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.
Reviewing these threads after a couple of years participation, I am struck by the amount of words written on subjects which are quite incidental to the war itself: the attack on Fort Sumter and the institution of slavery.
If the war was actually started by the firing on Sumter it follows that it was a conflict between two independent nations caused by one attacking the armed forces of the other. Such a war could be expected to conclude in a peace treaty. Was that what happened? No, because the war was fought by the U.S. government to suppress a rebellion. So was the firing on Sumter the key act of "rebellion"? Of course not. The key act of "rebellion", in the case of each state, was the passing of the act or ordinance of secession. The war happened because of these acts of secession and would have happened if Sumter had never been fired on. So Sumter really is an irrelevance.
And now for slavery. If the peculiar institution had been abolished throughout the United States long before 1861, and 11 states had seceded in that year, would the United States government have fought a war to drag them back into the Union? The answer has to be “yes”. Lincoln himself said often enough that he was fighting to preserve the Union rather than to free the slaves. It follows, therefore, that the issue dividing us on these boards is whether the departing states had the right to unilateral secession from the Union. That, and nothing else. Slavery is important only to the extent that it was, or was not, a motivating force behind secession. But the motives for secession and the right to secession, if such a right exists, are completely different things and should never be confused. Any yet they have been confused, constantly, for the last 140 years.
And one has to suspect that the confusion is quite deliberate. Dressing up a war against secession in the clothing of emancipation can hardly hurt the Union cause. And there has also been an awful lot of wilful self-deception. How many of the Federal soldiers who mutinied after the Emancipation Proclamation, or who mistreated the contrabands who came within their lines, sat around with brandy and cigars at G.A.R. meetings 30 years later, congratulating each other in maudlin style on their grand, humanitarian behaviour in freeing the slaves? How many of them probably even believed their own words?
Last edited by bill_torrens; 10-01-2005 at 03:48 AM.
Bill, I shouldn't be suprised any more. Simply put, would the South have seceded w/out Slavery? That is the question Neil asked and dedicated an entire thread full of excellent scholarship & research to the subject. He convinced me on the matter and has certainly made others think (if they're honest to themselves on the subject).
Would the War have been fought w/out Ft Sumter being fired upon, probably the spark would have been lit elsewhere. But Ft Sumter was the spark that lit the inferno of the Civil War. Calling it insignificant and irrelevent... I suppose if you called Pearl Harbor or the Zimmerman Wire insignificant & irrelevent as well.
As to the right of secession, that has been covered to no ones satisfaction as arguments can be made either way. I know your opinion & you know mine.
Dressing up the CS as though slavery had nothing to do w/ it is willful deception as well. In reference to scoundrals who sat around the fire in a GAR hall after the war; there doubtless were too many. I'll wager some of the murderers from Ft Pillow were perched around fires in the South doing the same kind of bragging.
__________________ Shane Christen
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For in much wisdom is much grief: and he that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow. Eccl 1:18
Bill- Points well taken! Of your three premises, i am in complete concord with your first two. Secesson was the essential ingredient to the rebellion hence the war. The Civil War is an auto da fe in which Ft Sumter was simply the matchstick. If not Sumter, then Ft Pickens, or the seized arsenals, or a piracy on the high seas; twould have been something.
And the key issue to the war was maintaining the integrity of the Union, that indeed was paramount. It so happens that the handling of the existence of slavery was the acute inflammation to which, so it proved, drastic measures need be applied. It is as you say, the motive and the right of secession are clear and separate issues. Many southerners who beleived in the right of secession doubted the wisdom of its application. And many a secessionist used any reason, pretext, or falsehood to justify secession. You have championed the issue of the cultural basis of the war, and i beleive that that is truly the key issue. The South set up shop apart to protect her cultural, societal, and economic interests, rightly or wrongly, against what they perceived as a perilous, intense, and heightening threat against those interests. Ultimately, the South would have considered the danger to herself so great that no amount of legality would have mattered- what matters is the sense of preservation. Secession, then, would happen whether legal or no, Constitutionally protected or no, what anyone else thought of it be buggered. Drives to secession or independence happen because of who a people are and what they believe.
And your last premise, wilful or at least unappraised deception and the sacrifice of truth- a common casualty to the human condition, and exacerbated by war. Fill the armies by appeals to patriotism, when that no longer works, dragooning is the next best thing. Even now, much of the whining and lambasting that fills our airwaves and Press is so much deception and appeal to non-reason that it makes me pull my hair and gnash my teeth. i feel as if I'm being 'dragooned' with a club of stridency.
__________________ 'It is the soldier, not the reporter, who has given us freedom of the press. It is the soldier, not the poet, who has given us freedom of speech. It is the soldier, not the campus organizer, who has given us the freedom to demonstrate. It is the soldier, who salutes the flag, who serves beneath the flag, whose coffin is draped by the flag, who allows the protester to burn the flag'
I firmly believe slavery was a bit more important than the recent quote, particularly to those looking up at the chains and whips and perhaps watching their loved ones being hauled down a dusty road towards another owner. Secession as previously discussed was a bit more complicated.
"And the key issue to the war was maintaining the integrity of the Union, that indeed was paramount."
That alone, would have made me consider joining the US Army, not to mention regular pay and rations. The Confederate cause, noble as it might have been in the minds of many of us still living, was alas tainted with rebellion.
Thanks for your reply. I am pleased to see that we are of a similar mind on this.
What I wrote does not, of course, constitute a criticism of the Union cause. It is merely an attempt to clarify what that cause was, and it pleases me that I can find common ground with someone who is "on the other side of the fence".
I must admit, old friend, when I first saw the title of this thread, I laughed until I had tears in my eyes!
Not because I consider the thread pointless or unimportant, but only because I knew that Bill 'Bull' Torrens could be the only one to consider such a point of view! Thank you for the shot of bracing refreshment on a subject I thought had been beaten to death.
And of course, I disagree with your premise.
Thanks again,
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
What is the value of integrity based on compulsion
Bill:
Thank you for starting yet another interesting Thread. And I would venture to say that integrity is valueless when based on compulsion, or the belief in this case that the Union cause was more just, moral and noble than that of the Confederate States of America, since the Union ideal was apparently "ordained by God." How dare one leave such a divinely inspired democracy.
I wonder what cause, since it obviously wasn't liberty or self-determination, would have been considered acceptable for the South to leave the Union in peace?
It never ceases to amaze me how elementary this really is. The cause of the Civil War was Lincoln's refusal to let the South secede, and the motives as opposed to rights have been muddied far too long now. Irreconcilible differences led to the war, but secession caused the war.
At some point in time, the United States decided that the strength of the Union was determined through it's ability to hold the country together by the use of force. And after all, the entire world was watching. Strangely enough, when the war motives changed, the Republican administration decided that it was quite alright to keep killing their own brethren, under the pretext of emancipating the slaves - the same race that the North refused to live with themselves.
Larry noted those "looking up at the chains and whips and perhaps watching their loved ones being hauled down a dusty road towards another owner" is to say the least, a horrific and very real scenario. But lest we forget that tens of thousands of slaves died in appalling conditions on U.S. slave ships; which was far less than the number who died from mistreatment on Southern plantations.
The 'wilful deception and deliberate confusion' is no more apparent than with those who still believe that the creation of the Confederacy was invalid, and that it operated without backbone. I'm certain that the likes of Robert E. Lee would disagree that the Southern cause was without merit.
The South imposed it's 'will' on no one, yet they became the recipients of an onerous army that could not accept the notion that the Southern motive in leaving the Union might not be nefarious. And since Fort Sumter held such insignificant military value and was hundreds of miles away from the nearest state remaining in the Union, it seems ludicrous for anyone to believe that Fort Sumter posed a threat to the security of the United States; making Fort Sumter completely irrelevant.
If it's true that the 'victors' are entitled to write history, then it's a given that some of those victors will actually come to believe their own lies, embellishing the 'truth' in pure patriotic style. There are many accounts of the mistreatment and murder of contrabands by Federal soldiers, all whilst under the guise of 'emancipating the slaves.' And if the Union cause had not been glorified and then later championed as a 'moral cause', who then would have fought the war?
I can well imagine the back-slapping, warm hand-shakes, and contrite nods of agreement that took place over decanters of aged brandy, and well-seasoned cigars.
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The irrelevance of Sumter & slavery 
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