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.
In some ways I find it amusing that we are still debating the issues of 1860. I am never quite certain what the purpose is except to somehow minimize responsibility for a big fight and to point fingers.
It seems to always begin in the same way – the south had a right to secede. It’s almost like beginning with the 3rd quarter instead of at the kick off. Great pains and efforts are assigned to proving what constitutional scholars have been incapable of unraveling to anyone’s satisfaction. Contradictory quotes of the founding fathers fly all over the place, which ends up proving that they apparently were as confused as we are. I think part of it at least is their own guilt over what they perceived as justifiable treason when they led the break with England.
In reality, the real problem was slavery, not states rights and certainly not economics. From day one in 1776, we had this conflicted attitude towards the chained bondage of men, women and children. So we created a whole new set of values to justify what I think in our deepest heart we could not justify. We set aside anglo-saxon law to accommodate the system; i.e., children belong to the man except in slavery when the child belongs to the woman; and, race is not determined by percentage but instead by “one drop of blood.”
My point is why are we unable to discuss this aspect of our culture as it developed in the antebellum years? Why are we incapable even today of starting from the kick-off? Why is this “wolf” as Jefferson called it, still the unspeakable topic? Seems to me that until we can develop and unravel this enigma of the wolf, we cannot become one nation in black and white.
I wish to say one other thing. Two biographers whom I admire immensely are William B. Cooper and James Robertson. Both wrote immense and fully developed biographies of Jefferson Davis and Stonewall Jackson. Both authors are highly respected historians and <u>southern born</u>, writing about southern icons. More importantly, both authors wrote without bashing, defending, justifying or comparing. They simply told the story of two men and their times.
My challenge is this:
1. Why can’t we discuss and unravel the development of slavery?
2. We are so interested in culture and lifestyles of the era, why then are we reluctant to discuss how the men, women and children in bondage felt and lived?
3. Why is it constantly said that Lee didn’t believe in slavery when he was a slaveholder?
4. How did Grant feel about slavery? He owned a slave at one point and his wife owned four?
5. Why did slavery have such a grip on the south that secession was the only answer?
6. Why is there a new millennium need to minimize slavery as a cause for secession when the secession commissioners and men such as Jefferson Davis and Robert Toombs fully admitted that slavery was the reason for secession?
Slavery was the means by which the South maintained its economic well being and at the same time gave its ruling class the time and leisure to and maintain its own patrician life style.
If Robert E Lee owned slaves I am sure he was a kind and considerate master. Why should this be a moral problem?
Slavery was the most immediate and political reason for secession; beneath the slavery question was the whole complex issue of cultural differences which the slavery issue highlighted.
1) You ask thought provoking questions, nothing to worry about. If anyone takes offense, they are probably a bit thin skinned.
2) Don't quit! If you do, I will be forced to hunt you down and whack you with a wet noodle.
3) FYI Lee owned no slaves, he didn't own Arlington either. The slaves at Arlington were his father in-laws. When his father in law passed on, he was charged with the responsibility to free his father in law's slaves. It took him about 6 or 7 years to do it. If you want to point a finger at him. Why did it take so long to do it? I have read many contradictory statements regarding Lee's attitude toward slavery. I think what it comes down to was that he thought it was wrong, but did not know what else to do with them. I am purely guessing here so please do not infer that he really felt this way; however, it may have been that he felt slaves were better off over here as slaves than in Africa as free tribesmen. Who knows what the answers are? My younger son takes a course called Pyscho-history in college in which history is examined from a pyschologists point of view. Some of the things he comes home with boggle the imagination. But it makes for some fun conversations.
"Slavery was the means by which the South maintained its economic well being and at the same time gave its ruling class the time and leisure to and maintain its own patrician life style."
I am well aware if this. However, was slavery right morally then or now? Since the South based its right to secede on protection of slavery, then don't we have to prove that slavery was right before the South can take the moral high ground with such things as claiming "cultural superiority" over us yankees of the northern persuasion?
Since you profess such deep and complete admiration for Robert E. Lee, why are you uncertain as to whether he owned a slave and at the same time certain that he was a kindly, benign master? What do his biographers say regarding his ownership of a man, woman or child in the antebellum period? In what way does one or all of his biographers demonstrate that Lee was a "kindly" master?
In addition, isn't master and kindly an oxymoron? How would you feel if you had to call someone master? And, finally, why do you avoid all references and sourcing? I don't get it. You have all these strong opinions, but won't share your knowledge and how you arrived at these opinions.
I have not felt myself to be on solid ground addressing the matter of antebellum slavery. Perhaps it is because I am uncomfortable speaking for and about black people outside their presence.
I have earnestly hoped that some black persons would post here at CWT in order to expand our discussions and their moral worth.
2. We are so interested in culture and lifestyles of the era, why then are we reluctant to discuss how the men, women and children in bondage felt and lived?
Connie, read the cover story on the September 30 issue of US News & World Report magazine. It discusses the interpretation of Gettysburg and how the interpretation will be changing to encompass more about slavery, and why. It may shed some light on your question #2.
For others who might see this issue, can anyone identify the Union cavalry rider on the cover? He seems vaguely familiar...
I certainly agree with you longstreetlass. I can’t nor would I attempt to speak for black people today. However, I can put myself in the place of someone born to bondage and ponder what life without hope would be like just as easily as I march in the shoes of a CW camp laundress. Heck human nature isn’t all that different. Humans dream, hope, despair, laugh and cry – then and now, black and white.
In addition, I can read slave narratives and the writings of Frederick Douglass, Harriet Tubman, Elizabeth Keckley, Booker T. Washington as well as biographies on these same people by modern day scholars to get an understanding what slavery was like and how it impacted my white culture during the mid 19th C.
I can also read what Fannie Kemble, the Grimke Sisters, and others had to say from the white side.
I read enough diaries, reminiscences and serious bios on a variety of other Civil War contemporaries and take their word for many things, quote them, even speak for them. Doesn’t it make sense that if I want to learn as much as possible about the Civil War that I would also want to take a close look at the men, women and children who are generally herded into a narrow, faceless history\ic sidebar called slavery and then dismissed as an economic tactic or legal right.
P.S. Kat – seems we are making the same point. No I haven’t seen the U.S. News & World Report, but we will definitely stop after work and pick it up. I have a hunch that finally the round-up of Free Blacks on the road to GB will be mentioned at Gettysburg. 'Bout time that window shade is opened.
Emory Thomas disagrees with you on this. On page 173: Lee himself continued to own slaves. As recently as August 1852 he had appointed an agent in Washington for the supervision of 'my Servant man Philip Meriday' Crucial to his views was his perception of racial hierarchy. Africans and African Americans Lee considered below white people on his evolutionary scale -- perhaps somewhere above Comanches, but beneath Mexicans."
While he did not actually own the Custis slaves, Mary and Lee's sons did, after his father-in-law's death due to the custom of the time and as executor, Lee had full control. He chose not to free them as Custis had decreed in his will, but to use their labors to clean up the financial mess of Arlington and the other holdings such as White House.
The servants, however knew that they were free and resented the fact that Lee would not carry out the terms of the will.
In May 1858, Lee wrote Rooney that he was having problems. "I have had some trouble with some of the people. Reuben, Parks, Edward . . . rebelled against my authority-refused to obey my orders & said they were free as I was etc. etc. I succeeded in capturing them however, tied them & lodged them in jail. They resisted till overpowered & called upon the other people to rescue them."
The slaves presumably Reuben, Edward and Parks, were sent to Richmond under guard. The agent was instructed to rent them out in the city, failing them he should hire them out on some farm or send them to work at White House. Lee continued to have trouble when in the summer of 1859 two Arlington slaves to escape to Pennsylvania, but were captured in Maryland and sent elsewhere. Because of Lee's connection to George Washington, the incident made the New York papers.
Because of the terms of the Custis will, the slaves were put on the back burner and their labors paid to fulfill the other bequests in the will <u>first</u> and it was done with full court approval. Lee finally freed the Custis slaves at the end of the 5 years allowed in the will although if counted from Custis' actual date of death in October 1857, Lee was late. On December 29, 1863 Lee did, "manumit, emancipate and forever set free from slavery" the slaves at Arlington, White HOuse and Romancoke as well as those slaves Lee had hired out in other places. Lee as executor freed 170 men, women and children from the chains of bondage.
Lee was three days quicker than Lincoln and like Lincoln was a limited emancipator freeing many slaves over whom he no longer had control by virture of Union occupation.
Reading this thread is both a pleasure to see and attempt to comphrend.
I'll give some opinions to the questions you ask.
1. Putting people from cultures other then your own, into servitude was very common through history prior to the 19th Century. Egyptians were proficient at it as well as Greeks, Romans, Christians and Moslems. The Claddagh Ring was made by an Irishman who was enslaved by a Moslem who eventually gave him his freedom. As we progressed from Middle Ages to Enlightenment we began to understand that individual had certain rights.
Through our independence, we tried to figure out who had rights many believed that men had these rights but to keep the colonies together we allow slavery to continue. Even in the days prior to the CW, many Republicians like Lincoln agreed only with the restriction of slavery to certain States and Territories. It was not the abolition of slavery but the mere restriction of where slavery would take place that start Secession. It would be cause of "The Rebellion" that an evolutional process of abolition took place much quicker and with the Federal Government taking the central role with Amending the Constitution as it's final instrument in this matter.
2. I do agree with the greater portrayal of Blacks in history is a good thing and should have a greater presence. The sad part is that when most you hear of Black Groups is slavery reparations and tearing down the Confederate battleflag they should be looking at slavery from all aspects even in cases the fair treatment of slaves by their owners. If all slave owners were evil the migration of Slaves through the Underground would have been a flood.
3. It was my belief that Lee had slaves in his family and in his life that he personally never owned any. Bill's FYI is more confirmation to this observation, his decision to join was based on the fact that he couldn't serve against his native Virginia more then anything else.
4. Like many of his contemporaires Grant had accepted Slavery's existence and yes he did own a slave and his wife had some as well. The war however changed his opinion about slavery and of Blacks as a whole. He became a believer that Slavery was a moral wrong and Blacks deserved the same rights as all Americans.
5. Why was the South so gripped with slavery that it felt secession was the only answer. I tend to think that slavery had become part of the culture and way of life that a sensitivity to the issue became apparent. The threat of the emerging Industrial Culture in the North and the threat of it entering the South taking over through abolition was the fear of the South's leaders. To separate itself from the North was seen as the only way to protect this culture, even by many back then was considered antiquated.
6. To the preservation of this culture, the protection of the right to hold slaves was considered essential by many not just fire-eaters like Toombs, Barksdale and Ruffin but by moderates like Jeff Davis. In recent years it had come to my attention that few people today completely understand what those both North and South thought about slavery. These opinions are more diverse then one may think in part it might have been the failure of both the North and South to completely understand where each side was coming from that started the Civil War and accelerated the advancement of thought on who has "Certain unalienable rights."
I get off the soapbox and hope that it doesn't get smashed over my head.
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