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.
Easy. The confederates' goal was to oppress black slaves and to continue to oppress them. There was no goal of liberty involved. The Federal cause was to maintain the Union, which is the source of strength with which we won our liberty and maintained it, and then later in the war they included the goal of destroying slavery. I fail to see how anyone could seriously claim the confederate cause had any morality or nobility at all.
Cash:
I'm afraid it's not quite that easy for me, and Mr. Davis ( the only American President ever to adopt a black child into his family) and his officers, including Robert E. Lee, did not believe their goal was to oppress black slaves:
"I tried all in my power to avert this war. I saw it coming, for twelve years I worked night and day to prevent it, but I could not. The North was mad and blind; it would not let us govern ourselves, and so the war came, and now it must go on till the last man of this generation falls in his tracks, and his children seize the musket and fight our battle, unless you acknowledge our right to self government. We are not fighting for slavery. We are fighting for Independence, and that, or extermination." Jefferson Davis
"All we ask is to be left alone." Jefferson Davis
"If the Confederacy fails, there should be writtten on its tombstone: Died of a Theory." Jefferson Davis
"I am with the South in life or death, in victory or defeat. I believe the North is about to wage a brutal and unholy war on a people who have done them no wrong, in violation of the Constitution and the fundamental principles of government. They no longer acknowledge that all government derives its validity from the consent of the governed. They are about to invade our peaceful homes, destroy our property, and murder our men and dishonor our women. We propose no invasion of the North, no attack on them, and only ask to be left alone." General Patrick Cleburne
"It is stated in books and papers that Southern children read and study that all the blood shedding and destruction of property of that conflict was because the South rebelled without cause against the best government the world ever saw; that although Southern soldiers were heroes in the field, skillfully massed and led, they and their leaders were rebels and traitors who fought to overthrow the Union, and to preserve human slavery, and that their defeat was necessary for free government and the welfare of the human family.
As a Confederate soldier and as a citizen of Virginia, I deny the charge, and denounce it as a calumny. We were not rebels; we did not fight to perpetuate human slavery, but for our rights and privileges under a government established over us by our fathers and in defense of our homes." Colonel R.H. Lee
Dear tdory,
Welcome to CWT. Interesting premise "Might makes wrong" IMO it depends on the circumstances, and can't be a general principle. Trail of Tears, wrong. Beating the living daylights out of the Japanese military, firebombing, then atomic bombing their cities, occupying the country, replacing their form of government, and informing them that hey, your living god is actually a stunted nerd, was...right.
Dear Matthew
Admittedly it is not an absolute rule, just one that does seem to fit generally throughout history, with some possible exceptions (although I wouldn't have put firebombing and atomic bombing cities on that list of exceptions!! Perhaps you are being facetious/humorous - in that case, good one!).
Quote:
Originally Posted by matthew mckeon
Trouble is, recently the US seems to think it has so much might, it doesn't matter if its actions are right, or even wise.
Well, I'm off to deny some people their rights, at the bidding of my corporate masters.
I'm afraid it's not quite that easy for me, and Mr. Davis ( the only American President ever to adopt a black child into his family) and his officers, including Robert E. Lee, did not believe their goal was to oppress black slaves:
Lee was a military man, and as such he didn't make policy for the confederacy. Davis did, though.
"Slavery and slavery alone was what brought the Confederate States together, however much they might try to argue more elevated arguments about states' rights. No other substantive issues bound them in 1861, and since then it was only the war, the Yankee enemy at their gates, and Jefferson Davis that held them together. Davis, too, went to war to defend his section's right to its own institutions, meaning slavery." [William C. Davis, Jefferson Davis: The Man and His Hour, p. 598]
Davis, of course, was in the forefront of the secession movement to protect slavery: "For myself, I say, as I said on a former occasion, in the contingency of the election of a President on the platform of Mr. Seward's Rochester Speech, let the Union be dissolved." [Jefferson Davis, speech of 6 July 1859, in Dunbar Rowland, editor, Jefferson Davis, Constitutionalist, Vol IV, p. 87, quoted in David M. Potter, Lincoln and His Party in the Secession Crisis, p. 4]
In his farewell address to the US Senate, Davis said, "It has been a belief that we are to be deprived in the Union of the rights which our fathers bequeathed to us -- which has brought Mississippi to her present decision. She has heard proclaimed the theory that all men are created free and equal, and this made the basis of an attack upon her social institutions; and the sacred Declaration of Independence has been invoked to maintain the position of the equality of the races."
Here, as we see, Davis identifies two reasons for secession--an attack on slavery and the possibility of racial equality.
In the first month of the war, in a message to the confederate congress, Davis confirmed that protection of slavery was behind secession:
[begin quote]
As soon, however, as the Northern States that prohibited African slavery within their limits had reached a number sufficient to give their representation a controlling voice in Congress, a persistent and organized system of hostile measures against the rights of the owners of slaves in the Southern States was inaugurated and gradually extended. A continuous series of measures was devised and prosecuted for the purpose of rendering insecure the tenure of property in slaves. Fanatical organizations, supplied with money by voluntary subscriptions, were assiduously engaged in exciting amongst the slaves a spirit of discontent and revolt; means were furnished for their escape from their owners, and agents secretly employed to entice them to abscond; the constitutional provisions for their rendition to their owners was first evaded, then openly denounced as a violation of conscientious obligation and religious duty; men were taught that it was a merit to elude, disobey, and violently oppose the execution of the laws enacted to secure the performance of the promise contained in the constitutional compact; owners of slaves were mobbed and even murdered in open day solely for applying to a magistrate for the arrest of a fugitive slave; the dogmas of these voluntary organizations soon obtained control of the Legislatures of many of the Northern States, and laws were passed providing for the punishment, by ruinous fines and long-continued imprisonment in jails and penitentiaries, of citizens of the Southern States who should dare to ask aid of the officers of the law for the recovery of their property. Emboldened by success, the theater of agitation and aggression against the clearly expressed constitutional rights of the Southern States was transferred to the Congress; Senators and Representatives were sent to the common councils of the nation, whose chief title to this distinction consisted in the display of a spirit of ultra fanaticism, and whose business was not "to promote the general welfare or insure domestic tranquillity," but to awaken the bitterest hatred against the citizens of sister States by violent denunciation of their institutions; the transaction of public affairs was impeded by repeated efforts to usurp powers not delegated by the Constitution, for the purpose of impairing the security of property in slaves, and reducing those States which held slaves to a condition of inferiority. Finally a great party was organized for the purpose of obtaining the administration of the Government, with the avowed object of using its power for the total exclusion of the slave States from all participation in the benefits of the public domain acquired by all the States in common, whether by conquest or purchase; of surrounding them entirely by States in which slavery should be prohibited; of thus rendering the property in slaves so insecure as to be comparatively worthless, and thereby annihilating in effect property worth thousands of millions of dollars. This party, thus organized, succeeded in the month of November last in the election of its candidate for the Presidency of the United States.
In the meantime, under the mild and genial climate of the Southern States and the increasing care and attention for the well-being and comfort of the laboring class, dictated alike by interest and humanity, the African slaves had augmented in number from about 600,000, at the date of the adoption of the constitutional compact, to upward of 4,000,000. In moral and social condition they had been elevated from brutal savages into docile, intelligent, and civilized agricultural laborers, and supplied not only with bodily comforts but with careful religious instruction. Under the supervision of a superior race their labor had been so directed as not only to allow a gradual and marked amelioration of their own condition, but to convert hundreds of thousands of square miles of wilderness into cultivated lands covered with a prosperous people; towns and cities had sprung into existence, and had rapidly increased in wealth and population under the social system of the South; the white population of the Southern slaveholding States had augmented form about 1,250,000 at the date of the adoption of the Constitution to more than 8,500,000 in 1860; and the productions of the South in cotton, rice, sugar, and tobacco, for the full development and continuance of which the labor of African slaves was and is indispensable, had swollen to an amount which formed nearly three-fourths of the exports of the whole United States and had become absolutely necessary to the wants of civilized man. With interests of such overwhelming magnitude imperiled, the people of the Southern States were driven by the conduct of the North to the adoption of some course of action to avert the danger with which they were openly menaced. With this view the Legislatures of the several States invited the people to select delegates to conventions to be held for the purpose of determining for themselves what measures were best adapted to meet so alarming a crisis in their history. Here it may be proper to observe that from a period as early as 1798 there had existed in all of the States of the Union a party almost uniterruptedly in the majority based upon the creed that each State was, in the last resort, the sole judge as well of its wrongs as of the mode and measure of redress. Indeed, it is obvious that under the law of nations this principle is an axiom as applied to the relations of independent sovereign States, such as those which had united themselves under the constitutional compact. The Democratic party of the United States repeated, in its successful canvass in 1856, the declaration made in numerous previous political contests, that it would "faithfully abide by and uphold the principles laid down in the Kentucky and Virginia resolutions of 1798, and in the report of Mr. Madison to the Virginia Legislature in 1799; and that it adopts those principles as constituting one of the main foundations of its political creed." The principles thus emphatically announced embrace that to which I have already averted-- the right of each State to judge of and redress the wrongs of which it complains. These principles were maintained by overwhelming majorities of the people in all the States of the Union at different elections, especially in the elections of Mr. Jefferson in 1805, Mr. Madison in 1809, and Mr. Pierce in 1852. In the exercise of a right so ancient, so well-established, and so necessary for self-preservation, the people of the Confederate States, in their conventions, determined that the wrongs which they had suffered and the evils with which they were menaced required that they should revoke the delegation of powers to the Federal Government which they had ratified in their several conventions. They consequently passed ordinances resuming all their rights as sovereign and independent States and dissolved their connection with the other States of the Union.
[end quote] [Jefferson Davis to Confederate Congress, 29 Apr 1861]
Davis' reaction to the Emancipation Proclamation is instructive:
"He saw the war as confirmation of the lengths to which those people [Republicans] would go to free the slaves. Consequently, he said, 'an inferior race, peaceful and contented laborers in their sphere, are doomed to extermination.' He intended to ask that all Union army officers captured in the South be turned over to state civil authorities to be charged and tried according to the applicable laws covering incitement to servile insurrection." [William C. Davis, Jefferson Davis: The Man and His Hour, p. 495]
"For Davis, the Emancipation Proclamation represented the culmination of the savage war waged upon his country. Lincoln issued his preliminary proclamation just after Antietam on September 22, with the final version promulgated on January 1, 1863, the date it took effect. Using his authority as commander in chief, Lincoln freed all slaves in states and areas of states still engaged in rebellion against the United States. Across the Confederacy the edict generated an outrage, which Davis conveyed in a message to Congress, ****ing the proclamation as 'the most execrable measure recorded in the history of guilty man.' For its backers he had only 'profound contempt,' and he tried to present the proclamation as 'impotent rage' from a government that could not conquer the Confederacy by defeating its armies.
in assaulting the proclamation, Davis articulated both central tenets of the proslavery argument and fears of white southerners: 'We may well leave it to the instincts of that common humanity which a beneficent Creator has implanted in the breasts of our fellowmen of all countries to pass judgment on a measure by which several millions of human beings of an inferior race, peaceful and contented laborers in their sphere, are doomed to extermination, while at the same time they are encouraged to a general assassination of their masters by the insidious recommendation 'to abstain from violence unless in necessary selfdefense.' ' In contemplating this monstrous deed, he did identify one virtue. Now all Confederates could see 'the complete and crowning proof of the true nature' of their enemy. For his part, he would react directly. Davis proposed to turn over to state authorities all Union commissioned officers captured in any state covered by the proclamation. At that point, 'they may be dealt with in accordance with the laws of those States providing for punishment of criminals engaged in exciting servile insurrection.' But the Confederate government never adopted any such policy. Emotion stemming from anger and horror said yes, yet practical recognition of the undoubted repercussions on captured Confederate officers dictated no. Once again, President Davis found no practical way to satisfy his overwhelming desire for retaliation." [William J. Cooper, Jr., Jefferson Davis, American, pp. 439-440]
On January 12, 1863, Davis declared, in a speech to the confederate congress, "a restitution of the Union has been rendered forever impossible by the adoption of a measure which ... neither admits of retraction nor can coexist with union." [James G. Randall and David H. Donald, The Civil War and Reconstruction, p. 387]
Davis himself proves that protection of slavery was the confederacy's goal and their sole cause.
Hal,
In my opinion it does. Did you want the ability to personally choose who serves in the federal government, or have veto power over Constitutionally elected officials if you don't approve of the choice?
best,
marc
Then our definitions are too far removed from each other to have a meaningful discourse on the point.
I have never heard anyone describe self-government as merely voting before.
Benjamin Franklin: Among the natural rights of the Colonists are these: First, a right to life; Secondly, to liberty; Thirdly, to property; together with the right to support and defend them in the best manner they can.
Which of these natural rights do you think carry conditions which must be met in order to exercise them?
-------------------
All of them. For example, if you don't meet the criterion of abstaining from criminal activity you can justly be deprived of your liberty, your property, and your life.
Then our definitions are too far removed from each other to have a meaningful discourse on the point.
I have never heard anyone describe self-government as merely voting before.
Hal
Hal,
I didn't describe self-government as merely voting. Self-government means not only voting, but being able to hold public office, to have access to public officials, to have access to the courts, the right of petition, the right of free speech, free and open newspapers. It means that the business of government is conducted openly, including debating and passing laws, public judicial proceedings, freedom from arbitary government action such as searches, seizures and arrests. All of these processes occur at various levels from local to national. And there is a legal process through which The People, in the sense of the entire citizenry, can change the Constitution itself. Self-government does not mean unlimited individual prerogitive to follow or not follow the laws, or to unilaterally remove onelsef from the social contract.
best,
marc
__________________ "It has been my experience that folks who have no vices have very few virtues." - Abraham Lincoln
Only the will and the wherewithal to do it. And then to win the war. regards, ed
__________________ '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'
Hal,
Any group is free to determine its own criteria, though in my opinion the Southern secessionists came no where near meeting the criteria established by the Declaration of Independence. However, any legitimately established government has the authority to enforce the law and to suppress an unlawful rebellion. Here is where the distinction between the "natural" right of revolution and the "legal" right of states to unilaterally secede is important.
best,
marc
__________________ "It has been my experience that folks who have no vices have very few virtues." - Abraham Lincoln
Originally Posted by hawglips
I have such a hard time comprehending how liberty was preserved by fighting to thwart it, or whatever one prefers to call it.
Thanks!
Hal
Quote:
My answer is that liberty was preserved by staying true to one's conception of liberty, sacrificing a part of one's self interest for the good of the whole, and a willingness to preserve it against all threats. As each side was a threat to the other, I do not say liberty was preserved by fighting to thwart it, but that the fight was to defend its own.
Ed, thank you.
I have never heard such a definition of liberty -- sacrificing another's self-interest for the sake of the "good of the whole." (With the "good of the whole" being defined solely by the half that wants to sacrifice the other's self-interest.)
That is quite a definition of liberty.
My mind is really being broadened with the new definitions of "liberty" and "self-government."
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