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.
By now, I'd have expected some reaction to that editorial. Of course, it's just an editorial, but it is fraught with meaning. From our present viewpoint, it's outragous. But it does express a viewpoint -- the northerners were vassals in rebellion against their southern masters.
co-nun-drum: noun - a difficult problem, a dilemma
How do you acknowledge the South's tenure in political domination of the federal government, and at the same time advance the idea that secession was just the breaking of the camel's back after decades of oppression from northern politicians, fronting for evil Yankee industrialists?
I'm from upstate NY, so I don't pretend to speak for those who are sympathetic to the confederacy, but I have read other places some of the most God-awful tales (and tales they were) of northern oppression and plundering against the poor defenseless South. Often these grievances are held under the misguided impression that the federal government in control and the entire North were getting a free lunch on the backs of southern planters - courtesy of tariffs on cotton exports. I am happy to say that I've not encountered it here, but man, is this kind of disinformation ever prevalent on many other sites. The gist of the editorial you have posted directly goes against that grain.
Otherwise, its an editorial from an arrogant aristocratic wannabe, filled with bigotry not only towards the inferior race of negroes, but the inferior race of Yankees. While he invokes the South's great contribution towards the founding, I doubt that the kind of animosity that he thinks ethnically natural was ever felt by Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Mason, etc., etc..
Quote:
from the editorial: "A few … thrashings will bring them once more under the yoke as docile as the most loyal of our Ethiopian Chattels.”
(hehe) It might have been fun to watch him eat those words, served up on the end of a bayonet by one of his former Ethiopian Chattels.
This writer makes much of the ethnic heritage and its resulting animosity, but for myself, I question the true polarity of this Celtic vs Anglo/Saxon in the make-up of the South and North. From anything I can find, The South was still predominately full of English, and the North was so peppered with Scots and Irish and Scot/Irish that I fail to see the possibility of an ethnic sectionalism. But I suppose that's a different discussion.
European writers saw the inevitability of secession in that the Union didn't have the right ingredients for permanence except with military force. James Spence wrote a book, (The American Union) which was popular throughout Britain during this period. He also wrote for the Scottish periodical, North British Review,and in February 1862 made this interesting observation:
"In truth, the Union itself was artificial in its origin; and its artificial character has long been increasingly apparent, and increasingly felt. Spontaneous and self-supporting political combination, compact and enduring nations, are the result of many convergent influences. There must be some degree at least of homogeneousness; there must be harmony, if not identity, of interests; there must be mutual liking, if not mutual respect. Or, in default of these binding links, there must be power......to enforce union and compel submission. Which of these necessary elements existed in the United States? Scarcely one." (Northern British Review 36 (February 1862): p. 235)
Naturally, that British writer was wrong. The North did have the last element--the power to enforce union and compel submission.
__________________ Thea
No one has permission to use any material from any of my posts on any CWT forum, the archives, or any other forum without my express written permission.
I'm with you on the notion being ridiculous that the South was Celtic and the North Anglo-Saxon.The South was mainly Anglo-Saxon in their genetic make-up best I can tell.
As for Washington I have read many comments he made that were very disparaging about New England in general, but in particular the militias from those areas.Most of those comments were earlier in the war so if you want to discount those remarks I could see your point.
He was a proud Virginian though and I think its impractical to think he would ever side against his home state.Sorry for getting off of the subject ,but does anyone except me think the rhetoric of no taxation without representation was krap during the time of our founding fathers.Those were brilliant poeple.Surely they knew being represented in Parliament wouldn't help at all because they would've simply been outvoted.It was good propaganda though.Now back to the topic.I don't personally think that there's much doubt that Jefferson would've sided with the Confederacy.You're a very astute fellow I'm sure you can understand why I take that assumption given some of Jefferson's writings and comments.I have no idea about Mr. Madison.For whatever reason I was never interested in him.His wife was a lot more interesting to me.
"...The most effectual way to bring about the enfranchisement of every slave on this continent, is to dissovle this Union. Slavery outflowing from a Southern nation, and seeking to diffuse itself over the Territiories, will be repulsed on every hand. The formidable confederacy of the North which would spring up, full armed, from the ruins of the present Republic, would have much to say and more to do in moulding the character of infant Territories. The North--now loyal and true to the Union, and devoted to the Federal Constitution--is willing to allow to slavery all the protection that the Constitution even by implication requires; but when the severance comes--if come it must--the States of the North that have submitted for the sake of Union to requirements which bound the consciences of their people, will take hold of the moral bearings of the great question, and they will see to it, that the curse of human bondage shall not pass beyond its present limits. They will be more jealously watchful than now of the encroachments of the Slave Power. They will show their fealty to the cause of freedom and their respect for the enlightened convictions of Christendom, by arresting the expansion of slavery, and by stopping the piratical commerce in the bones and muscles of men. The "irrepressible conflict" will not be disturbed by the destruction of the Union; but it will gather fierceness and energy, and will continue until the last chain forged for the enslavement of men on this continent, will fall from the limbs of the bondman.
It is obvious then to every man who is neither a fool nor a fanatic, that the secessionists are as surely working for the extinction of slavery, as they are for the dismemberment of the Government. While they seem to know it not, they are doing infinitely more to liberate their slaves, than all the abolitionists of the country; and it is very possible that God Almighty has stricken them with judicial blindness, that, in their hot zeal for the dominance of slavery, and in their fierce lust for the wages of unhallowed ambition, HIS own right arm might be bared in the liberation of every captive."
(Des Moines Iowa State Register, January 23, 1861)
Unionblue
__________________ "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
ABE LINCOLN, letter to Michael Hahn [ Gov. of
Louisiana] March 13, 1864:
"I barely suggest for your private consideration,
whether some of the colored people may not be let
in--as, for instance, the very intelligent, and
espcially those who have fought gallantly in our
ranks. They would probably help, in some trying time
to come, to keep the jewel of liberty in the family of
freedom."
_Battle Cry of Freedom_, McPherson, p.707
(Note he doesn't say ALL........hmmm)
__________________ Thea
No one has permission to use any material from any of my posts on any CWT forum, the archives, or any other forum without my express written permission.
Letter from J.L.M. Curry of Alabama to Gov. Hicks of
Maryland
Jabez L. M. Curry was born in Georgia but moved to
Alabama and took up a law practice. After service in
the state legislature he was elected to Congress in
1856. He was appointed commissioner to Maryland by
Gov. A.B. Moore and then served in the Confederate
Congress until defeated for re-election in 1863. He
then served as lieutenant colonel of the 5th Alabama
Cavalry. The text of his letter to Gov. Hicks of
Maryland can be found in OR Ser. IV, vol. 1, pp.
38-42. The picture is taken from North & South
magazine, vol. 4, no. 4 (2001).
J.L.M. Curry
ANNAPOLIS, MD., December 28, 1860.
Hon. THOMAS H. HICKS,
Annapolis, Md.:
SIR: The Governor of the sovereign State of Alabama
has appointed me a commissioner to the sovereign State
of Maryland "to consult and advise" with the Governor
and Legislature thereof "as to what is best to be done
to protect the rights, interests, and honor of the
slave-holding States," menaced and endangered by
recent political events. Having watched with painful
anxiety the growth, power, and encroachments of
anti-slaveryism, and anticipating for the party held
together by this sentiment of hostility to the rights
and institutions of the Southern people a probable
success, too fatally realized, in the recent
Presidential election, the General Assembly of
Alabama, on the 24th of February, 1860, adopted joint
resolutions providing, on the happening of such a
contingency, for a convention of the State "to
consider, determine, and do whatever the rights,
interests, and honor of Alabama require to be done for
their protection." In accordance with this authority
the Governor has called a convention to meet on the
7th day of January, 1861, and on the 24th instant
delegates were elected to that body. Not content with
this simple but significant act of convoking the
sovereignty of the people, the State affirmed her
reserved and undelegated right of secession from the
confederacy, and intimated that continued and
unceasingly violent assaults upon her rights and
equality might "constrain her to a reluctant but early
exercise of that invaluable right." Recognizing the
common interests and destiny of all the States holding
property in the labor of Africans, and "anxiously
desiring their co-operation in a struggle which perils
all they hold most dear," Alabama pledged herself to a
"cordial participation in any and every effort which,
in her judgment, will protect the common safety,
advance the common interest, and serve the common
cause."
To secure concert and effective co-operation between
Maryland and Alabama is in a great degree the object
of my mission. Under our federative system each State,
being necessarily the sole judge of the extent of
powers delegated to the general agent and controlling
the allegiance of her citizens, must decide for
herself in case of wrong upon the mode and measure of
redress. Within the Union the States have absolutely
prohibited themselves from entering into treaties,
alliances, and confederations, and have made the
assent of Congress a condition precedent to their
entering into agreements or compacts with other
States. This constitutional inhibition has been
construed to include "every agreement, written or
verbal, formal or informal, positive or implied, by
the mutual understanding of the parties." Without
indorsing this sweeping judicial dictum, it will be
conceded that if the grievance or apprehension of
danger be so great as to render necessary or advisable
a withdrawal from the confederacy there can be between
the States similarly imperiled, prior to separation,
only an informal understanding for prospective concert
and federation. To enter into a binding "agreement or
compact" would violate the Constitution, and the South
should be careful not to part with her distinguishing
glory of having never, under the most aggravating
provocations, departed from the strictest requirements
of the Federal covenant nor suggested any proposition
infringing upon the essential equality of the
co-States. It is, nevertheless, the highest dictate of
wisdom and patriotism to secure, so far as can be
constitutionally done, "a mutual league, united
thoughts and counsels," between those whose hopes and
hazards are alike joined in the enterprise of
accomplishing deliverance from Abolition domination.
To Your Excellency or so intelligent a body as the
Legislature of Maryland it would be superfluous to
enter into an elaborate statement of the policy and
purposes of the party which, by the recent election,
will soon have the control of the General Government.
The bare fact that the party is sectional and hostile
to the South is a full justification for the
precautionary steps taken by Alabama to provide for
the escape of her citizens from the peril and dishonor
of submission to its rule. Superadded to the sectional
hostility the fanaticism of a sentiment which has
become a controlling political force, giving
ascendancy in every Northern State, and the avowed
purpose, as disclosed in party creeds, declarations of
editors, and utterances of representative men, of
securing the diminution of slavery in the States and
placing it in the course of ultimate extinction, and
the South would merit the punishment of the simple if
she passed on and provided no security against the
imminent danger.
When Mr. Lincoln is inaugurated it will not be simply
a change of administration--the installation of a new
President--but a reversal of the former practice and
policy of the Government, so thorough as to amount to
a revolution. Cover over its offensiveness with the
most artful disguises, and the fact stands out in its
terrible reality that the Government, within the
amplitude of its jurisdiction, real or assumed,
becomes foreign to the South, and is not to recognize
the right of the Southern citizen to property in the
labor of African slaves. Heretofore Congress, the
Executive, and the judiciary have considered
themselves, in their proper spheres, as under a
constitutional obligation to recognize and protect as
property whatever the States ascertained and
determined to be such. Now, the opinion of nearly
every Republican is, that the slave of a citizen of
Maryland, in possession of and in company with his
master, on a vessel sailing from Baltimore to Mobile,
is as free as his master, entitled to the same rights,
privileges, and immunities, as soon as a vessel has
reached a marine league beyond the shores of a State
and is outside the jurisdiction of State laws. The
same is held if a slave be carried on the territory or
other property belonging to the United States, and it
is denied by all Republicans that Congress or a
Territorial Legislature or any individuals can give
legal existence to slavery in any Territory of the
United States. Thus, under the new Government,
property which existed in every one of the States save
one when the Government was formed, and is recognized
and protected in the Constitution, is to be proscribed
and outlawed. It requires no argument to show that
States whose property is thus condemned are reduced to
inferiority and inequality.
Such being the principles and purposes of the new
Government and its supporters, every Southern State is
deeply interested in the protection of the honor and
equality of her citizens. Recent events occurring at
the Federal capital and in the North must demonstrate
to the most incredulous and hopeful that there is no
intention on the part of the Republicans to make
concessions to our just and reasonable demands or
furnish any securities against their wrongdoing. If
their purposes were right and harmless, how easy to
give satisfactory assurances and guaranties. If no
intention to harm exists, it can be neither unmanly
nor unwise to put it out of their power to commit
harm. The minority section must have some other
protection than the discretion or sense of justice of
the majority, for the Constitution as interpreted,
with a denial of the right of secession or State
interposition, affords no security or means of redress
against a hostile and fanatical majority. The action
of the two committees in the Senate and House of
Congress shows an unalterable purpose on the part of
the Republicans to reap the fruits of their recent
victory, and to abate not a jot or tittle of their
Abolition principles. They refuse to recognize our
rights of property in slaves, to make a division of
the territory, to deprive themselves of their assumed
constitutional power to abolish slavery in the
Territories or District of Columbia, to increase the
efficiency of the fugitive slave law, or make
provision for the compensation of the owners of
runaway or stolen slaves, or place in the hands of the
South any protection against the rapacity of an
unscrupulous majority.
If our present undoubted constitutional rights were
reaffirmed in, if possible, more explicit language, it
is questionable whether they would meet with more
successful execution. Anti-slavery fanaticism would
probably soon render them nugatory. The sentiment of
the sinfulness of slavery seems to be embedded in the
Northern conscience. An infidel theory has corrupted
the Northern heart. A French orator said the people of
England once changed their religion by act of
Parliament. Whether true or not, it is not probable
that the settled convictions at the North, intensely
adverse to slavery, can be changed by Congressional
resolutions or constitutional amendments. Under
Republican rule the revolution will not be confined to
slavery and its adjuncts. The features of our
political system which constitute its chief excellence
and distinguish it from absolute governments are to be
altered. The radical idea of this confederacy is the
equality of the sovereign States and their voluntary
assent to the constitutional compact. This, from
recent indications, is to be changed, so that to a
great extent power is to be centralized at Washington,
Congress is to be the final judge of its powers,
States are to be deprived of a reciprocity and
equality of rights, and a common government, kept in
being by force, will discriminate offensively and
injuriously against the property of a particular
geographical section.
With Alabama, after patient endurance for years and
earnest expostulation with the Northern States, the
reluctant conviction has become fixed that there is no
safety for her in a hostile Union governed by an
interested sectional majority. As a sovereign State,
vitally interested in the preservation and security of
African slavery, she will exercise the right of
withdrawing from the compact of union. Most earnestly
does she desire the co-operation of sister Southern
States in a new confederacy, based on the same
principles as the present. Having no ulterior or
unavowed purposes to accomplish, seeking peace and
friendship with all people, determined that her slave
population, not to be increased by importations from
Africa, shall not be localized and become redundant by
excess of growth beyond liberty of expansion, she most
cordially invites the concurrent action of all States
with common sympathies and common interests. Under an
abolition Government the slave-holding States will be
placed under a common ban of proscription, and an
institution, interwoven in the very frame-work of
their social and political being, must perish
gradually or speedily with the Government in active
hostility to it. Instead of the culture and
development of the boundless capacities and productive
resources of their social system, it is to be
assaulted, humbled, dwarfed, degraded, and finally
crushed out.
To some of the States delaying action for new
securities the question of submission to a dominant
abolition majority is presented in a different form
from what it was a few weeks ago. One State has
seceded; others will soon follow. Without discussing
the propriety of such action, the remaining States
must act on the facts as they exist, whether of their
own creation or approval or not. To unite with the
seceding States is to be their peers as confederates
and have an identity of interests, protection of
property, and superior advantages in the contest for
the markets, a monopoly of which has been enjoyed by
the North. To refuse union with the seceding States is
to accept inferiority, to be deprived of an outlet for
surplus slaves, and to remain in a hostile Government
in a hopeless minority and remediless dependence. It
gives me pleasure to be the medium of communicating
with you, and through you to the Legislature of
Maryland when it shall be convened. I trust that
between Maryland and Alabama, and other States having
a homogeneous population, kindred interests, and an
inviting future of agricultural, mining, mechanical,
manufacturing, commercial, and political success, a
union, strong as the tie of affection and lasting as
the love of liberty, will soon be formed, which shall
stand as a model of a free, representative,
constitutional, voluntary republic.
I have the honor to be, with much respect, your
obedient servant,
No one has permission to use any material from any of my posts on any CWT forum, the archives, or any other forum without my express written permission.
"Madison's contributions to the discussions, notably
through his published _Federalist Papers_, were
seminal, and the evidence shows plainly that much of
his argument rests on Hume's [IM-]moral philosophy.
Indeed, Madison had the same world view as the great
men of the Scottish Enlightenment. For him, like
them, the best government was delivered by an elite of
the virtuous and wise managing power for the greatest
good of all."
--T.M. Devine, _Scotland's Empire_, p181
Thanks for bumping this most interesting thread back up to the top. At the very least, it shows that you have interest enough in this forum to dig into the archives. Right on!
Quote:
For him, like
them, the best government was delivered by an elite of
the virtuous and wise managing power for the greatest
good of all."
What do you think about this piece of your post? Every toyed with that idea yourself? I have, on occasion, given consideration to like thoughts. It might make an interesting thread in the general chat section.
Ole
__________________ I never knew a man who wished to be himself a slave. Consider if you know any good thing that no man desires for himself. A. Lincoln
Please, Ole, since you say you have "toyed with such ideas" I would be most interested in hearing your thoughts. Would you care to elaborate? Perhaps if you do, others will join in. Then we can make it into a thread.
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