slavery is at the bottom of everything they were worried about

[JohnTaylor]

Originally Posted by trice

John, there is certainly a laundry list of complaints in the Georgia declaration. Would you please provide some basis for thinking they are actually justified?

Now you are moving the goal posts. Perhaps you meant to say that "slavery was at the bottom of every justified complaint the South put forth." Of course, that puts you in the odd position of arguing that slavery-based complaints were in some way legitimate.
This is fascinating.
Respectfully,
John Taylor

[matthew mckeon]

Dear JT,
Thanks for replying to my post. If I understand your post, you are stating that fear of a slave uprising in the states with the highest black populations drove those states to secession. The coorelation between secession and slavery is due to an increased fear of slave uprisings among regions with more slaves. And the responsibility for this fear lies solely with John Brown and his confederates. Again, I don't find it that persuasive.

During the war, when one would think the danger of a racial rebellion and massive bloodletting would be at its height, the seceding states send the majority of their potential miltary force to fight the Yankees. The threat was the federal government, not from the slaves, and it was the legal and political abolition of slavery, not an armed struggle between black and white.

A second point. You used the analogy of the current controversy over abortion, distinguishing between legal protesters and users of illegal violence(bombings and so forth). Transporting ourselves back to the 1850s, what was the legal methods to protest slavery, particularly if you were a citizen in a Southern state. What kinds of response would those protests bring?

[trice]

Originally Posted by JohnTaylor

Now you are moving the goal posts. Perhaps you meant to say that "slavery was at the bottom of every justified complaint the South put forth." Of course, that puts you in the odd position of arguing that slavery-based complaints were in some way legitimate.
This is fascinating.

John, surely you understand that everyone needs to justify the complaints they make, or to withdraw them? Why would anyone pay attention to a complaint they knew was unjust?

We refer to suits brought without a basis as frivolous. Is that what you would have us believe these people were? Frivolous secessionists? They didn't think they were, and I think they would take great exception to your view.

In putting forth their declarations of secession, the seceding states are attempting to justfiy their actions before the world. The declarations are only in support of the actual ordinances. They are not part of them and have no force of law. They exist only to present to the world the reasons for the action.

Now you tell us that it doesn't matter a bit if their claims were justified. You tell us it only matters if they "felt" them. Balderdash. If the basis on which they acted was wrong, ==THEY== were wrong.

An example you point out mentions "Fishing Bounties". There were such bounties. They had been paid for decades. Andrew Jackson mentions them in one of his State of the Union addresses; Alexander Stephens defends them in his address to the GA legislature in 1860. What makes you think the secessionists had any reason to secede over them?

Why in the world do you find it objectionable to actually check up on what the secessionists said? Is there some particular reason you demand that they be untouchable? That no one can question them?

Regards,
Tim

[trice]

Originally Posted by JohnTaylor

"The Southern States now stand in the same relation toward the Northern States, in the vital matter of taxation, that our ancestors stood toward the people of Great Britain. They are in a minority in Congress. Their representation in Congress is useless to protect them against unjust taxation, and they are taxed by the people of the North for their benefit exactly as the people of Great Britain taxed our ancestors in the British Parliament for their benefit. For the last forty years the taxes laid by the Congress of the United States have been laid with a view of subserving the interests of the North. The people of the South have been taxed by duties on imports not for revenue, but for an object inconsistent with revenue -- to promote, by prohibitions, Northern interests in the productions of their mines and manufactures.
... The people of the Southern States are not only taxed for the benefit of the Northern States, but after the taxes are collected three-fourths of them are expended at the North. This cause, with others connected with the operation of the General Government, has provincialized the cities of the South. Their growth is paralyzed, while they are the mere suburbs of Northern cities. The bases of the foreign commerce of the United States are the agricultural productions of the South; yet Southern cities do not carry it on. Our foreign trade is almost annihilated. In 1740 there were five shipyards in South Carolina to build ships to carry on our direct trade with Europe. Between 1740 and 1779 there were built in these yards twenty-five square-rigged vessels, beside a great number of sloops and schooners to carry on our coast and West India trade. In the half century immediately preceding the Revolution, from 1725 to 1775, the population of South Carolina increased seven-fold." (Source: "The Address of the people of South Carolina, assembled in Convention, to the people of the Slaveholding States of the United States," please tell me you have read this)
The Convention declared their belief that the Federal system of taxes and expenditures had turned the South into the cash cow for the North.

I see. You are not talking about the Declaration of the Immediate Causes Which Induce and Justify the Secession of South Carolina from the Federal Union at all. The Address was written by Rhett, not Meminger.

Now obviously, since Mr. Rhett had just declared a few days before in from of his fellow convention members that some of the things he asserts in the Address were not valid causes of secession -- and yet here he asserts they were -- consistency is clearly not his strong point.

I have a question for you here: do you believe that the points this man makes in this document are valid ones that justify the act of secession, whether it is constitutional or not?

Regards,
Tim

[JohnTaylor]

Originally Posted by trice

Now obviously, since Mr. Rhett had just declared a few days before in from of his fellow convention members that some of the things he asserts in the Address were not valid causes of secession -- and yet here he asserts they were -- consistency is clearly not his strong point.

You keep saying this, but you are misquoting Rhett. Rhett said (in the one 1881 source you like to quote) that some people denied the constitutionality of the FSL. Rhett himself was not among those people. Rhett beat the economic exploitation drum for a long time. To him, the siphoning off of Southern wealth into Northern pockets was a serious issue. He made this case for a long time.
And as for Keitt and Memminger, they were not saying that these other (non-slavery) causes were irrelevant, just that restrictions on slaveholding in the Territories and PLLs were sufficient causes to justify secession.
And, in the end, the people of South Carolina, in the aggregate, declared that sectional economic exploitation was a cause for secession. Otherwise, they would not have mentioned it in the aforementioned declaration.
Respectfully,
John Taylor

[JohnTaylor]

Originally Posted by trice

I have a question for you here: do you believe that the points this man makes in this document are valid ones that justify the act of secession, whether it is constitutional or not?

If the Union were to develop a system of taxation that unfairly targeted the people of one State (or section), and the people of that State (or section) found such to be oppressive and intolerable, then yes, that, in my mind would be a valid reason for secession, because the alternative would be that people must accept oppression that they found intolerable. Hardly a just basis for a system of government. And very unAmerican.
Respectfully,
John Taylor

[johan_steele]

John Taylor & Trice I want to thank the two of you for making me do some etra reading and research. Anything that makes me think or double check my opinions... is greatly appreciated.

It is debate like this for which I truly love this board.

[trice]

Originally Posted by JohnTaylor

If the Union were to develop a system of taxation that unfairly targeted the people of one State (or section), and the people of that State (or section) found such to be oppressive and intolerable, then yes, that, in my mind would be a valid reason for secession, because the alternative would be that people must accept oppression that they found intolerable. Hardly a just basis for a system of government. And very unAmerican.

Avoidning the question I asked. Don't tell us that it *might* have been so *if* something happened in the future. The secessionists made the assertion that the existing system was already a cause for secession. You say this was so. Yet the tariff currently in place was the lowest in the world for any similar country. Please justify this and give us a clear answer. Were the secessionists of SC correct? Or were the secessionists of SC wrong? Which one is it?

Regards,
Tim

[JohnTaylor]

Originally Posted by matthew mckeon

Dear JT,

Originally Posted by matthew mckeon

Thanks for replying to my post. If I understand your post, you are stating that fear of a slave uprising in the states with the highest black populations drove those states to secession. The coorelation between secession and slavery is due to an increased fear of slave uprisings among regions with more slaves. And the responsibility for this fear lies solely with John Brown and his confederates. Again, I don't find it that persuasive.

I'm sure that Southerners (both slaveholders and nonslaveholders) would place the blame on Abolitionist agitation. Of course, we, viewing from our perspective at the beginning of the twenty-first century, can see that at least some of the blame lies in the nature of the system itself. States with no slaves need fear no slave uprisings. (Although many Northerners were keen to not have free blacks living in their midst, as chronicled in Litwack's North of Slavery) But if a State tolerates an institution like chattel slavery, is telling slaves to slit their masters' throats ethical? Must the nonslaveholding majority of such a State simply accept that as a form of political discourse? Or does engaging in such provocative behavior excuse the nonslaveholding majority for wanting out of a union with people who would engage in such political discourse?

Originally Posted by matthew mckeon

During the war, when one would think the danger of a racial rebellion and massive bloodletting would be at its height, the seceding states send the majority of their potential military force to fight the Yankees. The threat was the federal government, not from the slaves, and it was the legal and political abolition of slavery, not an armed struggle between black and white.

Southerners, especially slaveholding Southerners, engaged in a lot of whistling past the graveyard on the issue of slave violence. Most would swear that their slaves were contented with their lot, and had no inclination to rise up and kill their masters. yet the fear of slave uprising was endemic in the South. See Channing's Crisis of Fear, or Freehling's Prelude to Disunion, or Secessionists at Bay.

Originally Posted by matthew mckeon

A second point. You used the analogy of the current controversy over abortion, distinguishing between legal protesters and users of illegal violence(bombings and so forth). Transporting ourselves back to the 1850s, what was the legal methods to protest slavery, particularly if you were a citizen in a Southern state. What kinds of response would those protests bring?

Protesting against slavery in the South would most likely result in, to use a euphemism I heard growing up in the South, "a butt whuppin'," or a coat of tar and feathers. Unfortunately, Victorian era Americans were not very good at expressing ideas with moderation. Helper did in fact suggest that slaves slit their masters' throats. This kind of over the top rhetoric gave reasons for banning the book and proscribing politicians who would endorse it. If he had stopped at merely saying that slavery was holding back the South economically, and was bad for the white population, the reaction might have been different. Who knows?
Respectfully,
John Taylor

[JohnTaylor]

Originally Posted by trice

Avoidning the question I asked. Don't tell us that it *might* have been so *if* something happened in the future. The secessionists made the assertion that the existing system was already a cause for secession. You say this was so. Yet the tariff currently in place was the lowest in the world for any similar country. Please justify this and give us a clear answer. Were the secessionists of SC correct? Or were the secessionists of SC wrong? Which one is it?

Originally Posted by trice

Regards,
Tim

Tim, for some reason you have a hard time understanding this. Keitt and Memminger said that they felt that the Personal Liberties Laws and exclusion of slaves from the territories were sufficient to justify secession. These were two delegates of 167. Collectively, the people of South Carolina declared (in the declaration quoted) that economic exploitation of the South (via tariffs and Federal expenditures) was one of the reason why they wanted out of the Union.
The fracture of the Democratic party on tariff policy meant that Southerners had no ability to stop the impending increase of the tariff. With Northern Democrats abandoning the low tariff position in Congress, two more Kansas Republican Senators coming soon, and a Republican in the White House, everybody knew tariffs were going up. Seceding before they actually enacted the increase would at least mean getting out of the Union while Buchanan was still the commander in chief, and peaceful secession was a possibility.
“There is no difference between a Connecticut or Rhode Island Democrat and a Black Republican. ... Both agree in their general views of the Constitution; and are in favor of Protective Tariffs, Internal Improvements, ‘Land for the Landless,’ and the exclusion of the South from the territories. They differ in the mode of carrying out their policy in one single particular – the exclusion of the South from the Territories. That is all. ... Both pander to the interests, avarice and fanaticism of the North, and must sacrifice the South by their ascendancy. ... If there were no future progress – no future aggressions on the institution of slavery – we say that here is enough, and more than enough, to arm every true Southern man against the base surrender of the liberties and rights, the consummation of such a policy implies. But will there be no future aggressions? ... The Democratic party of the North ... gave way ... on Abolition petitions in Congress, .. . on the Wilmot proviso, .. . on the tariff and Internal Improvements. If tariffs are pushed to entire prohibition – if internal improvements for the benefit of the North shall screw the imports up to the last dollar – if we shall be turned out of every foot of our magnificent domain, purchased by our money, won by our blood – who will respect the complaints, or fear the opposition of so weak and dastardly a people?" (Charleston Mercury, 12 April 1860, pg. 1, col. 2)
Before you say that this was before the House vote on the Morrilll Tariff, the story was a response to the fact that the Connecticut and Rhode Island Democrats had endorsed a protective tariff, and were still beaten in State elections. Increased tariff rates were coming for all to see.
Respectfully,
John Taylor