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.
The simple answer would have been for the owners and their subjects to switch places for a couple generations.
By definition it would be "fair" and it would solve most of the problems identified in the preceding post.
It would? Care to elaborate?
The Yankee troops, themselves, would not have agreed with this Left Wing reactionary 'revisionism'!
"In asserting to the right of secession, it has not been my wish to incite to its exercise.
I recognize the fact that the war showed it to be impracticable... but this did not prove it to be wrong." Jefferson Davis
Still, there had to be a better way to free the slaves than destroying the Union by scaring off the Southern White folks..., or threatening the safety of all citizens, black and white, with a Federally mangled emancipation, such as is said to have killed off a massive number of negroes through starvation and displacement.
If all the North could think of was to start shooting in order to 'preserve the Union', then, by God, we are still a successful nation, today, IN SPITE OF such people!
King George III wanted the slave trade. The Antebellum Yanks begged for it. Racist Southern Scalawags like Alexander Stephens were determined to see the negro 'in his place'.
Beowulf
Last edited by ole; 05-15-2008 at 10:05 AM.
Reason: Edited to excise modern political rant.
This is exactly what I find wrong with Knee Jerk Reactionary politics...
...
I was referring to a way of peacefully resolving things in 1859. It's simple, and it's the very definition of fair.
If the practice, as often stated, was not so awful and the subjects seemed mostly happy, what would have been wrong with making the owners the ownees for a while?
I'm careful about reading northern accounts and southern accounts in turn, and I'm struck by how many (particularly among th enlisted ranks) southern accounts start with "we just wanted to be left alone, but when Sumpter fell, I signed up because I wanted to go k ill Yankees."
I've not seen that in northern accounts, not saying the sentiment was absent, but I haven't seen it.
As far as abolitionism in the north, yes of course it was a factor, http://www.aaggmv.org/archive/ad_white.htm for example. (I appreciate for humor's sake the bit about how
Quote:
The United States marshals were all arrested at Springfield on their way to Urbana, for assault with intent to kill and, being unable to furnish security, were lodged in jail over night.
Further, it seems to me that the peculiar institution was in no small part responsible for the southern actions leading to Sumpter. If a man feels he is enough superior to another man to own him, how can he not feel superior to those who would consider the owned man a peer.
As for today, it's ridiculous, of course. The whole issue was paid in blood, IMO.
I was referring to a way of peacefully resolving things in 1859. It's simple, and it's the very definition of fair.
If the practice, as often stated, was not so awful and the subjects seemed mostly happy, what would have been wrong with making the owners the ownees for a while?
I'm careful about reading northern accounts and southern accounts in turn, and I'm struck by how many (particularly among th enlisted ranks) southern accounts start with "we just wanted to be left alone, but when Sumpter fell, I signed up because I wanted to go k ill Yankees."
I've not seen that in northern accounts, not saying the sentiment was absent, but I haven't seen it.
As far as abolitionism in the north, yes of course it was a factor, http://www.aaggmv.org/archive/ad_white.htm for example. (I appreciate for humor's sake the bit about how
Further, it seems to me that the peculiar institution was in no small part responsible for the southern actions leading to Sumpter. If a man feels he is enough superior to another man to own him, how can he not feel superior to those who would consider the owned man a peer.
As for today, it's ridiculous, of course. The whole issue was paid in blood, IMO.
You bring up several excellent points, to which I should like clarification.
The role-reversal clause.
Jefferson Davis said that the slave should be made fit for his freedom by being made unfit for slavery.
Jefferson Davis was shackled during his unconstitutional incarceration at Fortress Monroe, by an arrogant mouthy little yankee upstart named General Miles, who did it because he could. (President Johnson did as Varina Davis
requested, during their meeting, and not only removed the shackles, but replaced Miles with General Henry Burton. As he should have done.)
But the shackles were an incorrect slight, and not a role reversal, because Davis WANTED to be tried and adjudicated by the courts, and would not have escaped if he could have done so...
"I wish for a trial to prove that Secession was not Treason!" DAVIS
Here's my question for you, sir.
At what point, during the 19th century, did the predominant attitude go from WE YANKEES NEED THE SLAVE TRADE TO BE EXTENDED... to THE SOUTHERNERS AND THEIR PECULIAR INSTITUTION?
Can I get a year, or a date, on that, when the Official Opinion was enforced? I would be curious to know this.
I believe, like all things, it was wrapped around a dollar bill.
The North seemed to have an almost jealous look at the South, for their beautiful climate (which is why so many of them are down here, now) and their laissez-faire outlook, which has galled many an industrious Northern visitor.
But to see them still benefitting from slavery, long after the North had cashed in their chips... well, even with federally-funded corporate welfare, and tariffs and what-not, the North still ground their teeth over the South, and their 'success' with their peculiar institution.
Lincoln was willing to contain slavery, and enslave the Southern slave owners in the slave states as thralls to the Federal government, a type of serfdom to the Federal vassals, and "live off the earnings of a prostitute", for want of a better analogy. He was willing to make slaves of the slave holders. It was when he could not collect his 'some fifty or sixty millions' at Sumter and other collection points that he refused to Let the South go. Where will we get our revenue?
Lincoln was no dummy. Even by being given the complete United States government, for his wretched Second Party, he knew his Liberals could not survive as parasites without a host body upon which to feed. And they could not feed on each other, because Made in America was still a federally-subsidized joke in those days, and needed to be wet-nursed through patronage and pork barrel spending...
This fits in with your role reversal, to a point. I find it interesting that they were called SLAVE STATES, as though the negro defined the South, at that point. I posit that the SLAVES were both the negroes and their masters.... (The 250,000 freed negroes and the other 94% of the South have never 'counted' in this definition of the Old South, but
hey, we are used to that, down here... by now).
But Out West had to be negro-free, and Slave free, and Conservative free, and Liberal controlled, so Lincoln could let slavery alone 'where it existed', and then have his party run the government through an eternal majority.
The North has always thought itself superior to the South, so it is no great stretch to see how that could be passed from individual to individual, as it was from the Anglo-Saxon to the common Celt!
New England got it from Old England, and it was inherited.
I see things differently, but it logically follows that J.D. would have been made fit to be an owner only by first being a slave.
As to your question, I don't understand it.
Large portions of the northern population were recent immigrants, that is, since 1820. In most of their home countries, slavery already had been outlawed, thus a preponderance of the new immigrants (again, mostly to northern and/or midwestern states) carried that with them as an expectation.
I don't have data at my fingertips and there may be some margin here. At any rate More than a few of these had left the old country due to oppression there, and I can't help but think that there's a connection.
In particular the Irish experience with Trevelyan during the famine had to have had an effect. For a quick synopsis, at the height of the famine, Trevelyan taxed the landlords for the houses on their property - in essense making the landlord responsible for feeding people on their property. The landowners responded by demolishing houses and creating hundreds of thousands of starving homeless. It would be a singularly unimaginative Irishman who would not see at least a glimmer of parallel between the fate of those he left behind and the unemancipated slave.
The pejoratives associated with Davis and his captors aren't necessary, but they reminded me of the ridiculousness of ostensibly states-rights supporters invoking the federal government to get Dred Scott out of Illinois.
Ultimately the two systems simply weren't compatible. One had to yield. And one did.
Last edited by Baggage Handler #2; 05-15-2008 at 06:14 PM.
Reason: I just can't spell today
How did duty and honor compel us into this awful war?
So the slave owners (including Jeff Davis) had a vested interest in making the slave fit for freedom by making him unfit to be a slave? It is unfortunate, indeed that Beowulf is, apparently, without a sense of humor.
It is telling that most southrons (including Beowulf) do not know the difference between a Prisoner and a Slave.
Can Beowulf, precisely date when the 'predominant attitude' and/or 'Official Opinion' of the south changed concerning slavery? When chattle slavery stopped being a national curse and became a sectional curse was when the south began to take pride in "Our Peculiar Institution". I ,myself, tend to place the event at Calhoun's ringing defense of it. As he helped engineer the gag rule in Congress.
Almost ALL moden nations with any pretensions of being civilized have always considered themselves superior to those based on slavery.
I see things differently, but it logically follows that J.D. would have been made fit to be an owner only by first being a slave.
As to your question, I don't understand it.
Large portions of the northern population were recent immigrants, that is, since 1820. In most of their home countries, slavery already had been outlawed, thus a preponderance of the new immigrants (again, mostly to northern and/or midwestern states) carried that with them as an expectation.
I don't have data at my fingertips and there may be some margin here. At any rate More than a few of these had left the old country due to oppression there, and I can't help but think that there's a connection.
In particular the Irish experience with Trevelyan during the famine had to have had an effect. For a quick synopsis, at the height of the famine, Trevelyan taxed the landlords for the houses on their property - in essense making the landlord responsible for feeding people on their property. The landowners responded by demolishing houses and creating hundreds of thousands of starving homeless. It would be a singularly unimaginative Irishman who would not see at least a glimmer of parallel between the fate of those he left behind and the unemancipated slave.
The pejoratives associated with Davis and his captors aren't necessary, but they reminded me of the ridiculousness of ostensibly states-rights supporters invoking the federal government to get Dred Scott out of Illinois.
Ultimately the two systems simply weren't compatible. One had to yield. And one did.
If you study Davis, his slaves ran his plantations, the ones under his control - no bullwhips, no corporal punishment that he meted out, and he could only make the Negro Court punishments less, not greater.
It is not popular to give him credit for anything - he was not a collectivist, nor a Whig, and since these people were all that was left to run the media, once the '300' (ha!) Sparatan Northern newspapers were defeated by Lincoln, (shut down, thus, shut up!) history is also written by these one-sided types...
It was also the reason that old Whig Zach Taylor didn't want Davis fooling with his daughter, Knoxie, but even he saw into his own political stupidity after awhile.
And Varina Davis, as a Howell, had been raised a Whig Liberal, but it is apparently curable, as her condition was...
Your first couple paragraphs do hold water, and are correct. Immigrants coming into a system with their own ideas, and little or no respect for the landed gentry...
I can see all that as a possibility. A definite one.
So the slave owners (including Jeff Davis) had a vested interest in making the slave fit for freedom by making him unfit to be a slave? It is unfortunate, indeed that Beowulf is, apparently, without a sense of humor.
It is telling that most southrons (including Beowulf) do not know the difference between a Prisoner and a Slave.
Can Beowulf, precisely date when the 'predominant attitude' and/or 'Official Opinion' of the south changed concerning slavery? When chattle slavery stopped being a national curse and became a sectional curse was when the south began to take pride in "Our Peculiar Institution". I ,myself, tend to place the event at Calhoun's ringing defense of it. As he helped engineer the gag rule in Congress.
Almost ALL moden nations with any pretensions of being civilized have always considered themselves superior to those based on slavery.
No definite date, as of yet, but between Patrick Henry, the first elected Governor of Virginia, and Calhoun, perhaps...
The South was trying to get along with the North (for too long, I think) and owning slaves from the yankee slave trade was patriotic when the South were English colonies, as well as , later, supporting American enterprise in the early 1800's...
Buying American (human imports), literally...
Which 'modern nations' were not built upon the back of Slavery, sir?
Civilization itself used Slavery as a means for the civilizing of these barbaric slaves.
Southern Slave Owning Christians saw it as their duty to uplift these oppressed. The Cotton Whig Atheists, on the other hand, saw the negro as needing to be kept down, by Racism, such as Stephens championed...
(Thus embarrassing Davis at ever imaginable turn...).
Perhaps you will enlighten us all as to the difference between PRISONER and SLAVE? You have something you wish to share?
Plantations towards the end were much better off with trained negroes, skilled in crafts, and making their own money, and becoming more like sharecroppers than
chattel property which had to be continually goaded to perform even the most menial assignments...
I know I would certainly have seen it that way. I would not run my plantation like Wal-Mart runs its stores, today, with terrified slaves as 'employees' and the bottom line as the god apparent of the industry...
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