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.
In the Confederate Congress there was debate about the wording of the law against the African slave trade...
...debate concerning the penalty for its violators.....
...but there was NO proposal...to reopen...the African slave trade.
Battalion, you are quibbling here. The debate was about the Constitution they were writing. Men like Yancy and Rhett wanted to leave out the section that prohibited the international slave trade. They had reason for doing so, but they were not able to get what they wanted done, for reasons that have already been noted. Rhett began work on an amendment soon after that Constitution was passed, but there was never any real chance of it passing during the brief life of the Confederacy for real political/diplomatic reasons, if nothing else.
Battalion, you are quibbling here. The debate was about the Constitution they were writing. Men like Yancy and Rhett wanted to leave out the section that prohibited the international slave trade.
Regards,
Tim
Whatever Rhett "wanted"...he never made any such proposal in the Confederate Congress...
...and Yancey was not a member until February 1862.
~~~
Again...you make claims with nothing to back it up.......
Whatever Rhett "wanted"...he never made any such proposal in the Confederate Congress...
...and Yancey was not a member until February 1862.
Again...you make claims with nothing to back it up.......
Well, you are wrong IMO, but you really don't care and no one would ever be able to get you to see anything you did not wish to know about anyway. Have fun swallowing camels and straining at gnats.
As long as there was slavery in the Confederacy, Great Britain would not come to its aid.
But if the Confederacy had attempted to renew importation of slaves from Africa, the British Navy would move not only against Confederate slave shipping, but any Confederate commercial shipping.
The non-maritime power, the Confederate States of America had much reason not to offend the maritime power of Britain over slavery. For years, Britain had used its navy to discourage the export of slaves from Africa.
Found this when looking for something else entirely. Searched for this thread because I think it belongs here.
The Memoirs of Colonel John S. Mosby.
(The following is taken from Chapter II, 'The War Begins.')
"William L. Yancy, of Alabama, did more than any other man in the South to precipitate the sectional conflict. In a convention, shortly before the campaign of 1860, he had offered resolutions in favor of repealing the laws against the African slave trade. Yancey attacked Thomas Jefferson as an abolitionist, as Calhoun had done in the Senate, and called Virginia a breeding ground for slaves to sell to the Cotton States. He also charged her people with using the laws against importation of Africans to create for themselves a monopoly in the slave market. Roger A. Pryor replied to him in a powerful speech."
Mosby's memoirs can be found at the following site:
Now, my feeling on the subject is that Mosby was there and he should know if Yancey had advocated reopening the African slave trade.
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
Found this when looking for something else entirely. Searched for this thread because I think it belongs here.
The Memoirs of Colonel John S. Mosby.
(The following is taken from Chapter II, 'The War Begins.')
"William L. Yancy, of Alabama, did more than any other man in the South to precipitate the sectional conflict. In a convention, shortly before the campaign of 1860, he had offered resolutions in favor of repealing the laws against the African slave trade. Yancey attacked Thomas Jefferson as an abolitionist, as Calhoun had done in the Senate, and called Virginia a breeding ground for slaves to sell to the Cotton States. He also charged her people with using the laws against importation of Africans to create for themselves a monopoly in the slave market. Roger A. Pryor replied to him in a powerful speech."
Mosby's memoirs can be found at the following site:
Now, my feeling on the subject is that Mosby was there and he should know if Yancey had advocated reopening the African slave trade.
The US had banned the Atlantic slave trade as of 1807 and made engaging in it an act of piracy under the law by 1820. The issue was regarded as decided, and in 1850, Jefferson Davis described it on the floor of the Senate as "odious" and declared "there is no man in the United States who would be willing to revive it".
Things changed. As with so much else pro-slavery, the 1850s saw the rise of pressure on the question of re-opening the Atlantic slave trade.
A newspaper editor named Spratt in South Carolina published an article urging the trade be re-opened in 1853. By 1855, Governor Adams of SC was urging the measure in his annual address to the state legislature. At the annual Southern Commercial Conventions (a major political event in those days) the question took on more and more of the delegates attention until at Vicksburg in 1859 it seems the one they considered most important.
If you look at the footnote on that page, you'll see that by 1857 there is a special report from a committee of SC Congressman on Governor Adams' 1855 message to the state legislature. Re-opening of the Atlantic slave trade was widely and hotly discussed in those days. I don't think it was ever likely to pass the US Congress, but it was definitely a major issue in the Deep South in the late 1850s, with many vocal supporters.
It doesn't look as if the people pushing this ever represented a majority, even in the South -- but the list of men involved looks like a who's-who of 1850s Fire-Eaters: Rhett, DuBow, Fitzhugh, Pollard, etc.
I think I researched this at one time, but didn't Southern delegates at the Democratic Convention also bring up the issue of reopening the African slave trade?
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
I think I researched this at one time, but didn't Southern delegates at the Democratic Convention also bring up the issue of reopening the African slave trade?
Sincerely,
Unionblue
Well, I've always meant to read a really good book on that convention, and never have. Everything I know about it comes from secondary sources.
However, many of the people at the 1860 Charleston Democratic Convention from the slave states were associated with the issue of re-opening the Atlantic Slave Trade, and I have seen extracts from letters, speeches, and newspaper articles in which they did advocate re-opening the Atlantic slave trade (or ending the laws and punishments against it, which amounts to the same thing).
Here, from a post-war speech by Gerrit Smith (Republican) against Ben Tilden (Democrat) is such a reference: "... The National Democratic Convention held in Charleston in 1860 was openly and shamelessly for slavery. No speaker in it was so vociferously welcomed as W. B. Gaulden of Georgia, whose much applauded boast was that he represented 'the African slave-trade interest.' ..." (Speech: "EVERY VOTE FOR MR. TILDEN HELPS TO BRING ON THE RUIN OF THE COUNTRY BY HELPING TO RESTORE THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY TO POWER.", during an 1874 election).
You'll also find part of Gaulden's speech in Lalor's Cyclopedia: "If any of you northern democrats will go home with me to my plantation, I will show you some darkies that I bought in Virginia, some in Delaware, some in Florida, and I will also show you the pure African, the noblest Roman of them all. I represent the African slave trade interest of my section:”
Here is an extract from a letter by Pollard of Virginia (the coiner of the term "Lost Cause" when he wrote the 1866 book of the same name), taken from a book he wrote called Black Diamonds Gathered in the Darkey Homes of the South in 1859: ===== You will notice that I advocated the reopening of the slave trade in the interests of the poor white men of the South, who are now oppressed by the monopoly of slave-holders. With these poor white men I have all my sympathies.
Secondly, I recommend the slave trade in the interests of the negro, that the cruelties and inhumanities of the present system of slavery in the South are to be ascribed to the irresponsible, high-handed, and defiant feudal rule of a conventional aristocracy of slaveholders. Make slavery common and popular; take it from the control of feudal proprietors; make it an institution of the people, and not the appanage of an aristocracy. I would secure and enforce the humane treatment of the blacks, and reduce slavery to a well-guarded, mild, and domestic institution. ...
The slave trade is the last resource to avert the decline of the South in the Union. It would admit the poor white man to the advantages of our social system; that it would give him dearer interests in the country he lives now only from simple patriotism; that it would revive and engender public spirit in the South, suppressed and limited as it now is by monopolies of land and labor. The cause of the poor white population of the South cries to Heaven for justice. We see them treated with the most insulting consideration by their country, debarred from its social system, deprived of all share in the benefits of the institution of slavery, condemned to poverty, and even forced to bear the airs of superiority in black and beastly slaves. Is not this a spectacle to fire the heart? As sure as God is judge of my own heart, it throbs with ceaseless sympathy for these poor, wronged, noble people; and if there is a cause I would be proud to champion, it is theirs. So help me God, it is theirs.
=====
Same source:
=====
With the reopening of the slave trade, imported negroes might be sold in our southern seaports at a profit, for one hundred to one hundred and fifty dollars a head. The poor man might then hope to own a negro; he would at once step up to a respectable station in the social system of the South; he would no longer be a miserable nondescript cumberer of the soil, or trespassing along the borders of the possessions of the large proprietors.
=====
As long as there was slavery in the Confederacy, Great Britain would not come to its aid.
But if the Confederacy had attempted to renew importation of slaves from Africa, the British Navy would move not only against Confederate slave shipping, but any Confederate commercial shipping.
The non-maritime power, the Confederate States of America had much reason not to offend the maritime power of Britain over slavery. For years, Britain had used its navy to discourage the export of slaves from Africa.
Maybe. It is clear they didn't do so, but there was substantial sentiment in Britain in 1861-62 to get involved, usually to "mediate", with or without the French. This probably came closest to being a reality in September of 1862 as Lee was invading Maryland and Bragg was invading Kentucky.
Generally, pro-Confederate sentiment in Britain was associated with the aristocracy, and anti-Confederate sentiment associated with the working classes. Much of that seems to have related to international power-politics and economics. Similar in France, where Napoleon III looks like he'd have gladly backed the South if he could get the British involved.
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