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.
Time out for the federal paymaster and all that money I get for trashing the South of today.
Unionblue
I get it, alright. First with the eternal 'INVALIDATION' from a very 'DIFFICULT PERSON', and then the WE (on this board) do this, while YOU (Beowulf) don't concept. This is what started your war, Brother Yank! We (up here) do this, while you (down there) don't! And you NEED to do it OUR WAY, and think like we do! Or else!
I was referrring to his very MODERN-DAY attitude towards
the Old South, WHICH WAS NOT, STRANGELY ENOUGH, SHARED by the YANKEES of old! Their crime of gullibility was that, they, as a nation, were made to believe that they had been 'attacked' at Sumter. They weren't. The US was being a pest, a threat. Exposing their men to harm needlessly in order to provoke an assault. LINCOLN ADMITS THIS. He didn't want that fort. He wanted to be a pain, which he clearly was... Get over it.
Your modern-day crime is that you know one word about the South, and nothing else. SLAVERY. To you, it is everything. And worse, these eternal posts by 'your people' seek to hammer that home. If you are not getting a stipend from the US government, they certainly owe you one for the automaton you are, parroting their blind, uninformed park service rhetoric, and enforcing a stereotyped code against the South which is sheer, blatant official discrimination. SO MUCH FOR ALL YOUR 'PROTECTION OF MINORITIES' NONSENSE. We have been a minority since the time president-elect Lincoln refused to reassure Senator Davis of Mississippi, and the rest of the South, in Congress assembled, that their property in slaves (and thus their plantations, investments, and their lives) would not be devalued by Western expansion and denial of Constitutional property rights in the territories..., and thus manage to 'preserve the Union' WHILE THE SOUTHERN CONSERVATIVES WERE STILL IN IT.
Why would the South object to Free Soil? The denial of Constitutionally-recognized property, even passing through the state... the incumbent BLUE color it would paint that state, and the loss of POLITICAL support in WASHINGTON CITY to people they simply did not and could not TRUST.
THE SOUTH DID NOT AND DOES NOT TODAY TRUST THE NORTH BECAUSE THE NORTH DOES NOT HAVE EVERYONE'S BEST INTERESTS AT HEART. AND THEY NEVER DID, BLUE BOY! THEY NEVER DID.
Look at the way you tell our history; you give the South absolutely no credit, at all. For anything. These are Americans you are slandering and libeling, Mister!
Surely, as Americans, you might could think of some middle ground in the name of Union, some rational justification - after all, the best and brightest did go South... and some of them you even admire, albeit begrudgingly... but when you see us, right now, all you see are captured provinces a la Sumner and Stevens and the Left...
Is it any wonder we don't like 'your people' any more than we do?
I read the dispatches at Sumter, and the newspaper accounts (not just the ones Lincoln put under his
puppies later in the day at the White House, which is about all they were good for...). That's where I got it.
The NATIONAL sin is strangely being paid exclusively at the South. We are getting a bit sick of it! A loss in a war does not make us your whipping boy, despite your NATIONAL efforts to the contrary.
THE WAR IS OVER does not equate to WE GET TO TELL IT OUR WAY. Sorry, YOU DON'T. This short four year period of history is the cause of much racism to Southern people today. We'd like a review, one which tells the story in all its complications, and does not attempt to tell the Northern viewpoint in the fourth grade for two weeks and then never mention it again...
A friend of mine is a history major. SHE KNOWS NOTHING about anything we talk about.
She has earned her degree well, I think.
Check with McPherson and Garry Wills and Gallagher that ilk. They will direct you to where you can be reimbursed for services rendered...
They don't use needles; they put it in your skim milk and fat-free cookies when you were in the fourth grade.
Was this compensation ever a real offer? I mean, with
the twenty to forty year time limit the YANKEES had; time to either convert (and sell off their livestock down the river! Ouch!),
.... and thus, by 1890, Slavery in the South could have been on a voluntary basis among negroes who still enjoyed eating and living in doors?
....or was said compensation on this wise; to be not only reimbursed for the investment, but the plantations were also to be given federal monies for the redeployment of the negroes into a voluntary WAL MART-styled servitude, like they enjoy today, in the world?
The negro doesn't get to QUIT. He just gets to pick his plantation. This is often lost on the student of today, along with the fact that, if the government doesn't pay up
in the necessary amounts, the value of the slaves goes to nothing, anyway, and the owners still have to feed all this now worthless property...
The North did not care about the Negro, they just wanted to have voting control over the entire continent to control patronage, and to get rid of the South as a political opponent.
Their loss of Southern income, substantial as it was, was a small price to pay for the destruction of representative Conservative control in DC, and a change in the governent to shameless socialism.
So much for ther beloved, benevolent government. They couldn't even cough up 40 acres and a mule!
If I end up believing those one-sided myths about the South, I'd rather just forget history, anyway, and go fishing...
I have seen the trash your 'historians' produce. No thanks.
They teach us the same garbage they taught you; so we are both deceived as to what happened. It takes about two weeks...
Well, surely Beowulf, with his superior knowledge of history should be able to cite some of those "Other" More important issues that justified secession.
I know I base a lot of my evidence for the centrality of slavery to southern society, by the constant reference to the importance of slavery by the movers and shakers of southen society.
I'm getting a trend here. It's shoulda, coulda, woulda. There is no actual history involved unless it's the skewed history fed to us by the likes of Stampp, Castel, Freehling, Gallagher, Bearrs, William C. Davis, and hundreds of others. Rather, we ought to pay attention to Conner, Jefferson Davis, Mildred Rutherford, the Saints Kennedy, and the Lew Rockwell crowd.
If Gallagher or Freehling were to tell me that Beowulf is absolutely correct, I would sit up and take notice. I'd check their endnotes, but I'd be strongly persuaded to change a few long-held attitudes. After all, these guys cannot afford to be wrong. If Gallagher were caught out in a lie, his days of publishing and his tenure at UVa would be immediately curtailed. Same with the rest of the professional historians. Let us not forget that each and every historian publishes under the scrutiny of all the others. And wouldn't LSU just love to catch a UVa in an error?
ole
__________________ I never knew a man who wished to be himself a slave. Consider if you know any good thing that no man desires for himself. A. Lincoln
....
It not only has succeeded in denying the antebellum South the right to have an equal voice in the original 'united states' general government, by allowing a sectional interest to exclude from the territories the right to
representation which ....
Representative government... you vote. Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose. When you lose a vote, you should either deal with it or figure out how to form a coalition with someone else to keep things going. The painful fact is that the peculiar institution was so odious that finding a political ally was ... a real problem.
Senators, two per state. Every. State. Has. Two. Rhode Island. Mississippi. Virginia. Ohio. Two. Each.
Representatives, every state gets a set according to population, except in the south where 20% give or take get none at all. None. At. All. But the male half of the remaining 80% got 5/3 the representation as the guy in Ohio or Maine. You're absolutely correct; the south was under-represented. But not the way you think.
Also, you should be very careful. When I refer to the south in the context of this discussion, I refer to the south of 1845-1860 (roughly), and not the south of 1865 or later.
You presume an awful lot of things. You presume that all of the posters are of your race, you presume that nobody has thought this through - has considered it carefully, maybe even changed opinions as a result of research.
You presume incorrectly.
Finally, as far as left/right, few things were more "left" in the 19th century than a representative government although I suppose a loose confederation of state-lets would have been more left than a United States under a federal government. The politics of today apply to different problems than the politics of 150 years ago.
"Representative government... you vote. Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose."
Oh, yeah? Well I'm going to take my votes and go home! So there!
A kid who takes his ball and goes home because he doesn't get his way is an annoyance. A group who tries to divide the country because they don't get their way are insurrectionists.
There was nothing to prevent anyone opposed to the election of Lincoln from leaving the United States... they just couldn't take the real estate with them when they left.
Well, surely Beowulf, with his superior knowledge of history should be able to cite some of those "Other" More important issues that justified secession.
I know I base a lot of my evidence for the centrality of slavery to southern society, by the constant reference to the importance of slavery by the movers and shakers of southen society.
[pg 77]
CHAPTER X.
False Statements of the Grounds for Separation.—Slavery not the Cause, but an Incident.—The Southern People not "Propagandists" of Slavery.—Early Accord among the States with regard to African Servitude.—Statement of the Supreme Court.—Guarantees of the Constitution.—Disregard of Oaths.—Fugitives from Service and the "Personal Liberty Laws."—Equality in the Territories the Paramount Question.—The Dred Scott Case.—Disregard of the Decision of the Supreme Court.—Culmination of Wrongs.—Despair of their Redress.—Triumph of Sectionalism.
At the period to which this review of events has advanced, one State had already withdrawn from the Union. Seven or eight others were preparing to follow her example, and others yet were anxiously and doubtfully contemplating the probably impending necessity of taking the same action. The efforts of Southern men in Congress, aided by the coöperation of the Northern friends of the Constitution, had failed, by the stubborn refusal of a haughty majority, controlled by "radical" purposes, to yield anything to the spirit of peace and conciliation. This period, coinciding, as it happens, with the close of a calendar year, affords a convenient point to pause for a brief recapitulation of the causes which had led the Southern States into the attitude they then held, and for a more full exposition of the constitutional questions involved.
The reader of many of the treatises on these events, which have been put forth as historical, if dependent upon such alone for information, might naturally enough be led to the conclusion that the controversies which arose between the States, and the war in which they culminated, were caused by efforts on the one side to extend and perpetuate human slavery, and on the other to resist it and establish human liberty. The Southern States and Southern people have been sedulously represented as "propagandists" of slavery, and the Northern as the defenders and champions of universal freedom, and this view has been so arrogantly assumed, so dogmatically asserted, and so persistently reiterated, that its authors have, in many cases, perhaps, succeeded [pg 78] in bringing themselves to believe it, as well as in impressing it widely upon the world.
The attentive reader of the preceding chapters—especially if he has compared their statements with contemporaneous records and other original sources of information—will already have found evidence enough to enable him to discern the falsehood of these representations, and to perceive that, to whatever extent the question of slavery may have served as an occasion, it was far from being the cause of the conflict.
I have not attempted, and shall not permit myself to be drawn into any discussion of the merits or demerits of slavery as an ethical or even as a political question. It would be foreign to my purpose, irrelevant to my subject, and would only serve—as it has invariably served, in the hands of its agitators—to "darken counsel" and divert attention from the genuine issues involved.
As a mere historical fact, we have seen that African servitude among us—confessedly the mildest and most humane of all institutions to which the name "slavery" has ever been applied—existed in all the original States, and that it was recognized and protected in the fourth article of the Constitution. Subsequently, for climatic, industrial, and economical—not moral or sentimental—reasons, it was abolished in the Northern, while it continued to exist in the Southern States. Men differed in their views as to the abstract question of its right or wrong, but for two generations after the Revolution there was no geographical line of demarkation for such differences. The African slave-trade was carried on almost exclusively by New England merchants and Northern ships. Mr. Jefferson—a Southern man, the founder of the Democratic party, and the vindicator of State rights—was in theory a consistent enemy to every form of slavery. The Southern States took the lead in prohibiting the slave-trade, and, as we have seen, one of them (Georgia) was the first State to incorporate such a prohibition in her organic Constitution. Eleven years after the agitation on the Missouri question, when the subject first took a sectional shape, the abolition of slavery was proposed and earnestly debated in the Virginia Legislature, and its advocates were so near the accomplishment [pg 79] of their purpose, that a declaration in its favor was defeated only by a small majority, and that on the ground of expediency. At a still later period, abolitionist lecturers and teachers were mobbed, assaulted, and threatened with tar and feathers in New York, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Connecticut, and other States. One of them (Lovejoy) was actually killed by a mob in Illinois as late as 1837.
These facts prove incontestably that the sectional hostility which exhibited itself in 1820, on the application of Missouri for admission into the Union, which again broke out on the proposition for the annexation of Texas in 1844, and which reappeared after the Mexican war, never again to be suppressed until its fell results had been fully accomplished, was not the consequence of any difference on the abstract question of slavery. It was the offspring of sectional rivalry and political ambition. It would have manifested itself just as certainly if slavery had existed in all the States, or if there had not been a negro in America. No such pretension was made in 1803 or 1811, when the Louisiana purchase, and afterward the admission into the Union of the State of that name, elicited threats of disunion from the representatives of New England. The complaint was not of slavery, but of "the acquisition of more weight at the other extremity" of the Union. It was not slavery that threatened a rupture in 1832, but the unjust and unequal operation of a protective tariff.
It happened, however, on all these occasions, that the line of demarkation of sectional interests coincided exactly or very nearly with that dividing the States in which negro servitude existed from those in which it had been abolished. It corresponded with the prediction of Mr. Pickering, in 1803, that, in the separation certainly to come, "the white and black population would mark the boundary"—a prediction made without any reference to slavery as a source of dissension.
Of course, the diversity of institutions contributed, in some minor degree, to the conflict of interests. There is an action and reaction of cause and consequence, which limits and modifies any general statement of a political truth. I am stating general principles—not defining modifications and exceptions with the [pg 80] precision of a mathematical proposition or a bill in chancery. The truth remains intact and incontrovertible, that the existence of African servitude was in no wise the cause of the conflict, but only an incident. In the later controversies that arose, however, its effect in operating as a lever upon the passions, prejudices, or sympathies of mankind, was so potent that it has been spread, like a thick cloud, over the whole horizon of historic truth.
As for the institution of negro servitude, it was a matter entirely subject to the control of the States. No power was ever given to the General Government to interfere with it, but an obligation was imposed to protect it. Its existence and validity were distinctly recognized by the Constitution in at least three places:
First, in that part of the second section of the first article which prescribes that "representatives and direct taxes shall be apportioned among the several States which may be included within this Union, according to their respective members, which shall be determined by adding to the whole number of free persons, including those bound to service for a term of years, and, excluding Indians not taxed, three fifths of all other persons." "Other persons" than "free persons" and those "bound to service for a term of years" must, of course, have meant those permanently bound to service.
Secondly, it was recognized by the ninth section of the same article, which provided that "the migration or importation of such persons as any of the States now existing shall think proper to admit shall not be prohibited by Congress prior to the year one thousand eight hundred and eight." This was a provision inserted for the protection of the interests of the slave-trading New England States, forbidding any prohibition of the trade by Congress for twenty years, and thus virtually giving sanction to the legitimacy of the demand which that trade was prosecuted to supply, and which was its only object.
Again, and in the third place, it was specially recognized, and an obligation imposed upon every State, not only to refrain from interfering with it in any other State, but in certain cases to aid in its enforcement, by that clause, or paragraph, [pg 81] of the second section of the fourth article which provides as follows:
"No person held to service or labor in one State, under the laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in consequence of any law or regulation therein, be discharged from such service or labor, but shall be delivered up on claim of the party to whom such service or labor may be due."
The President and Vice-President of the United States, every Senator and Representative in Congress, the members of every State Legislature, and "all executive and judicial officers, both of the United States and of the several States," were required to take an oath (or affirmation) to support the Constitution containing these provisions. It is easy to understand how those who considered them in conflict with the "higher law" of religion or morality might refuse to take such an oath or hold such an office—as the members of some religious sects refuse to take any oath at all or to bear arms in the service of their country—but it is impossible to reconcile with the obligations of honor or honesty the conduct of those who, having taken such an oath, made use of the powers and opportunities of the offices held under its sanctions to nullify its obligations and neutralize its guarantees. The halls of Congress afforded the vantage-ground from which assaults were made upon these guarantees. The Legislatures of various Northern States enacted laws to hinder the execution of the provisions made for the rendition of fugitives from service; State officials lent their aid to the work of thwarting them; and city mobs assailed the officers engaged in the duty of enforcing them.
With regard to the provision of the Constitution above quoted, for the restoration of fugitives from service or labor, my own view was, and is, that it was not a proper subject for legislation by the Federal Congress, but that its enforcement should have been left to the respective States, which, as parties to the compact of union, should have been held accountable for its fulfillment. Such was actually the case in the earlier and better days of the republic. No fugitive slave-law existed, or was required, for two years after the organization of the Federal [pg 82] Government, and, when one was then passed, it was merely as an incidental appendage to an act regulating the mode of rendition of fugitives from justice—not from service or labor.27
In 1850 a more elaborate law was enacted as part of the celebrated compromise of that year. But the very fact that the Federal Government had taken the matter into its own hands, and provided for its execution by its own officers, afforded a sort of pretext to those States which had now become hostile to this provision of the Constitution, not only to stand aloof, but in some cases to adopt measures (generally known as "personal liberty laws") directly in conflict with the execution of the provisions of the Constitution.
The preamble to the Constitution declared the object of its founders to be, "to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquillity, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity." Now, however (in 1860), the people of a portion of the States had assumed an attitude of avowed hostility, not only to the provisions of the Constitution itself, but to the "domestic tranquillity" of the people of other States. Long before the formation of the Constitution, one of the charges preferred in the Declaration of Independence against the Government of Great Britain, as justifying the separation of the colonies from that country, was that of having "excited [pg 83] domestic insurrections among us." Now, the mails were burdened with incendiary publications, secret emissaries had been sent, and in one case an armed invasion of one of the States had taken place for the very purpose of exciting "domestic insurrection."
It was not the passage of the "personal liberty laws," it was not the circulation of incendiary documents, it was not the raid of John Brown, it was not the operation of unjust and unequal tariff laws, nor all combined, that constituted the intolerable grievance, but it was the systematic and persistent struggle to deprive the Southern States of equality in the Union—generally to discriminate in legislation against the interests of their people; culminating in their exclusion from the Territories, the common property of the States, as well as by the infraction of their compact to promote domestic tranquillity.
The question with regard to the Territories has been discussed in the foregoing chapters, and the argument need not be repeated. There was, however, one feature of it which has not been specially noticed, although it occupied a large share of public attention at the time, and constituted an important element in the case. This was the action of the Federal judiciary thereon, and the manner in which it was received.
In 1854 a case (the well-known "Dred Scott case") came before the Supreme Court of the United States, involving the whole question of the status of the African race and the rights of citizens of the Southern States to migrate to the Territories, temporarily or permanently, with their slave property, on a footing of equality with the citizens of other States with their property of any sort. This question, as we have seen, had already been the subject of long and energetic discussion, without any satisfactory conclusion. All parties, however, had united in declaring, that a decision by the Supreme Court of the United States—the highest judicial tribunal in the land—would be accepted as final. After long and patient consideration of the case, in 1857, the decision of the Court was pronounced in an elaborate and exhaustive opinion, delivered by Chief-Justice Taney—a man eminent as a lawyer, great as a statesman, and stainless in his moral reputation—seven of the nine judges who [pg 84] composed the Court, concurring in it. The salient points established by this decision were:
1. That persons of the African race were not, and could not be, acknowledged as "part of the people," or citizens, under the Constitution of the United States;
2. That Congress had no right to exclude citizens of the South from taking their negro servants, as any other property, into any part of the common territory, and that they were entitled to claim its protection therein;
3. And, finally, as a consequence of the principle just above stated, that the Missouri Compromise of 1820, in so far as it prohibited the existence of African servitude north of a designated line, was unconstitutional and void.28 (It will be remembered that it had already been declared "inoperative and void" by the Kansas-Nebraska Bill of 1854.)
Instead of accepting the decision of this then august tribunal—the [pg 85] ultimate authority in the interpretation of constitutional questions—as conclusive of a controversy that had so long disturbed the peace and was threatening the perpetuity of the Union, it was flouted, denounced, and utterly disregarded by the Northern agitators, and served only to stimulate the intensity of their sectional hostility.
What resource for justice—what assurance of tranquillity—what guarantee of safety—now remained for the South? Still forbearing, still hoping, still striving for peace and union, we waited until a sectional President, nominated by a sectional convention, elected by a sectional vote—and that the vote of a minority of the people—was about to be inducted into office, under the warning of his own distinct announcement that the Union could not permanently endure "half slave and half free"; meaning thereby that it could not continue to exist in the condition in which it was formed and its Constitution adopted. The leader of his party, who was to be the chief of his Cabinet, was the man who had first proclaimed an "irrepressible conflict" between the North and the South, and who had declared that abolitionism, having triumphed in the Territories, would proceed to the invasion of the States. Even then the Southern people did not finally despair until the temper of the triumphant party had been tested in Congress and found adverse to any terms of reconciliation consistent with the honor and safety of all parties.
No alternative remained except to seek the security out of the Union which they had vainly tried to obtain within it. The hope of our people may be stated in a sentence. It was to escape from injury and strife in the Union, to find prosperity and peace out of it. The mode and principles of their action will next be presented.
JEFFERSON DAVIS - The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government - Chapter X
Now, perhaps you can see how non-slave owning Southerners, having just been told by the US Supreme Court that Negroes were not to be Citizens, and that no political party in Congress could exclude (and thus devalue and make worthless, thus bankrupting) slave owners from taking their belongings with them when they travelled...
...and now, were being shown that Northern rebels, dissenters, and terrorists were to begin an abolitionist 'holy war' against the South, and its people, involving both slave and nonslave owners... by proximity, which was to commence at once, in violation of their general government's rulings... even though 250,000 freed negroes were at that moment living peacefully in the South, and a number of these owned slaves, themselves... and were called 'colored taxpayers'.
... and now, said general government, having been taken over by a sectional majority, and was about to elect one of the ring leaders of collectivism, and Whiggery, into office, A. Lincoln, along with known terrorist financial supporters Salmon Portland Chase and William Seward...
... and no protections coming from this party, no president-elect soothing of fears, and in fact, 'the TUG has to come sooner or later', and rather sooner than later...as in now, with regard to keeping the territories free of negroes and their Conservative voting masters...
The anarchy of Northern hostilities, both abolition-oriented and collectivist-oriented, was just beginning in the South.
... you can see how non-slave owning Southerners could get behind Secession, to get away from these Northern idiots and their stupidity in trying to 'fix' things they did not understand.
As a non-slave owning White Male Southerner, who owns a substantial piece of multi-acreaged farm land, I can and do see how the general government had been taken over by an off-brand party of sectional totalitarians, bent on having their way with the country, through an accident of the vote, and I today can and do very easily and very often hoist a stars and bars over my land to show my love for the Old Union; the party of Mr. Jefferson, and free from what Jefferson Davis calls "the yankee nation of extortioners"!
Your three posts above are nothing more than an attempt by a broken, old man trying desperately to justify himself to history "after the fact."
History shows otherwise.
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
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