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.
Wouldnt the fact that it was contrary to US Law for Britain to have any additional Western Hemisphere positions Re Monroe doctrine, make any prevention of that sort of move legal?
Respectfully,
Matt
This is the philosophical problem: the elevation of the law above the fundamental human right to self-determination.
So the logic works like this: people in some seceding states hypothetically wish to revert to British citizenship. Because this involves a breach of the Monroe Doctrine the people should not be allowed to have what they want. Better to deprive some people of their liberty to choose their own allegiance rather than breach the Doctrine.
This is what boggles my mind. It's the ease with which so many perfectly decent people accept the notion that the right to determine one's own nationality can just be swept aside because it clashes with U.S. interests or some entirely contrived "Doctrine". Laws that prohibit the right to determine one's own nationality are bad laws, and should be disobeyed.
Bill,
I honestly don't believe Britain would have taken them back even if certain CSA states wanted it. If the Empire did so, it risked war with the US over a doctrine the British legitimized via enforcement of it by the Royal Navy earlier in the century. Even if the US was defeated by the CSA, it still had plenty of untapped resources and motives to go after Britain if it came down to the wire. While another war was hardly ideal, since Britain built the Alabama and other CSA cruisers, why shouldnt they feel some of the pain as a consequence. Since Britain had taken a severe drubbing in Afghanistan 20 years before, and had just finished restoring the pre-sepoy rebellion relations with the Indians, another war was hardly what its policy makers were clamoring for.
Respectfully,
Matt
Neil,
I admire Jefferson as well and wanted to share some of his comments.
Conquest is not in our principles. It is inconsistent with our government.
Force is the vital principle and immediate parent of despotism.
The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions that I wish it to be always kept alive.
When the people fear their government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty.
To compel a man to subsidize with his taxes the propagation of ideas which he disbelieves and abhors is sinful and tyrannical.
__________________ "The sword is mighty, but principles laugh at swords. Overwhelming force may crush truth to earth but, crushed or not the truth is still the truth." Regards, Ashley
In most contexts you are the torch-bearers of liberty; but in your own backyard you are perfectly prepared to be ruthless advocates of coercion.
You seem to forget that there was no widespread clamor in the north to force the south back into the Union. Many politicians like Dan Sickles said they should be allowed to go in peace.
But once the south attacked Federal troops at Sumter everything changed. The north came to realize that the south was not looking for a peaceful solution. Everything that happened to south during and after the war was their own fault.
How many peoples have the English subdued in their backyard? Welsh, Scottish, Irish.
Paratroopers gunning down Irish protestors on Bloody Sunday or the Jacobites being massacred after Culloden is your idea of self-determination?
Quote:
It's the ease with which so many perfectly decent people accept the notion that the right to determine one's own nationality can just be swept aside because it clashes with U.S. interests or some entirely contrived "Doctrine".
No different than the British. The Kaiser building a world class navy comes to mind.
__________________
Last edited by Admiral_Porter; 11-28-2005 at 03:35 PM.
Sam:
He tried but had to ultimately admit that it couldn't be separated from the whole.
Very interesting observations and, if he's right, there was no perceptable correlation between ownership and voting for or against secession!
I was more fascinated by his premise and that awesome database he and his people were working on.
Ole
And from that very program:
"No respected historian has argued for decades that the Civil War was fought over tariffs, that abolitionists were merely hypocrites, or that only constitutional concerns drove secession." [Edward Ayers, 18 Oct 05 presentation on "The Causes of the Civil War"]
If I'm not mistaken, your basic premise is that, since the South didn't industrialize, and since tariffs were placed on products of industry and not farming, then the tariff only acted to protect the northern industrialists, and not the Southern farmer. To this, I must disagree. Tariffs on agricultural products such as many of those I listed before helped support domestic prices (to varying degrees) for the producers of those products - farmers.
While tariffs on manufactures may have helped the respective industry, whether it was iron, wool, rum making or shipbuilding, tariffs on the raw materials used worked against them, and often to the benefit of farmer.
Quote:
With all due respect wouldn't factory produced items be needed in order to make those products you just listed?
Many of the products listed are direct crops harvested from farms. Whether sugar for instance needed to be processed seems irrelevant to me - it was entirely a product of the South, and the tariff on it benefitted Lousiana to the detriment of Massachusetts.
Cedarstripper,
You understood correctly. As for those farm produced goods, each state capitalized on its assets. To take your example of Louisiana, it in turn, lacked things that were heavily traded in Massachusetts such as rum and Whale oil. Since the South was so busy exporting cotton, there was little room on the docks for other exportable goods. On the farms themselves, the various implements of the farming business were made industrially, bought from companies such as Sears and Roebuck. People and inventions such as Cyrus McCormick and the mechanized combine come to mind. Thus in order to successfully farm, especially post Civil War, you needed industrially created technology. Before the war it was true as well, look at how the south took to the cotton gin.
Respectfully,
Matt
Last edited by milhistbuff1; 11-28-2005 at 04:31 PM.
You seem to forget that there was no widespread clamor in the north to force the south back into the Union. Many politicians like Dan Sickles said they should be allowed to go in peace.
But once the south attacked Federal troops at Sumter everything changed. The north came to realize that the south was not looking for a peaceful solution. Everything that happened to south during and after the war was their own fault.
This is the purest fantasy. I invite you to search the historical record and find a single word uttered by Lincoln which suggested that he was minded to recognise the Confederacy until they fired on Sumter.
Quote:
How many peoples have the English subdued in their backyard? Welsh, Scottish, Irish.
Paratroopers gunning down Irish protestors on Bloody Sunday or the Jacobites being massacred after Culloden is your idea of self-determination?
You can dangle that bait for as long as you like, but I’m not biting. You may, if it pleases you, construct an argument showing England to be the most unscrupulous nation on earth. I don’t care. It is no defence of what the U.S. did in 1861-1865. What you are uttering, in effect, is the time-honoured plea of the naughty schoolboy: “Please, Miss, the others were doing it too.”
(Having said that, I am amused beyond words to find that you believe that some issue of self-determination was involved in the 1745 Jacobite Rebellion. Who would have thought that one of Bud Robertson’s pupils could show himself up as such a dunce? You presumably think that Culloden was a battle fought between Scottish & English armies. And, presumably, that “Braveheart” is an historical source. That’s rather sweet.)
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