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.
20)"...every bill will be passed which they can pass and may deem necessary to strengthen the arm of Government and to enable Mr. Lincoln to enforce payment of revenue at Southern ports or to blockade them..."
Clement C. Clay, 7 January 1861
21) "They [the South] know that it is their import trade that draws from the people's pockets sixty or seventy millions of dollars per annum, in the shape of duties, to be expended mainly in the North, and in the protection and encouragement of Northern interest.... These are the reasons why these people do not wish the South to secede from the Union. They [the North] are enraged at the prospect of being despoiled of the rich feast upon which they have so long fed and fattened, and which they were just getting ready to enjoy with still greater gout and gusto. They are as mad as hornets because the prize slips them just as they are ready to grasp it."
New Orleans Daily Crescent, January 21, 1861
22)"... the mask [of protecting slavery] has been thrown off and it is apparent that the people of the principal seceding states are now for commercial independence. They dream that the centres of traffic can be changed from Northern to Southern ports. The merchants of New Orleans, Charleston, and Savannah are possesed of the idea that New York, Boston, and Philadelphia may be shorn, in the future, of their mercantile greatness, by a revenue system verging on free trade....The government would be false if this state of things were not provided against."
Boston Transcript, March 18, 1861
23) GOODS ENTERING FREE AT ST. LOUIS. The St. Louis Republican, of the 23d says: "Every day our importers of foreign merchandise are receiving, by way of New Orleans, very considerable quantities of goods, duty free. The goods are landed at the port of New Orleans-no Custom-house notice is taken of them-no bonds are executed for the payment of duties on their arrival there; and on many articles the saving of one half the duty only, would afford a handsome profit. If this thing is to become permanent, there will be an entire revolution in the course of trade, and New York will suffer terribly. Our merchants have capital enough to justify them in making their purchases in Europe, and shipping to New Orleans, and in that city, because of the difference in the tariff, goods can be bought cheaper than in New York. With these advantages, we shall be able to sell cheaper than any other city in the Valley of the Mississippi."
I'm confused. How does the above post conerning the draft and the Tribune fit into, 'Money; THE Cause?' theme?
Curious,
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
24) "Free trade is the soul and life of a people without manufactures, and dependent on the soil for their support, and, with the exception of sugar, the South could and would adopt free trade, which would add greatly to their prosperity. It would force that system on the North, and thus cripple the Eastern manufactories, while it would swell the trade of Charleston, Mobile and New Orleans vastly, as great ports of entry, and in proportion as their trade increased, the commerce of Philadelphia, New York, and Boston, would decrease. The spring trade of Philadelphia is almost exclusively confined to the Southern States. Nearly one half of the jobbing of New York is done with Southern retailers and sub jobbers. Boston depends to a great extent on the Southern and Cuba trade, while the shoe-mongers of Lynn would starve out were it not for the Southern trade, a fact fully proven by the disasters they are now experiencing from a partial suspension of that traffic."
The previous post? Does it concern itself with a specific Tribune article or editorial? Your previous posts have been quite long and detailed. Mind giving me a post number so I can check it out?
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
With only a few minutes left in the 2nd Quarter, Battalion has moved ahead of Cash 24 to 22 in the Battle of the Editorials. Oh, to be a fly on the walls of those halftime locker rooms! This looks to be a smash-mouth battle to the end.
__________________ -
"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
Volume II AMERICAN WAR. Speech II.
ROCHDALE, NOVEMBER 24, 1863.[At the general election of 1859, Mr. Cobden was returned for the borough of Rochdale, and sat for this town during the rest of his life. The following was one of his annual addresses to his constituents.]
Pertinent excerpt:
I have travelled--and it is for this that I am now going to mention, that I touch upon the subject at all--I travelled in the United States in 1859, the year before the fatal shot was fired at Fort Sumter, which has made such terrible reverberations since. I travelled in the United States--I visited Washington during the session of the Congress, and wherever I go, and whenever I travel abroad, whether it be in France, America, Austria, or Russia, I at once become the centre of all those who form and who avow strong convictions and purposes in reference to Free_trade principles. Well, I confess to you what I confessed to my friends when I returned, that I felt disappointed, when I was at Washington in the spring of 1859, that there was so little interest felt on the Free_trade question There was no party formed, no public agitation; there was no discussion whatever upon the subject of Free Trade and protection. The political field was wholly occupied by one question, and that question was Slavery.
Now, I will mention an illustrative fact, which I have not seen referred to. To my mind, it is conclusive on this subject. In December, 1860, whilst Congress was sitting, and when the country was in the agony of suspense, fearing the impending rupture amongst them, a committee of their body, comprising thirty_three members, being one representative from every State then in the Union,--that committee, called the Committee of Thirty_three, sat from December 11th, 1860, to January 14th, 1861. They were instructed by Congress to inquire into the perilous state of the Union, and try to devise some means by which the catastrophe of a secession could be averted. Here is a report of the proceedings in that committee [holding up a book in his hand]. I am afraid there is not another report in this country. I have reason to know so. There are forty pages. I have read every line.
The members from the Southern States, the representatives of the Slave States, were invited by the representatives of the Free States to state candidly and frankly what were the terms they required, in order that they might continue peaceable in the Union; but in every page you see their propositions brought forward, and from beginning to end there is not one syllable said about tariff or taxation. From the beginning to end there is not a grievance alleged but that which was connected with the maintenance of slavery.
There were propositions calling on the North to give increased security for the maintenance of that institution; they are invited to extend the area of slavery; to make laws, by which fugitive slaves might be given up; they are pressed to make treaties with foreign Powers, by which foreign Powers might give up fugitive slaves; but, from beginning to end, no grievance is mentioned except connected with slavery,--it is slavery, slavery, slavery, from the beginning to the end.
Is it not astonishing, in the face of facts like these, that any one should have the temerity, so little regard to decency and self_respect, as to get up in the House of Commons, and say that secession has been upon a question of Free Trade and Protection? Well, this is a war to perpetuate and extend human slavery. It is a war not to defend slavery as it was left by their ancestors--I mean, a thing to be retained and to be apologised for,--it is a war to establish a slave empire,--a war in which slavery shall be made the cornerstone of the social system,--a war which shall be defended and justified on scriptural and on ethnological grounds.
Well, I say, God pardon the men, who, in this year of grace 1863, should think that such a project as that could be crowned with success. Now, you know that I have, from the first, never believed it possible that the South should succeed; and I have founded that faith mainly upon moral instincts, which teach us to repudiate the very idea that anything so infamous should succeed. No; it is certain that in this world the virtues and the forces go together, and the vices and the weaknesses are inseparable. It is, therefore, that I felt certain that this project never could succeed. For how is it? There is a community with nearly half of its population slaves, and they were attempting to fight another community where every working man is a free man. It is as though Yorkshire and Lancashire were to enter into conflict, and it was understood that in the case of one, all the labourers who did the muscular work of the country, whether in the field or in the factory, whether in the roads or in the domestic establishments--in the one case, you would have that bone and muscle, the sinew of the country, eliminated from the fighting population, and not only eliminated from the fighting population, but ready to take advantage of this war, either to run away or fight against you.
How could we, so circumstanced, fighting against a neighbouring country, where every working man was fighting for his own--how could we have a chance, if our physical force was crippled, and we were devoid of all moral influences? That is the condition in which these two sections of the United States are now placed. In the one case, you have a condition in which labour is held honourable. Have we not heard it used as a reproach by some people, who fancy themselves in alliance with the aristocracy--some of our Ministers, who would lead us to suppose they are of the aristocratic order?
Now, we hear it used as an argument against the North, that their President, Mr. Lincoln, was a 'rail_splitter.' But what does that prove with regard to the United States, but that labour is held in honour in that country? And with such a conflict going on, and with such an example as I feel no doubt will follow, I cannot, if I speak of such a contest as that, say that it is a struggle for empire on the one side, and for independence on the other. I say it is an aristocratic rebellion against a democratic Government.
That is the title I would give to it; and in all history, when you have had the aristocracy pitted against the people, in a hand_to_hand contest, the aristocracy have always gone down under the heavy blows of the democracy. When I speak this, let no one say I am indifferent to the process of misery and destitution, and ruin and bloodshed, now going on in that country. No. My indignation against the South is, that they fired the first shot, and made themselves responsible for this result. I take, probably, a stronger view than most people in this country, and certainly a stronger view than anybody in America, of the vast sacrifices of life, and of economical comfort and resources, which must follow to the North from this struggle. They are mistaken if they think they can carry on a civil war like this, drawing a million men from their productive industry, to engage merely in a process of destruction, and spending their two or three hundred millions sterling--I say they are mistaken and deluded if they think they can carry on a war like that without a terrible collapse, sooner or later, and I am sure that there will be a great prostration in every part of the community. But that being so, makes me still more indignant and intolerant of the cause; but of the result I have no more doubt than I have on any subject that lies in the future.
And now I would ask you--why do some people wish that the United States should be cut up in two? They think it desirable that it should be weakened. Will that view bear discussion for a moment? I hold not. I am of the opinion which our statesmen held in the time of Canning, who thought it desirable for Europe that America should be strong; desirable that she should be strong, because it would thereby prevent European Powers from interfering in American affairs. American States which have not been so prosperous or so orderly as the United States. And now see what has followed. See what has happened already from this disruption of the United States.
You have France gone to Mexico; you have Spain gone to San Domingo..Why, there are horrors unutterable now going on in San Domingo, because Spain has gone and invaded that country with the view to re_conquest; and the French Government has embarked in a career in Mexico which I will only characterise as the greatest mistake committed by the monarch of that country. This enterprise would never have been undertaken if the United States had not been in the difficulties of this civil war; and it is the least creditable part of those enterprises that they have been undertaken because America was weak. But it only required that the North should have been a little weaker, and then these silly people would have been going about for an interference in America, and then they would have carried out their project, and you would have had France and other Powers going over to America to meddle in that quarrel.
Now, is that desirable? Don't you think we have enough to do at home? Do you think, now, that Europe has so much wisdom to spare in the management of her affairs, that she can afford to cross the Atlantic to set the new world in order?.......
There's more, but he talked on about European politics.This from an Englishman -- not a story teller or journalist, a member of Parliament.
Now for the silly editorial...
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
Late 1861, the editor of the "Louisville Courier" wrote:
"We are not the brothers of the Yankees, and the slavery question is merely the pretext, not the cause of the war. The true irrepressible conflict lies fundamentally in the hereditary hostility, the sacred animosity, the eternal antagonism between the two races engaged. The Norman cavalier can not brook the vulgar familiarity of the Saxon Yankee, while the latter is continuously devising some plan to bring down his aristocratic neighbor to his own detested level. Thus was the contest waged in the old United States… [and] when the Yankee hirelings placed one of their own spawn [Lincoln] over us, political connection became unendurable, and separation necessary to preserve our self-respect. As our Norman kinsmen in England, always a minority, have ruled their Saxon countrymen in political vassalage up to the present day, so have we, ‘the slave oligarchs,’ governed the Yankees till within a twelvemonth. We framed the Constitution, for seventy years moulded the policy of the government, and placed our own men, or ‘Northern men with Southern principles’ in power. On the 6th of November, 1860, the Puritans emancipated themselves, and are now in violent insurrection against their former overseers. This insane holiday freak will not last long, however, for, dastards in fight, and incapable of self-government, they will inevitably again fall under the control of the superior race. A few … thrashings will bring them once more under the yoke as docile as the most loyal of our Ethiopian Chattels.”
One common thing about all these editorials: they're fortune-telling talents were woefully inadquate.
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
Thought it might help make it easier for you to find some old source and reference material for this new thread.
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
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