Civil War History - "What if..." DiscussionsWhat if they had attacked instead of digging in...? What if he was in charge of the army instead...? Did you ever have a "What if..." question, and you weren't sure where to post it? Here's the place to ask these speculative questions!
It has been widely reported that Lincoln once said that if he could preserve the Union by freeing all the slaves, he would do it; if he could preserve the Union by freeing none of the slaves, he would free none of them; and if he could preserve the Union by freeing some of the slaves and not the others, he would do that.
What might have happened if, shortly after taking office, Jefferson Davis, rather than Lincoln, had announced that all slaves in the Confederate States would henceforth and forever be free?
Would the Union have let the Confederate states depart in peace, or would the war have happened, anyway? Or would the Confederate states have dumped Davis immediately and looked for a president more inclined to preserve the "peculiar institution?"
With almost all of the problems, that led up to the south leaving, the union, being over slavery, I would figure, that if Davis, had made such a statement, and meant it, that he would have been, booted out of office, and a replacement searched for. If in the search for Davis's replacement, if the south failed to fire on Fort Sumter, when Lincoln attempted to re-supply it, chances are, the war, may never have happened.
Regardless, the Union would have attacked the newly formed Confed gov... Even if every Southern man agreed to free slaves, Lincoln would not have let them leave the Union.
What they should have done is call for a gradual release starting within months of leaving the Union. It may have given them the credibility needed to get more aid from Europe... and beaten Abe to the punch. However, I due not see them trying anything like that... If they did thought the war may have ended very differently.
Very interesting concept. Myself I feel that ol' Jeff would have been torn apart by the plantation owners convention and would have had no chance whatsoever to implement such a plan. Even if he had gotten away with it in the South, the North would have made war, not over slavery, but leaving the Union.
You have to remember that Jeff was not the first choice for the office of President of the Confederacy, not by a long shot! Check out the book, The Road to Disunion, Secessionists at Bay, 1776-1854, by William W. Freehling. In the Prologue: The Spirit of Montgomery, you will find some interesting insights on how most fire-eaters felt about Davis.
Good topic, though. Got any more?
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
I tend to agree with all those who have expressed the opinions that: (A) Davis would never have done such a thing; (B) the South would never have let him get away with it if he had tried; and (C) the war would have continued, anyway.
I do have an idea about how to approach the emancipation issue from another direction. That'll be the topic for another thread.
Here I am a bit perplexed. It has always been my contention that slavery and slavery alone caused the Civil War. If the slaves had been freed, would the North had had the support to conduct a war a against the South? Would keeping the Union together been enough of a cause to go to war over?
Lincoln thought so, and so do I, as I think the primary cause of the North going to war was not over slavery but the keeping of the Union, from the North's point of view. If there had been no institution of slavery from the begining, I feel there would have been no cause for the South to leave the Union and no cause for the North to fight the South, so no war period.
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
Not only would President Davis (nor any Southern leader) have been unable to manumit the slaves, even had he considered the notion, but at the formation of the Confederated States, the fire-eaters, who brought on secession and its ensuing catastrophic war, wanted to reopen the African slave trade. RB Rhett, the Charleston editor and 'Father of Secession', declaring that if slavery was worth establishing an independent state buttressed by a constitution maintaining the right to property in chattel slavery, then no restrictions should be put upon it, which can be taken as a castigation of the institution. So felt the fire-eaters. The Southern Constitutional Convention, primarily peopled by moderates, would not write that into the new Constitution, moreover, expressly outlawing the international trading of slaves.
The Deep South states, whose representatives wrote the new Constitution, besides being generally opposed to the African slave trade in principle, were sensitive to the feelings of the upper tier of slave states, whom they were attempting to woo into the Confederacy and were sensible to their views. These views were decidedly moderate on slavery, and there were no assurances that any more states were willing to forsake the Union of their forefathers.
Hence ultimately, from a Confederate point of view, the wise choice was made. Now what if the fire-eaters had been appeased and /or their argument had won the day and the African slave trade had been reestablished, (which had been abolished under the Federal government in 1809 if I'm not mistaken.) This act might have been enough to keep Tennessee, North Carolina, and Arkansas from joining the Deep South when they did, and allowed the Unionists to gain strength and help maintain the Union. An interesting question.
__________________ 'It is the soldier, not the reporter, who has given us freedom of the press. It is the soldier, not the poet, who has given us freedom of speech. It is the soldier, not the campus organizer, who has given us the freedom to demonstrate. It is the soldier, who salutes the flag, who serves beneath the flag, whose coffin is draped by the flag, who allows the protester to burn the flag'
Defining terms, by moderate on slavery which I used in the above post to state that condition in the Upper South, I mean believing in the right to property in slaves as protected in the Federal Constitution, but not believing that secession and disruption of the sacred Union was an appropriate remedy to the question. And also not believing in the legitimacy of the African slave trade.
As to the morality of holding men in bondage, this grew decidedly more against as one moves North from the Gulf of Mexico. This question, though, is moreso addressed in the Declaration of Independence than the Constitution.
Regards, ed
__________________ 'It is the soldier, not the reporter, who has given us freedom of the press. It is the soldier, not the poet, who has given us freedom of speech. It is the soldier, not the campus organizer, who has given us the freedom to demonstrate. It is the soldier, who salutes the flag, who serves beneath the flag, whose coffin is draped by the flag, who allows the protester to burn the flag'
CivilWarTalk.com -
A free and friendly Civil War community. 
Linear Mode
