Chapter IV on page 124, a nonslaveholder in Georgia, writing as "sydney," writes in the Macon Telegraph and Confederate, November 19, 1864:

"Try and hide it as much as we may, yet the question of negro slavery was the great leading cause of this war, and but for it we would have been recognized long ago by foreign powers, but in particular the world is against us, and so we will remain until this war shall have placed it upon a basis too firm to be questioned."

Sincerely,
Unionblue

(Message edited by Unionblue on December 28, 2004)

[unionblue]

From the book, Lincoln At Cooper Union, The Speech That Made Abraham Lincoln President, by Harold Holzer.

In a footnote of the Cooper Union Speech delivered by Lincoln in February 1860, Mr. Holzer makes note of the fact that although Lincoln states during his speech that although the South's representatives "...have not, as yet, in terms, demanded the overthrow of our Free-State Constitutions." that demand has since been made.

Says Mr. O'Conor, counsel for the State of Virginia in the Lemon Case, page 44: "We claim that under these various provisions of the Federal Constitution, a citizen of Virginia has an immunity against the operation of any law which the State of New York can enact, whilst he is a stranger and wayfarer, or whilst passing through our territory; and that he has absolute protection for all his domestic rights, and for all his rights of property, which under the laws of the United States, and the laws of his own State, he was entitled to, whilst in his own State. We claim this, and neither more NOR LESS."

"Throughout the whole of that case, in which the right to pass through New York with slaves at the pleasure of the slave owners is maintained, it is nowhere contended that the statute is contrary to the Constitution of New York; but that the statute and Constitution of the State are both contrary to the Constitution of the United States."

"The State of Virginia, not content with the decision of our own courts upon the right claimed by them, is now engaged in carrying this, the Lemon case, to the Supreme Court of the United States, hoping by a decision there, in accordance with the intimations of the Dred Scott case, to overthrow the Constitution of New York."

"Senator [Robert] Toombs, of Georgia has claimed in the Senate, that laws of Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, New Hampshire, Ohio, Rhode Island, Vermont, and Wisconsin, for the exclusion of slavery, conceded to be warranted by the State Constitutions, are contrary to the Consitution of the United States, and has asked for the enactment of laws by the General Government which shall override the laws of those States and the Constitutions which authorize them."

So, Southern representatives along with a court case they hoped to put before the Southern leaning Supreme Court, had designs to expand the institution of slavery to the Northern States, in spite of the idea of 'States Rights.' Have I got that right?

Sincerely,
Unionblue

Neil,
Can you show me what Toombs actually said himself? As to the Constitutionality of a State forbidding a stranger or wayfarer to travel through a state with his property, I can see that as a valid issue. For instance, had Maine eventually voted to allow slavery they would have been forbidden from traveling with their property, say if they desired to move to Maryland.
For me this is a very tricky issue and slavery notwithstanding I think they have dropped the ball on. There are many areas of this nation that you are restricted from carrying constitutionally protected property that is allowed in others.

Anyway I'd be interested in Toombs actually arguments in context.

[unionblue]

Tommy,

The information I have on Robert Toombs comes from the formal, heavily annotated thrity-two-page edition of Lincoln's Cooper Union Address, February 27, 1860, that was prepared by Charles C. Nott and Cephas Brainerd of the Young Men's Republican Union of New York.
I am checking the Congressional Globe site to find Toomb's speech on the note given.

However, I have found several quotes about the same concern for the same case from the book The Slave Power; The Free North and Southern Domination, 1780-1860, as noted on my post of Thursday, December 23, 2004 - 12:45 am.

The book list the following pages of the Congressional Globe, 35th Congress, 1st session, 1857-58, pp. 385, 547, 617, 1089. Here Senators and Representatives voice their concerns over the idea that slavery would be expanded beyond the Southern Slave States by the Supreme Court, etc.

Sincerely,
Unionblue

[unionblue]

Friends,

I have some extracts from the above pages of the Congressional Globe, 35th Congress, 1st session, 1857-58, page 547, concerning the idea that the push was on to expand slavery, even into the Free States.

"If we had said, Mr. President, twelve years ago, that the Democratic party, which then, in both Houses of Congress, stood up here for the glorious doctrines of the ordinance of 1787, would have retreated from that doctrine, and come down, down, to the doctrine that the Constitution of the United States carries slavery wherever it goes all over the Territories; that wherever it goes it carries chains and fetters for men; they would have justly regarded it as a libel upon them, but there they are now. They have only got a step or two further to go. They have only got to declare--and they have raised the question in the judicial tribunals of the country--that they may take their slaves in transit through the Free States, and then come to the final doctrine enunciated in the Union a few days ago, that these views, legitimately carried out, would prevent the abolition of slavery in the States by State constitutions. I believe they intend to come to that. I believe the slave holding interest will ultimately demand the right not only to carry their slaves into the Territories and hold them there, but they will demand the right to carry their slaves in transit through all the States, and then to set up the doctrine which we find in the Kansas constitution, that slaves are property, that property is above all constitutions and all laws, and that you have no right by constitutional action, or any other action, to abolish slavery in the States. Then we shall be an Africanized Republic."

Unionblue

[unionblue]

Tommy,

Still looking for Toombs statements in the Congressional Globe, but I did find a site on the Lemmon vs People case, the one many Free State folks thought would be the basis for a US Supreme Court case making slavery legal in all the US, regardless of State Constitutions or Personal Liberty Laws.

http://www.lib.niu.edu/ipo/iht820111.html

You will have to scroll down about two-thirds of the page from the top subject, the Lincoln - Douglass debates, and then you will come upon the title, Lemmon vs People, Court of Appeals of New York, 20 N.Y. 562; 1860 N.Y., LEXIS 135, March 1860, Decided.

I also found to New York Tribune articles expressing concern over the idea that the US Supreme Court, at Southern urging, was going to expand slavery rights throughout the Nation and Free States as a result of recent Supreme Court decesions.

The first is from 11 March 1857.

http://history.furman.edu/~benson/docs/nytrds57311a.htm

The second article is from 12 March 1857.

http://history.furman.edu/~benson/docs/nytrds57312a.htm

At the very least it shows some concern over the whole possibility to get slavery legalized throughout the entire country.

Sincerely,
Unionblue

(Message edited by Unionblue on January 06, 2005)

[bill_torrens]

Neil,

Re your post 2359, much the most interesting part of the extract from the Congressional Globe is the last sentence: "Then we shall be an Africanized Republic."

This is something that the speaker clearly dreads. And so it is clear, is it not, that his opposition to slavery is based on his own racial prejudice? He wishes to preserve the North as a Nordic republic full of blonde, blue eyed Yankees. Negroes and Southern whites can work out their own future any way they like, just as long as the Ayrian destiny of those north of the Mason-Dixon line remains unthreatened.

I could be wrong, but that is the only way I can interpret the words "Africanized Republic."

Bill

[unionblue]

Bill,

I made sure that the phrase was included as it does accurately reflect not only the possibility that Southern leaders wanted slavery legal in EVERY state of the Union, but also the fears, racial and otherwise, the North feared the possibility of this action taking place.

But Bill, does this detract in any way the evidence above that the South was pushing forward with a legal agenda to advance the idea that slavery should be, would be, legal in the entire US, no matter what a State's people or constitution wished? The issue of States Rights in reverse, as it were?

Unionblue

Neil,
Granted I only scanned all this. I'm seeing this as not making it legal to own slaves in the state but only allowing to travel through the state with the slave. Not a citizen residing in the state to own slaves. I see this as a different issue.
But Neil, I ask, how is your claim any different than the new states having the right to create their own constitution re slavery? How is forbidding it any different?

(Message edited by aphillbilly on January 06, 2005)