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.
Perzackle.And here we diverge. I lean to the idea that the fire-eaters were, first and foremost, in favor of their rule of a country they might possibly create. There was a good chance of maintaining a union and they would have none of it.
A goodly number of them were. The term "manifest destiny" was first coined in the 1840s at the time of the Mexican War, and many Americans believed it was destined by God that the country would expand to fill the continent. Schemes to acquire Cuba, conquer Mexico, and filibustering expeditions into Central America were all consistent with and part of that.
Even men not considered Fire-Eaters fell in line with this. Jefferson Davis, while still a US Senator, said he wanted Cuba and intended to have her. Immediately after becoming Confederate President, he avoided meeting with the Mexican emmisary (who wanted to discuss recognizing the new Confederacy) because Davis felt he might be invading Mexico soon, and so meeting with him would be dishonorable. The new Confederacy definitely saw itself as being in an aggressive and expansionist mode after secession was accomplished.
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.
The idea that territories could be made into slave states doesn't strike me as very realistic.
Quote:
Originally Posted by cw1865
Well, the point is that they're trying and failing, because its clear that if you're going to get additional slave states you would absolutely have to get slaveholders into the territory with slaves, otherwise it just isn't going to happen; and you see this in the Resolutions of Secession with references to the South being deprived of the territories because slavery was banned, etc, etc. etc.. And like I said, its just expounding on Tim's point that the handwriting is on the wall for the South politically, and when they look into the future, they really don't see any opportunity to regain it
The above is the problem in a nutshell. Expanding slavery into the territories proved to be so unrealistic the South felt compelled to overturn the Compromise of 1850, the Missouri Compromise of 1820, the Northwest Ordinance of 1787 and all similar measures. The pressure became intolerable for both sides, leading to situations like "Bleeding Kansas".
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.
The basic problem, was that the leaders of south, simply could not quite get their minds around the idea of freeing their slaves.
Cold logic may have indicated the necessary path, but emotion (much of it subconscious) could not really accept that path.
Slavery was a growing anachronism, it could only exist where there was a strong concensus of opinion of the majority of the people supporting its existed. Slavery had to be propped up by its people by supporting a gov't that would do whatever was required to ensure slavery's survival. Although slavery enjoyed strong popular support in a section of America, this was not so among the majority of the population of the whole country.
The growing inability for the Federal Gov't to govern during the 1850's was caused by the growing conflict between southerners demanding more and more support to ensure slavery's safety and a growing reluctance on the part of the majority of the country to sacrifice their interests(politrical, economic and social) in order to ensure slavery in the south.
The fire-eaters and then the rest of the southern leadership realized that in a Democracy, numbers count, and the numbers of those not willing to support slavery at all costs would only grow.
With emancipation unthinkable (emotionally, if not logically) then a new political entity formed by and dedicated to it's peculiar institution had to be created. But to do that they had to leave political entity to which they already belonged.
Although convinced in their own minds that it was perfectly legal and right that they could leave the Union, by a simple declaration of right, that conviction was not shared by a majority in the country.
The south had to leave the Union, if they wanted to preserve slavery, because by it's actions the majority of the nations representatives and those who voted them into office, were obviously reluctant and increasingly, unwilling to do everything necessary to preserve slavery in that Union.
By 1860, the leadership of the sectional, pro-slavery south, had seen a rival, anti-slavery, sectional party, gain control of the House of Representatives in Congress. Their former solid allies, the northern democratics, were no longer stalwart defendeers of southern pro-slavery interests. In fact these northerners (especially from the NW states) were confessing that slavery was becoming such a hot button item to their constituents that their automatic support should not, now, be counted on.
I've gone through the same exercise you lay out, and of course you're right. Under even the most wildly optimistic scenario, an abolition amendment could not have passed until the 1890s at the earliest.
But I think that what your posts really highlight is the fact that secession was not primarily a logical or rational phenomenon. As a practical matter, people don't take action, much less radical action, based on something that might happen thirty years or fifty years hence.
Nor is this simply a deduction from human nature. In analyzing the arguments for and against secession in Alabama, Mills Thornton has pointed out that the secessionist argument really made no sense. I've quoted this passage before, but I can't resist quoting it again because it's absolutely brilliant:
"The careful reader will have observed a fundamental non sequitur in the southern rights case. If the great threat of free-soil was that it would trap southerners in the South amidst the rising tide of Negroes, how would secession remedy the predicament? Would not independence shut southerners out of the territories even more effectively than would the adoption of a free-soil policy by the federal government? . . . If getting access to that territory was the primary southern goal, southerners had certainly not selected a means which gave obvious promise of being efficacious.
"It is essential to note, however, that . . . Unionists almost never mentioned the difficulty. The solution to this paradox is the identification of which element in the southern rights case was the primary source of its force. Despite all the discussion about the effects of free-soil upon southern slavery, the threat of Negro inundation was not the chief terror with which the case conjured; and the Unionists knew it. . . . The essence of the case was not what would happen to southerners when they were excluded from the territories but was the fact that they were to be excluded. That the exclusion would wreak ill in the economic and social environment of the South was mere lagniappe [something extra, a bonus, a freebie -- I looked it up] to the argument; the true ills would be wrought in the hearts of those debarred. Free-soil was an issue basically because it would represent an overtly discriminatory action by the common government."
* * *
"Secession, then, was not really intended as a remedy for the consequences of free-soil . . .. It was to be revenge for the condemnation implied by the policy and the inequality inherent in it. Southerners were Americans and they wanted to be treated like Americans; we must never forget that they saw themselves as struggling to preserve the substance of the American dream."
H. Mills Thornton III, Politics and Power in a Slave Society: Alabama 1800-1860 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press 1978), pp. 225-27 (emphasis added).
The southern leadership, were not too concerned with legalities concerning the Territories. If they were to remain in the Union, they HAD to have more slave states join the Union. The niceties involving How those Slave States may have been formed, was not a particular concern of theirs.
It did not matter if Kansas was actually compatible with a slave economy. What mattered was that Nebraska was coming in as a Free State and Kansas as a matter of equity, Must be a slave state, no matter what the majority of the population may or may not have wanted
New Mexica, Arizona, Cuba, Mexica, Central America, maybe even California, were all under threat of the US slave oligarchy. Simply because of the way the US gove't was formed and how it operated, if the South were to remain in the Union it HAD to expand.
The simple act of trying to save slavery was destablizing to the Country, Economically, Socially and Politically. The inevitable point had been reached when America, could no longer remain half free and half slave, it had to decide; were they a slave society or a Free society?
was their ego far exceeded their brains.
Lincoln threw a political buzz bait at those Southern "bass" and they couldn't wait to get a hook in their mouth.
The leadership was all retoric and little study. They never realized that they could not defend all of their desired goals and territory. That they never had the industrial capacity, let alone the numbers of soldiers, to sustain a long war.
The chickens came home to roost once they seceded and lost all power in the U.S. Congress.
I now abdicate to you my crown as king of the cliche. Wear it proudly.
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
was their ego far exceeded their brains.
Lincoln threw a political buzz bait at those Southern "bass" and they couldn't wait to get a hook in their mouth.
So you are saying that Lincoln was a scheming liar who connived to start a war?
__________________ 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."
So you are saying that Lincoln was a scheming liar who connived to start a war?
So you are saying Davis and Company were dumb enough to fall for it?
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
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