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.
__________________ "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
Being new on this forum, I'm sort of feeling my way through, so please forgive if this is not the correct place to post this.
I have seen numerous references to the claims that Lincoln manipulated the South into war. None of the books I have address this notion. Doing a Google search, I've been unable to come up with anything other than rabid and hateful, but uninformative essays, which do little other than seemingly base their position on the fact that Lincoln was anti-slavery and made his thoughts public far in advance of his election. This does not answer the question I have of, specifically, what did Lincoln do that brought on the war, aside from his statements that he would not allow the spread of slavery into the territories, which does not seem to me to be a manipulation but rather a clear statement of his intentions.
I'd be grateful if someone could point me to a web site that clarifies this issue.
Welcome, Johnny. To answer your question, Lincoln didn't manipulate the south into war. It's my view that Jefferson Davis was determined to start a war for the two-fold purpose of uniting the southern people and bringing the upper south into the confederacy.
Tulane has a nice site on the events leading up to the crisis at Sumter. If you decide to pursue the topic further, an excellent (and not too lengthy) narrative can be found in Richard N. Current’s “Lincoln and the First Shot”.
What I will do is tackle each of the five installments separately, so that I can respond in a timely manner and still work on the areas I haven't gotten to yet.
Morgan: "He rejected the notion of social equality of the races, and held to the view that blacks should be resettled abroad. As President, he supported projects to remove blacks from the United States."
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Morgan sets up a straw man here by implying Lincoln's goal in colonization was a racist goal. But that does not view colonization from Lincoln's point of view. Lincoln felt blacks could never achieve equal treatment in the United States, even if they were free. Thus, they would be continually oppressed if they remained here. I think the history of race relations in the United States bears out that he had a point.
I'll be quoting from some scholarly articles on colonization which are available if you have a university library near you.
"Lincoln's fundamental rationale for colonization was noble, as far as nobility was possible on behalf of such a proposal. He argued that the unequal relationship of whites and blacks in the United States harmed them both. Indeed, for the blacks this relationship was 'the greatest wrong inflicted on any people' anywhere. He was very pessimistic about a change, and for a century after him the relatively small achievements in race relations vindicated his judgment. His solution to the problem was federally aided emigration of the oppressed people. He was too just a man to claim morality for this solution, and enough of a pragmatist and a politician not to concede its inequity. 'Whether it is right or wrong, I need not discuss,' he said, and then took the ground of expediency which almost amounted to 'absolute necessity.' " [Gabor S. Boritt, "The Voyage to the Colony of Linconia," The Historian, Vol XXXVII, No. 4, August, 1975, p. 622] In his support of colonization, Lincoln was in company with Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, James Monroe, and many others, including the mother and the wife of Robert E. Lee.
Morgan: "One of Lincoln's most representative public statements on the question of racial relations was given in a speech at Springfield, Illinois, on June 26, 1857. In this address, he explained why he opposed the Kansas-Nebraska Act, which would have admitted Kansas into the Union as a slave state:
"'There is a natural disgust in the minds of nearly all white people to the idea of indiscriminate amalgamation of the white and black races ... A separation of the races is the only perfect preventive of amalgamation, but as an immediate separation is impossible, the next best thing is to keep them apart where they are not already together. If white and black people never get together in Kansas, they will never mix blood in Kansas ...
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Morgan takes Lincoln's words out of context.
Here's what Lincoln said, in context:
[begin quote]
There is a natural disgust in the minds of nearly all white people, to the idea of an indiscriminate amalgamation of the white and black races; and Judge Douglas evidently is basing his chief hope, upon the chances of being able to appropriate the benefit of this disgust to himself. If he can, by much drumming and repeating, fasten the odium of that idea upon his adversaries, he thinks he can struggle through the storm. He therefore clings to this hope, as a drowning man to the last plank. He makes an occasion for lugging it in from the opposition to the Dred Scott decision. He finds the Republicans insisting that the Declaration of Independence includes ALL men, black as well as white; and forth-with he boldly denies that it includes negroes at all, and proceeds to argue gravely that all who contend it does, do so only because they want to vote, and eat, and sleep, and marry with negroes! He will have it that they cannot be consistent else. Now I protest against that counterfeit logic which concludes that, because I do not want a black woman for a slave I must necessarily want her for a wife. I need not have her for either, I can just leave her alone. In some respects she certainly is not my equal; but in her natural right to eat the bread she earns with her own hands without asking leave of any one else, she is my equal, and the equal of all others.
Chief Justice Taney, in his opinion in the Dred Scott case, admits that the language of the Declaration is broad enough to include the whole human family, but he and Judge Douglas argue that the authors of that instrument did not intend to include negroes, by the fact that they did not at once, actually place them on an equality with the whites. Now this grave argument comes to just nothing at all, by the other fact, that they did not at once, or ever afterwards, actually place all white people on an equality with one or another. And this is the staple argument of both the Chief Justice and the Senator, for doing this obvious violence to the plain unmistakable language of the Declaration. I think the authors of that notable instrument intended to include all men, but they did not intend to declare all men equal in all respects. They did not mean to say all were equal in color, size, intellect, moral developments, or social capacity. They defined with tolerable distinctness, in what respects they did consider all men created equal---equal in "certain inalienable rights, among which are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.'' This they said, and this meant. They did not mean to assert the obvious untruth, that all were then actually enjoying that equality, nor yet, that they were about to confer it immediately upon them. In fact they had no power to confer such a boon. They meant simply to declare the right, so that the enforcement of it might follow as fast as circumstances should permit. They meant to set up a standard maxim for free society, which should be familiar to all, and revered by all; constantly looked to, constantly labored for, and even though never perfectly attained, constantly approximated, and thereby constantly spreading and deepening its influence, and augmenting the happiness and value of life to all people of all colors everywhere. The assertion that "all men are created equal'' was of no practical use in effecting our separation from Great Britain; and it was placed in the Declaration, nor for that, but for future use. Its authors meant it to be, thank God, it is now proving itself, a stumbling block to those who in after times might seek to turn a free people back into the hateful paths of despotism. They knew the proneness of prosperity to breed tyrants, and they meant when such should re-appear in this fair land and commence their vocation they should find left for them at least one hard nut to crack.
I have now briefly expressed my view of the meaning and objects of that part of the Declaration of Independence which declares that "all men are created equal.''
Now let us hear Judge Douglas' view of the same subject, as I find it in the printed report of his late speech. Here it is:
"No man can vindicate the character, motives and conduct of the signers of the Declaration of Independence except upon the hypothesis that they referred to the white race alone, and not to the African, when they declared all men to have been created equal---that they were speaking of British subjects on this continent being equal to British subjects born and residing in Great Britain---that they were entitled to the same inalienable rights, and among them were enumerated life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. The Declaration was adopted for the purpose of justifying the colonists in the eyes of the civilized world in withdrawing their allegiance from the British crown, and dissolving their connection with the mother country.''
My good friends, read that carefully over some leisure hour, and ponder well upon it---see what a mere wreck---mangled ruin---it makes of our once glorious Declaration. "They were speaking of British subjects on this continent being equal to British subjects born and residing in Great Britain!'' Why, according to this, not only negroes but white people outside of Great Britain and America are not spoken of in that instrument. The English, Irish and Scotch, along with white Americans, were included to be sure, but the French, Germans and other white people of the world are all gone to pot along with the Judge's inferior races.
I had thought the Declaration promised something better than the condition of British subjects; but no, it only meant that we should be equal to them in their own oppressed and unequal condition. According to that, it gave no promise that having kicked off the King and Lords of Great Britain, we should not at once be saddled with a King and Lords of our own.
I had thought the Declaration contemplated the progressive improvement in the condition of all men everywhere; but no, it merely "was adopted for the purpose of justifying the colonists in the eyes of the civilized world in withdrawing their allegiance from the British crown, and dissolving their connection with the mother country.'' Why, that object having been effected some eighty years ago, the Declaration is of no practical use now---mere rubbish---old wadding left to rot on the battle-field after the victory is won.
I understand you are preparing to celebrate the "Fourth,'' tomorrow week. What for? The doings of that day had no reference to the present; and quite half of you are not even descendants of those who were referred to at that day. But I suppose you will celebrate; and will even go so far as to read the Declaration. Suppose after you read it once in the old fashioned way, you read it once more with Judge Douglas' version. It will then run thus: "We hold these truths to be self-evident that all British subjects who were on this continent eighty-one years ago, were created equal to all British subjects born and then residing in Great Britain.''
And now I appeal to all---to Democrats as well as others,---are you really willing that the Declaration shall be thus frittered away?---thus left no more at most, than an interesting memorial of the dead past? thus shorn of its vitality, and practical value; and left without the germ or even the suggestion of the individual rights of man in it?
But Judge Douglas is especially horrified at the thought of the mixing blood by the white and black races: agreed for once---a thousand times agreed. There are white men enough to marry all the white women, and black men enough to marry all the black women; and so let them be married. On this point we fully agree with the Judge; and when he shall show that his policy is better adapted to prevent amalgamation than ours we shall drop ours, and adopt his. Let us see. In 1850 there were in the United States, 405,751, mulattoes. Very few of these are the offspring of whites and free blacks; nearly all have sprung from black slaves and white masters. A separation of the races is the only perfect preventive of amalgamation but as an immediate separation is impossible the next best thing is to keep them apart where they are not already together. If white and black people never get together in Kansas, they will never mix blood in Kansas. That is at least one self-evident truth. A few free colored persons may get into the free States, in any event; but their number is too insignificant to amount to much in the way of mixing blood. In 1850 there were in the free states, 56,649 mulattoes; but for the most part they were not born there---they came from the slave States, ready made up. In the same year the slave States had 348,874 mulattoes all of home production. The proportion of free mulattoes to free blacks---the only colored classes in the free states---is much greater in the slave than in the free states. It is worthy of note too, that among the free states those which make the colored man the nearest to equal the white, have, proportionably the fewest mulattoes the least of amalgamation. In New Hampshire, the State which goes ****hest towards equality between the races, there are just 184 Mulattoes while there are in Virginia---how many do you think? 79,775, being 23,126 more than in all the free States together.
These statistics show that slavery is the greatest source of amalgamation; and next to it, not the elevation, but the degeneration of the free blacks. Yet Judge Douglas dreads the slightest restraints on the spread of slavery, and the slightest human recognition of the negro, as tending horribly to amalgamation.
This very Dred Scott case affords a strong test as to which party most favors amalgamation, the Republicans or the dear Union-saving Democracy. Dred Scott, his wife and two daughters were all involved in the suit. We desired the court to have held that they were citizens so far at least as to entitle them to a hearing as to whether they were free or not; and then, also, that they were in fact and in law really free. Could we have had our way, the chances of these black girls, ever mixing their blood with that of white people, would have been diminished at least to the extent that it could not have been without their consent. But Judge Douglas is delighted to have them decided to be slaves, and not human enough to have a hearing, even if they were free, and thus left subject to the forced concubinage of their masters, and liable to become the mothers of mulattoes in spite of themselves---the very state of case that produces nine tenths of all the mulattoes---all the mixing of blood in the nation.
Of course, I state this case as an illustration only, not meaning to say or intimate that the master of Dred Scott and his family, or any more than a per centage of masters generally, are inclined to exercise this particular power which they hold over their female slaves.
I have said that the separation of the races is the only perfect preventive of amalgamation. I have no right to say all the members of the Republican party are in favor of this, nor to say that as a party they are in favor of it. There is nothing in their platform directly on the subject. But I can say a very large proportion of its members are for it, and that the chief plank in their platform---opposition to the spread of slavery---is most favorable to that separation.
Such separation, if ever effected at all, must be effected by colonization; and no political party, as such, is now doing anything directly for colonization. Party operations at present only favor or retard colonization incidentally. The enterprise is a difficult one; but "when there is a will there is a way;'' and what colonization needs most is a hearty will. Will springs from the two elements of moral sense and self-interest. Let us be brought to believe it is morally right, and, at the same time, favorable to, or, at least, not against, our interest, to transfer the African to his native clime, and we shall find a way to do it, however great the task may be. The children of Israel, to such numbers as to include four hundred thousand fighting men, went out of Egyptian bondage in a body.
How differently the respective courses of the Democratic and Republican parties incidentally bear on the question of forming a will---a public sentiment---for colonization, is easy to see. The Republicans inculcate, with whatever of ability they can, that the negro is a man; that his bondage is cruelly wrong, and that the field of his oppression ought not to be enlarged. The Democrats deny his manhood; deny, or dwarf to insignificance, the wrong of his bondage; so far as possible, crush all sympathy for him, and cultivate and excite hatred and disgust against him; compliment themselves as Union-savers for doing so; and call the indefinite outspreading of his bondage "a sacred right of self-government.''
The plainest print cannot be read through a gold eagle; and it will be ever hard to find many men who will send a slave to Liberia, and pay his passage while they can send him to a new country, Kansas for instance, and sell him for fifteen hundred dollars, and the rise.
[end quote]
[Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, Vol 2, pp. 405-410]
As can be seen, Lincoln's primary goal is ending slavery. But he and the Republicans are being attacked by Douglas and the Democrats as favoring mixing of the races, which at that time was viewed generally across the country as a terrible thing. Lincoln is defending himself and the Republicans against these charges and saying, to paraphrase, well, if you want to prevent mixing, you have to separate the races. Ending slavery and implementing colonization will do that.
Morgan: "In January 1858, Missouri Congressman Francis P. Blair, Jr., introduced a resolution in the House of Representatives to set up a committee 'to inquire into the expediency of providing for the acquisition of territory either in the Central or South American states, to be colonized with colored persons from the United States who are now free, or who may hereafter become free, and who may be willing to settle in such territory as a dependency of the United States, with ample guarantees of their personal and political rights.'
"Blair, quoting Thomas Jefferson, stated that blacks could never be accepted as the equals of whites, and, consequently, urged support for a dual policy of emancipation and deportation, similar to Spain's expulsion of the Moors. Blair went on to argue that the territory acquired for the purpose would also serve as a bulwark against any further encroachment by England in the Central and South American regions."
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This is in the Congressional Globe, 35th Congress, 1st Session, p. 293. Blair gave his speech on 14 January 1858.
Here is a portion of it:
[begin quote]
Mr. BLAIR. Mr. Chairman whenever it shall be in order, I shall offer to the House the following resolution, which covers the ground that I propose to discuss:
Resolved, That a select committee to consist of ___ members, be appointed by the Speaker, with instructions to inquire into the expediency of providing for the acquisition of territory either in the Central or South American States, to be colonized with colored persons from the United States who are now free, or who may hereafter become free, and who may be willing to settle in such territory as a dependency of the United States, with ample guarantees of their personal and political rights.
It was remarked by a gentleman from Tennessee [Mr. MAYNARD] the other day, on this floor, that he had hoped and believed that this question would be discussed and disposed of without reference to the subject of slavery, because, he said, there were no slaves in Central America. The inquiry was made immediately, by many around me, “How long will it be before there are slaves there?’’ This inquiry shows, what is almost universally felt to be true, that the slavery question is at the bottom of this whole movement. There is a party in this country who go for the extension of slavery; and these predatory incursions against our neighbors are the means by which territory is to be seized, planted with slavery, annexed to this Union, and, in combination with the present slaveholding States, made to dominate this Government, and the entire continent; or, failing in the policy of annexation, to unite with the slave States in a southern slaveholding republic. I believe that there are those who entertain such a purpose. I am opposed to the whole scheme, and to every part of it; and, in order to oppose it successfully, think we should recur to the plans cherished by the great men who founded this Republic. I think we ought to put it out of the power of any body of men to plant slavery anywhere on this continent, by taking immediate steps to give to all of these countries that require it, and especially to the Central American States, the power to sustain free institutions under stable governments; and, as one method of doing this, we might plant those countries with a class of men who are worse than useless to us, who would prove themselves to be of immense advantage to those countries, who would attract the wealth and energy of our best men to aid and direct them in developing the incredible riches of those legions, and thus open them to our commerce, and the commerce of the whole world. I refer to our enfranchised slaves, all of that class who would willingly embrace the offer to form themselves into a colony under the protection of our flag, and the guarantee of the Republic of every personal and political right necessary to their safety and prosperity.
What I propose is not new; it is bottomed on the reasoning and recommendation of Mr. Jefferson. Speaking of a proposition, similar in many respects, urged by him upon the Legislature of his native State, he says:
“It was, however, found that the public mind would no yet bear the proposition, nor will it bear it even at this day; yet the day is not far distant when it must bear it and adopt it, or worse will follow. Nothing is more certainly written in the book of fate, than that these people (the negroes) are to be free; nor is it less certain that the two races, equally free, cannot live in the same Government. Nature, habit, opinion, have drawn indelible lines of distinction between them. It is still in our power to direct the process of EMANCIPATION AND DEPORTATION , and in such slow degree as that the evil will wear off, insensibly, and their place be pari passu filled up by free white laborers. If, on the contrary, it is left to force itself on, human nature must shudder at the prospect held up. We should in vain look for an example in the Spanish deportation or deletion of the Moors.”
The time has ripened for the execution of Mr. Jefferson’s plan. By adopting it, we may relieve ourselves of a people who are a burden to us; give to them an amount of happiness and comfort they can never realize here, where they are treated as a degraded class; reinvigorate the feeble people of the southern Republics, and open up to the enterprise of our merchants the untold wealth of the intertropical region, containing a greater amount of productive land than all the balance of the continent; put a stop to the African slave trade, which is created and kept up by the demand for tropical productions; by supplying that demand by the labor of the only class of freemen capable of exertion in that climate. I make this proposition to meet, oppose, and defeat that which seeks by violence to reestablish slavery, reopen the African slave trade, subject those regions, in Walker’s own language, 'to military rule' and exclude from them the people of the northern States. I shall discuss and compare these propositions as fully as the time limited will allow me.
[end quote]
Once again, take note of Blair's motivations. He's looking to end slavery and to protect the rights of the freed people, because he doesn't believe that can be done within the United States as it existed then. This proposal is also interesting because the colony would be a part of the United States, not a separate country.
Morgan: "In supporting 'colonization' of the blacks, a plan that might be regarded as a "final solution" to the nation's race question, Lincoln was upholding the views of some of America's most respected figures."
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Note Morgan's use of the term "final solution." This is clearly a value-laden term that Morgan uses to cast aspersions on Lincoln.
Morgan: "In the most widely reprinted of his pre-nomination speeches, delivered at Cooper Union in New York City on February 27, 1860, Lincoln expressed his agreement with the leaders of the infant American republic that slavery is 'an evil not be extended, but to be tolerated and protected' where it already exists. 'This is all Republicans ask -- all Republicans desire -- in relation to slavery,' he emphasized, underscoring the words in his prepared text."
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Morgan once again takes Lincoln's words out of context. Lincoln spends the first part of the speech making the case that prohibiting the expansion of slavery into the territories is completely in line with the Founding Fathers and what they did. He then says, "But enough! Let all who believe that 'our fathers, who framed the Government under which we live, understood this question just as well, and even better, than we do now,' speak as they spoke, and act as they acted upon it. This is all Republicans ask---all Republicans desire---in relation to slavery." [Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, Vol 3, p. 535] "All Republicans ask," then, is acting as Lincoln laid out the actions of the Founding Fathers, who restricted slavery from the Northwest Territory and tried to restrict it from the Louisiana Territory. It's after that statement in the speech that Lincoln says, "As those fathers marked it, so let it be again marked, as an evil not to be extended, but to be tolerated and protected only because of and so far as its actual presence among us makes that toleration and protection a necessity. Let all the guaranties those fathers gave it, be, not grudgingly, but fully and fairly maintained. For this Republicans contend, and with this, so far as I know or believe, they will be content." This is a concession the Republicans are willing to give. They will tolerate it and protect it because it is necessary to do so, but not extend it. This is a different statement than what Morgan would have us believe Lincoln made.
After stating that any emancipation should be gradual and carried out in conjunction with a program of scheduled deportation, he went on to cite Thomas Jefferson:
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This is not true. Lincoln does no such thing prior to citing Jefferson. I see no statement at all in that speech concerning gradual emancipation carried out in conjunction with a program of scheduled deportation.
On the critical question of slavery, the Republican party platform was not altogether clear.
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On the contrary, it was very clear. Slavery was regarded as a state institution outside the interference of the Federal Government in the states where it existed. But they regarded the territories as under control of Congress, with Congress able to restrict slavery from them.
Morgan: "Less than one third of the white families in the South had any direct connection with slavery, either as owners or as persons who hired slave labor from others."
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In order to get this figure you have to include Delaware, Maryland, Missouri, and Kentucky, states that did not secede.
"In the Lower South (SC, GA, AL, MS, LA, TX, FL -- those states that seceded first), about 36.7% of the white families owned slaves. In the Middle South (VA, NC, TN, AR -- those states that seceded only after Fort Sumter was fired on) the percentage is around 25.3%, and the total for the two combined regions -- which is what most folks think of as the Confederacy -- is 30.8%. In the Border States (DE, MD, KY, MO -- those slave states that did not secede) the percentage of slave-ownership was 15.9%, and the total throughout the slave states was almost exactly 26%." [http://members.aol.com/jfepperson/stat.html]
And there are no figures that I know of on how many families rented slaves from others, so Morgan's statement is deceptive because he doesn't know if the rental figure pushes the number over 1/3 or not.
Morgan: "The vast majority of Southerners thus had no vested interest in retaining or extending slavery."
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This is actually incorrect because it assumes that only those who directly used slaves had a vested interest in retaining or extending slavery. That's not the case. There were those who benefited from slavery without having direct use of slaves. These included those who were employed in moving slave-gathered crops to market, selling those crops, buying and selling slaves, slave patrols, and slave catchers. Additionally, the status of every white person was enhanced because of slavery. They may be the poorest white in the state, but they were a step above a slave on the status ladder. in areas where slaves outnumbered whites, slavery was a system that was needed to maintain white supremacy. Secessionists made the case that every southerner benefited from slavery, even nonslaveholders.
Morgan: "But incitement by Northern abolitionists, where fewer than 500,000 blacks lived, provoked fears in the South, where the black population was concentrated, of a violent black uprising against whites. (In South Carolina, the majority of the population was black.) Concerns that the writings and speeches of white radicals might incite blacks to anti-white rampage, rape and murder were not entirely groundless. Southerners were mindful of the black riots in New York City of 1712 and 1741, the French experience in Haiti (where insurgent blacks had driven out or massacred almost the entire white population), and the bungled effort by religious fanatic John Brown in 1859 to organize an uprising of black slaves."
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It was considered a crime in the south to utter abolitionist speech. They also prohibited the shipment of abolitionist literature through the mail. There was no way slaves in the south could hear anything of abolitionism, except as their masters told them about it.
As Lincoln said in the "Cooper Union Speech,"
"You charge that we stir up insurrections among your slaves. We deny it; and what is your proof? Harper's Ferry! John Brown!! John Brown was no Republican; and you have failed to implicate a single Republican in his Harper's Ferry enterprise. If any member of our party is guilty in that matter, you know it or you do not know it. If you do know it, you are inexcusable for not designating the man and proving the fact. If you do not know it, you are inexcusable for asserting it, and especially for persisting in the assertion after you have tried and failed to make the proof. You need not be told that persisting in a charge which one does not know to be true, is simply malicious slander.
"Some of you admit that no Republican designedly aided or encouraged the Harper's Ferry affair; but still insist that our doctrines and declarations necessarily lead to such results. We do not believe it. We know we hold to no doctrine, and make no declaration, which were not held to and made by 'our fathers who framed the Government under which we live.' You never dealt fairly by us in relation to this affair. When it occurred, some important State elections were near at hand, and you were in evident glee with the belief that, by charging the blame upon us, you could get an advantage of us in those elections. The elections came, and your expectations were not quite fulfilled. Every Republican man knew that, as to himself at least, your charge was a slander, and he was not much inclined by it to cast his vote in your favor. Republican doctrines and declarations are accompanied with a continual protest against any interference whatever with your slaves, or with you about your slaves. Surely, this does not encourage them to revolt. True, we do, in common with 'our fathers, who framed the Government under which we live,' declare our belief that slavery is wrong; but the slaves do not hear us declare even this. For anything we say or do, the slaves would scarcely know there is a Republican party. I believe they would not, in fact, generally know it but for your misrepresentations of us, in their hearing. In your political contests among yourselves, each faction charges the other with sympathy with Black Republicanism; and then, to give point to the charge, defines Black Republicanism to simply be insurrection, blood and thunder among the slaves.
"Slave insurrections are no more common now than they were before the Republican party was organized. What induced the Southampton insurrection, twenty-eight years ago, in which, at least, three times as many lives were lost as at Harper's Ferry? You can scarcely stretch your very elastic fancy to the conclusion that Southampton was 'got up by Black Republicanism.' In the present state of things in the United States, I do not think a general, or even a very extensive slave insurrection, is possible. The indispensable concert of action cannot be attained. The slaves have no means of rapid communication; nor can incendiary freemen, black or white, supply it. The explosive materials are everywhere in parcels; but there neither are, nor can be supplied, the indispensable connecting trains.
"Much is said by Southern people about the affection of slaves for their masters and mistresses; and a part of it, at least, is true. A plot for an uprising could scarcely be devised and communicated to twenty individuals before some one of them, to save the life of a favorite master or mistress, would divulge it. This is the rule; and the slave revolution in Hayti was not an exception to it, but a case occurring under peculiar circumstances. The gunpowder plot of British history, though not connected with slaves, was more in point. In that case, only about twenty were admitted to the secret; and yet one of them, in his anxiety to save a friend, betrayed the plot to that friend, and, by consequence, averted the calamity. Occasional poisonings from the kitchen, and open or stealthy assassinations in the field, and local revolts extending to a score or so, will continue to occur as the natural results of slavery; but no general insurrection of slaves, as I think, can happen in this country for a long time. Whoever much fears, or much hopes for such an event, will be alike disappointed."
[Collected Works, Vol 3, pp. 538-541]
Morgan: "What worried Southerners most about the prospect of an end to slavery was fear of what the newly-freed blacks might do. Southern dread of Lincoln was inflamed by the region's newspapers and slave-owning politicians, who portrayed the President-elect as a pawn of radical abolitionists."
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Then one would consider they might have favored colonization.
That Lincoln manipulated the south into anything admits that the southern leaders were stupid. It's one of those red herrings that get thrown into the mix from time to time to prove that Confederate leadership had been so oppressed that their guilt (by which I am not saying there wasn't enough guilt to go around -- North and South) was somehow justifiable because of Northern oppression.
You won't find a real accusation in credible resources because it's silly. It's beneath mention except when referred to as one more desperate measure to prove that the Confederacy was blameless.
And I will do the same. My printer has died a tragic death (much like a Viking funeral) and additional complications from broken ribs has derailed any desire that I might have had to peruse my local library. But please be assured that I will be coming back down from the Mount with my stone slabs in tow, as soon as I am able. :-)
Sorry to hear about your printer and especially about the broken ribs. Ouch. Maybe you can get a wagon for those stone slabs.
I spent today at the library doing some unrelated research and came across a couple more articles on colonization that I hope to bring into the discussion. I have several now. One thing we know for sure is that Lincoln's support of colonization was never a secret, and has never been ignored by historians. There is quite a bit of information in scholarly journals about it.
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