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.
RE: No formal surrender by the Confederate States of America.
And why would there ever be one? In the eyes of the United States government and as a legal matter, the Confederate States of America never existed. To enter into a formal surrender with the Confederate States would be to recognize its de jure legal existence at the very time it de facto ceased to exist.
One does not enter into a treaty of surrender with rebels, unless the rebels win. Rebels are traditionally hung, not treated with. It is to the eternal credit of all the people of the United States that at the end of the Civil War, the rebelling Southerners were welcomed back into the Union without the recriminations and vengance which has marked nearly every other civil war.
__________________ "There must be more historians of the Civil War than there were generals figthing in it... Of the two groups, the historians are the more belligerent." David Donald, Lincoln Reconsidered (1961)
I've said my bit, I'm going to opt out of Unionblues thread; maybe that will help keep it from further hijacking.
Again, Unionblue my apologes for contributing to the hijacking of a fine thread.
__________________ Few take the trouble to understand or to view the American scene with perspective. And we Americans love to find ourselves guilty of something. However, it is never I who am guilty, but those other Americans, the past or present government or the other political party. Americans almost never find other countries guilty. It is always ourselves or our fancied influence in other countries. Louis L'amour
Last edited by johan_steele; 07-04-2008 at 01:51 AM.
Reason: trying to keep thread on point
"Your New-York bankers and merchants are shrewd people, but I never gave them credit for so much sagacity as when they took the Government Loan. It was not merely patriotism, it was a high stroke of policy. It has saved the Government, and what they will regard as equally important, saved them from a great financial disaster."
New York Times, 27 September 1861
Last edited by johan_steele; 07-04-2008 at 01:38 AM.
Reason: Trying to keep a thread on point
Still awaiting, the non-slave issues that 'really' caused secession.
All southern states except S.C. (and even it provided many individuals) provided organized military units to the Federal Armies to fight for the Union. How many nothern units fought for secession?
What ever the 'real' issues involved in secession, other than slavery, did not rate as high as slavery with southern contemporaries. They seem to be revisionist discoveries, After the Lost Cause had been Lost.
The southern ruling oligarchy wanted to keep their slaves, at the expense of both the Union And the Confederacy. That is Historical Fact.
OpnDownfall,
Actually South Carolina did provide an organized military unit for the Union: The First South Carolina Volunteer Infantry, the "First South."
Still awaiting, the non-slave issues that 'really' caused secession.
...
There aren't any. I used to think there were, but it cannot be so.
The people who started clamoring for secession in the 1840's and 1850's were none of them abolitionists.
If there were other solid reasons - truly sectional reasons - there would have been a coalition.
But the most significant cause may have been an indirect result of the "euphemized institution."
A man who considers himself so superior to others that he thinks he has the right to own them simply could not allow other people of "inferior" intellect and blood to have equal say in government. That had to gall.
From the Charleston Mercury, 13 Jan 1865
Quote:
In 1860 South Carolina seceded along from the old union of States. Her people, in Convention assembled, invited the slaveholding States (none others)
...
It was on account of encroachments upon the institution of slavery by the sectional majority of the old Union, that South Carolina seceded from that Union.
...
We want no Confederate Government without our institutions. And we will have none
Last edited by Baggage Handler #2; 07-04-2008 at 12:59 PM.
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