Secession

[bill_torrens]

Dear Neil,

I can’t accept your suggestion that my belief in deliberate Republican agitation of the slavery issue is a mere conspiracy theory. Conspiracy theories tend to rely on improbable coincidences and contrived motivation. In this case, however, we have the simplest and most transparent combination of opportunity and motive. A split in the Democratic Party offered the Republicans their best chance of winning the 1860 election; agitating the slavery issue offered the best prospect of causing such a split; men like Lincoln & Seward were clearly intelligent enough to recognise this fact; so the only issue open to doubt was whether they would stop short of exploiting such an obvious political opportunity simply because it ran contrary to the national interest. I have no desire to demonise Lincoln, a man who strikes me as complex and interesting; but equally I have no patience with those who would sanctify him simply because someone put a bullet in his brain. He was, first and foremost, an ambitious and ruthless politician who put the interests of the Republican Party first, second and third in his list of priorities.

On the subject of growing abolitionist influence on Northern public opinion, I am not particularly surprised that you find Avery Craven’s views too sympathetic to the South. So let me try Allan Nevins. In Volume II of his “Ordeal Of The Union” he pinpoints a radical change in public opinion at the time of the Kansas-Nebraska bill:

One illustration of the sudden change in the intellectual climate was supplied by the meeting of the American Anti-Slavery Society in New York early in May [1854]. The abolitionist leaders were as hysterical as ever….Once such a meeting would have been met with derision and possible violence. Only three years earlier a mob headed by the Democratic politician Isaiah Rynders had broken up the abolitionists’ Tabernacle meeting and virtually driven them from the city. Only two years earlier every hall had closed its doors to them, and they had to assemble in Syracuse. But now they were made welcome in one of the city’s handsomest churches. Crowded and sympathetic audiences of respectable citizens listened to their discourses. Their boldest utterances, recently so shocking, were heard without visible dissent.

I would also ask you to consider the following. It doesn’t prove anything, but it is a very interesting illustration of how Southerners were imbued with the firm idea that the Republicans intended mischief on the slavery issue. It is an extract from a letter written in November 1860 by a young Marylander named McHenry Howard. He was writing to his college friend from his Princeton days, a Northerner named Francis G. Wood. Howard wrote:

I live just between the North and the South, hearing both sides of the question and feeling both sides….I do not believe that a State has the right to secede, but that when every constitutional mode of obtaining redress is exhausted and when the evil is of a sufficient magnitude, there always remains underneath every constitution and every government that last right of revolution…I would to God that a slave had never set his foot on the soil of this country. I hope most earnestly for its ultimate extinction, but I do most earnestly contend that you of the North must leave us to settle it for ourselves, there must be no outside force, it is unjust & it retards the very object which it seeks. [the use of bold type is mine]

Howard went on to spend four years in the Army of Northern Virginia. I have deliberately chosen a Marylander because nobody can say that he blindly followed his state out of the Union. Whatever he did, he clearly did it out of personal conviction. He was a highly intelligent man who had lived in the North and had Northern friends; he was opposed to both secession and slavery; and yet he felt compelled to fight for the South. He wrote the above letter at the time of the 1860 election, and he clearly believed that the Republicans were going to interfere with slavery in a way which would prove calamitous. I do not say that Howard was right [in the short term, at least, I think he was probably wrong], but I do say that the Republicans must have been giving out signals which made moderate and thoughtful men like him respond in the way that they did.

What could those signals have been? In fact, they were so numerous that one can only hope to quote a couple at random. We could start with the fact that Hinton Helper, the author of what was – by anyone’s standard – a landmark abolitionist work, was able to obtain the endorsement of his views by 68 of the 92 Republicans in the House of Representatives. We could then move on to the fact that the Republicans agreed to print thousands of cheap copies of Helper’s Impending Crisis and also to distribute them. We could also look at an article entitled The Institutional Origins Of The Republican Party: A Spatial Voting Analysis Of The House Speakership Election Of 1855-56, by Jenkins & Nokken. The title is scary, and I cannot pretend to understand the more technical aspects of the article, but its conclusions are clear enough:

This study explores the Republican Party’s origins at the institutional level, specifically in the 34th House of Representatives. We focus on an especially critical event, the House Speakership election of 1855-56, which resulted in the first major victory for the new party. We conduct our analysis by applying the spatial theory of voting to the House balloting for Speaker, using a scaling technique developed by Poole (1998). Results from our spatial model suggest that slavery was the overriding determinant of vote choice throughout the two-month speakership battle. Its effects were considerable from the outset, even in multiple candidate rounds, and proved to be more influential as the balloting progressed. We also find that the issue of nativism, which was so important in the previous Congressional elections and would continue to affect the Republicans’electoral fortunes for several more years, had no impact on members’ votes for speaker. Once elected, the new Republican speaker, Nathaniel Banks, organized the House around anti-slavery tenets, stacking both committees and chairs with anti-slavery advocates. Overall, these results suggest that while the Republicans would struggle for an electoral identity deep into the 1850s - balancing the competing interests of slavery and nativism to win office - they emerged as a single-issue, anti-slavery coalition at the institutional level as early as 1855.

(A.P.Hillbilly forwarded this to me. If you want to read the entire article you can find it at http://www.msu.edu/~jenki107/jenknok.PDF . Tommy said that he had occasional trouble opening it, although it has worked fine for me.)

It suggests to me that the Republican Party was inextricably entwined with abolitionism and that abolitionists, as a consequence, did indeed have a substantial political platform and, by the end of 1860, substantial political power. Let me know what you think.

Bill

[unionblue]

Bill,

I have seen the web site APHillbilly has forwarded to you and we have discussed this theory/formula before. I for one prefer the one by Hawkings which states that since worm holes have been now proven NOT to destroy all matter that comes within the grasp of a collapsed star, the theory of the Republican Party totally entwined with abolitionist causes thereby somehow bringing on the Civil War is not the only theory available.

Bill, the point is being missed here, big time. What section of the country was so sensitive about the issue of slavery? Who fought to protect it? Who wanted the slave trade reopened? Who DEMANDED Federal protection for it, even at the expense of destroying your political party, even if it meant trampling on the issue of States Rights? The issue comes full circle, back to the South. The North simply did not exhibit the sensitivity of the South on the subject to such a degree that it used this reason to go to war. Time and time again, I hear from those defending the South that Lincoln cared less about slavery, that the majority of the North was willing to let the South secede, that slavery was not THE issue with them.

And I agree.

It was the SOUTH that slavery was THE issue with, proven by their words, speeches, declarations, and their actions.

Bill, in all honesty, do you believe there would have been a Civil War at all, IF the institution of slavery did not exist in the United States?

Sincerely,
Unionblue

[bill_torrens]

Dear Neil,

I trust that this finds you and yours all well, and that whatever ‘distracted’ you for a few days was of an entirely pleasant nature.

You asked a few questions in your last post:

Q. What section of the country was so sensitive about the issue of slavery?
A. Both sections.

Q. Who fought to protect it?
A. Nobody.

Q. Who wanted the slave trade reopened?
A. A miscellaneous group of individuals, some of whom were Southerners.


One thing we should be clear about is that the causes of the war were not necessarily the same things that each side actually fought for during the war. The United States fought to preserve the Union; the Confederate States fought to preserve their national independence. Certainly the Confederate States did not fight to preserve slavery per se.

But you have asked me the straightforward question “Bill, in all honesty, do you believe there would have been a Civil War at all, IF the institution of slavery did not exist in the United States?

And my honest answer is “probably not.”

I am aware that some of my Southern friends may disagree with me on this point. And it is certainly true that slavery was neither the only nor even necessarily the most important of the issues over which the two regions were at loggerheads. But it was the most emotionally-charged and, for that reason, it was probably a crucial element in the disintegration of the Union. Does this in any way undermine the Confederate cause? Not in the slightest degree.

I have given you a plain answer to a plain question. While in this honest mood, let us admit to each other that differences in attitude towards slavery between various communities of Americans were determined solely by the proximity or otherwise of the said communities to large numbers of Negroes. The less contact with Negroes, the more positive attitude towards emancipation. (The one exception to this being those Midwesterners who favoured emancipation because they thought that their own Negroes would move to the South once slavery ended.) If several million Negroes had lived in New England it is a moral certainty that the people of Massachusetts would have been as committed to slavery as the people of Mississippi.

What this means is that to criticise Southerners for their attachment to the Peculiar Institution was hypocritical, since those parties who saw fit to criticise enjoyed absolutely no moral superiority on the race question. And none of this had any bearing at all on the entitlement of the South to assert the right to self-government which is possessed by every people/region/community on this earth.

Bill

[georgiana]

I’ve not posted to this site since shortly after the death of Connie Boone, but I’d like to explore some of the thoughts expressed by Mr. Torrens, if I may. Specifically, I am inclined to echo the notion that it is not necessary for the war aims to reflect the causes of the war. Sometimes there is a neat and tidy connection between the politics that led to a war and the stated (or unstated) war aims of the parties involved, but not always. Nor is it necessary that the two sides have "complimentary" reasons for going to war.

It seems to me that there are several fundamental questions, each yielding potentially different answers - all of which carry a certain degree of weight in terms of their unique contribution to the escalation of hostilities.

The first might be - Why did the Southern states secede and what led to this decision being made? This question can be delineated further by distinguishing between the reasons that Southerners:
(a) believed secession was legal;
(b) believed secession was justified; and
(c) chose to secede

Another related question might be - Given that secession occurred, why was the political crisis resolved by war and not some form of compromise or negotiation?

And finally, once the war began, what were the reasons that influenced young men (and women) to join the armies?

Different ways of asking the same question? Perhaps, but my answers tend to vary, often to a fairly significant degree, depending on how the question is asked.

[georgiana]

My apologies for entering the discussion in the 11th hour, but I also wanted to pick-up on some of the thoughts expressed with respect to abolitionists and their influence (or lack thereof) in the North. I could be wrong, but it seems to me that the church provided a significant source of influence/agitation with regard to the slavery issue - both North and South. I haven’t read all of the archives for this particular thread, only those from June to the present, but the influence of the church seems largely absent from the discussion.

My gg-grandparents, William and Eliza Green, harbored slaves on their farm in a small community in Southeastern Ohio known as “Tuppers Plains”. They were not well educated (could barely sign their names), so it’s hard for me to imagine that they were influenced to a significant degree by the media. I don’t know what kind of political oratory they might have been exposed to, but this is a fairly remote area of Ohio even today, so I doubt there was much activity in that regard. They were, however, extremely active in the local ME church, and were among the many community sponsors of the “Albany Enterprise Academy”, as well as active members of the “Friends of the Colored People”. These were, however, all church-sponsored activities and organizations.

I also have some German-Lutheran ancestors who were life-long members of a Lutheran congregation in Harrison County, Ohio – a church that actually splintered in 1853 when the clergy began to espouse biblical justifications for slavery. I don’t want to make too much of this, as these are just two accounts – confined to very remote, sparsely populated areas in Ohio, but I do wonder sometimes if the “pulpit” wasn’t the more predominate source of “media” for the common man, both North and South, particularly in the nineteenth century.

[unionblue]

Dear Bill,

Thank you for your patience with me and your good wishes concerning my distractions.

Georgiana, so nice to see you back on this site and this thread and please note that neither Bill or myself feel the need of any apology by you by entering into this thread at ANY hour. I welcome your input and questions.

Bill, I would like to address your replies to my questions. You reply that both sections were sensitive to the issue of slavery. I reply that this is true to an extent. It is my contention that the South was much more sensitive to this issue, far more than the North and that they were willing to dare much in its defense, much more than the North.

Your answer to the second question is simply wrong, in my own opinion. Why did the South leave the Union? Why did the Democratic Party split at the Charleston convention and over what issue?

And again Bill, who called for the opening of the African Slave Trade? What positions did they hold and how much influence did they have?

As for causes not being the same things each side actually fought for during the war, I agree with only half your statement and then only for a short period before the Emancipation Proclamation. I am of the opinion the South DID fight to preserve slavery, it's institution, it's way of life, it's means of wealth, etc.

I thank you for your honest answer, and my friend, I believe I would get nothing but honest answers from you on all subjects and occasions. I will respond in kind, as I always hope that you believe that I do.

I do not accept the statement that slavery was neither the only nor even necessarily the most important issue of the war. It was the primary cause of it and the issue at the source of the disintegration of the Union. I consider it THE Confederate cause, because all I read from the period is that it WAS the cause of the men who supported it.

I do not know exactly how to answer your plain question concerning the proximity of Negroes to various communities and they would effect their opinions on emancipation. Lincoln said that if positions had been reversed and slavery had been in the North and the South free of it, the North would more than likely act like the South.

The main reason this argument has no meaning with me is because of what I have said all along. The North went to war to preserve the Union, not over the issue of slavery, BUT the South left the Union over the main, central issue of slavery, not for tariffs, not for State Rights, but to defend and to later expand that institution.

I do not disagree with the idea that to criticise Southerners for their attachment to the institution of slavery could be in some ways hypocritical and I do think slavery is a national sin, not just a sectional one. But this attempt at what you consider self-government was attempted for the sole reason of slavery, to maintain it, to spread it, to preserve it. All other issues and reasons pale to nothing compared to this one central fact and most of this information comes from the people of the South at the time.

Until next time,
Unionblue

[bill_torrens]

Dear Neil,

I thought this extract from the memoirs of Randolph H. McKim, a Confederate veteran from Maryland, might interest you:

…I am chiefly concerned to show that my comrades and brothers, of whom I write in these pages, did not draw their swords in defence of the institution of slavery. They were not thinking of their slaves when they cast all in the balance – their lives, their fortunes, their sacred honor – and went forth to endure the hardships of the camp and the march and the perils of the battle field. They did not suffer, they did not fight, they did not die, for the privilege of holding their fellow men in bondage!

No, it was for the sacred right of self-government that they fought. It was in defence of their homes and their firesides. It was to repel the invader, to resist a war of subjugation. It was in vindication of the principle enunciated in the Declaration of Independence that “governments derive their just power from the consent of the governed.”

Only a very small minority of the men who fought in the Southern armies – not one in ten – were financially interested in the institution of slavery. We cared little or nothing about it. To establish our independence we would at any time have gladly surrendered it. If any three men may be supposed to have known the object for which the war was waged, they were these: Abraham Lincoln, Jefferson Davis, and Robert E. Lee. Their decision agrees with what I have stated. Mr. Lincoln consistently held and declared that the object of the war was the restoration of the Union, not the emancipation of the slaves. Mr. Davis as positively declared that the South was fighting for independence, not for slavery. And Robert E Lee expressed his opinion by setting all his slaves free Jan. 8, 1863, and then going on with the war for more than two years longer. In February, 1861, Mr. Davis wrote to his wife in these words, “In any case our slave property will eventually be lost.” Thus the political head of the Confederacy entered on the war foreseeing the eventual loss of his slaves, and the military head of the Confederacy actually set his slaves free before the war was half over. Yet both, they say, were fighting for slavery!

[A Soldier’s Recollections: Leaves From The Diary Of A Young Confederate, pp.21-22.]


All the best,

Bill

[unionblue]

Bill,

I can find other statements made by other men who fought for the South who say the exact opposite. I can find countless of newspaper articles and speeches before and during the war stating that slavery was THE issue and THE cause. And I mostly find these statements coming from the South.

It is not until after the war and the South's defeat do I detect any other reason for the war other than slavery.

Sincerely,
Unionblue

[bill_torrens]

Dear Neil,

This is interesting. I would be very grateful if you could copy to me any contemporary letter or diary, or post-war memoir, in which a Confederate soldier states that he is/was fighting to preserve slavery.

Cheers,

Bill

[felinelady]

Gentlemen,
I have been following this thread with interest. Thank you for the wealth of information you have thus far shared.
Neil,
I too would be very interested in anything written by confederate soldiers stating that they were fighting to preserve slavery. Nothing that I have read has ever given that as a written reason by a soldier before-during or after the war.
Respectively,
(Back Silent Now)
Kate