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.
As has been pointed out in this and many other threads, that THE Biggest economic interest 'Directly, involved in the starting of the war was Slave owners.
The war was indeed about money. Money derived from the ownership of slaves. As Cash has pointed the ruling elite of the south knew 'exactly' which side their bread was buttered on.
"The issue to be decided by the people of Virginia is clearly stated in the following resolution, adopted by public meeting in the county of Dinwiddie: (The full proceedings will be found in another column.)
“'Resolved, 1st. The old Union being irreparably dissolved, there is no option left us, (the people of Virginia,) save to unite our destinies with our sister Southern States—or, to remain a useless appendage to the Northern Confederacy—the latter alternative being utterly repugnant to ALL TRUE SOUTHERN MEN.' Here is a noble platform for the Resistance Party of Virginia. The question of secession is not before the people of Virginia—it has been decided, and they have now to choose between the Confederate States of the South and the Northern Union. The old Union, the glorious Union our fathers made, has been dissolved—ruthlessly torn asunder by Northern fanaticism—against the earnest protestation of the people of Virginia. From that Union, the allies of Virginia, her truth and mien have been derived, and her people have now to decide whether they will remain with the North or go with the South. The agitation of secession is the agitation of a question decided, and which can be remedied by no determination of Virginia. She did not dissolve the Union, and she cannot restore it. The North has disrupted the Union, and only the Northern States can re-construct it. The Northern States have driven the Southern States out, the Northern States must bring back the Southern States. Virginia’s ultimatum with a Border State Conference is a loss of time, a waste of paper, useless for all purposes, save those of Mr. Seward, 'delay' and 'wait.'—We are not without an ultimatum which will re-construct the Union; the States sought to be brought back are the only parties whose ultimatum can restore the Union. Virginia’s ultimatum may determine the conditions upon which she will remain with the North, but further than this it cannot go; if the re-construction of the old Union is the real object of the Convention, the adoption of the ultimatum of the seceded States will attest its sincerity and convince the people of the country that they are not scheming for party purpose, and that they have not given up to party the time and labor they were directed to bestow upon the country. The ultimatum of the seceded States is left in no uncertainty; it is to be found in the solemn action of the Montgomery Constitution and may be analyzed as follows:
"That African slavery in the Territories shall be recognized and protected by Congress and the Territorial Legislatures.
"That the right to slaveholders of transit and sojourn in any State of the Confederacy, with their slaves and other property, shall be recognized and respected.
"That the provision in regard to fugitive slaves shall extend to any slave lawfully carried from one State into another, and there escaping or taken away from his master.
"That no bill or ex post facto law (by Congress or any State,) and no law impairing or denying the right of property in negro slaves, shall be passed.
"That the African slave trade shall be prohibited by such laws of Congress as shall effectually prevent the same.
"The report made by Gov. Wise embraces all these. The Convention, in voting upon the report of Gov. Wise, will decide for or against the Northern Confederacy. Gov. Wise presents no question of secession, he accepts that as already decided, and calls upon the Convention of Virginia to declare either for the old Union upon the ultimatum laid down by the seceded States; or for Union with the seceded, or for remaining with the North. In voting down the report of Gov. Wise and adopting that of the majority, the Convention will have deliberately voted down the only plan of re-construction; they will also have voted down the Union with the South; and they will have decided, without consulting the people of Virginia, to remain 'a useless appendage to the Northern Confederacy,' an 'alternative utterly repugnant to all true Southern men.' 'Our connection with the Federal Union' has been dissolved by the disruption of the Union, but Virginia is under the dominion and government of the Northern States, according to the forms of the Constitution of the once Federal Union. Shall she so remain? The Convention, by adopting the majority report, will determine this question in favor of the North. Will the people ratify such action by the Convention?The question does not involve secession or disunion, but merely whether, the Union being dissolved, Virginia will remain with the North or go with the South. Such is the issue between the resistance and submission parties in Virginia." [Richmond _Enquirer,_ 23 Mar 1861]
"If things continue as they are, the outside pressure of fanaticism, and its secret incendiary action, operating more and more to render property in slaves unsafe, will continue to cause (as has long been the case) and to increase the removal of the slave population from the border slaveholding States until these will lose all, and ceasing to be slaveholding, must consequently become more and more assimilated to the North in sentiment and policy. On this account, every year that shall pass before the secession movement is made, will serve to depress still lower the property and slavery interests, and the power for resistance and self-protection of the border slaveholding states. If these States are to be successfully defended in the possession of their property, their political rights, and everything dear to free men, or if they are to be preserved as a future integral portion, and the border bulwark of a Southern confederacy, it must be secured by the more Southern States seceding first, and speedily." [_The Charleston Mercury,_ 10 Mar 1860]
26) "The men of Pennsylvania and Massachusetts cared as a rule very little about the 'domestic institutions' of the South until this war broke out. The merchants of New York were bitter partisans of slavery. But the ironmasters of Pennsylvania and the manufacturers of New England have taxed the South for their benefit so long that they cannot bear the thought of losing the power of doing so for the future. The brokers of the Empire City are furious at the prospect of seeing their lucrative trade diverted to Charleston or New Orleans, and carried on with English capital. The lust of money has had ten times more to do with the sudden patriotism of the North than their love of liberty."
27) "....The regret of the English people at the rupture of the American Union was...genuine and universal, and yet the calamity to the Union...was evidently favorable to our own interests, both political and commercial....with the establishment of a Confederacy of purely agricultural States in the South, the restrictive tariff of the old Union and the still more restrictive one recently adopted, will no longer suffice to prevent the entry of our manufacturers into the American continent. Free-trade pure and simple--free-trade of the most absolute kind is opened to us by the new Confederacy....Even our shipping interest will benefit largely by this change in the political organization of North America...."
The Press, 6 April 1861 (reprinted in The Living Age, Boston)
"Mr. Lincoln has accepted the Presidential nomination tendered him by the Black Republicans. Whatever may be the result of future Conventions held by other parties, we know now who is to lead on the formidable, well-drilled, and hopeful hosts of the main body of those who are warring upon the institution of slavery. The 'irrepressible conflict,' despite our wishes, our hopes, our struggles to arrest or postpone it, is now upon us." [_Daily Courier,_ Louisville, 26 May 1860]
"Upon the accession of Lincoln to power, we would apprehend no direct act of violence against negro property, but by the use of federal office, contracts, power and patronage, the building up in every Southern State of a Black Republican party, the ally and stipendiary of Northern fanaticism, to become in a few short years the open advocates of abolition, the confiscation of negro property by emancipation sudden or gradual, and eventually the ruin of every Southern State by the destruction of negro labor. By gradual and insidious approach, under the fostering hand of federal power, Abolitionism will grow up in every border Southern State, converting them into free States, then into 'cities of refuge' for runaway negroes from the gulf States. No act of violence may ever be committed, no servile war waged, and yet the ruin and degradation of Virginia will be as fully and as fatally accomplished as though bloodshed and rapine ravished the land. There are no consequences that can follow, even forcible disunion, more disastrous to the future prosperity of the people of Virginia, than will be this sowing the seeds of discord and division, of emancipation and abolitionism by Northern hands, to be cultivated and harvested by the people of Virginia.
"If Mr. Yancey is a disunionist to avert these sad consequences, there will be no odium in the charge; on the contrary, the best and noblest men of the Southern States will rally around the gallant Alabamian, to avert consequences so calamitous to the peace and prosperity of the Southern States." [_Richmond Enquirer,_ 10 Jul 1860]
I find no shortage of them...so how is it not mainstream?...how does it not prove my point?
Because you are basing it on the illogical and historically false assumption that it was the Federals who started the war. Those who have studied this period of history will know that it was the confederates who started the war and the Federals who accepted the war the confederates started.
"If things continue as they are, the outside pressure of fanaticism, and its secret incendiary action, operating more and more to render property in slaves unsafe, will continue to cause (as has long been the case) and to increase the removal of the slave population from the border slaveholding States until these will lose all, and ceasing to be slaveholding, must consequently become more and more assimilated to the North in sentiment and policy. On this account, every year that shall pass before the secession movement is made, will serve to depress still lower the property and slavery interests, and the power for resistance and self-protection of the border slaveholding states. If these States are to be successfully defended in the possession of their property, their political rights, and everything dear to free men, or if they are to be preserved as a future integral portion, and the border bulwark of a Southern confederacy, it must be secured by the more Southern States seceding first, and speedily." [_The Charleston Mercury,_ 10 Mar 1860]
This quote becomes even more interesting when we realize that The Charleston Mercury was owned and operated by the Rhett family -- and that Mr. Rhett had worked for secession from his very first political campaign in the 1820s, back when his name was still Smith. He was, in fact, the leader of the Fire-Eaters, the collection of incendiary fanatics and extremists most involved in bringing this calamity down upon the nation. He should have taken a good look in the mirror and hung his head in shame when his own paper printed this.
26) "The men of Pennsylvania and Massachusetts cared as a rule very little about the 'domestic institutions' of the South until this war broke out. The merchants of New York were bitter partisans of slavery. But the ironmasters of Pennsylvania and the manufacturers of New England have taxed the South for their benefit so long that they cannot bear the thought of losing the power of doing so for the future. The brokers of the Empire City are furious at the prospect of seeing their lucrative trade diverted to Charleston or New Orleans, and carried on with English capital. The lust of money has had ten times more to do with the sudden patriotism of the North than their love of liberty."
London Morning Herald, 1861
As has been pointed out to you before, this bears little resemblance to the reality of the United States in the 1850s. It is an example of foreigners with little knowledge of the internal workings of a foreign country pontificating upon it. Americans often get it wrong when they do this about other parts of the world; foreigners often get it wrong when they do it about the US.
Anyone who investigates this will see the facts. You yourself, Battalion, have seen them often enough on this Forum; I have only been here a year and have seen them posted often enough in threads you were involved with.
Most articles and editorials like this are just foolishness and wishful-thinking on the part of whoever wrote it. There is no port on the Atlantic seaboard of the Confederacy that could handle the volume of New York at that time. Possibly New Orleans or Mobile could have made a stab at it with decades of development. If Maryland had succeeded, Baltimore would have been the best port, but even that mighty shipping center was far behind New York for good reason.
There no other port with the combination of centralized location with superior water and RR routes to the interior that made New York the pre-eminent entry port in the continent. The opening of the Erie Canal made it so. That development thrust New York out of the pack and made also-rans out of Boston, Philadelphia, and Baltimore because of the access it gave New York to the basin of the Great Lakes. The development of the RRs across upper New York State and Pennsylvania simply made it more established and harder to dethrone the king of ports. (They also diverted trade in the Mid-West, which used to flow entirely down the Ohio/Mississippi River complex, so that more and more of it went East to New York instead of South to New Orleans. This was one of the reasons Kentucky and the western part of Virginia were leaning steadily more northern on economic ties throughout the 1850s.)
To talk of Wilmington, Charleston, Savanah or Richmond-Petersburg on a level of commerce with those ports above the Potomac is to exhibit unreasonable enthusiasm and expectations (something the backers of secession and their supporters abroad had in plenty). Geography, the size of the market involved, the facilities that were non-existent, and the total failure of the Southern people themselves to understand and value what was required make such ideas completely impractical.
The economic matters that concerned Northerners during the "Winter of Secession" in 1860-61 were:
1) the terrible mess the Southern-led Buchanan administraion was leaving in Washington (mountainous debt, no funds in the Federal coffers, rising interest rates, banks that refused to lend money to the government to meet the crisis, etc.)
2) the witholding of payment of debts honestly owed by Southerners to Northerners, done in order to create a crisis and presure their fellow citizens. This SOUTHERN action, BTW, was probably a major cause of the layoffs of workers you are trying to stress as a contributory cause of the Civil War, and would have been particularly a harsh result of SOUTHERN perfidy in states like PA, NJ, and NY (particularly in Brooklyn) where much of the goods the Southerners bought for their slaves was manufactured. Note that NJ was generally regarded as a state aligned with Southern political interests before the Civil War, despite any comments you may be posting.
3) the seizure of Federal assets (income from Customs, the New Orleans Mint and $500,000 in gold and silver, another $500,000 of specie in New Orleans Customs hands at the time, Federal posts, forts, ships, arsenals, weapons, etc.) All this when the North had done absolutely nothing at all to any of the seceding states.
Yet despite all this, despite the use of armed force by Southerners and the near bankruptcy of the Federal government when Lincoln arrived in office on March 4, 1861, there is not a single hint that the US went to war over money. Not one. The clear and absolutely only incident that caused the people of the United States to rise, arm themselves, and move to suppress the rebellion was the unprovoked assault on the United States by the Confederacy. That action was taken in solemn council by the heads of that government, with reasoning given and over the objections of the man they had appointed to head their State Department. If you want the cause of war, look there, at the deliberate decision of the Confederacy to lash out to get their own desire, nothing else.
Most newspaper editorials follow events rather than initiating them. If one is seeking causes, it is well to listen to those who acted to realize a cause, rather than those who merely pontificate on the results of the action.
What influence Barnwell Rhett's thoughts and actions had on the starting of the Civil War is problematic, But the thoughts and actions of the govenor and the legislature of S.C. are not problematic, nor are the results of their actions.
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