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.
Mr. Spratt was a leading, perhaps the leading, advocate of the re-opening of the Atlantic Slave Trade in the 1850s. This article is written in reaction to the actions in Montgomery on the new Confederate Constitution.
Spratt was convinced the new Confederacy was itself subject to the "irrepressable conflict" over slavery, and wanted to see a ratio of at least one slave to one master -- which lead him to believe the Atlantic Slave Trade needed to be re-opened to increase the slave population.
As Mr. Spratt says of himself:
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Opinions, when merely true, move slowly; but when approved, acquire proclivity. Those as to the right of slavery have been true merely so far, but they came rapidly to culmination. I was the single advocate of the slave trade in 1853; it is now the question of the time. Many of us remember when we heard slavery first declared to be of the normal constitution of society: few now will dare to disaffirm it. Those opinions now roll on; they are now not only true but are coming to be trusted; they have moved the structure of the State, and men who will not take the impulse and advance must perish in the track of their advancement. The members of your Convention may misdirect the movement--they may impede the movement--they may so divert it that another revolution may be necessary; but if necessarily that other revolution comes, slavery will stand serene, erect aloft, unquestioned as to its rights or its integrity at some points within the limits of the Southern States, and it is only for present actors to determine whether they will contribute or be crushed to that result.
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Even within the Fire-Eaters, Spratt was an outspoken and radical man. He is, however, solid proof of the devotion of some of those men to the concept of re-opening the Atlantic Slave Trade. At the same time, his association with the Charleston Mercury, the paper owned by the Fire-Eater leader Rhett, indicates how close that leadership was to his belief.
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.
Much of Confederate defense comes from the "elegant" words of rights, beliefs, and hopes.
"I was the single advocate of the slave trade in 1853; it is now the question of the time."
Were some of these folks smoking dope? Great Britain, the great maritime power, was patrolling African waters looking for slave trading ships, at the time.
Here we have a southern spokesman, speaking for a region without a navy, and subsequently getting its best ships, from the yards of Great Britain, during the Civil War.
Once the U.S. was free of the southern vote in the U.S. Congress, it approved a treaty to use U.S. Navy ships, together with Great Britain, to -patrol African waters looking for slave ships.
Unlike most southerners, including most fire-eaters, Mr. Spratt seems to have done some actual thinking on where the logic of what is required of a society based on chattle slavery, would lead.
Rationally, societies, civilizations, nations are born, grow and eventually die. Spratt saw that a new born slave state must grow or die an early death. Logic dictated that the south must expand, to not be enclosed, to be overwhelmed by a growing slave population. That, in the long run, to expand, the south would probably need more slaves than the South could produce.
Spratt, was one of those few southerners who actually realizeed that an Independent slave south, would need to become a slave empire.
Just to bring this old thread back to the front for those who haven't seen it.
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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"The Philosophy of Secession: A Southern View" 
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