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.
...I haven't checked on the numbers of black people leaving slavery, I'm basing what I said on the work of Dr. Barbara Fields. I'm check into that. I am also leaving your last point was now and will reply later.
In early 1865, at the time of the "peace negotiations" with the Confederate commissioners down near Grant in City Point, the Lincoln administration speculated there were approximately 250,000 freed slaves. Lincoln discussed this with his people at the time because they were thinking about ending the Emancipation Proclamation in connection with a peace settlement, and the idea had been broached of freezing everything in place, leaving all still in their master's control as slaves and declaring free all those who had already been recognized as such. That may only mean those who had received papers from Union authorities, and not include many who had fled slavery.
It was all pretty meaningless, of course. Lincoln might have been willing to do this in return for peace, but only if the Confederacy dissolved and the states re-entered the Union. Jefferson Davis was unwilling to consider anything less than the US recognizing the independence of the Confederacy. As a result, the commissioners went back and the war went on, with Sheridan and Grant smashing Lee's lines at Five Forks not too long after.
Not so, he left out a para in the EP calling for a mass rising of servile Insurection to be aided by the Union Arms, a crime punishable by death on the US statutes for instigating btw, he did so soley he said, because of the influence such an action would have on forgien attitudes.
.
By this are you suggesting that Lincoln originally suggsted a mass insurrection of slaves aided by Union troops?
If so, I'd be very interested in your evidence and/or sources of this allegation.
__________________ -
"It was a very peculiar time." - Franklin D. Cossitt
Ancestors in USA Army: 6th IA Inf, 11th IL Cav, 1st AL Cav; 122nd NY Inf; 6th MI Cav; 35th MA Inf; 100th IL Inf; 1st CO Inf/Cav; 22nd IN Inf
In early 1865, at the time of the "peace negotiations" with the Confederate commissioners down near Grant in City Point, the Lincoln administration speculated there were approximately 250,000 freed slaves. Lincoln discussed this with his people at the time because they were thinking about ending the Emancipation Proclamation in connection with a peace settlement, and the idea had been broached of freezing everything in place, leaving all still in their master's control as slaves and declaring free all those who had already been recognized as such. That may only mean those who had received papers from Union authorities, and not include many who had fled slavery.
It was all pretty meaningless, of course. Lincoln might have been willing to do this in return for peace, but only if the Confederacy dissolved and the states re-entered the Union. Jefferson Davis was unwilling to consider anything less than the US recognizing the independence of the Confederacy. As a result, the commissioners went back and the war went on, with Sheridan and Grant smashing Lee's lines at Five Forks not too long after.
Regards,
Tim
Hampton Roads:
"This dramatic confrontation took place February 3 on the Union steamer "River Queen." Lincoln's earlier instructions to Seward formed the inflexible Union position during four hours of talks; " (1) The restoration of the National authority throughout all the States. (2) No receding by the Executive of the United States on the Slavery question. (3) No cessation of hostilities short of an end of the war, and the disbanding of all forces hostile to the government." In vain did Stephens try to divert Lincoln by bringing up Blair's Mexican project. Equally unprofitable was Hunter's proposal for an armistice and a convention of states. No armistice, said Lincoln; surrender was the only means of stopping the war. But even Charles I, said Hunter, had entered into agreements with rebels in arms against his government during the English Civil War. "I do not profess to be posted in History." replied Lincoln. "All I distinctly recollect about the case of Charles I, is, that he lost his head."
On questions of punishing rebel leaders and confiscating their property Lincoln promised generous treatment based on his power of pardon. On slavery he even suggested the possibility of compensating owners to the amount of $400 million (about 15 percent of the slaves' 1860 value). Some uncertainty exists about exactly what Lincoln meant in these discussions by "no receding....on the Slavery question." At a minimum he meant no going back on the Emancipation Proclamation or on other wartime executive and congressional actions against slavery. No slaves freed by these acts could ever be re-enslaved. But how many had been freed by them? Asked the southerners. All of the slaves in the Confederacy, or only those who had come under Union military control after the Proclamation was issued? As a war measure would it cease to operate with peace? That would be up to the courts, said Lincoln. And Seward informed the commissioners that the House of Representatives had just passed the Thirteenth Amendment. Its ratification woud make all other legal questions moot. If southern states returned to the Union and voted against ratification, thereby defeating it, would such action be valid? That remained to be seen, said Seward. In any case, remarked Lincoln, slavery as well as the rebellion was doomed. Southern leaders should cut their losses, return to the old allegiance, and save the blood of thousands of young men that would be shed if the war continued. Whatever their personal preferences, the commissioners had no power to negotiate such terms. They returned to dejectedly to Richmond."
__________________ -
"It was a very peculiar time." - Franklin D. Cossitt
Ancestors in USA Army: 6th IA Inf, 11th IL Cav, 1st AL Cav; 122nd NY Inf; 6th MI Cav; 35th MA Inf; 100th IL Inf; 1st CO Inf/Cav; 22nd IN Inf
By this are you suggesting that Lincoln originally suggsted a mass insurrection of slaves aided by Union troops?
If so, I'd be very interested in your evidence and/or sources of this allegation.
Yes, he said so when delivering early darft of the EP, which is the source that contains that para and omitted latter in the final proclamation, for the effect Lincoln ascribbed it would have if issued in final form, and the below is what the Union Army come up with**, while the Fanaticaly pro Republican Gov Seymour said on hearing the first version in a speech, "The scheme for an immediate emancipation and general arming of the slaves throughout the South is a proposal for the butchery of women and children, for scenes of lust and rapine, arson and murder, unparalleled in the history of the world. Its effect would not be confined to the walls of cities, but there would be a widespread scene of horror over the vast expanse of great States, involving alike the loyal and the seditious. Such malignity and cowardice would invoke the interference of civilized Europe. History tells of the fires kindled in the name of religion, of atrocities committed under the pretext of order or liberty; it is now urged that scenes bloodier than the world has yet witnessed shall be enacted in the name of philanthropy.Horatio Seymour, quoted by Blackwood's Magazine, 1 November 1862 and General McClellan "it appeared to most observers to call for the arming of the negro population throughout the South. withe the farms and plantation in the charge of women and Juviniles and old Folks, the prospect of putting down the insurection was small indeed. Lincoln facing the wrath and disaproval of a large segement of civilised thinking, deleted from his early draft of the proclamation, a para calling for a violent uprising."
Lincoln himself said he ommited this para calling for, and promising aid in, a violent uprising, "because of the influence such an action would have on forgien attitudes", and instead repalced it with the part about the now free using force only in self defense and proper wages, Im using The life and writtings of A Lincoln, by A Lincoln, but its in all good biographys of the man.
**
General: A plan has been formed for a simultaneous movement to sever the rebel communications throughout the whole South, which has been sent to some General in each military department in the seceded States, in order that they may act in concert and thus secure success.
The plan is to induce the Blacks to make a simultaneous movement of rising, on the night of the 1st of August next, over the entire States in rebellion, to arm themselves with any and every kind of weapon that may come to hand, and commence operations by burning all the railroad and country bridges, and tear up railroad tracks, and to destroy telegraph lines, etc., and then take to the woods, swamps, or the mountains, where they may emerge as occasion may offer for provisions and for further depredations. No blood is to be shed except in self-defense.... This is the plan in substance, and if we can obtain a concerted movement at the time named it will doubtless be successful.
The main object of this letter is to state the time for the rising that it may be simultaneous over the whole South. To carry out the plan in the department in which you have the command, you are requested to select one or more intelligent contrabands, and, after telling them the plan and the time (night of the 1st of August), you will send them into the interior of the country within the enemy's lines and where the slaves are numerous, with instructions to communicate the plan and the time to as many intelligent slaves as possible, and requesting of each to circulate it far and wide over the country, so that we may be able to make the rising understood by several hundred thousand slaves by the time named.
When you have made these arrangements, please enclose this letter to some other General commanding in the same department with yourself, some one whom you know or believe to be favorable to such movement, and he, in turn, is requested to send it to another, and so on until it has traveled the entire round of the Department, and each command and post will in this way be acting together in the employment of negro slaves to carry the plan into effect.
In this way, the plan will be adopted at the same time and in concert over the whole South, and yet no one of all engaged in it will learn the names of his associates, and will only know the number of Generals acting together in the movement. To give the last information, and before enclosing this letter to some other General, put the numeral "1" after the word "approved" at the bottom of the sheet:
And when it has gone the rounds of the Department, the person last receiving it will please enclose it to my address, that I may then know and communicate that this plan is being carried out at the same time.
Yours respectfully, your obedient servant,
Augustus S. Montgomery.Augustus S. Montgomery, dispatch dated 19 May 1863; in Official Records: Armies, Series I, Volume LI, Part II, page 736
Does that help?.
__________________ "Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch.
Liberty is a well armed lamb contesting the vote."
Benjamin Franklin, 1759
Dear Hanny,
You're got a lot in your post, so forgive me if I don't address everything.
1. The Rationale for the EP.
The EP was a war measure, under President Lincoln's conception of his war powers. The disruption of slavery(which was occuring already) undercut the Southern war effort.
2. Slavery is a moral and political wrong. Lincoln had opposed slavery all his adult life. He, and others, deplored the cruelty and oppression of slavery itself, but also argued it warped the society around it in ways that inconsistent with a free republic.
3. Influence on England and France. While many segments of English society, especially the middle and working classes, were anti-slavery, the domestic considerations were paramount for the North.
4. The logic of events. In the early months of the war, Lincoln was trying to contain the rebellion: compromise with the border states, reassure Southern unionists that he didn't mean to disrupt slavery, where it existed, schemes of gradual compensation in the loyal slave states. When Union commanders like Fremont overstepped, Lincoln checked them, sharply. By the middle of 1862, it was clear that Southern unionists were a chimera, the border states were firmly in the Union camp, and the war, already long and costly was going to get longer and costlier. Lincoln was not trying to contain, but to win.
By Lincoln's reasoning, the Union would be not repaired status quo ante, but be reborn, shorn of the slavery (a cancer, in his words) which caused the trouble in the first place.
5. Reality on the ground. By the middle of 1862, slavery was beginning to dissolve, especially in areas near the Union army, as the slaves voted with their feet not to be slaves anymore. Abolitionists black and white were demanding blacks be enrolled in the army, because they understood the link between military service, with its hardships and dangers and citizenship.
As to the hardships, and awful conditions some freedpeople endured, that does not change the above.
As to relationships between slaves and owners, if seems to me that any relationship based so entirely on domination, exploitation and total control would have a hard time growing any real, as opposed to pretended affection.
As to owners of one slave being nicer than owners of many, I don't see why that would be so. In many ways it could be tougher for the slave, since he has no friends or family, and a much smaller psychological space after from his master.
1. Yes i agree post war it has no legal weight.
2.
Where in the Bible does it say slavery is imoral?, i can see where God directly speaks to Mosses and regulates and aproves it for Mosiac law. I can see where the 13 colonies, all but one slave states, enter into a Union that protects slavery with laws, so im afraid you posting as if i accept your posistion, which i dont, as being accurate.
Lincoln while in private practice fought and won cases to return slaves to their owners, he never once argued that slavery was wrong or defended a slave agianst his master in any court, and only spoke against slavery in any form from, in late life when he was more aware of it as an instition and its effects, yes he came to the posistion you mention, but he did not start with it but arrived at it, from one of complet ambivalence to the slave and his condition.Lincoln got nominated in Chigago because he was not associated with the anti slavery section of the Republican party,
While I was at the hotel to-day, an elderly gentleman called upon me to know whether I was really in favor of producing a perfect equality between the negroes and white people. While I had not proposed to myself on this occasion to say much on that subject, yet as the question was asked me I thought I would occupy perhaps five minutes in saying something in regard to it. I will say then that I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races — that I am not nor ever have been in favor of making voters or jurors of negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people; and I will say in addition to this that there is a physical difference between the white and black races which I believe will forever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality. And inasmuch as they cannot so live, while they do remain together there must be the position of superior and inferior, and I as much as any other man am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race.Lincoln, speech delivered at Charleston, Illinois on 18 September 1858
Lincoln addressed a delegation of free Blacks at the Executive Mansion with these words:
.[W]hy... should the people of your race be colonized, and where? Why should they leave the country? This is, perhaps, the first question for consideration. You and we are different races. We have between us a broader difference than exists between almost any other two races. Whether it is right or wrong I need not discuss, but this physical difference is a great disadvantage to us both, as I think your race suffers very greatly, many of them by living among us, while ours suffers from your presence. In a word we suffer on each side. If this be admitted, it affords a reason at least why we should be separated.
You here are freemen, I suppose... but even when you cease to be slaves, you are yet far removed from being placed on an equality with the white race. You are cut off from many of the advantages which the other race enjoys.... Owing to the existence of the two races on this continent, I need not recount to you the effects upon white men growing out of the institution of slavery.
I believe in its general evil effects on the white race. See our present condition — the country engaged in war — our white men cutting one another's throats — none knowing how far it will extend — and then consider what we know to be the truth. But for your race among us there could not be war, although many men engaged on either side do not care for you one way or the other.... It is better for us both therefore to be separated....
I have urged the colonization of the negroes, and I shall continue. My Emancipation Proclamation was linked with this plan. There is no room for two distinct races of white men in America, much less for two distinct races of whites and blacks.
I can conceive of no greater calamity than the assimilation of the negro into our social and political life as our equal....
Within twenty years we can peacefully colonize the negro and give him our language, literature, religion, and system of government under conditions in which he can rise to the full measure of manhood. This he can never do here. We can never attain the ideal union our fathers dreamed of, with millions of an alien, inferior race among us, whose assimilation is neither possible nor desirable.Lincoln, address delivered at Washington, D.C.; in Basler, Collected Works of Lincoln, Volume V, pages 371-375.
3. Actually the connetion between the UK/France and other Eurpean and Scandavian countries recognising the CSA as a beligerent was a very important part of the EP evolution and timing of delivery by Lincoln.
4. I agree completly with what you say. The problem though is then the perception that the Southerners had was that he and the Black Republicans had inteneded this from the start, rather than arrived at it from force of circamstance.
5. So what the Union moving into CSA ground mean to the negro? now he was free, free to be drafted, and this did what to his dependednts?, both sides have eaten the ground out, leaving the lowest element of society to do what?, go where they can feed themselves.
General Orders No. 17, from the Department of the South headquarters at Hilton Head, South Carolina, stipulated: General Orders No. 17, 6 March 1863; ibid., Volume XIV, page 1020
[A]ll able-bodied male negroes between the ages of eighteen and fifty within the military lines of the Department of the South who are not, on the day of the date of this order, regularly and permanently employed in the quartermaster and commissary departments, or as the private servants of officers, within the allowance made by the Army Regulations, are hereby drafted into the military service of the United States, to serve as non-commissioned officers and soldiers in the various regiments and brigades now organized, and in process of being organized, by Brig. Gen.
After this order had failed to produce the desired results, the following amended order was issued: General Orders No. 119, 16 August 1864; ibid., Series III, Volume IV, page 621.
In view of the necessities of the military service, the want of recruits to complete the unfilled regiments in this department, the great numbers of unemployed colored men and deserters hiding about to avoid labor or service, and in consideration of the large bounties now paid to volunteers by the Government, General Orders, No. 17, dated headquarters Department of the South, Hilton Head, S.C., March 6, 1863, is hereby amended to read as follows:
All able-bodied colored men between the ages of eighteen and fifty, within the military lines of the Department of the South, who have had an opportunity to enlist voluntarily and refused to do so, shall be drafted into the military service of the United States....
Rufus Saxton, specially authorized to raise such troops by orders of the War Department.
Negros had voted with there feet for decdes, about 500 per annum went into the underground RR, but when war devestated a region, its not freedom they got, but a change of master.
__________________ "Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch.
Liberty is a well armed lamb contesting the vote."
Benjamin Franklin, 1759
As to relationships between slaves and owners, if seems to me that any relationship based so entirely on domination, exploitation and total control would have a hard time growing any real, as opposed to pretended affection.
As to owners of one slave being nicer than owners of many, I don't see why that would be so. In many ways it could be tougher for the slave, since he has no friends or family, and a much smaller psychological space after from his master.
The legal relationship is that the owner of the chattel property is the area your forgetting, he had by law to provide home, work, food, cloths, medical care, take work for instance, the stick was punishment and the carrot was fincial incentives, the Average slave earnt about 20% of the national av wage by incentive payments, so the incentives were quite more important than the punishment, your where more likly to be flogged in the UK Army of that time, than as a slave, and the RN was three times more likly to flogg you than the Uk Army.
And then there is the vast literature, pre war, and post war, of negros reporting the kind of relationship that existed.
__________________ "Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch.
Liberty is a well armed lamb contesting the vote."
Benjamin Franklin, 1759
Where in the Bible does it say slavery is imoral?, i can see where God directly speaks to Mosses and regulates and aproves it for Mosiac law.
I'm not so sure as you that the Bible is the final arbiter on what is and is not immoral. Many cultures develop a notion of morality without benefit of the Good Book.
Ole
__________________ 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
Dear Hanny,
You're not replying to my post 29, which answers some, but not all of the points above. I haven't looked up the material on slaves leaving for Union lines up to 1862 yet(contrabands) haven't had the chance, but will.
Hanny re read your last paragraph. Are you defending slavery as a great deal for the enslaved people? Not quoting a defense of slavery by a slaveowner to justify it to himself and others. Or arguing that most slaveowers didn't rape, flog or kill their slaves, much. Are you arguing that by objective standards, slavery was a benign institution, a "good deal" for the human being enslaved, a useful and desirable occupation?
As I said before, if you need Biblical authority as to the morality of slavery, I suggest the Golden Rule.
Since the Bible otherwise seemed to condone slavery, slave owners would interpret this to mean they should treat their slaves as they would wish to be treated if they were a slave, themselves.
__________________ "Forgive your enemies, but never forget their names".--J.F.K.
The War Between the States established... This principle that the Federal Government is, through its courts, this final judge of its own powers.
-- Woodrow Wilson
CivilWarTalk.com -
A free and friendly Civil War community. 
Linear Mode
