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.
Yes, it is always useful to talk in code on issues people are squeamish about.
I didn't see much in the way of "code." I think it's very clear: "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."
Quote:
Originally Posted by trice
It is like the mention of how "most Southerners didn't own slaves". Absolutely true. Slaves were expensive. Most people did not own slaves because they could not afford them; they were a sign of prosperity and wealth.
In the 1860 census, only about 25% of Southern families owned slaves. But that story changes drastically if you look at a group like the members of the state legislatures, or the governors and appointed officials, and the members of the secession conventions of the seceding states. Then you discover the percentage of slave owners was much higher, essentially 100% in some states. That is normal enough when you begin to associate the term slave with money, and money with politics. You don't find a lot of dirt-poor farmers in state legislatures in those days; you do find lawyers and plantation owners in great abundance. So when you actually look at the men casting the votes that brought secessionabout in the South, virtually all of them did own slaves.
Regards,
Tim
I agree completely. Does that make me one of your cohorts? Do we get to wear a cool patch?
"For myself, I say, as I said on a former occasion, in the contingency of the election of a President on the platform of Mr. Seward's Rochester Speech, let the Union be dissolved." [Jefferson Davis, speech of 6 July 1859, in Dunbar Rowland, editor, _Jefferson Davis, Constitutionalist,_ Vol IV, p. 87, quoted in David M. Potter, _Lincoln and His Party in the Secession Crisis,_ p. 4]
"As soon, however, as the Northern States that prohibited African slavery within their limits had reached a number sufficient to give their representation a controlling voice in Congress, a persistent and organized system of hostile measures against the rights of the owners of slaves in the Southern States was inaugurated and gradually extended. A continuous series of measures was devised and prosecuted for the purpose of rendering insecure the tenure of property in slaves. Fanatical organizations, supplied with money by voluntary subscriptions, were assiduously engaged in exciting amongst the slaves a spirit of discontent and revolt; means were furnished for their escape from their owners, and agents secretly employed to entice them to abscond; the constitutional provisions for their rendition to their owners was first evaded, then openly denounced as a violation of conscientious obligation and religious duty; men were taught that it was a merit to elude, disobey, and violently oppose the execution of the laws enacted to secure the performance of the promise contained in the constitutional compact; owners of slaves were mobbed and even murdered in open day solely for applying to a magistrate for the arrest of a fugitive slave; the dogmas of these voluntary organizations soon obtained control of the Legislatures of many of the Northern States, and laws were passed providing for the punishment, by ruinous fines and long-continued imprisonment in jails and
penitentiaries, of citizens of the Southern States who should dare to ask aid of the officers of the law for the recovery of their property. Emboldened by success, the theater of agitation and aggression against the clearly expressed constitutional rights of the Southern States was transferred to the Congress; Senators and Representatives were sent to the common councils of the nation, whose chief title to this distinction consisted in the display of a spirit of ultra fanaticism, and whose business was not "to promote the general welfare or insure domestic tranquillity," but to awaken the bitterest hatred against the citizens of sister States by violent denunciation of their institutions; the transaction of public affairs was impeded by repeated efforts to usurp powers not delegated by the Constitution, for the purpose of impairing the security of property in slaves, and reducing those States which held slaves to a condition of inferiority.
Finally a great party was organized for the purpose of obtaining the administration of the Government, with the avowed object of using its power for the total exclusion of the slave States from all participation in the benefits of the public domain acquired by all the States in common, whether by conquest or purchase; of surrounding them entirely by States in which slavery should be prohibited; of thus rendering the property in slaves so insecure as to be comparatively worthless, and thereby annihilating in effect property worth thousands of millions of dollars. This party, thus organized, succeeded in the month of November last in the election of its candidate for the Presidency of the United States. ... With interests of such overwhelming magnitude imperiled, the people of the Southern States were driven by the conduct of the North to the adoption of some course of action to avert the danger with which they were openly menaced. With this view the Legislatures of the several States invited the people to select delegates to conventions to be held for the purpose of determining for themselves what measures were best adapted to meet so alarming a crisis in their history. ... They consequently passed ordinances resuming all their rights as sovereign and independent States and dissolved their connection with the other States of the Union." [Jefferson Davis, First Message to the Confederate Congress, 29 April 1861]
This thread was apparently, started by a southron who feels editorials in major northern cities proves that the Civil War was started by the north due to the overwhelming economic interests of northern capitalist, whereas the words of the political leadership of the south (and not a few leading southern editorialists) explaining exactly why the South seceded, is dilligently ignored.
This is a good point. The leadership of several state secession conventions produced official declarations of the causes of secession, the reasons they took this drastic action. Overwhelmingly, their statements tell us, the reason was slave property. SC mentions nothing else, and made that decision after discussion in the convention of including the tariff. Texas seems the only state concerned with much beyond that: they also stress the failure of the Federal government to do enough to protect them from Indians and bandits (mentioned in the annexation agreement).
Just thought I'd mention two other pieces of trivia rolling around in my memory:
1) I recall seeing a study, years ago, about slave ownership in one of the seceding state legislatures, which I recall as North Carolina. Roughly 25% of the state's white families owned slaves, and 100% of the members of the state legislature did. As I said, it has been years, so my memory might be off slightly; maybe a different state or a few percentage points.
2) I also recall reading (in Jack Davis book on the forming of the Confederacy in 1861, I think) that the five members of the LA delegation sent to represent that state in Montgomery controlled (through their personal holdings or family connections) above 50% of the slaves in that state.
Once again, something like this should be expected: slaves represented money, and the people who owned them tended to be better off than those who did not, and people with money were often involved in politics precisely because they could afford to do so.
But in practical terms, the more you look at the people with authority and the leaders of the secession movement, the more you find out that they had heavy, often overwhelmingly so, economic interests in protecting slavery. The further away you get from that, the more you look at poor farmers and such, the harder it becomes to document slavery as a direct economic cause.
Since we are dealing with humans, economic interests did not decide all. For example, N. B. Forrest was a man who had made his pre-war fortune (over $1 million) on slaves, either as a slave-trader (a business he was supposedly out of by 1860) or as a plantation owner (largely down in Mississippi). Yet when Mississippi seceded, taking his plantations with it, Forrest did not. He waited for Tennessee, said very little, and many believe to this day he was more a Union man than a secessionist who would have remained with the Union if Tennessee had.
We can certainly find others. Even in the Deep South, support for secession was not universal outside of SC (where it nearly was). But if the argument is to be that "MONEY" was the cause of and the motivation for the Civil War, then clearly the outstanding and overwhelming example would be the economic interest slaveowners had in "slave property".
if the argument is to be that "MONEY" was the cause of and the motivation for the Civil War, then clearly the outstanding and overwhelming example would be the economic interest slaveowners had in "slave property".
Regards,
Tim
In the South known as "direct trade"-
European manufactured goods brought in on European ships to New Orleans (or Mobile, Charleston, etc).
They unload their cargo and guess what they take on in its turn?
That's right- cotton, sugar, tobacco to ship back to Europe.
~
How much money made by Yankee shippers, importers, &etc?
$Zero
How much money lost to Yankee shippers, importers, and domestic manufacturers (without their protective tariff)?
Multiple $100s of Millions Annually
Percentage of Northern economy- probably well over 20%
European manufactured goods brought in on European ships to New Orleans (or Mobile, Charleston, etc). They unload their cargo and guess what they take on in its turn?
That's right- cotton, sugar, tobacco to ship back to Europe.
This overlooks several other facts provided earlier in this thread (or was it another?). Southern ports were not equipped to handle this kind of traffic. The exports were seasonal.
Southern ports might have been improved had the capital been diverted from purchasing land and slaves to facilities and transportation. The export business would still have been handicapped by its seasonal nature. The import business would largely remain in northern ports because the preponderance of demand was in the north.
That the north would have seen a dip in the shipping business is probably fact. Northern business interests wanted no war to interfere with it -- until war was forced on them.
The editorials (primarily south; a few north) predicting the demise of the north without the south's purchasing power were demonstrably hand-wringing -- northern prosperity grew meteorically during the war and as a result of it.
In any event, predicting economic disaster is in no way evidence that the war was started over money.
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
Most of the editorials I have posted are from the North-
North-20, South-4, England-3
Quote:
Originally Posted by ole
predicting the demise of the north without the south's purchasing power were demonstrably hand-wringing -- northern prosperity grew meteorically during the war and as a result of it.
That's the point.
What would it have been without a war?
When the south was not fulminating about the north not protecting its slaves, they waxed eloquent on how northern businessmen were getting rich leaching off the southern slave owners.
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