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.
So if the Constitution clearly sees a situation where slavery can be limited, and Washington does, and the Continetal Congress passes a law to limit slavery, isn't it fairly clear that limits to slavery were in the "original intent" of the "Founding Fathers"?
Pleased to note that we are on the same page in the hymnal. I've always believed that the founders recognized the evil of slavery but didn't have a solution. "I know it ain't right, but I don't know how to fix it!" Lincoln said as much himself.
We still don't have a good handle on how the peculiar institution could have been equitably "repaired." Most everybody agrees, or professes to agree, that it wasn't a stellar moment in US history. I have yet to see anyone propose a way that it could have been eliminated. Kinda like a wart. You can bury a black cat in a graveyard at midnight and it may or may not get rid of it. Or a tumor, you can take it out surgically, but its location may make its removal very risky. Worra, worra.
A great moral and economic quandary approached with much emotion, hutzpah, hubris, and belly-bumping. No answers. Bang. You're dead. Now let's go play cowboys and Indians.
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
Pleased to note that we are on the same page in the hymnal. I've always believed that the founders recognized the evil of slavery but didn't have a solution. "I know it ain't right, but I don't know how to fix it!" Lincoln said as much himself.
Yes, I agree with that. That's not an unusual situation in history, a knotty problem that needs to be solved, but no one is quite sure how to do it. Or willing to go through the pain of handling it, so they leave it to a future generation. Much like water rights on the Colorado River, or Social Security, etc. In politics, there is often a tendency to do something now that puts the difficulty off to sometime in the future -- and makes the ultimate solution more painful. Back in the 1780s, the "Founding Fathers" were negotiating a minefield of problems, looking to make compromises to get the Constitution adopted, and probably saw no way to resolve this issue in the midst of that. Most of the deals they struck out worked out remarkably well. The ones over slavery seem to have simply pushed this unpleasant issue off into the dim future.
Quote:
Originally Posted by ole
We still don't have a good handle on how the peculiar institution could have been equitably "repaired." Most everybody agrees, or professes to agree, that it wasn't a stellar moment in US history. I have yet to see anyone propose a way that it could have been eliminated. Kinda like a wart. You can bury a black cat in a graveyard at midnight and it may or may not get rid of it. Or a tumor, you can take it out surgically, but its location may make its removal very risky. Worra, worra.
Agreed again. The problem was too big/emotional/integral to be solved easily, and the long delays in dealing with it only made a solution more painful. Like knowing you have a cavity, and not going to the dentist until it abcesses, you only make the pain worse.
We know what happened then: secession, Civil War, Reconstruction, the KKK, segregation, the civil rights movement of the 1960s, etc. If there was an "easier" way, one that avoided secession and the Civil War, I would guess that it would mean a movement towards gradual emancipation in the remaining slave states back somewhere in the 1830s-1850s. Virginia almost did that, and if VA had gone that way, MD and DE almost surely would have done it, perhaps NC as well.
If that had happened, the entire situation would have changed. Instead of a slavery-everywhere/slavery-nowhere divide, we would have seen a different debate. Other slave states would have faced great moral pressure to adopt the same position. Abolitionists would have to argue that emancipation was taking too long. But in this situation, movement towards a solution would be obvious, and the battle would be over the details instead of the principle. You can always resolve that if the parties wish to do so.
But I think the chance of that happening melted away in the late 1830s and 1840s. The "King Cotton" boom and the expansion in the Deep South from the eviction of the Indians and the annexation of Texas, the "Manifest Destiny" movement, and the acquisition of new territory to argue over seems to have pushed it into oblivion.
There may well have been a few who sincerely believed they were working for a return to the constitution as they thought is was. The sentiment certainly sounds better than "they want to take our slaves," which didn't play well to the majority of the south or to potential European support.
Ole, I am not so sure that most southerners were opposed to the idea of slavery (unfortunately). In fact, I think that most southerners, even non-slaveholding ones, were pretty solidly in favor of the institution, or at least were in favor of the south finding her own solution (which in 1860, looked like maintaining the status quo). Slaveholders in 1860, playing on racial fears and stereotypes, talked about how emancipation played out in Santo Domingo (Haiti) in which the white population was exterminated by former slaves, or Jamaica, in which former slaves stopped working, and the island's economic output dropped precipitously in the years following emancipation. Neither alternative was attractive to southerners, whether they owned slaves or not. And some of the rhetoric coming out of some northerners led a significant number of southerners to foresee that southern emancipation would look more like Santo Domingo than Jamaica.
__________________ "In this Constitution, the citizens of the United States appear dispensing a part of their original power in what manner and what proportion they think fit. They never part with the whole; and they retain the right of recalling what they part with." James Wilson of Pennsylvania, October 28th, 1787
Ole, I am not so sure that most southerners were opposed to the idea of slavery (unfortunately). In fact, I think that most southerners, even non-slaveholding ones, were pretty solidly in favor of the institution, or at least were in favor of the south finding her own solution (which in 1860, looked like maintaining the status quo). Slaveholders in 1860, playing on racial fears and stereotypes, talked about how emancipation played out in Santo Domingo (Haiti) in which the white population was exterminated by former slaves, or Jamaica, in which former slaves stopped working, and the island's economic output dropped precipitously in the years following emancipation. Neither alternative was attractive to southerners, whether they owned slaves or not. And some of the rhetoric coming out of some northerners led a significant number of southerners to foresee that southern emancipation would look more like Santo Domingo than Jamaica.
Yes, it is true that those fears were played up in the South, particularly with the large influence of immigrants from Santo Domingo/Haiti to Charleston and New Orleans after the troubles there.
However, why is it, do you think, that Southerners would look to foreign examples when they had several American examples close at hand: the gradual and peaceful emancipations in New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania, all occuring in the first half of the 19th century? Given the close relationship between NJ and the South, a fair number of Southerners would have had first hand observation of that one. Would you not think those stories more appropriate than the horror stories out of a foreign place?
I understand why extremists would play up the horror stories, just as I understand why Abolitionist extremists played up horror tales about Southern slaveowners. I just do not believe it was reasonable for the rest of the South to swallow it hook, line, and sinker.
Yes, it is true that those fears were played up in the South, particularly with the large influence of immigrants from Santo Domingo/Haiti to Charleston and New Orleans after the troubles there.
However, why is it, do you think, that Southerners would look to foreign examples when they had several American examples close at hand: the gradual and peaceful emancipations in New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania, all occuring in the first half of the 19th century? Given the close relationship between NJ and the South, a fair number of Southerners would have had first hand observation of that one. Would you not think those stories more appropriate than the horror stories out of a foreign place?
I understand why extremists would play up the horror stories, just as I understand why Abolitionist extremists played up horror tales about Southern slaveowners. I just do not believe it was reasonable for the rest of the South to swallow it hook, line, and sinker.
Tim, not trying to make excuses for bad behavior, but in 1820, Pennsylvania had 211 slaves, and 30,413 free black people, which represented 2.9% of her population. In NY the % was the same (2.9%). New Jersey was the highest in 1820, with 7.2% of her population black. Black people were always a distinct minority in every northern state that ended slavery. In South Carolina and Mississippi, in 1860, 58.6% and 55.3% respectively. Louisiana was 49.5%, Alabama 45.4%, Florida and Georgia were 44%. That is a big population to absorb. Now slaveholders and secessionists played to racial stereotypes that blacks were lazy and ignorant and wouldn't work, and would simply steal for a living. In fact, in the newspapers I have read, one sees, from time to time, articles about how defenseless and abused northern freedmen were, unable to make a living because of northern bigotry, and lack of opportunity etc. In some cases, there were articles about emancipated slaves coming back to the south and looking for their old “situations” again. Of course, secessionists played such cases up, to show how humane southern slavery was, and how hard life was for freed blacks.
__________________ "In this Constitution, the citizens of the United States appear dispensing a part of their original power in what manner and what proportion they think fit. They never part with the whole; and they retain the right of recalling what they part with." James Wilson of Pennsylvania, October 28th, 1787
Tim, I have long been curious about one thing, and maybe you know, or someone else on the board does. What percentage of the slaves in the northern states that enacted gradual emancipation statutes were sold south? Most northern states passed laws to the effect that, all children born to slaves after a certain date would be free on their 18th or 21st birthdays. I am not familiar with the provision of these laws, but it seems possible that a particularly tight-fisted owner could avoid emancipation by simply selling his slaves before the law freed them, unless the statue forebade such a practice.
Any thoughts?
__________________ "In this Constitution, the citizens of the United States appear dispensing a part of their original power in what manner and what proportion they think fit. They never part with the whole; and they retain the right of recalling what they part with." James Wilson of Pennsylvania, October 28th, 1787
My recollections from having looked into the situation are now quite fuzzy. I don't think I ever read a percentage sold south, although it certainly must have happened with some frequency. In all the states, the intent of the laws was to free the slaves at their majority; however, few states actually forbade the sale.
If I'm remembering correctly, there were still a few aging slaves in New Jersey and Delaware in 1865, a fact gleefully paraded by the "you're another" faction.
__________________ 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
If I'm remembering correctly, there were still a few aging slaves in New Jersey and Delaware in 1865, a fact gleefully paraded by the "you're another" faction.
18 slaves in New Jersey in 1860 census. 1,798 in Delaware. I'm not gleeful about it though.
__________________ "In this Constitution, the citizens of the United States appear dispensing a part of their original power in what manner and what proportion they think fit. They never part with the whole; and they retain the right of recalling what they part with." James Wilson of Pennsylvania, October 28th, 1787
But then, you're not part of the "you're another" faction.
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
18 slaves in New Jersey in 1860 census. 1,798 in Delaware. I'm not gleeful about it though.
One of the objects of the NJ law was to avoid dumping the aged and infirm on the community for support, while freeing all others after a set period of years and/or their becoming adults. There were actually a few more than this 18 according to one reference I read, almost all down in a single county in central NJ. Anyone reporting them to a census taker would be admitting to a crime if they were a NJ citizen at that point. However, I believe that county was the same one Princeton is in, and Princeton was where many Southerners sent their sons to school in preference to Yale or Harvard. The slaves reported might well simply belong to citizens of Southern states who were living in NJ at the time of the census.
Delaware, of course, was still a slave state. There were more free blacks than slaves in one of its three counties (Wilmington, the most populous one). Slave population there was declining in real numbers as well as in percentage of the population. There was a higher percentage of slaves in NY at the time of the Revolution than there was in Delaware, Maryland, or Missouri in 1860.
CivilWarTalk.com -
A free and friendly Civil War community. 
Linear Mode
