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.
Again, I refer all to my post number 21. Upon this thread, I make my presumptive stand.
The Generals, Public figures &etc.. I referenced were indeed trying to win the war by promising freedom to slaves & their families upon honorable service in the CS Army. The fact that these Military leaders did, only adds a forte to my prospects. If the CS Army had prevailed, through slaves-turned-soldiers, no amount of Top-Class Southern caste would have prevented these Generals from doing what they had promised. Would you state with any degree of certainty, the people of the South, would have gone against the sacred word of 'the' Robert E. Lee. I highly doubt it, myself. Gen. Lee would most likely have been elected President, if this has any bearing to the matter at hand. Other personages such as Gen. Johnston would have stuck to his word. They would have to fulfill their Military duties and that included freedom to honorably discharged colored soldiers & their families. The people, 70% non-slaveholders, would have followed their beloved leaders such as Lee, Johnston, Benjamin (the Jewish member of the CS cabinet etc. Anyone Southern, wishing to hold-on to slavery, by 1865 and that terrible carnage, would have been 'eyed' like a cat watching a tiny mouse in a well bucket! Slavery, THROUGH the military call for arming slaves, lends credence to the demise of slavery upon a successful war with the North. For the "thought" was already there. "Necessity" or not.
Rob Adams
--------
Rob,
The problem is that when they made that offer they were all but defeated already. By the time they offered emancipation there was nothing that could have been done to save the confederacy. It was just a matter of time. They had no chance of winning at all at that point.
So to postulate a confederate victory we have to diverge from the original timeline at an earlier point, where it was still possible for them to win. That was well before they ever thought of the idea of emancipating their slaves. I would say it was even before Cleburne made his proposal, which was shot down by both JEJ and Jefferson Davis.
Cash,
I must say that I agree with you.They did agree to emacipate the slaves when all hope of victory was lost.However,Rob's point that some leaders in the Confederate military were advocating emancipation even earlier in the war should be noted.I'm not sure and I'm too lazy to look it up ,but I think Clebourne made those statements in 1862.If he made those statements at any time before July 4th,1863,I would confidently say he thought the South could still win the war.
This is off the subject Cash but what if the slave owners were compensated for freeing the slaves.I know they would've resisted but assuming it was done what would you estimate the cost to be.I mean do you think that the federal government pre-Civil War could have afforded it?I have no real answer to this question in mind I was just curious as to a ballpark figure.I'll appreciate your answer.
Cash,
I must say that I agree with you.They did agree to emacipate the slaves when all hope of victory was lost.However,Rob's point that some leaders in the Confederate military were advocating emancipation even earlier in the war should be noted.I'm not sure and I'm too lazy to look it up ,but I think Clebourne made those statements in 1862.
January, 1864, and his proposal was not supported by the top leadership of the confederacy and was suppressed by Jefferson Davis.
Quote:
Originally Posted by MobileBoy
This is off the subject Cash but what if the slave owners were compensated for freeing the slaves.I know they would've resisted but assuming it was done what would you estimate the cost to be.I mean do you think that the federal government pre-Civil War could have afforded it?I have no real answer to this question in mind I was just curious as to a ballpark figure.I'll appreciate your answer.
Thanks,
Ashley
4.5 million slaves at let's say an average of $900 per slave equals $4,050,000,000. Could the nation afford $4 billion? Not immediately, but Lincoln believed it was cheaper than a war. Lincoln's plan was for gradual compensated emancipation, spreading the cost over the years. The slaveholders of Delaware rejected it outright when he offered them compensated emancipation. He was able to convince Congress to approve compensated emancipation for the slaveholders in the District of Columbia, though, and he also persuaded Congress to lay aside funds for an initial compensated emancipation and colonization. The question dealt not only with freedom for the slaves but also with what to do with them once they were freed. It was simple in the North, where they could maintain white supremacy by sheer numbers alone. But in the south there were areas where blacks outnumbered whites, and it would not be possible to maintain white supremacy in the same manner. Much of the opposition to emancipation, both from many Northerners as well as many Southerners, came from those who feared that once emancipated blacks would achieve political and social equality, and then would mix with whites and would intermarry with whites. And then there was also the fear that once freed, blacks and whites would engage in a race war due to the presence of bad feelings from slavery. Lincoln's solution to these was colonization, which he had long supported, as did Henry Clay, Robert E. Lee, James Madison, Thomas Jefferson, and James Monroe, to name a few.
If you recall the preliminary Emancipation Proclamation, Lincoln held out to the confederates the carrot that if they laid down their arms before 1 Jan 1863, they could keep their slaves. His plan then was to work out compensated gradual emancipation. But the confederates fought on.
Hi, Ashley:
General Cleburne's proclamation, "A Plan Which We Believe will Save Our Country" was concepted in his mind in Dec., 1863 but was delivered to mny General and Staff Officers on 2 January 1864. All corps and division commanders were envited to Gen. Johnston's Headquarters' tent that evening at 7:OO pm. Generals Govan, Lowrey, Kelly, Lucius Polk and Granbury by agreed proxy, signed it.
Cleburne said: "It is said (that) slavery is all we are fighting for, and if we give it up we give up all. Even if this were true, which we deny, slavery is not all our enemies are fighting for. It is merely the pretense to establish sectional superiority and a more centralized form of government, and to deprive us of our rights and liberties. We have now briefly proposed a plan which we believe will save our country. It may be imperfect, but in all human probability it will give us our independence. No objection ought to outweigh it which is not weightier than independence."
300,000 armed colored Confederate troops would have been
mustered had it been ratified.
My point is even the discussion of this very subject, with a little more than 50% favoring, leads credence to slavery being abolished. The old Confederate hold-outs, Gens. Bate, Walker & Patton Anderson represented the big slaveholders (I think) and they could have been over-ridden with a bit of Confederate propaganda. Gen. Johnston, in my opinion, didn't squash the idea as much as he was protecting his best Divisional Leader from censure via some CS Congressmen. The CS Congress had (take this into consideration) gave their vote of Congressional Appreciation twice to Gen. Cleburne & his men. The last one, only two mos. previous for the severe mauling of US troops at Ringgold Gap, Georgia.
Gen. Cleburne and MANY other Gen. Officers of the CS Army of Tennessee "had no dog in the slavery fight." Lots of the private soldiers and enlisted men of the Army of Tennessee felt like their officers; to heck with slavery, lets win this war with them freed. (my source: via hundreds of war-date letters)
The Army of Tennessee still had a good chance of winning in 1864. Please bear this in mind.
My point is even the discussion of this very subject, with a little more than 50% favoring, leads credence to slavery being abolished.
No, the only ones who supported it were members of Cleburne's own division. The rest of the Army of Tennessee's commanders found the idea repugnant.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Alabaman
The old Confederate hold-outs, Gens. Bate, Walker & Patton Anderson represented the big slaveholders (I think) and they could have been over-ridden with a bit of Confederate propaganda. Gen. Johnston, in my opinion, didn't squash the idea as much as he was protecting his best Divisional Leader from censure via some CS Congressmen.
He quashed it. Cleburne read his proposal out loud in Johnston's quarters on 2 Jan in the presence of Johnston, Hardee, Walker, Stewart, Stevenson, Hindman, Bate, and Anderson. Anderson called it a "monstrous proposition" and "revolting to Southern sentiment, Southern pride, and Southern honor." [OR Series I, Vol 52, Part 2, p. 598]
Johnston himself reports of that night, "None of the officers to whom the memorial was read favored the scheme; and Major-General Cleburne, as soon as that appeared, voluntarily announced that he would be governed by the opinion of those officers, and put away his paper. The manner of strengthening our armies by using negroes was discussed, and no other thought practicable than that which I immediately proposed to the President." [Ibid., p. 609] The proposal he's speaking of is this:
"But to make victory probable, the army must be strengthened. A ready mode of doing this would be by substituting negroes for all the soldiers on detached or daily duty, as well as company cooks, pioneers, and laborers for engineering service. This would give us at once 10,000 or 12,000 men, and the other armies of the Confederacy might be strengthened in the same proportion. Immediate and judicious legislation would be necessary, however." [Johnston to Davis, 2 Jan 1864, OR, Series I, Vol 32, Part 2, p. 511]
Johnston refused to forward Cleburne's proposal to Richmond. W. H. Walker is the one who forwarded it, outside channels. When Davis received it, his reply was, "Deeming it to be injurious to the public service that such a subject should be mooted, or even known to be entertained by persons possessed of the confidence and respect of the people, I have concluded that the best policy under the circumstances will be to avoid all publicity." [Davis to Walker, 13 Jan 1864, OR, Series I, Vol 52, Part 2, p. 596]
Secretary of War Seddon then wrote to Johnston, "He [Davis] is gratified to infer, from your declining to forward officially General Walker's communication of the memorial, that you neither approved the views advocated in it, nor deemed it expedient that, after meeting as they happily did the disapproval of the council, they should have further dissemination or publicity. ... The dissemination or even promulgation of such opinions under the present circumstances of the Confederacy, whether in the Army or among the people, can be productive only of discouragement, distraction, and dissension. The agitation and controversy which must spring from the presentation of such views by officers high in pulbic confidence are to be deeply deprecated." [Seddon to Johnston, 24 Jan 1864, Ibid., p. 606]
Quote:
Originally Posted by Alabaman
The CS Congress had (take this into consideration) gave their vote of Congressional Appreciation twice to Gen. Cleburne & his men. The last one, only two mos. previous for the severe mauling of US troops at Ringgold Gap, Georgia.
But they didn't know about his proposal in January.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Alabaman
Gen. Cleburne and MANY other Gen. Officers of the CS Army of Tennessee "had no dog in the slavery fight." Lots of the private soldiers and enlisted men of the Army of Tennessee felt like their officers; to heck with slavery, lets win this war with them freed. (my source: via hundreds of war-date letters)
Hundreds? I think you are exaggerating.
In his book, For Cause and Comrades, James M. McPherson says that while only around 20% of the confederate soldiers wrote about fighting for slavery, no confederate soldier at all disagreed with the idea of fighting for slavery. For them there was nothing controversial about the institution of slavery. They not only accepted it, they believed in it.
"The vandals of the North . . . are determined to destroy slavery . . . We must all fight, and I choose to fight for southern rights and southern liberty." [Lunsford Yandell, Jr. to Sally Yandell, April 22, 1861 in James M. McPherson, For Cause and Comrades: Why Men Fought in the Civil War, p. 20]
"A stand must be made for African slavery or it is forever lost." [William Grimball to Elizabeth Grimball, Nov. 20, 1860, Ibid.]
"This country without slave labor would be completely worthless. We can only live & exist by that species of labor; and hence I am willing to fight for the last." [William Nugent to Eleanor Nugent, Sept 7, 1863, Ibid., p. 107]
"Better, far better! endure all the horrors of civil war than to see the dusky sons of Ham leading the fair daughters of the South to the altar." [William M. Thomson to Warner A. Thomson, Feb. 2, 1861, in McPherson., p. 19]
"A captain in the 8th Alabama also vowed 'to fight forever, rather than submit to freeing negroes among us. . . . [We are fighting for] rights and property bequeathed to us by our ancestors.' " [Elias Davis to Mrs. R. L. Lathan, Dec. 10, 1863 in McPherson, p. 107]
"Even though he was tired of the war, wrote a Louisiana artilleryman in 1862, ' I never want to see the day when a negro is put on an equality with a white person. There is too many free n****rs. . . now to suit me, let alone having four millions.' " [George Hamill Diary, March, 1862, in McPherson, p. 109]
"A private in the 38th North Carolina, a yeoman farmer, vowed to show the Yankees ' that a white man is better than a n****r.' " [Jonas Bradshaw to Nancy Bradshaw, April 29, 1862 Ibid.]
"A farmer from the Shenandoah Valley informed his fiancée that he fought to assure 'a free white man's government instead of living under a black republican government.' " [John G. Keyton to Mary Hilbert, Nov. 30, 1861, Ibid.]
"The son of another North Carolina dirt farmer said he would never stop fighting the Yankees, who were 'trying to force us to live as the colored race.' " [Samuel Walsh to Louisa Proffitt, April 11, 1864, Ibid.]
"Some of the boys asked them what they were fighting for, and they answered, 'You Yanks wat us to marry our daughters to the n****rs.' " [Chauncey Cook to parents, May 10, 1864, Ibid.]
"An Arkansas captain was enraged by the idea that if the Yankees won, his 'sister, wife, and mother are to be given up to the embraces of their present dusky male servitors.' " [Thomas Key, diary entry April 10, 1864, Ibid.]
"Another Arkansas soldier, a planter, wrote his wife that Lincoln not only wanted to free the slaves but also 'declares them entitled to all the rights and privileges as American citizens. So imagine your sweet little girls in the school room with a black wooly headed negro and have to treat them as their equal.' " [William Wakefield Garner to Henrietta Garner, Jan 2, 1864, Ibid.]
"[If Atlanta and Richmond fell] we are irrevocably lost and not only will the negroes be free but . . . we will all be on a common level. . . . The negro who now waits on you will then be as free as you are & as insolent as she is ignorant.' " [Allen D. Chandler to wife, July 7, 1864, Ibid.]
Quote:
Originally Posted by Alabaman
The Army of Tennessee still had a good chance of winning in 1864. Please bear this in mind.
Rob Adams
----
You and I disagree on this, Rob. This is all my opinion, but not with Grant about to head East and Sherman about to take over in the West. It was a done deal by January of 1864, and from then on, in my opinion, it was only a matter of time.
Though many love McPherson, his anti-Southern bias is well-known. Left-wing academics with their dream of a great shining social utopia, always seek to scapegoat the South for past wrongs. This has led to Southern stereotypes that are deemed politically correct in today's liberal media and academia.
Northern arrogance concerning the slavery issue is amazing to me, especially since the Union was founded on slavery. Just because slavery died out in the North first, it places them on a higher moral plane? Northern cities were still founded on the blood & sweat of slaves. Northerners just replaced African exploitation with that of the starving Irish. If the North was so moral, and the War was about freeing the slave, then why was West Virginia accepted into the Union as a state where slavery was permitted up to a certain age?
Pasting quotes of Southerners making racial statements hardly proves a thing, since you can find just as many comments, if not more, in the North. Why not paste some information concerning the Anti-negro laws that began popping up in northern states before and after the war, including Lincoln's own Illinois. Blacks weren't even allowed to enter, much less live, in certain Northern towns. The South has hardly cornered the market on racists. Do your research on the KKK. Some of the largest memberships were in the NORTH, especially in good old Indiana.
So, ease up a little on the arrogance. There's blame enough to go around on both sides.
Regards,
John W.
__________________ Ancestors in CSA Army: 51st VA, 54th VA, 45th VA, 50th VA, 24th VA
Though many love McPherson, his anti-Southern bias is well-known.
His bias is toward the truth. Some might consider that antisouthern.
Quote:
Originally Posted by JohnW in E.TN
Left-wing academics with their dream of a great shining social utopia, always seek to scapegoat the South for past wrongs. This has led to Southern stereotypes that are deemed politically correct in today's liberal media and academia.
Nothing but an ad hominem fallacy that doesn't address anything substantive.
Why don't you instead address the actual points? Can you provide a letter from a confederate written during the war disagreeing that slavery was one of the rights for which they were fighting?
Quote:
Originally Posted by JohnW in E.TN
Northern arrogance concerning the slavery issue is amazing to me, especially since the Union was founded on slavery. Just because slavery died out in the North first, it places them on a higher moral plane? Northern cities were still founded on the blood & sweat of slaves. Northerners just replaced African exploitation with that of the starving Irish. If the North was so moral, and the War was about freeing the slave, then why was West Virginia accepted into the Union as a state where slavery was permitted up to a certain age?
More ad hominem lacking substance.
West Virginia was not allowed admittance until they had placed a gradual emancipation clause in their state constitution. Slavery was going to be abolished in West Virginia, even without the 13th Amendment.
Quote:
Originally Posted by JohnW in E.TN
Pasting quotes of Southerners making racial statements hardly proves a thing, since you can find just as many comments, if not more, in the North.
Perhaps you should read the post again to see what it was about. You seem to be confused about what's being discussed.
Cash:
I wish to ascertain if you'll agree with me on just one WBTS matter. ;-) Here is my test...I'm sincere and not being inflammatory. This concerns Cleburne for the legality of being on the correct Post by Moderators.
Re: The battle of Missionary Ridge, Tennessee, on the Confederate Right flank 'about' Tunnel Hill/Billy Goat Hill, in 1863.
Answer (please) yes or no, only.
Did Gen. P.R. Cleburne, C.S. Army and his men soundly defeat Gen. W.T. Sherman, U.S.Army and his men during this battle?
My answer is: YES
What is your answer? Lets see if we agree on one thing.
Thanks for the information I asked about possible compensated emancipation.I would agree with you that Confederate poltical power shot down the emancipating the slaves until there was but a miraculous hope for victory.Mcpherson in my opinion is a great writer who I enjoy reading ,but I could see how he could be perceived as favoring the Union side of the argument.Cash I don't see your point as to why did Confederate soldiers not write letters saying they weren't fighting for slavery.Are troops from Iraq now writing letters home saying that they're not fighting for gay rights overthere.Yea that's a bad example but the recipient of the letter would be very familiar with the author and they wouldn't waste time stating something probably already understood.Just a thought.States rights and independence shows up in tons of letters so clearly that was more important than slavery to most Confederate enlisted men.
Hey Rob,
I've read several books about Stonewall Jackson,but I haven't seen him make reference to freeing the slaves.In the movie Gods and Generals he talks about some in this government want for slaves to be free(paraphrasing)is there any historical documentation to that.Also I've read where Robert E. Lee supported emancipation, but I've always seen the quotes from another person referring to it not him directly.There was a very interesting story after the war about a black guy coming to the altar beside Robert E Lee during church.This kind've freaked everyone out(blacks usually stayed in the balcony) but Lee just prayed as usual and then the Congregation followed his example.
Have a good one Buddy,
Ashley
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