Was the Civil War about Slavery?

Acton Institute, Prager University ^ | 8/11/2015 | Joe Carter

[BroJoeK]

DiogenesLamp: "You are overlooking the fact that the war was started by the Confederacy to suppress Liberty of slaves, not achieve it.
That it eventually (several years later) had that consequence for a previously subjugated portion of the population is irrelevant totally relevant to the actual purpose for which it was fought, namely to preserve, protect and defend slavery."

Pal, I know you're in a hurry, so I just filled in your missing words.
Now your post is 100% true.

[Tau Food]

If the Union invaded the southern part of the USA why is it shocking for The Confederacy (Lee) to invade the northern part of the USA?

Color me confused.

My reference to the "USA's invasion of the USA" was an oxymoron designed to remind another poster that the South remained part of the USA despite the fact that some people in the South pretended to "secede" from the USA. There was never any such thing as a "secession" from the USA. That was just a theory concocted by some folks who wanted to give their actions the appearance of legality.

As many prominent Southerners later acknowledged, what we call the Civil War was actually a rebellion. There have been other rebellions in our history, beginning with the Whiskey Rebellion during the presidency of George Washington.

Your confusion was understandable. The so-called "secessionists" did all that they could to distort the Constitutional principles that bind us together as "One nation, under God, indivisible." Since the adoption of our Constitution, we have been a country created by "We the People of the United States of America" and a relatively small group of slaveholders had no power to change that reality. But, that's what the rebellion was all about.

[miss marmelstein]

Well, it sure looked like secession (or succession as the original writer wrote) to me! I guess my old history professor was wrong, wrong, wrong.

My point simply was what is good for the goose is good for the gander since some folks here were expressing shock and awe that Lee invaded the north. Of course he did! He wanted to win the war and that was a necessary step in the right direction. That he failed is another story.

[miss marmelstein]

My immigrant ancestors were the ones drafted. I am embarrassed to admit that I came across a cringing letter in Ancestry.com from a relative of mine trying to get out of the draft. A NYer - a notoriously Copperhead Democrat city.

[DiogenesLamp]

Result is days & sometimes weeks between posting.

Not nearly enough, judging by the quality and pointless verbosity of your posts.

[Tau Food]

PeaRidge isn't really confused by any of this. He knows that you can't attempt to remove an existing government and attempt to create an entirely new nation without affecting the rights of the people in your neighborhood.

The Fourteenth Amendment contains language that ends that bogus argument forever. "No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States"

PeaRidge just isn't willing to make the argument that the "secessionists' made and so instead he just pretends to not understand what the "secessionists" were arguing.

[DiogenesLamp]

Point is: there is no possibility that the US Supreme Court in 1790 was going to strike down a Northern state's anti-slavery laws, because that was simply not part of the Founders' Original Intent & understandings.

Speculation and non sequitur. More like they wouldn't come down harsh on anybody in the early days because they didn't want to blow apart the coalition while everyone could still remember that it was joined voluntarily.

It took "four score and seven years" for people to forget that.

In the case of slavery, it is absolutely beyond reasonable dispute that our Founders intended both that Northern states could lawfully abolish slavery, and that the Federal government could pass restrictions against it in, for examples, international waters and US western territories.

So then tell me Mr BroJoeK who spends more time on snark than actually rebuttal, how can you stop slavery in a "free state" when you can't restrict travel to and from slave states? You assert that this is somehow possible, but you have yet to explain how it is possible.

You bitch about my foolish understanding, but all you do is ASSERT that it is foolish, you never demonstrate it to be foolish. You hand wave.

So let's say you are a slave owner living in Georgia, and you decide to take your slave to Massachusetts.

So what happens next? You tell me.

[Tau Food]

Well, you’ve got the facts right. Lee, as part of the rebellion, conducted his rebellion in the North. He also conducted his rebellion in the South. And, you’re right, he failed.

[DiogenesLamp]

We should take note that here, and in some others of your excellent posts, the response from DiogenesLamp is a thunderous, deafening silence.

There is an uncomplimentary way to regard silence. It's the point at which you think words are pointless because you are arguing with a fool.

So here you are silent for days or a week, or so long I don't even remember the last time you said something, and now you are chortling over what you see as a lack of response from me?

I'm thinking I need to give you and a whole lot of other people a lot more lack of response. Arguing with religious nutjobs is an effort in futility.

Oh, and to address your point, citing state cases is what an IDIOT does. They have no binding power over a Federal case or Federal law, of which the US Constitution article IV most certainly is.

[HandyDandy]

I think that perhaps DL is from a fictional land called British Union. After declaring that Article IV, 2, 3 implied that ALL states must embrace slavery, he later stated that until this thread he hadn't given much that clause much thought. Shirley, as an expert on Lincoln's mindset, DL couldn't possibly, in his years of research, have missed the part (near the beginning) of Lincoln's 1st Innaugural, wherein he said:

"There is much controversy about the delivering up of fugitives from service or labor. The clause I now read is as plainly written in the Constitution as any other of its provisions:

No person held to service or labor in one State, under the laws thereof, escaping into another, shall in consequence of any law or regulation therein be discharged from such service or labor, but shall be delivered up on claim of the party to whom such service or labor may be due.

It is scarcely questioned that this provision was intended by those who made it for the reclaiming of what we call fugitive slaves; and the intention of the lawgiver is the law. All members of Congress swear their support to the whole Constitution—to this provision as much as to any other. To the proposition, then, that slaves whose cases come within the terms of this clause "shall be delivered up" their oaths are unanimous. Now, if they would make the effort in good temper, could they not with nearly equal unanimity frame and pass a law by means of which to keep good that unanimous oath?

There is some difference of opinion whether this clause should be enforced by national or by State authority, but surely that difference is not a very material one. If the slave is to be surrendered, it can be of but little consequence to him or to others by which authority it is done. And should anyone in any case be content that his oath shall go unkept on a merely unsubstantial controversy as to how it shall be kept?"

Perhaps DL didn't have time to settle into his seat before Abe got these words out. Of course, Abe was quoting the fugitive slave clause in the Constitution, but then went on to discuss the Fugitive Slave Act. I have to wonder if, when Abe said "the intention of the clause was scarcely questioned...." DL would have raised his hand and asked if it included wagons.

[miss marmelstein]

Ah, but as he said, he sure gave them a good licking. And he did! Amazing man, amazing general and a fine example of American manhood. And if you don’t agree, I do not give a damn.

[BroJoeK]

PeaRidge quoting a Boston newspaper 3/18/1861: "It does not require extraordinary sagacity to perceive that trade is perhaps the controlling motive operating to prevent the return of the seceding States to the Union."

That was just mindless blather by people addicted to wishful thinking.
In fact, there was, literally, nothing in March of 1861 which the Union might do to entice Deep South states back into Union.
By this time numerous proposals had been made in Congress and elsewhere for change to attract secessionists, but all that time the Confederacy was instead busy provoking and preparing to start war at Fort Sumter.
It made no response to any such ideas.

Tariffs did not drive away the Deep South, and no change to tariffs in March 1861 was going to bring it back.

[Tau Food]

And, even though Lee participated in a rebellion to overthrow the United States government, it should not be forgotten that he was ecstatic that slavery was abolished.

Thanks in part to people like Robert E Lee, slavery is gone now - gone for good- and no amount of arguing is going to bring it back.

[DiogenesLamp]

We might note first that no American today spells the word "labour", rather "labor", and perhaps that hints at something regarding DiogenesLamp's birth-language. He has, after all, sometimes suggested a difficulty understanding English.

God, what an @$$. I spelled it that way because that's the way it's spelled in article IV. As usual, you read far more into something than is actually there.

You are all mouth.

[Tau Food]

Yes, he was a great man. The fact that he participated in a failed rebellion doesn’t change that. Some of my ancestors participated in a failed rebellion - just a different one.

[DiogenesLamp]

You quote Abe Lincoln, but nothing in your quote proves your point. You cap it off with snark.

Next.

[Pelham]

Prager’s pal Joe Carter is making the usual mistake of conflating the reason for secession with the reason for the Civil War.

Those who say that Lincoln fought the Civil War to bring an end to slavery find themselves using an argument similar to those who compare Lincoln to Lenin. That argument being that Lincoln ruled by force, gaining his goal by using the army to kill those who objected. People rarely think about that claim because in their mind the morality of ending slavery justifies whatever Lincoln did, including the slaughter and destruction resulting from the Civil War.

But Lincoln solved the mystery of his reason for the war by repeatedly saying that his goal in waging it was to force the seceding States back into the Union. He declared the secession to be treason and rebellion, the same as the English king had done 90 years earlier.

Lincoln didn’t claim the right to burn out and kill Americans who engaged in slavery. He did believe that he had the right to use violence to prevent States from leaving the Union. Preserving the Union was his causus belli. People ought to read his own words. He was using the army in the same fashion that Buchanan had in the Utah War just four years earlier, to compel obedience to federal law.

[DiogenesLamp]

Thanks in part to people like Robert E Lee, slavery is gone now - gone for good- and no amount of arguing is going to bring it back.

I beg to differ. While we are arguing, that is exactly what they have been doing.

[miss marmelstein]

He was not a fan of slavery even on a personal level - he had a lot of headaches with the ones at Arlington. But, he was stuck with them.

[BroJoeK]

PeaRidge: "All of that because they would not repeal the Morrill Tariff?
It is apparent that the issue of slavery was now moot, but the sectional arrogance and hostility would block reasoned politics or taxation policy."

Pure fantasy.
First of all, the Morrill Tariff only passed after Confederate states walked out of Congress, and no Confederate offer was ever made to rejoin the Union if only Morrill was repealed.
That issue was never on the table for negotiation.

Second of all, slavery was never an issue of negotiation.
No demands regarding slavery were made by Presidents Buchanan or Lincoln in the months before war started.
Of course, slavery was a big issue in the minds of Southern Fire Eaters, it was the reason they declared secession.
And northerners had various proposal to ease Southern concerns over their "peculiar institution".

But nothing regarding slavery was being negotiated during the months the Confederacy was furiously provoking, starting and declaring war on the United States.