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.
I appear to have offended you and for that I apologize.
Sincerely,
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
It is actually amusing how offended some get when they find their heroes compared w/ the German soldier of WWII. Superb soldiers being compared should be a compliment. But accusing a man of being Hitler is just poor form and is far beneath a man who is a teacher. I might ask, Mobileboy, that you take a moment reread your post and ask yourself how you might react if one of your students spoke to you in such a way. I hope that you would censure any student that gave you a Nazi Salute. Not being a teacher I might just not be politic in my reaction.
Neil, needs no defence as his writings on this board have ALWAYS been well researched, well presented and above all most polite. All that is asked is that when you disagree or question someones facts, please back them up. WE, all of us who regularly participate, are here to learn.
Many of my own conclusions and opinions have been formed, shaped and some even changed by other members of this board. Just as an example is my appreciation and respect for Genl Forrest, also is my own belief that the Civil War was indeed over Slavery in that it was the ONE overriding source and cause. I did not believe this when I first came to this board and in fact in the archives my rather vehement defence of the average CS soldier not fighting for slavery w/ Mrs Connie Boone might be rather interesting reading. I still do not believe that the average CS soldier was fighting for slavery, but his politicians were. Thus whether a slaveowner or not every CS soldier was fighting for slavery. Every CS politician that got the ball rolling I can find reference to was a slaveowner and very few had the integrity to find their way to the sharp end and back up their beliefs w/ their own blood. THe same can be said for all too many US politicians of the day.
I am sometimes referred to as the Yankee Mod (when certain members aren't calling me worse things) and Aphillbilly the Reb Mod. I am tempted to agree somewhat, both Tommy and I have our disagreements and I doubt in a round table that we would have much to say to each other. But Aphillbilly does his research and puts forward evidence of one sort or another to back up his opinions as I try to as well. There is a bias in everything we say and do, it is a bias of one sort or another. To be honest I don't give a care what someone on this board votes for today unless I can see it reflected in the views of the 19th Century. I don't care if Tommy or Neil, Dawna or Ole etc are screaming liberals or rabid Republicans. Most of us are here trying to pick up something new. We aren't going to learn a thing if we keep finding ourselves at each others necks over imagined slights and insults. Quite frankly, I've not seem Ami or Mike (The Mod Supremos) angry... I don't want to. Ami has already warned the members of this board to play nice.
Mobileboy, SgtCSA, Albaman, Dawna etc are all a valid interesting batch of people to read from the other side of the aisle. Valid points, usually well reasoned thoughts and points from a perspective other than my own; in short a chance to learn. I would hope you would do the same and try and listen and explore the points put forward by Neil and others from the other side of your aisle. A chance to learn something from each other should be embraced.
__________________ 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
About 15% of all white families in Tennessee owned slaves. Tennessee refused to secede in February 1861 when a state-wide referrendum was taken on the issue. It was not until Lincoln called for 75,000 volunteers to "supress a domestic insurrection" that Tennessee left the Union. For Tennessee, the issue of slavery was not decisive.
Please keep in mind that slavery was protected by the U. S. Constitution and that the Supreme Court had ruled that "neither congress nor the president has the authority to end the practice. Only the individual states can end slavery."
This clearly says that the Republican position of not allowing the expansion of slavery was illegal and unconstitutional. The passage of the 13th Amendment was necessary to change the Constitution so as to make the Republican position legal, post facto.
Also keep in mind that there were still slaves in New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware as well as "border states." In the North slavery had been ended by gradual emancipation which did not cover all persons at once. This
means the issue is not as clear as some wish to think.
Was there a slave power? Of course. There have always been elites. Is there an economic elite today? Sure. Do we go to war because of the wishes of the elite? Maybe. So, what is new? What is the issue?
About 15% of all white families in Tennessee owned slaves. Tennessee refused to secede in February 1861 when a state-wide referrendum was taken on the issue.
According to my figures from the 1860 Census, statewide, 25% of Tennessee families were slaveholders. Tennessee seems also to provide a good example of the correlation between the incidence of slaveholding and the approval of secession. In the Eastern counties such as Seveir (7% slaveholders), Polk (5%), Johnson (7%) and Carter (7%), the initiative to secede never gained support, while secession maintained popularity in the central counties such as Davidson (38%), Giles (44%), Montgomery (47%), Williamson (57%), and the Western counties like Haywood (62%) and Fayette (71%).
Quote:
Please keep in mind that slavery was protected by the U. S. Constitution and that the Supreme Court had ruled that "neither congress nor the president has the authority to end the practice. Only the individual states can end slavery."
This clearly says that the Republican position of not allowing the expansion of slavery was illegal and unconstitutional.
Since prohibiting the expansion of slavery was limited to the federal territories, and the Constitution empowers Congress to regulate its territories, can you explain how this was "clearly illegal and unconstitutional?"
Quote:
Also keep in mind that there were still slaves in New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware as well as "border states." In the North slavery had been ended by gradual emancipation which did not cover all persons at once. This
means the issue is not as clear as some wish to think.
While the gradual emancipation of slaves might in theory have some slaves still existing in NY and PA in 1860, I think you would have been hardpressed to find any, and the Census did not count any.
About 15% of all white families in Tennessee owned slaves.
This is a statement we often see in various forms in these threads, used to minimise slavery as a cause of the war. After all if so few owned slaves, how could slavery be important? By the same token we often see the arguement, from many of the same people, that the war was caused by northern industrialists.
This brings me to a question. I'll admit in advance that I don't yet know the answer, it is a statistic I have yet to find. It is not in the census as the slave population was, remember that slaves were still counted in determining seats in the House of Representives. Anyway here is the question. What percentage of the population in the north owned factories or railroads?
Neil,
You did offend me ,but you didn't deserve the tongue lashing I gave you.I think after I read cowardly I was unable to focus on anything but anger.I realize I could be a caveman(I probably am) in that regard ,but in my part of the world cowardly is about the same thing as being a croossdresser.I overreacted and I thank you for your apology.Though your on the Yank side I do consider you a friend and that's why I let my temper get the best out of me.I do have a lot of respect for you Neil and I think you're a really smart guy.I really do.Perhaps I let my frustration with some of your conclusions get to me as well.I say I don't but maybe I do have an agenda.I do get frustrated when someone as smart as yourself seems to limit what I see as a great mind.Who knows maybe where we grow up determines are beliefs a great deal.I've told myself for years it doesn't it ,but perhaps I was wrong.In Alabama the thoughts of some of you Yankees are honestly considered as blasphemous as Jesus having a baby with Mary Magdelene.That doesn't make you guys wrong per say I'm just trying to explain to you how it is difficult to accept some of your beliefs.I guess looking at it from the other side of the spectrum you guys probably feel the same way reading our assesment of things.Your apology is accepted and I extend my own.You have shown to be a much better man in this case than me.
In an unrelated event three of our football players were arrested in a drug bust while they were skipping school Friday morning.They were are all starters and good ones at that but football takes a back seat when something like this happens..One of them I'm really close with.He used to come over to the house onca a week for dinner before Katrina.I'm so dissapointed in him.Among other things a group of them apparently took their time with a 16 year old girl.I fear the moral fabric of our country is eroding away for good.
Regards,
Ashley
Ashley,
I've been there, when students you've invested your time, talent and emotions screw up. You sound low on your last post, but I know you're going to keep making it happen for the kids and your team.
I want to point out that the use of "slave power" as synonimous with "south" or "southern" is historically incorrect. New York was the largest slaveholding state at the time of independence and continued to practice slavery well into the Nineteenty Century. Pennsylvania was a slave state and continued to practice slavery for many decades into the Nineteenth century. This, of course, should not allow us to forget the other small states of the Northeast where slavery was practiced.
It would also be accurate to argue that it was the wealthy states which controlled national politics. In 1860 eight of the ten wealthiest states in the Union were in the South. These states also practiced slavery but it is overly simplistic to argue that they dominated national politics because of slavery--wealth had a lot to do with it.
Keep in mind, also, that the Lincoln Administration was powerless to do anything at all about slavery, short of war, because the Supreme Court of the United States had ruled in the Dred Scott Case that "neither the Congress not the President" could end or limit slavery.
Slavery was supported by a national consensus even after it became a "peculiar instutution" practiced almost exclusively in the South.
The argument that slaveholding and support for secession can be correlated does not bear the scrutiny of statistical examination. The county with the largest number of slaves in Tennessee in 1860 was Williamson, yet there was a significant anti-secession vote in Williamson (47%). Franklin County held far fewer slaves but voted 100% for secession. While West Tennessee counties had more slaveholders than any other part of the state there were strong anti-secession votes in that section as well, Hardin and Wayne counties being examples. Indeed, these two counties were much more Unionist in sentiment than the better well known cases in East Tennessee.
The statement that 15% of Tennessee families owned slaves is not open to challenge since it is documented by the 1860 census. I have offered no interpretation of that fact in my posting. The burden of proof, that slavery caused the othe 85% to fight, is on the other side of the argument, not on me. The facts are the facts.
The available evidence from this majority of Tennesseans (and other Southerners) is that they did not much care about slavery, they did care about other issues they perceived to be at stake. This is documented by McPherson, Why Men Fought in the Civil War. This can be documented independently by looking at any collection of letters and diaries written by these men.
The "Slave Power" was a political and economic elite. This group helped bring on the war. Their existence does not explain why Southerners fought any more than Big Business explains why we fought World War One. Indeed, in response to any question about so complex an issue as the causes of a war any one word answer is too simplistic to deserve serious consideration.
I’ve just been reading a number of reviews of William K. Scarborough’s “Masters Of The Big House: Elite Slaveholders Of The Mid-Nineteenth Century South”.
I know of Scarborough because he was the editor of the three volumes of Edmund Ruffin’s diaries, a superlative piece of scholarship. His thoughts are worth considering, even if one doesn’t ultimately agree with his conclusions.
His methodology appears to have been to examine the 1850 and 1860 census returns and identify every individual who owned more than 250 slaves. Some of the findings about these 340 ultra-wealthy people are startling.
In one table he sets out the state of residence of 322 of this total sample. Of these, only 11 lived in Virginia, Maryland & Kentucky combined.
Because most of them owned slaves in several different locations it seems probable that an individual nabob has been counted as, say, four different slave-owners rather than one individual with slaves in four places. And so the number of slave-owners in the South (and, therefore, amongst the population of the Confederate States) has been overstated.
For me the most interesting assertion to emerge from the various reviews was that a considerable number of these ultra-rich planters were of Northern birth. Unfortunately, none of these reviews quantify this precisely:
Scarborough finds surprising and controversial evidence regarding the degree to which these grandees, previously pictured as exclusively southern agriculturists, involved themselves in the wider world of capitalism. Because many of them came from and drew capital from the North, they present a startling contradiction: the richest slaveholders were in fact an odd brand of Yankee capitalist, who tended to oppose disunion until the very last moment…
Another review states:
While there was no "typical" route to wealth, the example of David Hunt might suffice. He moved to Natchez from New Jersey. There he worked in a mercantile firm and married into a wealthy family. Hunt then carefully managed several agricultural properties and owned around 600 slaves in the 1850s (p. 128). Many of these planters quickly diversified their wealth. At least twenty percent speculated in land, bought shares of bank stock, or invested in commercial empires. These people clearly saw ownership of slaves as the primary means of wealth but also recognized the need to find other avenues to riches. Stephen Duncan provides an interesting case study. The Natchez nabob bought government bonds that yielded an annual income of $12,600 in the late 1850s. His portfolio also included northern railroad stocks and securities. He was worth $2 million in 1855 (pp. 235-7). Men such as Duncan were closely tied to the credit markets of the northeast and might have had as much in common with the investment bankers in New York as they did with the yeomen farmers in the rural South. These close economic ties were imperiled by the Civil War and it is instructive that a significant portion of the elite slaveholders opposed secession.
The review in Virginia Magazine of History and Biography offers the following:
Scarborough devotes four chapters to the elite’s political attitudes during the sectional controversy, Civil War, and Reconstruction. His conclusions are likely to startle many readers. Planters were not particularly interested in politics because they were too absorbed in their business dealings. The large planters divided rather evenly between Whig and Democrat in their political preferences, and probably the only thing they had in common was their abhorrence of abolitionists. Their reactions to the crisis over slavery’s expansion in the territories was conservative, and except for a few in the cotton South, most distrusted secession and wanted to stay in the Union so long as they could obtain security for slavery. Planters were taken into secession rather than leading the masses there, and during the war some of the elite continued to be Unionist rather than secessionist. Scarborough remarks that planters during the war were more interested in their profits than in the success of the Confederacy.
I look forward to reading this important work. At the very least it seems to shed an interesting light on the final paragraph of your post 49, with which I fully concur.
Bill
Last edited by bill_torrens; 10-24-2005 at 05:57 AM.
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