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 have a question. I realize this will open a huge can of worms, but it is something which has been bothering me.
Many claim that the war was not about slavery, but about "states rights" and that states rights had nothing to do with slavery. The South was fighting to free itself from the oppression of the North - fighting for liberty, freedom, etc. which had been denied by the Federal Government.
Let us assume that slavery was indeed not the issue. What were the rights that were being denied/violated? What actions or threatened actions of the Federal government were threatening the liberty and/or property of the people in the South?
I have seen it argued that it was the right of secession itself which was being denied, but it is illogical to secede simply because you do not have the right to secede.
In answering this question, acts taken by the Federal goverment after the acts of secession are irrelevant. No diatribes about invasion and the abridgment of civil liberties by Lincoln. They did not secede because they were invaded, they were invaded following their secession. Lincoln could not have abridged civil liberties in the South because he was not even in office yet when most fo the states voted to secede.
So if not slavery, what was it?
__________________ "There must be more historians of the Civil War than there were generals figthing in it... Of the two groups, the historians are the more belligerent." David Donald, Lincoln Reconsidered (1961)
The unanswerable question (for southrons) has always been, "would there have been a Civil War, if there had been no slavery?"
The leaders of the southern states were very honest and forthright about which state right was being (or in danger of being) violated, before and during the war; when southern independence was still to be won.
They only became coy and mealy-mouthed, After the cause had been lost.
The unanswerable question (for southrons) has always been, "would there have been a Civil War, if there had been no slavery?"
The leaders of the southern states were very honest and forthright about which state right was being (or in danger of being) violated, before and during the war; when southern independence was still to be won.
They only became coy and mealy-mouthed, After the cause had been lost.
You don't mind if I... pick up that... particular gauntlet..., do you? Since you threw it right on my feet, I do feel compelled to at least hand it back to you.
Mr. OpnDownfall...
Let's take a walk, sir. Back. Back in time...
We are 80 some odd years from having fought a viciously nasty Revolution. One which claimed a whole lot of lives. And what did we get for all this? Did we get England? Or King George's head on a platter? Or recompense? (I think of
WHEN THE TIGERS BROKE FREE by Pink Floyd, when I think of Kind Old King George!...)
No. We got what we basically had... Except now, we had no overlord trying to tax us out of reason... Except now there were a lot of people dead who should have been alive. Watch THE PATRIOT, and you'll get the mood I am trying to set for you.
And we have a LOT of touchy people who are listening as 'progressives' and other 'Johnny-come-latelys' are trying to vote themselves largesse from the common treasury, and doing so without an ounce of shame! People from Europe washing up over here in the North, with strange egalitarian customs and odd ideas about how things 'ought to be'...
And we have Celtic Southerners and their Country English born plantation-owning parallels, who abhore the Anglo-Saxon Londoners downtown-ideologies as much as the Celts do, (and their inner-city paganism, and secular humanism... as well as their pushy New England attitudes).
Got the picture?
Good. Now hang on tight...
The South is culturally chained to Slavery, because of King George III and the pre-tariff Yankees. So there we are...
Whether Southerners owned any or not, there they are!
Abolitionists threaten to throw off the balance, and disrupt people's lives.
Liberals were not as prevalent in those days as they are today, and we can only imagine the rage these Southern Conservatives felt when listening to such big-mouth 'progressives' who knew absolutely ZILCH about what they were talking about!
The Southern slave owners legally and ethically had a right and a duty to own their Slaves and to care for them according to the laws of the land. Does that, in any way, sound Coy or Mealy-mouthed to you, sir? These people were property, and constitutionally so. Their well-being was the legal obligation of their owners. Like prisoners serving life sentences are the wards of the state... Yet these people were treated better in MOST instances as Southern slaves than many of them were ever treated at the hands of the North. There was a concern for their well-being in the South that the North has NEVER had. EVER.
(The funny thing is this! You act like being a citizen does not imply a servitude to the government, nor an obligation to pay it tribute when you are willingly a member of its society. Yet, when Secession was invoked, now these same people, once conquered, are SLAVES to that government, sir! (As Thaddeus Stevens said, MADE TO PAY THE NATIONAL DEBT!) Serfs! Helots! The parallel obviously escapes you.).
As I said, we are back in time! Yankees flogged their employees! Children were worked to death! People just didn't get to roam around 'free' (ask the Indians about that!) You had to have a reason for being, and slavery gave them this justification. Today, you almost have to have an ID on you! In those days, you had to have a reason for being where you were! The world was a different place! So quit applying this 2008 bleeding-heart Liberalism to the North of old... it might be a nice 'excuse' for the invasion today, but it doesn't hold water... and it never did.
The way they were eventually emancipated is downright shameful, and without any thought or feeling for their futures. You might as well take every one of these 12 year olds in the country, emancipate them from their parents, and say YOU ARE FREE! Root little hog, or die! No one is responsible for you any longer, and those who were CANNOT take care of you, any longer, and WE DON'T CARE!
Davis had a plan for Compensated Emancipation which would have worked. No one cared to even ask what it was! Why? He LOST an invasion, and couldn't defend his people from attack! He is, therefore, nothing and nobody.
FRANK CONNER from THE SOUTH UNDER SIEGE 1830-2000:
"In March 1865, per an act of Congress, The US War Department set up the FREEDMEN'S BUREAU to deal with the Blacks in the occupied territories in the South. After the war, the Republican Congress kept the Bureau going.
Theoretically, this was to be the North's benevolent instrument of black redemption.
The Bureau was funded with a small percentage of the money confiscated or taxed from the South, and it benefitted only a tiny percentage of the pitifully-needy blacks in the postwar South. From 1865 through 1867,
the Bureau fed almost 0.5% of the almost four million Southern blacks - many of whom could find little to eat.
The North left it to the impoverished planters to keep the vast majority of the ex-slaves alive, and somehow the planters managed that. In 1866, the Bureau set up 45 hospitals in the South, which treated 143,000 blacks.
Over its five year existence, the Bureau spent $5,262,511 of SOUTHERN MONEY (emphasis mine) to school a small percentage of the ex-slaves.
That was the sum total expression of the US Government's
burning concern for the welfare of the blacks, at a time when the government was completely under the control of the Radical (Black) Republican (Liberal!) Congress - which was itself the tool of the Northern Capitalists and the Northern Liberals.
Thus did the abolitionists demonstrate their real degree of concern for the blacks as a people."
(It gets better, but I am tired of typing!)...
Beowulf
__________________ If the South accepted Sectional Left Wing Republican Rule, their property would be devalued, by being outlawed unconstitutionally in the territories, and suffer terrorism by Brown's mob ,... their economy would be in shambles... The effect is that the South is not any longer an equal part of the Union.
If the South tried to gain independence from these Left wing Republicans, the North will destroy them all... and curse their memory for all eternity....
Thank you, Beowulf, for that fascinating diatribe. But would you care to actually answer the question asked?
__________________ "There must be more historians of the Civil War than there were generals figthing in it... Of the two groups, the historians are the more belligerent." David Donald, Lincoln Reconsidered (1961)
Two secondary economic issues were the tariff and internal improvements, but they alone could not have caused the Civil War.
Many Southerners complained about the tariff when it ceased being a revenue tariff and became a protective tariff.
Many Southerners despised the idea of internal improvements;(canals, roads, bridges, and railroads), as unnecessary in the South while helping the North and West, and were unconstitutional due to federal funding.
__________________
"Those who forget to remember the past are condemned to repeat it", George Santayana.
However, there was very little federal funding for RRs.
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
Thank you, Beowulf, for that fascinating diatribe. But would you care to actually answer the question asked?
I think the question should be, "If there had never been a Second Party, would there have been a Civil War?"
As to the Slavery issue, as I have stated elsewhere, I see it as an excuse, and not as the real cause of Secession. I think that the tariffs, perceived tariffs, and the intended destinations of these said revenues was most likely the great cause. By this time, the South could see the handwriting on the wall.
Mene mene Tekel Upharsin.
Basically, "Thou art weighed in the balance, and found wanting". (The South is not being recognized as an equal member of the Union. More is going in than they are getting out of it, and they could 'get better terms out of the Union'. And war was not the foregone conclusion that all movies and et cetera show it to be today... It took a while between Secession and the excuse of Sumter!).
Slavery, Tariffs, States Rights, and the right of a state not to have to attack a sister state in order to appease the sitting Liberal Federal party in question... these are all part and parcel of the reasoning for Secession.
But if Virginia had to be a party to armed bloodshed at the behest of a Federal government, she chose to be on the
side she believed in...
The South knew that she was going to either be voted into
political bondage, or else have to fight to avoid it. If she was conquered and forced into the position she found herself later, she can always look to the Confederate flag and see that she strained to avoid empire.
While the Liberal party did not keep permanent control of the Congress nor the executive branch, nor did it get to completely outlaw Conservatism, it did seek to do this... (and one of the greatest "Consolidation" victories was the thirteenth amendment: from CONNER...).
Page 177 The South under Siege 1830-2000
"The Thirteenth Amendment consists of only two sections, each of which contains only one sentence.
This was an abrupt and radical departure from the republican form of government provided for by the US Constitution. Here, for the first time, an amendment was to be inserted into the Constitution to empower the federal government to intervene in the domestic affairs of the states and their individual citizens, to deal with a particular social issue. (The first 11 amendments had been specifically written to prevent the federal government from doing that sort of thing, and the 12th Amendment dealt with the mechanics of presidential elections.)
Ratification of the 13th Amendment could have been made even more difficult by the fight between President Johnson and the radical Congress for control of the Southern states,
but Johnson cooperated with the Congress in that particular matter." End quote.
Slavery was dying, and no one knew this more than the slaves and the masters, themselves. The work was getting less and less and the slaves more and more. It was not cost effective to keep slaves any longer.
This was in 1860 that they knew this... But to keep from being FORCED into doing it the yankee abolitionist way,
yes, that got thrown into the ring as a reason for Secession.
Just not THE reason.
THE reason according to me?
The pushiness of the Second Party. So, rephrase your question and ask, "If there never was a Successful Liberal party come to power, would there have ever been a Secession?"
Or this, "If there had been a Jeffersonian as the liberal candidate in 1860, (A direct contradiction in terms, but still...) if there had been a Jeffersonian-minded president in 1860 at the head of the Liberal party... could he have
handled the 'crisis' differently, and at least prevented a war?"
The answers are NO, and YES, respectively.
Beowulf
__________________ If the South accepted Sectional Left Wing Republican Rule, their property would be devalued, by being outlawed unconstitutionally in the territories, and suffer terrorism by Brown's mob ,... their economy would be in shambles... The effect is that the South is not any longer an equal part of the Union.
If the South tried to gain independence from these Left wing Republicans, the North will destroy them all... and curse their memory for all eternity....
Two secondary economic issues were the tariff and internal improvements, but they alone could not have caused the Civil War.
Many Southerners complained about the tariff when it ceased being a revenue tariff and became a protective tariff.
They didn't mind its protection of cotton, sugar, and rice.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Freddy
Many Southerners despised the idea of internal improvements;(canals, roads, bridges, and railroads), as unnecessary in the South while helping the North and West, and were unconstitutional due to federal funding.
The real reason why they opposed internal improvements--protection of slavery.
Robert J. Turnbull, a South Carolina low country planter and pamphleteer, wrote a series of essays called _The Crisis._ Turnbull believed tariffs and internal improvements were dangerous because "acquiescence in these measures, on the part of the State sovereignties, sanctions . . . the constitutional right to legislate on the local concerns of the States." ". . . these words 'general welfare' are becoming every day more and more important to the folks, who are now so peacably raising their cotton and rice, between the Little Pedee and the Savannah. The question, it must be recollected, is not simply, whether we are to have a foreign commerce. It is not whether we are to have splendid national works, in which we have no interest, executed chiefly at our cost. . . . It is not whether we are to be taxed without end. . . . But the still more interesting question is, whether the institutions of our forefathers . . . are to be preserved . . . free from the rude hands of innovators and enthusiasts, and from the molestation or interference of any legislative power on earth but our own?" [Robert J. Turnbull, "The Crisis," pp. 12-14, 64, 139 quoted in William J. Freehling, _Prelude to Civil War: The Nullification Controversy in South Carolina, 1816-1836,_ p. 127]
"The same doctrines 'of the general welfare' which enable the general government to tax our industry for the benefit of the industries of other sections of this Union, and to appropriate the common treasure to make roads and canals for them, would authorize the federal government to erect the peaceful standard of servile revolt, by establishing colonization offices in our State, to give the bounties for emancipation here, and transportation to Liberia afterwards. The last question follows our giving up the battle on the other two, as inevitably as light flows from the sun." [James Hamilton to John Taylor, 14 Sep 1830]
Thank you again, Beowulf, but I do not accept your amendment of the question - if not slavery, what specifically was the Federal government doing to that constituted oppression of the liberty of the Southerners.
I understand that the South opposed the tariffs. But the nullification crisis was about the tariffs, too, and that was not enough to cause the secession of any buy South Carolina, apparently. And if its about taxes in the form of tariff's you think they would have gone into battle under the banner of "oppressive taxes" not "state's rights." It does not seem to me that tariffs are a state's rights issue since they are expressly a matter for the Federal government under the Constitution.
So I ask again: I hear, "It was not about slavery, it was about state's rights." What rights? What oppression?
I still do not believe I have an answer.
__________________ "There must be more historians of the Civil War than there were generals figthing in it... Of the two groups, the historians are the more belligerent." David Donald, Lincoln Reconsidered (1961)
Cash's two citations come about as close to not saying slavery as you're likely to get. Even without saying the word, they both still meant slavery.
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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