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 agree that if the south had gained it's independence, there would have been knock-down, drag-out fight in Congress over the re-establishment the importation of slaves. But, were those who actually forsaw that this was almost certain to happen, anywhere near the levers of power at the national level?
P.S. It would not be too far out, to predict such a power struggle between the established 'aristocracy' and the rising 'noveau riche' empire builders to precipitate and a 'second' secession of slave states., not too long after the first.
Seems like there were pipe dreams aplenty mixed in the those who wanted to reopen slave importation. Avoiding class conflict, cheaper slaves to work to death, more slave-owners... Considering that the advocates were apparently in a minority, if the CS Constitution, Declarations of Secession, Declarations of Causes, et al, are any indication, there couldn't have been a strong move toward reopening the trade anytime soon.
And that presupposes that the British Empire would allow it.
Opn seems to have reached the bottom line: re- and re-re-secessions.
And what happened to that growing southern fear that slave-owning might actually be immoral? Or the growing southern fear of the potentially murderous population among them?
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
From Chapter Three, The Pro-African Slave-Trade Argument.
"The pro-African slave-trade argument was undoubtedly the most extreme and aggressive ideological defense of slavery. In newspapers, magazines, letters, speeches, public meetings, Southern Commercial Conventions, political conventions, election campaigns, and state legislatures, hundreds of Southerners were advocating the African slave trade. In their defense of the African slave trade, they were expressing and revealing their deepest concerns and anxieties about themselves and their slaveholding society. The pro-African slave-trade argument was a mirror of the Old South in profound crisis."
From what I gather from this chapter, there were at least three reasons for these advocates to reopen the African slave trade.
1. They thought this would help the South retain political power in the US government. One advocate stated that every 50,000 new slaves would equate to that section of the South gaining 30,000 new votes in federal representation.
2. The renewed African slave trade would provide a supply of slaves for Southern expansion into the territories. It was stated that the South needed Africans to cultivate "all these beautiful rich prairie plains, not only here where the Eagle already floats--but if it be our destiny in the Providence of God--over the fallen Empire of the Astec [sic], and Central America, and even to the rich valley of the Amizon [sic]." (American Cotton Planter, II, No. 11, November, 1859, p. 381.)
3. By advocating a reopening of the African slave trade, the issue could be used to destroy the Union. In a private letter to Representative William P. Miles, Spratt urged that Southern Congressmen continue fighting for the repeal (restrictions against the African slave trade), "not to triumph... Our only object is to render the South Sui Juris upon the subject of domestic slavery and the war in Congress if it shall not end in victory on that field will gain as much by demonstrating the fact that the Union is inconsistent with our objects." (Spratt to Miles, February 12, 1859.)
From the rest of the chapter:
"This relationship between the African slave-trade agitation and disunion involved the disruption of the National Democratic Party. Aware that the National Democracy was, in William Yancey's words, "the only ligament that united North and the South," advocates of the African slave trade knew their issue could split the party and thereby clear the path to secession. They had seen the Etheridge Congressional resolution divide the National Democratic Party in December 1856. They did not openly confess that their purpose was to break the Democracy, yet they privately expressed hopes for the destruction of the party. In his diary, Ruffin wrote that he heartily desired an open break between the Southern and Northern Democrats, and the end of the National Democratic Party. "Still better if this 'national' democratic party, shall then be defeated and ruptured, and an abolitionist elected. Then perhaps the South may act for its defence and only salvation." (Ruffin diary entry, April 25, 1859, August 14, 1858, August 15, 1858, Library of Congress.)
More to follow,
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
Seems like there were pipe dreams aplenty mixed in the those who wanted to reopen slave importation. Avoiding class conflict, cheaper slaves to work to death, more slave-owners... Considering that the advocates were apparently in a minority, if the CS Constitution, Declarations of Secession, Declarations of Causes, et al, are any indication, there couldn't have been a strong move toward reopening the trade anytime soon.
The people we are talking about here (essentially pro-slave-trade, aggressively expansionist, slavery everywhere, "the South" above everyone else types) are also largely the leadership of the Fire-Eaters. Spratt, Rhett, Yancey, Ruffin ... these are the same people driving the divisiveness that brings on secession and the Civil War. They tended to be wealthy (Hammond, for example, owned over 300 slaves when only one man in the South owned over 1,000 -- and that man was Wade Hampton, his relative by marriage). They tended to be politically powerful and hold major government offices at the state and national level. They tended to be widely heard public figures: newspaper owners/editors (Rhett, Pollard, etc.), popular speakers (like Yancey, etc.) Their influence was out of proportion to their numbers, and they deliberately applied it to create the angry, chaotic situation they needed to get their desires.
The North had similar men in the extremes of the Abolitionists movement, just as these men were the fanatical extremists of the South. The difference is that while the Northern extremists might have attained enough power to bring things to a boil some years down the road (or perhaps not), the Southern extremists did attain enough power by 1860 to bring their rebellion about.
Quote:
Originally Posted by ole
And that presupposes that the British Empire would allow it.
By the 1860s, British power had restricted the African slave trade so much coolies were being imported to Cuba from China. Post-Civil-War ex-Confederates who moved there found they had to make-do with coolies because of the shortage of blacks.
While we're at it, I suppose a US administration faced with an independent Confederacy (peacefully separated or after a war) might have been willing, even eager, to assist the Royal Navy in the Slave Patrol efforts.
Quote:
Originally Posted by ole
And what happened to that growing southern fear that slave-owning might actually be immoral? Or the growing southern fear of the potentially murderous population among them?
I don't think those issues applied very much to the influential but small leadership group we are talking about here.
Regards,
Tim
__________________ "Let us, then, consider all attempts to weaken this Union, by maintaining that each state is separately and individually independent, as a species of political heresy, which can never benefit us, but may bring on us the most serious distresses."
Charles Cotesworth Pinckney of South Carolina, 1740-1824, Revolutionary War soldier, one of the authors of the US Constitution in 1787, speaking at the South Carolina Ratifying Convention in 1788.
... From what I gather from this chapter, there were at least three reasons for these advocates to reopen the African slave trade.
1. They thought this would help the South retain political power in the US government. One advocate stated that every 50,000 new slaves would equate to that section of the South gaining 30,000 new votes in federal representation. ...
I agree that this was one of their motivations. I always think it is an example of wrong-headed logic, or logic driven by an absolute need to defend slavery and preserve the relative position of the non-slave class. The flaw is obvious: if 50,000 new slaves give you an additional count of 30,000 for Federal representation (in the House of Representatives), 50,000 new free people give you an additional count of 50,000. This is a losing game for the South even if the population increases, North and South, were in a one-for-one ratio.
Logically, the quickest, most effective way to change the voting count for the next re-apportionment would be to free all the slaves in the South before the next Census. With some 4 million slaves counted as 2.4 million for representation, freeing them would add 1.6 million "new" people to their side in a single stroke.
Regards,
Tim
__________________ "Let us, then, consider all attempts to weaken this Union, by maintaining that each state is separately and individually independent, as a species of political heresy, which can never benefit us, but may bring on us the most serious distresses."
Charles Cotesworth Pinckney of South Carolina, 1740-1824, Revolutionary War soldier, one of the authors of the US Constitution in 1787, speaking at the South Carolina Ratifying Convention in 1788.
Were not the 'Fire-Eaters' in the same relative position with the confederate congress that the Abolitionists occupied in the U.S. Congress? Namely a vocal minority with an agenda but no real following (in political terms) on which to build a sustainable majority in their respective gov'ts?
IMO, it was no accident that Yancey, Rhett and most other true believers in a confederate manifest destiny, came no where close to having any real influence in their own gov't.
"...hundreds of Southerners were advocating the African slave trade..."
...and Southerners are accused of promoting "mythologies."
"Hundreds" means at least 200.
Name 200.
__________________ POWER & MONEY
"Your New-York bankers and merchants are shrewd people, but I never gave them credit for so much sagacity as when they took the Government Loan. It was not merely patriotism, it was a high stroke of policy. It has saved the Government, and what they will regard as equally important, saved them from a great financial disaster."
"Flawed" doesn't begin to define the logic. To reopen the trade and gain representation, proponents would have had to repeal the ban. To do that, they'd need a massive increase in representation. But, as they were also moving toward secession, why would they need more voters?
If all the slave states had been in favor of reopening the trade, there might have been a chance of forcing the issue and gaining yet another appeasing compromise. But they weren't.
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
__________________ 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
Were not the 'Fire-Eaters' in the same relative position with the confederate congress that the Abolitionists occupied in the U.S. Congress? Namely a vocal minority with an agenda but no real following (in political terms) on which to build a sustainable majority in their respective gov'ts?
IMO, it was no accident that Yancey, Rhett and most other true believers in a confederate manifest destiny, came no where close to having any real influence in their own gov't.
The main period of influence for the Fire-Eaters passed when the states seceded. Even during the days in Montgomery when the Confederacy was forming, the most radical Fire-Eaters met disappointment, and their influence quickly drains away. Even in SC, Rhett was shuffled to the side quickly -- he had badly wanted to be the first Governor of the newly seceded and independent South Carolina but was defeated for election even as the state rushed into secession. As rabble-rousers, they were very effective in setting the torch to the bonfire of secession and war. Once secession was an accomplished fact, the more established elements of the South seem to have felt they'd be just as much of thorn to them as they had been to the US.
But as to the Manifest Destiny of the Confederacy, even the Southern establishment believed in that. Jeff Davis refused to meet with an emissary from Mexico who came to discuss establishing diplomatic relations and recognition for the new Confederacy -- in early 1861 when Mexico would have been the first nation to recognize them, an important event. Why did he do so? Because he thought it would be embarassing if he had to invade them within a year or two.
Confederate agents were also active in northern Mexico during the war, bribing governors of Mexican provinces and making preparations for the future. Davis himself had long been associated with the desire to access Cuba to the US, and felt it would be a goal for the new Confederacy.
IMHO, with the new nation started, the Southern powers-that-were looked at those Fire-Eaters and decided they were a bunch of hot-heads who couldn't really be trusted to run something as important as a nation. Too bad they hadn't looked at them more skeptically a few years earlier.
Regards,
Tim
__________________ "Let us, then, consider all attempts to weaken this Union, by maintaining that each state is separately and individually independent, as a species of political heresy, which can never benefit us, but may bring on us the most serious distresses."
Charles Cotesworth Pinckney of South Carolina, 1740-1824, Revolutionary War soldier, one of the authors of the US Constitution in 1787, speaking at the South Carolina Ratifying Convention in 1788.
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