Was War Necessary After Secession?

[tamaroa]

Neil,

It was so long ago, I forgot which thread it was but Rick McElroy and I had a discussion about the importance of slavery as a catalyst for the Civil War. I stated that the cause of the Civil War was the inability of the founding fathers to deal properly with slavery. I hope I don't put words in Rick's mouth but I recall his answer as something like "everyone recognized how important the union was so basically slavery was a left over on the table to be dealt with later."

I still maintain that the founding fathers were direct contributors to the Civil War and 625K deaths because they did not deal with the issue. They should have dealt with slavery because "All Men created equal" rings very hollow when we know in fact that they meant all white men with property are created equal.

Slavery was a cause of the war, it was not the single cause of the war but its tentacles were tangled in a number of issues to make it ever present. It could have been stopped way back in 1789 but as usual politicians do what they need to do to meet their own agendas, not what is right.

[unionblue]

Bill,

Thank you for your post and know that now that I have extended my research on slavery back to our founding as a nation, I agree with you completely that our founding fathers must share in the blame of slavery becoming such a problem later on.

My only disagreement with you is my contention it was the central and main cause of the war, not just 'a cause'. My main contention is as Lincoln's, the issue of slavery was the only subject that caused such agitation and strife to such a large degree before and right up until the beginning of the war. If slavery had not been 'the' issue, there would have been no war.

And I further agree the institution could have been stopped back in 1789 but as you state, politicians took care of their own agendas instead of facing up to the hard and unpleasant task of rooting out that institution at the very start of the nation.

YMOS,
Unionblue

[johan_steele]

Bill & Neil,

I think the greatest barrier to the abolition of slaverry in 1860 and to our founding fathers was the very concept of equality among the races. Here is an intriguing notion, after the Crimea War a group of North African Royalty (I don't recall from where, though they were apparently quite dark skinned) visited Charleston & several other cities in the south. They were treated as absolute celebraties. THat was a point that made me take note. Here are a pair of extremely wealhty black people being treated as equals by the slave holding gentry! What gives, simply put they were not slaves, they weren't anyone elses property and they were an oddity.

Put simply the attitude among the majority of whites in the south toward slaves was the fact that most viewed slaves in much the same way we today view cars, trucks & tractors. Neccesary, but w/out feelings or sometimes even souls. Yes, it's true some Southern clergy were bound & determined the black race lacked souls, so it wasn't wrong to enslave them.

This belief was widespread enough that anyone who suggested blacks were equal was likely to be viewed in the same way we today view someone who believes cars have feelings...

It took the Civil War to change that, the excellent performance on the battlefield of black troops changed the opinion of many and humanized them to many in the nor5th who had never seen a black man.

Without a Union victory, slavery would have continued. After all there is no doubt many of the leaders of the CSA certainly believed the War was about slavery. Their memories may have faded thrity years later when it came time for them to write their memoirs and to enhance the Lost Cause theory. The problem is that their speeches of 1860 leave them litle wiggle room. Essentially to say otherwise is to debate the meaning of is.

[hawglips]

Neil, I am weighed down with sorrow to see the extent of the problem. (Sigh) To raise the sword of truth alone is such a heavy burden to bear. To see such a heavy gauge of chain shackling your extraordinary cognitive abilities causes my shoulders to droop even more. The task before me is one I would long to avoid.

However, I must push on for now, as duty permits me no alternative.

With that in mind, please allow me to ask another question of the first sargent. If, as you submit, during the secession crises of 1803 and 1860, the advantage within the general government sought after, by whomever, was either to escape slavery or to facilitate it, what was the reason for that of 1814 and 1832? Isn't it a bit stretched and strained to submit that such reasoning was somehow behind those?

You see, it is the same soil from 1803 to 1812 to 1832 to 1844 to 1860. Though trees of different sorts may spring up therefrom, and some may be taller than others at various times, the soil from which they all arise, remains the same.

It appears you are mistaking the tree for the forest, the gun for the battle, and the battlefield for the war.

Shane: Without a Union victory, slavery would have continued. After all there is no doubt many of the leaders of the CSA certainly believed the War was about slavery. Their memories may have faded thrity years later when it came time for them to write their memoirs and to enhance the Lost Cause theory. The problem is that their speeches of 1860 leave them litle wiggle room. Essentially to say otherwise is to debate the meaning of is.

Shane, it is apparent you have chosen to be very discriminating in your reading of speeches, and in the phrases you extract from them. I would suggest a broader approach. Otherwise, it is like a blind man attempting to describe an elephant while holding on to its tail.

Slavery had long been gradually declining from north to south. The pressures on it had only intensified by 1860, and would only increase as time went on. As the USA, where slavery was protected, could not shield the institution from those forces, the CSA likewise could not.

Still holding out hope,

Hal
Private

(Message edited by hawglips on January 08, 2004)

[thea_447]

To Hal, Neil states:

The political power the South so desperately tried to
maintain and garner over the rest of the nation at the expense of
democracy, freedom of speech and law, was to maintain slavery.

Untrue, the South had lost the political clout and was being forced to pay exorbitant taxes to fund the ever expanding empire that Northern mercantilism needed.
Tax, tax, tax. A VERY important reason for secession, the most important, in my opinion.

To Bill, Neil states:

My only disagreement with you is my contention it (slavery) was the central and
main cause of the war, not just 'a cause'. My main contention is as
Lincoln's, the issue of slavery was the only subject that caused such
agitation and strife to such a large degree before and right up until
the beginning of the war. If slavery had not been 'the' issue, there
would have been no war.

I flat out disagree with this! Lincoln wanted his tariff ("What will become of my Tariff?"). He issued the E.P. only after seeing Northern troops being beaten and needed those blacks on the front lines and the British and French to stay well out of it.

As you, Neil, have repeatedly stated, Lincoln did not go to war to end slavery. Therefore, how can you do an about face and say: My main contention is as
Lincoln's, the issue of slavery was the only subject that caused such
agitation and strife to such a large degree before and right up until
the beginning of the war.

Ah yes, it is still your contention that Lincoln didn't send armed vessels to Ft. Sumter to do anything but provide provisions which could easily have been attained at Charleston. Right...when pigs fly!

I ask again, why, since the South wanted out, and you apparently believe that Lincoln didn't care about the wealth of the South, didn't they just LET THEM GO! Looking at this logically, how can you expect to have a united country when one part of it so desperately wanted out that they risked EVERYTHING for that freedom? They knew they were outnumbered, out-gunned, out-financed,etc. Yet, they went headlong into war, hoping to win their freedom.

Are you going to try to tell me, Neil, that Lincoln only went to war to preserve the Union for purely altruistic reasons? Posh! This man was a protectionist from the word go, bought and paid for. And certainly we've already established that he didn't give a fig about the black man until the war was swinging towards the South.

If you think that this country has become one nation since 1865, I daresay you need to take another look. There are riots everywhere. Our school situation is a joke. Welfare, street crime, drugs, we've got it all! And before I hear the entire Greek chorus about the best country on earth, where else would I want to live, stop right there!

This is my country, just as it is yours. I believe Neil's byline offers me the opportunity to criticize if I want to. I take that opportunity only when blind eyes won't see.

Things had been building towards this war since first Patrick Henry "smelt a rat".

And anyone that can't see that the Southern region of this country is entirely different in thought, word, and deed than the rest of the country, just "don't know Dixie!"

We've moved beyond integration, except in the weird minds of California movie directors. We have always interacted quite well with our black counterparts and will continue to do so. Just keep Jesse Jackson ranting and raving while solving the rest of the entire world's problems and we'll be a lot better off. Heck, the whole country would be better off if he concentrated on just solving his family situation. The man's a walking soap opera as it is. (And wouldn't I have loved to be a fly on the wall as he counseled Clinton on his sexual proclivites! HA!) But I digress.

Back to the first paragraph, when Neil so gleefully exhorts the South for loss of freedom of speech and law - hmm, I just can't get my mind off Lincoln: habeas corpus, Van Landingham, martial law, etc.

Hal: I'm really enjoying your posts and am delighted to see that you've got Neil going full force. There is great interaction here.
Glad to see such an able Southerner on board. Keep it up!

That's all for now.
I'll close with a little Aussie bye:

Avagoodone!

[johan_steele]

Hal... Watch out for the trees prose, the squirrel shamans are quite capable of inflicting the CHS syndrome. They are also quite vindictive.

When did Lincoln have a chance to even set up a new tariff? He wasn't in office long enough before the CSA fired on Sumter to get his feet wet. As to the EP being issued only because he needed troops... not quite the whole picture. The War in the western theatre was going quite well for the Union, in fact what major victory had the CSa managed there? W/ the exception of Forrests spectacular raids and Chickaumaga the CSA never really won a major battle in the west. I think your missing the forrest for the fertilizer on your brogans.

There was NO chance that the troops in Ft Sumter could aquire provisions from Charleston. They were attacked in the streets, twice I believe, prior to their abandonment of Ft Moultrie and subsequent move to Ft Sumter. I understand Hard Tack & Salt Pork can be a deadly weapon but I don't see Major Andersons troops doing much damage to Charleston w/it as badly outnumbered as they were. How many men did he have to attack Charleston w/... not enough. I suggest you check the cargo manifests of the ship sent to provision Ft Sumter. An interesting read. BTW, pigs and cattle can fly...especially when dropped from a high altitude.

Why not just let the South go? That is an interesting question, though I would bring your attention to the oath President Lincoln gave upon his innaugeration. He apparently took it more seriously than the officers of the Regular Army who joined the CSA.

Hal, you keep stating that slavery was on the decline from north southwards... I'd almost be tempted to believe you except that you have yet to provide concrete evidence, or even vague, to back up your statement. What evidence do you have that SC would ever have peacefully let go of slavery? As I've stated many times before there was no economic, religious or cultural pressure to abolish it in the south; in fact the reverse was true. What economic, religious or cultural pressure was going to exert itself enough to eliminate slavery? No one seems capable of answering that question?

I ask these questions exactly because I have read as much as I have. I just don't see anything short of an event of biblical proportions making slavery unfeasible in the South. It was still quite profitable in 1865 when the CSA had all but lost the war! Talk about not being able to see the forrest for the trees!

Please don't answer my question w/ a question. It makes it appear as though you are either unwilling or unable to respond. Evasive answers are beneath you.

This trees in the forrest... prose, is getting tiresome. I've always prefered wolves among the flock of sheep.

[unionblue]

Thea,

I will try to answer your post (Thursday, January 08, 2004 - 05:17 pm) first.

As to the idea that the South had lost the political clout and was being 'forced' to pay exorbitant taxes, etc.

Taken from the book, Negro President, Jefferson and the Slave Power, by Garry Wills.

"The Slave States always had one-third more seats in Congress than their free population warranted--forty-seven seats instead of thirty-three in 1793, seventy-six instead of fifty-nine in 1812, and ninety-eight instead of seventy-three in 1833...The Deep South also imported more slaves from Africa in the twenty years from 1788 to 1808 (the year the international slave trade was legally banned) than in any other twenty-year period...the three-fifths rule (where five slaves equaled the vote of three free men) would also play a decisive role in every political caucus and every political convention."

"In the sixty-two years between Washington's election and the Compromise of 1850, for example, slaveholders controlled the presidency for fifty years, the Speaker's chair for forty-one years, and the chairmanship of House Ways and Means [the most important committee] for forty-two years. The only men to be reelected president--Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, and Jackson--were all slaveholders. The men who sat in the Speaker's chair the longest--Henry Clay, Andrew Stevenson, and Nathaniel Macon--were slaveholders. Eighteen out of thirty-one Supreme Court justices were slaveholders. Seven of those justices delivered the majority opinion in the Dred Scott decision, and a majority of them were slaveholders."

"From the inauguration of Washington until the Civil War, the South was in the saddle of national politics. This is the central fact in American political history to 1860."

I find it distressing that you think that I have 'about faced' over my conviction that the South left the Union over the issue of slavery. I have not deviated one bit from that statement. The South left the Union because it could not expand, protect, nor force upon the rest of the Union through the use of Federal Police Power, the institution of slavery. Slavery was the cause of the South leaving the Union. When I said I agreed with Lincoln when he said that it was slavery that was the ONE subject, the ONE issue that caused such strife and agitation between the North and the South and that it was the ONLY issue that came between them with such force.

Slavery caused the South to leave the Union. THE NORTH WENT TO WAR TO PRESERVE THE UNION. I cannot help what Lincoln said about the issue of slavery before the war. His words are there for anyone to read. Slavery was THE spark, THE cause, THE reason for the South leaving the Union and the cause of the war.

And are you sure ALL of the South wanted to leave the Union? That they all DESPERATELY wanted their freedom, that they wanted to risk EVERYTHING? Not the way I read it.

Lincoln went to war because he had an oath to uphold as President of the United States. Anything less would have been a betrayal of his office. The South left him no choice and it did so over the issue of slavery and the concept that the Federal Government was so weak, it would be unable to enforce its will upon it. Wrong move.

Your opinion on the current condition of our country is yours and you are entitled to it. I do not agree with all you have said, nor am I willing to give up on trying to make it a better country. We are, after all, only 228 years old. Maybe we will learn from history and improve our condition. The rest of the world seems to think we are something to envy.

As for your contention that the South is so different from the rest of the nation, please consider, once you are outside of it, you are considered an American. And in some cases a target because of that distinction. No one cares that you are from the Southern United States or the Western United States. You are from the United States. It is true that we have many customs, practices, religions, faiths, convictions, leanings and such. But you are considered an American all the same, no matter what those historical or regional differences.

As for Lincoln vs the South and the loss of personal liberty and censorship, I am reminded, 'he that lives in a glass house should not throw stones' or some such quote.

Enjoy your trip.

Until that time,
Unionblue

(Message edited by Unionblue on January 09, 2004)

[bill_torrens]

I must admit that, not being American, I feel a little inhibited about participating in this particular discussion. It seems to me that I will be skating on the very edges of good manners, since it is one thing to engage in spirited debate with your fellow-citizens but it is quite another to have some foreigner pontificating to you about your own history. So please remember that I am just a dumb Limey who means no offence…

The endless arguments about the legality and constitutionality of secession do bemuse me, because they seem to miss the fundamental point. The United States is a nation which was born as a result of a war of rebellion. The Patriots of 1776 were all, in a strict legal sense, guilty of treason. They were indifferent to this narrow interpretation of their actions because they asserted a right to revolution which was supra-legal.

The Declaration of Independence, as I understand it, explicitly elevates the right to self-determination above any obligations of allegiance to previously constituted political authority. Constitutions, statute books, oaths of allegiance – they all dissolve to nothing when a people choose “to institute new Government” and “to dissolve the Political Bands which have connected them with another”. This is a noble concept, and it is one which has moved and inspired people for two centuries – many of them non-Americans. But it contains its own remorseless logic, and I believe that this logic crept up and bit the Federal Government in a tender place in 1861.

Because if the right to self-determination was sufficient, in itself, to sever all constitutional, legal, moral and financial obligations to the British Government in 1776, it follows that it was also sufficient to sever the same obligations to the Federal Government 85 years later. And, in that case, it is only necessary to demonstrate that the majority of the citizens of the seceding states supported departure from the Union in order to prove the legitimacy of the Confederates States.

In 1861 some very senior figures in Washington had an uneasy awareness of this remorseless logic. On 4th April William Howard Russell, war correspondent of The Times, had an interview with William Seward. The latter, with his usual bluster, threatened war against European powers who recognized the Confederacy. “But he certainly assumed the existence of strong Union sentiments in many of the seceded States, as a basis for his remarks, and admitted that it would not become the spirit of the American Government, or of the Federal system, to use armed force in subjugating the Southern States against the will of the majority of the people. Therefore if the majority desire Secession, Mr. Seward would let them have it – but he cannot believe in anything so monstrous, for to him the Federal Government and Constitution, as interpreted by his party, are divine, heaven-born.”

President Lincoln also clung stubbornly to the belief, mistaken in my opinion, that there was no popular will behind the creation of the Confederacy. The closing words of the Gettysburg Address do not make sense unless he believed this, since secession posed absolutely no threat to “government of the people, by the people, for the people” in the remaining United States.

As a foreigner I am very conscious that one can spend a lifetime assimilating knowledge about the your country’s history without ever really understanding some elements of it, because one simply cannot think and feel like an American. For example, I think I know what Manifest Destiny is, but I do not understand it. Similarly, I do not understand why scores of thousands of Union volunteers in 1861 believed that they were fighting “for the government” or “for constitutional liberty”. For me their attitude to the South could be summarised in the following words: “We are your brothers, your flesh and blood. We share the same national heritage. We simply cannot bear the thought of being parted from you. And so we’re going to kill you.” And that I really }do not understand.

William

Dear Sir, I beg you, do not hesitate to join in. Post often as you like. On any thread. Personally I seriously welcome different perspectives. I have eagerly awaited your joining in.

The idea that debating with fellow citizens is somehow more tolerated...well...we did have a Civil War after all, so I ‘m not sure that is really the case here. Besides, in my opinion, since this is a Civil War board, and you have exhibited a very serious and extremely well informed interest in the war, you are indeed, not an outsider. I think that regardless of someone’s nationality, all it takes to be a brethren of this board is the common bond of interest, study and love of history. So post on sir.

YMOS
tommy

P.S.
Please forgive me
if this post makes little sense
I am not at my best.


As to dumb Limey, I do not buy that for a nano second.

[johan_steele]

Mt Torrens, I will second the illustrious Aphillbilly in exhorting you to feel free to post. It is welcomed.

However, that said I must point out something. THe Americans in 1776 commited Treason against England. Had they failed I think their punishments would have been... quite permenant. THe CSA commited the same treason in 1860. The only diference between the two's treason was that the CSA lost.

I find it curious, and I'm not trying to be insulting, that there is so much literature abouth the American Civil War in England. A friend who was stationed there for several years pointed this out to me. In fact she noted that ACW references seemed to far outweigh those of the English Civil War. I wonder if I might get your opinion of whether she might have had her opinion colored by the fact that she was living on a USAF base w/ the libraries & local book stores inventories likely colored by their customers. What is the fascination w/ the ACW overseas... I've never really understood it.

I've always found it curious that there are so many ACW re-enactors in England and Germany