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.
British political theorist John Stuart Mill was one of the best known thinkers of his day, famous for his 1859 work On Liberty. He is widely associated with the cause of women's sufferage as well, and saw the role of the government in human affairs as preventing harm to other individuals. He is often associated with Libertarianism, and is the first political theorist I have found who actually used the term "self-determination" in his work.
In case anyone is wondering, what John Stuart Mills actually thought of the Civil War, here is what he said in his 1873 autobiography:
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Before this, however, the state of public affairs had become extremely critical, by the commencement of the American civil war. My strongest feelings were engaged in this struggle, which, I felt from the beginning, was destined to be a turning point, for good or evil, of the course of human affairs for an indefinite duration. Having been a deeply interested observer of the Slavery quarrel in America, during the many years that preceded the open breach, I knew that it was in all its stages an aggressive enterprise of the slave-owners to extend the territory of slavery; under the combined influences of pecuniary interest, domineering temper, and the fanaticism of a class for its class privileges, influences so fully and powerfully depicted in the admirable work of my friend Professor Cairnes, "The Slave Power." Their success, if they succeeded, would be a victory of the powers of evil which would give courage to the enemies of progress and damp the spirits of its friends all over the civilized world, while it would create a formidable military power, grounded on the worst and most anti-social form of the tyranny of men over men, and, by destroying for a long time the prestige of the great democratic republic, would give to all the privileged classes of Europe a false confidence, probably only to be extinguished in blood. On the other hand, if the spirit of the North was sufficiently roused to carry the war to a successful termination, and if that termination did not come too soon and too easily, I foresaw, from the laws of human nature, and the experience of revolutions, that when it did come it would in all probability be thorough: that the bulk of the Northern population, whose conscience had as yet been awakened only to the point of resisting the further extension of slavery, but whose fidelity to the Constitution of the United States made them disapprove of any attempt by the Federal Government to interfere with slavery in the States where it already existed, would acquire feelings of another kind when the Constitution had been shaken off by armed rebellion, would determine to have done for ever with the accursed thing, and would join their banner with that of the noble body of Abolitionists, of whom Garrison was the courageous and single-minded apostle, Wendell Phillips the eloquent orator, and John Brown the voluntary martyr.(8*) Then, too, the whole mind of the United States would be let loose from its bonds, no longer corrupted by the supposed necessity of apologizing to foreigners for the most flagrant of all possible violations of the free principles of their Constitution; while the tendency of a fixed state of society to stereotype a set of national opinions would be at least temporarily checked, and the national mind would become more open to the recognition of whatever was bad in either the institutions or the customs of the people. These hopes, so far as related to Slavery, have been completely, and in other respects are in course of being progressively realized. Foreseeing from the first this double set of consequences from the success or failure of the rebellion, it may be imagined with what feelings I contemplated the rush of nearly the whole upper and middle classes of my own country even those who passed for Liberals, into a furious pro-Southern partisanship : the working classes, and some of the literary and scientific men, being almost the sole exceptions to the general frenzy. I never before felt so keenly how little permanent improvement had reached the minds of our influential classes, and of what small value were the liberal opinions they had got into the habit of professing. None of the Continental Liberals committed the same frightful mistake. But the generation which had extorted negro emancipation from our West India planters had passed away; another had succeeded which had not learnt by many years of discussion and exposure to feel strongly the enormities of slavery; and the inattention habitual with Englishmen to whatever is going on in the world outside their own island, made them profoundly ignorant of all the antecedents of the struggle, insomuch that it was not generally believed in England, for the first year or two of the war, that the quarrel was one of slavery. There were men of high principle and unquestionable liberality of opinion, who thought it a dispute about tariffs, or assimilated it to the cases in which they were accustomed to sympathize, of a people struggling for independence.
It was my obvious duty to be one of the small minority who protested against this perverted state of public opinion. I was not the first to protest. It ought to be remembered to the honour of Mr Hughes and of Mr Ludlow, that they, by writings published at the very beginning of the struggle, began the protestation. Mr Bright followed in one of the most powerful of his speeches, followed by others not less striking. I was on the point of adding my words to theirs, when there occurred, towards the end of 1861, the seizure of the Southern envoys on board a British vessel, by an officer of the United States. Even English forgetfulness has not yet had time to lose all remembrance of the explosion of Feeling in England which then burst forth, the expectation, prevailing for some weeks, of war with the United States, and the warlike preparations actually commenced on this side. While this state of things lasted, there was no chance of a hearing for anything favourable to the American cause; and, moreover, I agreed with those who thought the act unjustifiable, and such as to require that England should demand its disavowal. When the disavowal came, and the alarm of war was over, I wrote, in January, 1862, the paper, in Fraser's Magazine, entitled "The Contest in America," And I shall always feel grateful to my daughter that her urgency prevailed on me to write it when I did, for we were then on the point of setting out for a journey of some months in Greece and Turkey, and but for her, I should have deferred writing till our return. Written and published when it was, this paper helped to encourage those Liberals who had felt overborne by the tide of illiberal opinion, and to form in favour of the good cause a nucleus of opinion which increased gradually, and, after the success of the North began to seem probable, rapidly. When we returned from our journey I wrote a second article, a review of Professor Cairnes' book, published in the Westminster Review. England is paying the penalty, in many uncomfortable ways, of the durable resentment which her ruling classes stirred up in the United States by their ostentatious wishes for the ruin of America as a nation: they have reason to be thankful that a few, if only a few, known writers and speakers, standing firmly by the Americans in the time of their greatest difficulty, effected a partial diversion of these bitter feelings, and made Great Britain not altogether odious to the Americans.
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__________________ I never knew a man who wished to be himself a slave. Consider if you know any good thing that no man desires for himself. A. Lincoln
Great Britain at the time was very much the Kingdom, and few of its citizens had any say in government. It wasn't a democracy and the leadership never wanted war. It had a recent war, the Crimea War and all those debts. It had an empire to tend and the recent troubles in India, to give any great concern to the independence of the Confederate States.
Great Britain also had an obsolete wooden ship navy, by U.S. monitor standards. Great Britain for all its wealth was not going to build an adequate ironclad navy in two years, to fight the United States. While the U.S. monitors could not attack Great Britain, Great Britain would need far better ironclad ships to cross the Atlantic, and then battle the monitors. How many monitors on the St. Lawrence River would it have taken to evict Great Britain from Canada? Wooden ships would not easily cross that gauntlet.
Great Britain at the time was very much the Kingdom, and few of its citizens had any say in government. It wasn't a democracy and the leadership never wanted war. It had a recent war, the Crimea War and all those debts. It had an empire to tend and the recent troubles in India, to give any great concern to the independence of the Confederate States.
I am not sure that has much to do with John Stuart Mill, who was serving in Parliament about then. His views were clear, and he was a strong supporter of the Union in the war. However, there were two points where it looked like the British would intervene: one at the time of the Trent affair, and the other in September 1862.
The Trent affair was ably defused by the Lincoln administration. If it had not been, intervention might have come about through national outrage.
In September 1862, the feeling was that the Confederacy had perhaps shown its' viability through military success: the Seven Days, 2nd Manassas, Bragg's Invasion of KY, Lee's invasion of Maryland. British leadership was seriously considering it when a string of Confederate reversals struck: Antietam, Iuka, Corinth, Perryville. The British backed off.
Intervention in this case probably meant a Franco-British offer of mediation, with a six-month truce -- which would have been highly favorable to the Confederacy.
Quote:
Originally Posted by whitworth
Great Britain also had an obsolete wooden ship navy, by U.S. monitor standards. Great Britain for all its wealth was not going to build an adequate ironclad navy in two years, to fight the United States. While the U.S. monitors could not attack Great Britain, Great Britain would need far better ironclad ships to cross the Atlantic, and then battle the monitors. How many monitors on the St. Lawrence River would it have taken to evict Great Britain from Canada? Wooden ships would not easily cross that gauntlet.
In December of 1860, the Royal Navy launched HMS Warrior, the most powerful, technology-leading warship in the world. This was the RN's response to the 1859 launch of La Gloire, another iron-hull warship. Warrior entered service in 1862.
While the monitor classes were excellent platforms for combat on rivers and in deep waters, they were not intended for projecting power into the open ocean. Warrior was superior to anything the US had once away from the shore.
A few numbers from the website (http://www.hmswarrior.org): Overall Length:418 feet (128 metres)Length Inside:380 feet (116 metres)Beam (Width):58 feet (18 metres)Completed Weight:9,210 tonsDraught:26 feet (8 metres)Normal Maximum Speed:13 knots under sail
14.5 knots under steam Main Armament:26 muzzle-loading 68 pounders (31 kgs)
10 breech-loading 110 pounders (50 kgs)Cost including guns and coal:£390,000Crew:42 officers
3 warrant officers
455 seaman and boys
3 Royal Marine officers
6 Royal Marine NCOs
118 Royal Marine artillerymen
2 chief engineers
10 engineers
66 stokers and trimmers Total complement:705 men
Against the original monitors of 1862, Warrior would have been a very dangerous foe. The Monitor's Dahlgren guns could not penetrate the Warrior's armor, she could steam at perhaps 5 knots. OTOH, Warrior's guns could penetrate 6 inches of Monitor's armor at 500 yards -- and the 110 pounders could open at 4400 yards, forcing Monitor to steam through fire to open at about 1500 yards or less.
In 1863, France had 4 sea-going armored warships and the British another 4. They would not have been able to win a numbers game on the other side of the Atlantic, but ship-for-ship the US would have likely had a great deal of trouble.
British political theorist John Stuart Mill was one of the best known thinkers of his day, famous for his 1859 work On Liberty. He is widely associated with the cause of women's sufferage as well, and saw the role of the government in human affairs as preventing harm to other individuals. He is often associated with Libertarianism, and is the first political theorist I have found who actually used the term "self-determination" in his work.
In case anyone is wondering, what John Stuart Mills actually thought of the Civil War, here is what he said in his 1873 autobiography:
Tim
Tim are you aware Mills wrote for Harpers (http://www.harpweek.com/ )during the conflict?, and argued in the UK press against Charles Dickens who argued that the war was an economic issue disguised under an issue of who would control the slaves, Dickens as a social commetator certainly came out ahead in the Uk while Mills socialist views did not go down well in the UK at that time.
That did not make his observations inaccurate or unworthy of consideration.
Dickens knew how to write fiction. Maybe he should have stuck to what he did best.
Other British politicians also stated it was a war about slavery and not tariffs.
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
That did not make his observations inaccurate or unworthy of consideration.
Dickens knew how to write fiction. Maybe he should have stuck to what he did best.
Other British politicians also stated it was a war about slavery and not tariffs.
Unionblue
Union Blue
Yes all perspectives are equally worth while of consideration, my point was however he was more popular in the States with his views than he was in the UK, he hated Dickens (who hated him right back, writting Bleak house and Hard times due to mills Political economy) and lost out in the public expanation of what on earth was going on in the US in the UK press when he and Dickens crossed swords on expanning it, Dickens continued to write and Mills wrote in the US instead. Because when mills published and Dickens tore him and it to shrewds for its logical fallacys, incorrect history and anology etc, Mills refused to defend himself in the Uk and instead syndicated it to the US where awkard people who asked good questions could be arrested for doing so.
Mills said that the war was soley about slavary and would end with a slavocracyover the entire continent unless stopped, that would at a future time mean war with the Uk on econimic grounds. Dickens asked just why would this follow?
Mills said every state who seceded did so to protect and perpetuate slavary, and no other reason. Dickens asked where upper Southern states in the second wave of secession fitted into this theory of secesion over slavery.
Mills said the South was for opening the international slave trade, and re introduce a world wide slavocracy based on slave usage, which would bring a war with the Uk and RN over it. Dickens pointed out the CSA Constition forbade the international slave trade and asked where mills got his intpretation of the future from.
Mills said that the Republican form of government rested on the consent to be governed as expressed in th DOI, normally this would follow then that any state could justifiably secceded from the Union. They have no justification for secesion except to protect slavary. Thats Mills posistion, Dickens asked if that is the case why was he saying that secesion was not lawfull/constitional.
i could go on btw...
Dickens did indeed stick with what he knew best, he worked to stop West Indian slave excess as far as was possible, he worked to prevent the UK poor from being worked for 20 hours out of 24 under UK legislation in the poor house, to restrict UK mine owners granting life time contracts to mine workers where they were bound to work in the mine untill death, in return for house and gaurenteed emplyment for life, and is as read today as he was in his day.
Mills otoh political philosophy went the way of the dinasaur without ever gaining wide usage, and is reaely if ever read or used, and his poorly researched intpretation of the cause of the war remains an excellent example of someone not knowing what they were talking about, especially when read in comparison with Dickens series in the UK press.
Dickens was about the most succesfull social comentator (he unlike Mills had lived and looked at society in the US, particulry the South, even going to slave auctions) we have ever produced, couple that with being a wonderfull story teller to pass on that social comentary in a form of fiction that makes him still today extremly well read, makes his perspective extremly valubale. Dickens is banned in Isreal because of his portrial of Jews in a bad light, Dickens fictional use of a Jew being the bad guy sure has resonances today, dont like a version of history, ban it. Mills found the Uk audience unwilling to accept his version/explantion of events in the USA and stopped doing so and wrote instead for the US market.
Yes politicians said many things, but the HOP voted on what the war was about, and the vote did not come down on it being about slavary as the one/s your thinking off wanted.
And yet Mills was right and Dickens was wrong about the one thing they debated on that we discuss on this thread. I pretty much agree with the first part of your above post as you state it quite clearly. It's from the 'I could go on btw' that you begin to lose me.
It was about slavery, in spite of what the English Parliament hoped, thought or voted on. Mr. Dickens was just flat out wrong and he's entitled to be wrong about one thing in his life, Just as Mills is entitled to be right about one thing. Human beings are such imprect role models as they are rarely right about everything.
And thank you, no, I do not at the present require your assistance with 'one's/your (my) view.' I got here all by myself with help from many others, but you are correct.
The view is mine.
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
Tim are you aware Mills wrote for Harpers (http://www.harpweek.com/ )during the conflict?, and argued in the UK press against Charles Dickens who argued that the war was an economic issue disguised under an issue of who would control the slaves, Dickens as a social commetator certainly came out ahead in the Uk while Mills socialist views did not go down well in the UK at that time.
The American Civil War was the biggest war going at the time and a "hot topic". Just as the war in the Crimea was the "hot topic" of the mid-1850s, and the war in Italy in 1859 the "hot topic" of that year (which gave us magenta and solferino as hot fashion colors in 1860, named after the battles at Magenta and Solferino).
We can also note that Marx and Engels were being paid to write on the American Civil War at the time. So were quite a few others, writing for and against various points of view.
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