What Best Would a Worried Planter Do in 1850--1860 to Preserve Slavery?

James Lutzweiler

Sergeant Major
Joined
Mar 14, 2018
Fellow Posters,

Thank you much for your continued engagement with me on the subject of Secession and its cognate questions.

I think the caption to this thread says all that I need to say to elicit your reflections. However, let me repeat something I said on another thread in which I attempted to answer the question of another poster. I will post my reply below. But in short, the larger question that won't fit in the caption above is this: If you lived in 1850-1860 and saw your way of life threatened, what steps would you take to preserve it --particularly to preserve slavery? How would you do it? My own negative answer to that question is that I would certainly NOT secede. I am not alone. There are plenty of antebellum voices with the same position. But that being said, what do you do when your way of life is threatened?

In replying, try insofar as is possible to know only what you could have known in that time period. No presentism allowed.

Here now below is my reply to a poster who in light of my criticism on another thread of South Carolina's Secession Declarations asked me what I would have written, had I had the opportunity to contribute to those documents that I have consciously dissed as nothing but posterity papers pregnant with octuplets of straw men:



Alan,

Thank you for your thoughtful post.

This is a good question and I would answer it, if I could. The reason I cannot is because I probably would not have tried to secede. But that is only because of what I know now, and that is presentism. There were Unionists among the Charlestonians in 1860; and given my present proclivities, I probably would have been among them. So, theoretically, I might have simply argued against any such Declarations, urging upon those so-inclined to find some other solution to the dilemma. I would have listened to what the Seceshers had to say and would have commented to them about the flaws I saw in their Declarations, but I would not have tried to reconsturct that document or fine tune it, since I would not have embraced their cause in the first place.

However, suppose for a moment that I was a planter in search of a method to preserve slavery, their ostensible goal, I would have said --based on what I knew then, not on what I know now-- "Let's quietly keep building our railroad into the western territories. We are already as far as Memphis (in March 1857) and beyond. All we need to do now is connect with El Paso and San Diego and we should be home free. Let's just quietly emigrate into those territories (where Lincoln does not want us to take our slaves, but we don't have to take them for now, that can come later), just as Stephen Austin and Sam Houston did in Texas, and steal those territories, just as we stole Texas and the other western terrritories from Mexico. Once we get the railroad built and are able militarily to overpower any Union that would come after us, we are home free. Those Yankees will then never be able to tell us what to do with our peculiar institution and we can expand even further South into Mexico (especially into Sonora that former Mississippi Senator William Gwin has told us exceeds California in mineral wealth) and Central America and tell the North to go fly a kite. If necessary, we can even hook up with the Mormons who just a few years ago (1857 in a war that cost the federal government as much as the Gadsden Purchase) were striving for their own new nation and just let them have Utah in exchange for their cooperation, should a war break out with the Union." Etc.

That is what I would say --and what many others did say whose words I have posted but never answered. You might not like my answer and that is perfectly fine. I would just ask you, as I might on a new post, "If you were a planter in 1850-1860 and saw your way of life threatened, what specific steps would you take to preserve it?" You have just read my answer to that question. I might be wrong. I don't think I am, but i might be. But if I am, no matter. The question remains the same: Exactly what steps would you take to preserve your way of life? I will guarantee you that Secession would NOT be my method, and I know of plenty of South Carolinian and Charlestonians who felt the same way. I suggest you read the online biography of Robert Hayne. It is pregnant with the folly of Secession and twice as pregnant with western railroads as a solution to disunion.

The constant appeal to the majority of contemporary historians and amateurs to slavery as the primary or only cause runs up against the theories of other once contemporary historians of the early twentieth century. If this were 1920, one could argue, "But the majority of historians believe it was tariffs or states rights." So what makes the views of contemporary historians "more true" than the majority of another generation?

I think one potential solution to the debate is to begin thinking not so much like high school history teaches who also coach basketball or football to supplement their meager incomes but to think like historians who also own a few pieces of real estate and can think like developers of land. You have just read a few meditations by one. Secession, abolitionism, slavery, tariffs, states rights are nothing in the last analysis but real estate problems.

That's the best I can give you for now. But why don't you be the first on a new thread to address this question:If you were a planter in 1850-1860 and saw your way of life (cotton growing on real estate, soils wearing out, slaves angry because of pitiful houses to live in, etc.), what would YOU do --knowing only what you could know in 1850-1860-- to preserve your way of life?

Cordially

James
 
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