Posted on 05/19/2015 10:33:26 PM PDT by iowamark
Even while the Civil War raged, slaves in Cuba could be heard singing, “Avanza, Lincoln, avanza! Tu eres nuestra esperanza!” (Onward, Lincoln, Onward! You are our hope!) – as if they knew, even before the soldiers fighting the war far to the North and long before most politicians understood, that the war in America would change their lives, and the world.
The secession crisis of 1860-1861 threatened to be a major setback to the world antislavery movement, and it imperiled the whole experiment in democracy. If slavery was allowed to exist, and if the world’s leading democracy could fall apart over the issue, what hope did freedom have? European powers wasted no time in taking advantage of the debacle. France and Britain immediately each sent fleets of warships with the official purpose of observing the imminent war in America. In Paris, A New York Times correspondent who went by the byline “Malakoff” thought that the French and British observers “may be intended as a sort of escort of honor for the funeral of the Great Republic.”
...the French forced Benito Juárez, the republican leader, to flee the capital and eventually installed the Austrian archduke Maximilian as emperor of Mexico.
European conservatives welcomed the dismemberment of the “once United States” and the bursting of the “republican bubble” that, beginning with the French Revolution, had inspired revolution and unrest in Europe. Republicanism had been in retreat in Europe since the failed revolutions of 1848, and some predicted that all the wayward American republics would eventually find their way back to some form of monarchy, or seek protection under European imperial rule. When Lincoln, in the darkest days of the war, referred to America as the “last best hope of earth,” he was hardly boasting...
(Excerpt) Read more at opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com ...
Trade relations between the United States and the confederacy are an interesting area of speculation. Would the south have charged an import tariff on midwestern goods bound for New Orleans and overseas export? That would most likely have had the effect of spurring railroad growth to the eastern seaboard to bypass New Orleans, greatly diminishing port traffic there. Almost certainly they would have charged a tariff for goods imported from the US to confederate consumers, and southern goods entering the United States would have been subject to tariff as well.
” Most Americans are aware that Colonialists did not “secede” from the crown.”
You may be right since they have managed to elect Obama twice. They are liable to believe anything.
Prior to July 4 1776 Colonials were British subjects and the Colonies belonged to the United Kingdom. Then the colonials announced to the King that they were withdrawing from the UK and taking the colonies to form their own country. Let’s see how that comports with definitions of secession:
“the action of withdrawing formally from membership of a federation or body, especially a political state.”
That definition doesn’t include chaff about aggression and tyranny since the ‘why’ of leaving isn’t what determines secession. It’s the leaving itself that is secession.
“Most Americans also knew that although the Constitution does not speak to an enumerated provision or process for secession, there was a reason for that silence. The reason was that the Republic was assembled in perpetuity and no Founder wished to be the author of its demise.”
That may impress modern readers who know little about what was thought and taught regarding the Constitution prior to the Civil War and Lincoln’s insistence on perpetual union.
But to learn what Americans of that era actually thought all we need do is look at William Rawle’s “A View of the Constitution”, the text used at West Point to teach government to the cadets.
And here we have page 149 of Rawle’s text:
” the United States are authorized to oppose, and if possible, prevent every state in the Union from relinquishing the republican form of government, and as auxiliary means, they are expressly authorized and required to employ their force on the application of the constituted authorities of each state, “to repress domestic violence.”
If a faction should attempt to subvert the government of a state for the purpose of destroying its republican form, the paternal power of the Union could thus be called forth to subdue it.
Yet it is not to be understood, that its interposition would be justifiable, if the people of a state should determine to retire from the Union, whether they adopted another or retained the same form of government, or if they should, with the, express intention of seceding, expunge the representative system from their code, and thereby incapacitate themselves from concurring according to the mode now prescribed, in the choice of certain public officers of the United States.
The principle of representation, although certainly the wisest and best, is not essential to the being of a republic, but to continue a member of the Union, it must be preserved, and therefore the guarantee must be so construed.
It depends on the state itself to retain or abolish the principle of representation, because it depends on itself whether it will continue a member of the Union. To deny this right would be inconsistent with the principle on which all our political systems are founded, which is, that the people have in all cases, a right to determine how they will be governed”
We could look at what was happening when Spain held New Orleans for another possibility. States along the Ohio and Mississippi began talking of joining with Spain so that they would have access to New Orleans and the gulf. There’s a good book, “An Artist in Treason”, about a long forgotten Revolutionary War general, James Wilkinson, who was pretty much a double agent working for Spain in all of this when he was supposed to be our top general.
Depending upon how the Confederacy ran the New Orleans port the traders might have been content just to ship their goods there as they always had done. Or they might have been tempted to join the Confederacy which would certainly have been a recipe for political trouble. I kind of doubt that railroads would have been a practical solution because they are a very expensive alternative to using the rivers.
Why? Goods destined for Northern consumers would have to be delivered to a North eventually and the tariff would be collected then.
That must be why they called up 75,000 troops with the goal of forcing the North into the Confederacy.
Whatever the goals of the Confederacy was, it is a fact that they started the war by firing on Sumter and that they seceded to protect their slave property.
Ordinances were adopted as legal statements.
The others you quote did not have that status.
When was that adoption and by whom?
Thank you for a very interesting quote.
I have never been a great admirer of Lincoln. Although I certainly respect his personal passion to end slavery, I think he inflicted horrifying damage on the Constitution and the country in his effort to make that happen.
I'm not sure I have read anything by Mencken, but I know some people describe him as a Conservative.
I read through Mencken's bio on Wiki and found another quote you might enjoy:
Democracy, as defined by Mencken, is “the worship of jackals by jackasses.”
At your link, Alabama and Texas and Virginia all use some form of the word “slaveholding.”
Also, they all use the word “Ordinance.”
So, I'm not completely sure what your point was.
By the way - two of my great-great grandfathers were wounded at Pea Ridge. They were German farmers from northern Illinois - and possibly exchanging fire with some of your ancestors?
See #116
"The ordinances of secession were the actual legal language by which the seceded states severed their connection with the Federal Union. The declarations of causes, given elsewhere on this Web site, are where they tended to disclose their reasons for doing so, although only four states issued separate declarations of causes."
Is it your belief that their reasons are unknowable, since we can’t accept their declarations as being genuine expressions?
In what post did I mistake the ordinances and the declarations?
There may have been a rump who didn't go over to the Democrats or the American (Know Nothing) Party, and they would have been the ones to endorse PGTB, the Democratic candidate.
Beauregard was a lifelong Democrat according to one source.
Who were the authors?
wiki has him running for office only the one time, for New Orleans mayor in 1858 with the support of both Whigs and Democrats. They cite this book in their footnote:
Williams, T. Harry. ‘P.G.T. Beauregard: Napoleon in Gray.’ Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press,
“Why? Goods destined for Northern consumers would have to be delivered to a North eventually and the tariff would be collected then. “
European shippers would choose lower tariff southern ports when possible. Previously tariffs were equal so there was no reason to make a choice based on price. European goods would also be less expensive for the South when tariffs were lower. Northern made goods would be less competitive. The lower tariff would have an impact, just as tax havens do today.
“Whatever the goals of the Confederacy was, it is a fact that they started the war by firing on Sumter and that they seceded to protect their slave property.”
Of course such property had been legal since before the Revolution, with George Washington being one of the larger practitioners in Colonial days.
As we know in hindsight Southerners were correct in their suspicion that the North had decided to abrogate the idea of human property by force- any Constitutional remedy was moving too slowly. That plan was hardly a secret, a campaign of vilification and hatemongering had been waged on the ‘slaveocracy’ for decades in the run-up to the war, a situation well documented in Fleming’s recent “A Disease in the Public Mind”.
By 1859 that vilification campaign flowered with John Brown’s murderous plan for a Haiti-style slave rebellion, financed by wealthy Northern abolitionists. There was no longer any doubt that Northerners were waging a guerrilla war against the South, with John Brown being widely praised as something akin to a Messiah.
The election of 1860 confirmed that the country had divided. Lincoln received less than 40% of the popular vote and not one electoral vote south of the Mason-Dixon line. This was the most extreme example of sectional division in American political history.
I'm assuming that the South is an independent country in your scenario? So again, why would goods destined for Northern consumers go there? The tariff makes no difference to European supplier because they don't pay it, the consumer does. Goods that U.S. consumers want will have to cross the border at some point and the U.S. tariff would be applied there. If the Confederacy has already applied their own tariff then that would serve to make goods shipped via the South to be even more expensive. As for Northern goods meant for Southern consumers those would be taxed at the same rate as European goods would be so the European goods would not have a cost advantage.
Of course such property had been legal since before the Revolution, with George Washington being one of the larger practitioners in Colonial days.
You say that like anyone on any of these pages ever claimed otherwise. And it is curious that you would sully the great name of Washington by associating him with the riffraff who would upend our nation for their own personal profit.
As we know in hindsight Southerners were correct in their suspicion that the North had decided to abrogate the idea of human property by force- any Constitutional remedy was moving too slowly.
No, we don't know that. We know that some northerners had impatience with the recalcitrance of southern slavers, but to broad-brush all northerners is an exaggeration.
There was no longer any doubt that Northerners were waging a guerrilla war against the South, with John Brown being widely praised as something akin to a Messiah.
Well, there you go again. You overstate both Brown's influence, his support, and his impact. If he was "widely praised as something akin to a Messiah" some of that praise should have survived to the present.
European shippers would choose lower tariff southern ports when possible. Previously tariffs were equal so there was no reason to make a choice based on price. European goods would also be less expensive for the South when tariffs were lower. Northern made goods would be less competitive. The lower tariff would have an impact, just as tax havens do today.
This would carry more credibility had the confederates refrained from imposing their own tariffs.
"the people of South Carolina, by our delegates, in Convention assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions"
"The people of Georgia having dissolved their political connection with the Government of the United States of America, present to their confederates and the world the causes which have led to the separation."
"We the delegates of the people of Texas, in Convention assembled"
The secession conventions were conventions of the people, and the acts and statements issued by those conventions must, if we take them at their word and accept what they believed at the time, be acts and statements of the people.
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