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.
Neil, I suppose you are making the common mistake of making "slavery" synonomous with "institutions."
Neil: As for Calhoun speaking about slavery and your view that "the great and primary cause" was the real 'primary cause' was what? Here is my own spin on what Calhoun was talking about....
It is not profitable to put my spin or yours on this. In the quote I gave, and in very clear terms, Calhoun explained what he considered to be the "great and primary cause" of the endangered union - the destruction of the equilibrium between the two sections. No spin is required.
Jefferson Davis said the same thing, in other words, over a decade later. The sectional controversies "...were essentially struggles for sectional equality or ascendancy - for the maintenance or the destruction of that balance of power or equipoise between North and South, which was early recognized as a cardinal principle in our federal system."
Robert E. Lee hit on this same point in yet other words: All that the South has ever desired was that the Union, as established by our forefathers, should be preserved, and that the government as originally organised should be administered in purity and truth.
And even the Great Centralizer and Northern champion of protectionist tariffs and internal improvements hit on this same theme when he stated that the only "substantial" dispute between North and South was the extension of slavery into the territories. (Neil, please note again, that "extension into the territories" is the half of the equation you keep leaving out.)
This common thread runs through all the secession crises, from 1803 to 1860.
Neil: Your contention to Shane is, as I read it, that the remaining United States, after a Southern departure, would be more 'homogeneous than before, not less. I beg to differ somewhat as a person from Hartford CN, viewed himself differently from one from Boston, MA or Gettysburg, PA, or even moreso if from a 'Western' state like Ohio or such.
So you propose to insinuate that a republic of Northern States would NOT be more 'homogenous' than one which included States from Maine to Texas?
From a New Englander proposing secession: A Northern Confederation would unite congenial characters and present a fairer prospect of public happiness; while the Southern States, having a similarity of habits, may be left to manage their own affairs in their own way.
Neil: During the 1850's and 1860's democracy as we now know it, and lower-class rights generally, hung in the balance throughout the Western world. In Great Britain the great majority of workers were disfranchised, trade unions were illegal, strikes were criminal acts, and quitting a job without an employer's permission was a breach of contract punishable by stiff fines and years of imprisonment.
...I also tend to think that if the South had won victory in the Civil War, it would have waged more war to expand its institution of slavery South and West of its borders. Mexico, Cuba, South America, New Mexico, California, the potential for further bloodshed was here also. Once filled with confidence that they could not be defeated on the field, would not this have emboldened the South for more territory? I think it would have....If the South had been able to win on the battlefield or gain peaceful secession, it would have not only indefinitely delayed the freeing of US slaves but would very likely have slowed down the struggle to extend suffrage and other democratic rights to the lower classes in Europe, and it might have eroded whatever rights had already been granted to them in both Europe and North America. Since the forces of reaction everywhere would have been greatly encouraged, and those of democracy and reform demoralized, it is likely that the momentum for liberal reform would have been replaced by a drive for aristocratic privilege under the reasoning of paternalism and the all important preservation of order.
Neil, it is wonderfully amazing to me that you can paint those that merely sought to more fully govern themselves -- those that sought democracy and reform, as war-like, aristocratic monsters out to destroy democracy and the liberties of peoples of all mankind; and at the same time paint those that wanted to prevent self-government and thwart the liberty of their own citizens, and undertook to force an imperialist union of States at the point of the bayonet on those that no longer wanted it, as peace-like holy saviors of the entire civilized world.
I now more fully understand why I am having such trouble persuading you to discuss an obvious and most crucial point concerning the sectional dispute that ended in a war to force union and preserve empire.
It strikes me that the various exchanges between what one might call the two sides in this thread are usually well reasoned, coherent arguments. But they are built upon such fundamentally different assumptions about the nature of nationality, government and citizenship that we might just as well be speaking two different languages. And so there is a danger that we end up talking at each other rather than to each other. And there really isn't the slightest possibility of anyone changing their viewpoint, is there?
Because of that I find that I am more interested in analysing the differences in our views than in trying to persuade you of the superiority of mine. We are all clearly reasonably intelligent people who have scrutinised the same evidence and come to diametrically opposite conclusions. We have all used some process of logical deduction along the way, and I would like to explain mine. The reason why I am Secesh can be demonstrated in five very short sentences:
1. The right to self-determination, to self-government, is the one great political principle
2. The nation state exists in order to give expression to that desire for self-government.
3. The nation state has no purpose, identity or validity independent of that function.
4. Any group of human beings, forming a majority within a given area, who come to think of themselves as a distinct and separate people thereby actually become so.
5. Having become a separate people, their need for self-government cannot be fulfilled by the existing nation state, which therefore ceases to exist.
What would really interest me is to read any similarly stripped-down description of the logical path which leads any of you to the Unionist camp. Or, indeed, any alternative route to the broad, sunny uplands of Rebellion!
Hal, preserve Empire? Oh now that is choice! That's what Lincoln was doing, preserving an Empire? That's why so many flocked to defend old glory? Take a look at the US of 1860-65 vs say Rome, or the Holy Roman Empire... Empires, not democratic Republics where the leader had a very real chance of losing his position in a democratic election to a failed general. If that is Empire what on earth do you call a Republic?
"Neil, it is wonderfully amazing to me that you can paint those that merely sought to more fully govern themselves -- those that sought democracy and reform, as war-like, aristocratic monsters out to destroy democracy and the liberties of peoples of all mankind; and at the same time paint those that wanted to prevent self-government and thwart the liberty of their own citizens, and undertook to force an imperialist union of States at the point of the bayonet on those that no longer wanted it, as peace-like holy saviors of the entire civilized world."
So Hal you are saying that the Confederacy was willing to accept a legal election... like say that of 1860? The rest of what you've stated is so pattently ridiculous as not to warrant a response.
__________________ Few take the trouble to understand or to view the American scene with perspective. And we Americans love to find ourselves guilty of something. However, it is never I who am guilty, but those other Americans, the past or present government or the other political party. Americans almost never find other countries guilty. It is always ourselves or our fancied influence in other countries. Louis L'amour
William you put forward an interesting challenge. In fact I'm not certain I really diagree w/ your five points.
1. The right to self-determination, to self-government, is the one great political principle.----- I agree completely and have no problem w/ such a belief.
2. The nation state exists in order to give expression to that desire for self-government. ----- I might instead state the the Nation State exists to defend the people of said Nation State from all enemies; foreign & domestic.
3. The nation state has no purpose, identity or validity independent of that function. ---- W/ the exception of the necessity of collecting fees & taxes neccesary to sustain & defend it.
4. Any group of human beings, forming a majority within a given area, who come to think of themselves as a distinct and separate people thereby actually become so. ---- I'm not certain I quite agree w/ that. The United States has integrated dozens of diferent cultures w/in it's society and govt. After all there are sizeable immigrant populations from almost every nation on Earth here, a true melting pot. Poles, Germans, Norwegians, Irish etc have all become Americans.
5. Having become a separate people, their need for self-government cannot be fulfilled by the existing nation state, which therefore ceases to exist.--- This I think is bothered by point four and might invite a fith column of sorts.
My "Unionist" tendancies may seem a trifle simplistic, but they are mine.
1. This nation exists to serve and protect it's populace as well as to make certain that the laws are fairly enforced. The military govt of this nation does not exist for colonial expansion nor conquest of territory. Instead they are a defensive force (understanding full well that the best defense is a stout offensive capability.) Those that serve and have served continue to do so even after their enlistment has ended by becoming productive members of this society.
2. The duly elected officials and representatives are SUPPOSED to represent those people who elected them. W/ that said the people who elected them are expected to support those they elected and be aware of their actions. Those who voted against said representative are expected to be highly observant of their actions and form a check of sorts to their actions and when the time comes to vote them out to be at the forefront of the action.
3. Those who reside in said Nation should be expected to at the very least appreciate and participate in the above actions. If they do not feel it pertinent to defend said nation by material action they should at the very least support those who do.
4. Every individual in said nation should make every effort to improve their lot in life through their own efforts. This will strengthen said nation.
5. The minority does not rule, however, they are to be protected from the majority by the checks and balances provided in the govt.
__________________ Few take the trouble to understand or to view the American scene with perspective. And we Americans love to find ourselves guilty of something. However, it is never I who am guilty, but those other Americans, the past or present government or the other political party. Americans almost never find other countries guilty. It is always ourselves or our fancied influence in other countries. Louis L'amour
I am sorry….I didn’t actually see your reply to me until after I had sent my last post. I don’t want to give the impression that I was ignoring your very interesting comments. And so I am going to try to write this and send it during my work lunchbreak.
Most of the points you raise require me to do some research…especially the questions about 19th century Britain, since I know relatively little about this in comparison to what I know about America.
But a few quick reactions….I think you slip too easily into the assumption that things Northern were progressive and things Southern reactionary. Perhaps too easily to feel the need to justify these labels. Even I cannot argue that slavery was a progressive institution, but to characterise the Confederacy as inherently reactionary seems to ignore the fact that the vast bulk of the Confederate Constitution was copied wholesale from that of the U.S.A. One innovation inserted in the C.S. version was the limiting of the President to one term of office…a change which does not seem to me to be indicative of a society veering towards autocracy. And when you consider the deranged practice of allowing the armies to re-elect their officers in ’62, I think you have to concede that, if anything, the new republic suffered from a surfeit of democracy.
It’s much the same when it comes to the label of “aristocratic”. Cash’s “Mind Of The South” effectively demolishes the myth of the Southern Aristo. With the arguable exception of a few Tidewater families these men were actually yeoman farmers who, through an unusual combination of circumstances, were able to make a lot of quick money. They, or their sons, may have built themselves porticoed mansions but culturally they were indistinguishable from their humbler neighbours. So it seems a little hard to use this as a stick with which to beat the region.
The South didn’t abide by the result of the election of 1860? I’m sure it comes as absolutely no surprise to you to learn that I am going to insist that they did. Imagine that you are a member of a club or society which holds an election for a new club secretary. Imagine that they elect someone whom you find utterly obnoxious. Now obviously you have to abide by your fellow member’s choice. You have no right to start lobbying for a new election. But you might well feel that, in the circumstances, the right thing to do is to resign your membership.
Mature democracies are generally robust enough to survive deep divisions of political opinion amongst their citizens. Where they are vulnerable, where the democratic process arguably breaks down, is when these divisions are polarised geographically. Let me give you an example from the present day in Britain: it’s a relatively minor issue but I feel it illustrates the point perfectly. The Labour Government (whose power base is exclusively metropolitan) is threatening to ban fox-hunting. Supporters of hunting, who naturally live in the countryside, maintain that a government elected almost exclusively by city dwellers simply doesn’t have the right to interfere with rural institutions, and so they threaten to ignore any such legislation. Now I am utterly indifferent to hunting, I don’t care one way or the other, but I do not believe that these people are being undemocratic. I believe that they are expressing the visceral anger which most human beings feel when they sense that their lifestyle and institutions are being meddled with by outsiders who have little understanding of them and who will have to take no responsibility whatever for the results of their meddling. Is this ringing any bells?
In 1860 the South was confronted with the election of a government for which there was no electoral mandate in its own region. What is more, given the growth of the populations of the Northern states, they were faced with the prospect of an endless succession of governments elected exclusively by Northern votes. So, in effect, the South was disenfranchised. The Union had become a prison.
You describe the senior figures in the Confederate government as selfish. Selfishness amongst politicians usually manifests itself in the corrupt pursuit of either money or power. I am aware of proven venality within the Lincoln cabinet (Simon Cameron) but I am not aware that C.S. cabinet members were notorious for this. As for Jefferson Davis himself, everyone knows that he wished to serve in the army and that, for him, appointment to the post of Chief Magistrate really was a poisoned chalice. I do not see how his acceptance of this responsibility could be depicted as self-serving.
Oops. I’m out of time. I have a library full of historians and genealogists to look after…speak to you later.
Shane: Hal, preserve Empire? Oh now that is choice! That's what Lincoln was doing, preserving an Empire? That's why so many flocked to defend old glory? Take a look at the US of 1860-65 vs say Rome, or the Holy Roman Empire... Empires, not democratic Republics where the leader had a very real chance of losing his position in a democratic election to a failed general. If that is Empire what on earth do you call a Republic?
Wigan Examiner (UK) May 1861
“The struggle of today is one side for empire and on the other for independence.”
Punch, the London magazine, in a political cartoon, had Lincoln say to Alexander II:
“Imperial son of Nicholas the Great,
We air in the same fix, I calculate,
You with your Poles, with Southern rebels, I,
Who spurn my rule and my revenge defy.”
Punch: Dec. 15, 1860
"The Star-spangled banner that blows broad and brave,
O'er the home of the free, o'er the hut of the slave-
Whose folds every year, broad and broader have grown,
Till they shadow both arctic and tropical zone,
From the Sierra Nevada to Florida's shore
And, like Oliver Twist, are still asking for more."
London Times:
"If Northerners… had peaceably allowed the seceders to depart, the result might fairly have been quoted as illustrating the advantages of Democracy; but when Republicans put empire above liberty, and resorted to political oppression and war rather than suffer any abatement of national power, it was clear that nature at Washington was precisely the same nature as at St. Petersburg. … Democracy broke down, not when the Union ceased to be agreeable to all its constituent states, but when it was upheld, like any other Empire, by force of arms."
J.K. C. Wheare, 1961: “It is startling to realize that Lincoln did not believe in the principle of the self-determination of peoples….Lincoln fought against them (the South) with more determination than any British Prime Minister fought against Ireland… Perhaps Gladstone’s sympathy for the South is more understandable if this aspect of the case is considered. He saw them as a nation struggling to be free…. To those who associate the principle of self-determination with the United States it comes as something of a shock to find that that Abraham Lincoln, associated in one’s mind with liberty and democracy, should argue so firmly against it. Yet the fact is unavoidable.”
Hal... your using a cartoon to support your point? Please use a source and explain how the United Staes at ANY time in it's history has been an Empire. Feel free to draw comparisons between Rome, or perhaps the Mandarin... any Empire will do.
While you're at it tell me how slavery was going to die out on it's own and how slavery had nothing to do w/ Secession.
I've been waiting for someone on this board to convince me that slavery was on the way out in the Deep South and how Slavery had nothing to do w/ the whole Secession crisis. No one has bothered to answer any of those questions, they just acuse the Union of being some evil insidious organ intent on swallowing the South whole. It's rhetoric, and not even good rhetoric.
__________________ Few take the trouble to understand or to view the American scene with perspective. And we Americans love to find ourselves guilty of something. However, it is never I who am guilty, but those other Americans, the past or present government or the other political party. Americans almost never find other countries guilty. It is always ourselves or our fancied influence in other countries. Louis L'amour
William, bear w/ me here I admit to a poor knowledge, at best, of customs and laws in England. I understand your analogy that the CSA seccesion was like quiting a club, in fact it makes quite a bit more sense than many. I understand your viewpoint when viewed in that light. Now if an Englishman surrenders his passport and gives up his citizenship because...say he doesn't like the idea of Prince Charles becoming king. Then he decides to take up, say Whales and call it his own Kingdom and all English law is moot. Along the way he recruits about a third of the military command. He happens to have enough friends to make it count and takes them w/ him as well. He then fires on any English bobby (sp?) who comes to say: "You bloody well can't do that chap!" I would expect the British govt to act similarly to President Lincoln. Is that a logical analogy?
I appreciate this discourse, I'm not really surprised to see that we think as much alike in terms of Secession. I understand the irritation w/ the Union that led to Seccesion, I also think it was blown far out of proportion. Upon reading the various states Declerations of Secession... I can't help but feel that they were quite rash and didn't expect the reaction they got from the North. At the same time I read of the actions of the CSA congress & cabinet & realize that they wanted a fight. No one expected the kind of War they ended up with.
__________________ Few take the trouble to understand or to view the American scene with perspective. And we Americans love to find ourselves guilty of something. However, it is never I who am guilty, but those other Americans, the past or present government or the other political party. Americans almost never find other countries guilty. It is always ourselves or our fancied influence in other countries. Louis L'amour
I've been waiting for someone on this board to convince me that slavery was on the way out in the Deep South and how Slavery had nothing to do w/ the whole Secession crisis.
I see the target is moving...
Upon reading the various states Declerations of Secession... I can't help but feel that they were quite rash and didn't expect the reaction they got from the North.
I would suggest that the notion that union should be forced at the point of the bayonet is the rash one.
"To coerce a State would be one of the maddest projects ever devised:
no State would ever suffer itself to be used as the instrument of
coercing another." ~ Alexander Hamilton, New York
"To coerce a State would be more like a declaration of war than an
infliction of punishment, and would probably be considered by the
party attacked as a dissolution of all previous compacts."
~ James Madison, Virginia
"I do not know what the Union would be worth if saved by the sword."
~ Senator William H. Seward, New York
"If the day should ever come (may Heaven avert it!) when the
affections of the people of these States shall be alienated
from each other,...the bands of political associations will not
long hold together parties no longer attracted by the magnetism
of conciliated interests and kindly sympathies; and far better
will it be for the people of the disunited states to part in
friendship from each other, than to be held together by constraint."
~ John Quincy Adams, Massachusetts
"We have repeatedly said, and we once more insist, that the great principle embodied by Jefferson in the Declaration of American Independence, that governments derive their just powers from consent of the governed, is sound and just; and that if the slave States, the cotton States, or the gulf States only choose to form an independent nation, they have a clear, moral right to do so. Whenever it shall be clear that the great body of southern people have become conclusively alienated from the Union, and anxious to escape from it, we will do our best to forward their views." (Horace Greeley, New York)
"Lincoln's war implied, and the Gettysburg Address set to words,
a firm message to the States of the Union - "I love you all, and if
you leave me, I'll hunt you down and kill you."
~ Lewis Goldberg
New York Daily Tribune, Friday, November 30, 1860:
ARE WE GOING TO FIGHT?
But if the cotton States, generally, unite with her in seceding, we insist that they cannot be prevented, and that the attempt must not be made. Five millions of people, more than half of them of the dominant race, of whom at least half a million are able and willing to shoulder muskets, can never be subdued while fighting around and over their own hearthstones. If they could be, they would no longer be equal members of the Union, but conquered dependencies. * * * We propose to wrest this potent engine from the disunionists by saying frankly to the slave States:
"If you choose to leave the Union, leave it, but let us have no quarrel about it. If you think it a curse to you and an unfair advantage to us, repudiate it, and see if you are not mistaken. If you are better by yourselves, go, and God speed you. For our part, we have done very well with you, and are quite willing to keep along with you, but if the association is irksome to you, we have too much self-respect to insist on its continuance. We have lived by our industry thus far, and hope to do so still, even though you leave us."
We repeat, that only the sheen of northern bayonets can bind the South wholly to the evils of secession, but that may do it. Let us be patient, neither speaking daggers nor using them, standing to our principles, but not to our arms, and all will yet be well.
John Quincy Adams: “I love the Union as I love my wife. But if my wife should ask for and insist upon a separation, she would have it though it broke my heart.”
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