Posted on 07/11/2015 9:54:21 AM PDT by golux
I figured you'd understand it better if I spoke your language.
However please keep in mind that 70-80% of southern soldiers were not slave owners. The Northern hero Grant owned slaves while Lee did not.
The fact that 70 – 80% of Southern soldiers were not slave holders in immaterial. Individuals did not secede from the Union, the States did. The states were very (crystal) clear that their reason for seceding was slavery. You don’t have to believe me – just read the Articles of Secession that the states wrote to justify their secession> Individual soldiers had many reasons for fighting, but the reason there was a Confederate Army to join was because they seceded to protect slavery.
As far as the statement that Grant owned slaves, if you look at the data, from 1854 to 1859 Grant lived on, and managed, his father-in-law’s farm at White Haven, Missouri. While the majority of slaves on the farm were owned by his father-in-law, Grant did own one slave, William Jones, that he freed in 1859. As far as whether Lee owned slaves, the data is a little less clear. As the executor, of his father-in-laws will, Lee had control over 63 slaves, who worked on his plantation. As a condition of the will, he was required to manumit them within 5 years, which he did. Note that he could have manumitted them earlier than that, but he chose to keep them as long as possible and personally benefit from their labor
And the Union was very (crystal) clear that it would accept slavery, but not Independence.
Direct some hatred at the Union. It didn't fight to end slavery, it fought to end freedom.
It didn't start talking about ending slavery until two years after the war had been going on. Even then, "Ending Slavery" was first a military tactic, then a political tactic, and finally a punishment for having put up such a fight.
Five Union states were still practicing slavery throughout the civil war, and were in fact exempt from the emancipation proclamation. If the Union wanted to fight to end slavery, they could have started with their own five slave states. The supply lines would have been a lot shorter.
Stop buying into the propaganda the victors spread to justify their carnage. It isn't true.
OK, so can you please you point me to a source that confirms that Lincoln arrested the entire Maryland legislature in September 1861 and which details the statewide referendum on secession that Baldwin talks about? Thanks in advance.
Do you disagree with the part regarding the "Emancipation" Proclamation? Because if you go and read the actual document you will find that it specifically leaves out the slaves in Union states, the only ones Lincoln could have really freed.
Constitutionally Lincoln could not. Lincoln could free the slaves in the South because the Confiscation Acts, passed by Congress and upheld by the Supreme Court, allowed the government to seize private property without compensation if that property was being used to support the rebellion. So he issued the Emancipation Proclamation. He could not legally free the slaves in the North because slavery was not unconstitutional. It took the 13th Amendment to end slavery. I'm surprised that you were unaware of all that.
Do you disagree with the facts regarding the tariff issues of the time? If so you should research the issue more and read what people of the time had to say on it..."
Yes, let's see what people of the time had to say on it.
"Texas abandoned her separate national existence and consented to become one of the Confederated States to promote her welfare, insure domestic tranquility [sic] and secure more substantially the blessings of peace and liberty to her people. She was received into the confederacy with her own constitution, under the guarantee of the federal constitution and the compact of annexation, that she should enjoy these blessings. She was received as a commonwealth holding, maintaining and protecting the institution known as negro slavery--the servitude of the African to the white race within her limits--a relation that had existed from the first settlement of her wilderness by the white race, and which her people intended should exist in all future time. Her institutions and geographical position established the strongest ties between her and other slave-holding States of the confederacy. Those ties have been strengthened by association." -- Texas Declaration of Causes for Secession
"Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery-- the greatest material interest of the world. Its labor supplies the product which constitutes by far the largest and most important portions of commerce of the earth. These products are peculiar to the climate verging on the tropical regions, and by an imperious law of nature, none but the black race can bear exposure to the tropical sun. These products have become necessities of the world, and a blow at slavery is a blow at commerce and civilization. That blow has been long aimed at the institution, and was at the point of reaching its consummation. There was no choice left us but submission to the mandates of abolition, or a dissolution of the Union, whose principles had been subverted to work out our ruin. That we do not overstate the dangers to our institution, a reference to a few facts will sufficiently prove." -- Mississippi Declaration of the Causes of Secession
"The South had always been solid for slavery and when the quarrel about it resulted in a conflict of arms, those who had approved the policy of disunion took the pro-slavery side. It was perfectly logical to fight for slavery, if it was right to own slaves." -- John Singleton Mosby
"What was the reason that induced Georgia to take the step of secession? This reason may be summed up in one single proposition. It was a conviction, a deep conviction on the part of Georgia, that a separation from the North-was the only thing that could prevent the abolition of her slavery." -- Speech of Henry Benning to the Virginia Convention
The only issue of contention remaining was the 40% Federal sales tax on Southerners, which required a compulsory Union to collect.
Except that there was no 40% tax on Southerners. Not in 1860. Not ever.
After the South had been forced back into the (now) compulsory Union under the 40% tax rate, Federal tax revenues mushroomed 300% to $170 million per year. Before the war, while the South was in the Union under the 20% tax rate, revenues had been $50 million per year. Source: U.S. Census Bureau Balance of Payments And Foreign Trade: 1821-1945 (Page 248)
Even if correct, you're saying this was a reason for the South leaving in 1860?
Do you honestly believe that?
You are welcome to your history (sic). We will keep ours.
To paraphrase Daniel Patrick Moynihan, you are entitled to your own history, but you are not entitled to your own facts.
The South's reasons for leaving is immaterial to the North's refusal to allow it for any reason.
The Salient question is this; Do people have a right to leave?
Our founding document, the Declaration of Independence, says "yes."
I'll be glad to. The University of Virginia census browser for 1860. Here is the Link. Do the math yourself.
From a moral perspective, do you really think the difference between 80,000 and 300,000 is significant?
From a factual perspective don't you think there is quite a difference between 80,000, which is approximately the total number of slave owners in all the Union states, and 300,000 which Baldwin claims is the total number of slave owners in Union ranks? Or do facts mean absolutely nothing to you?
The South's reason for leaving is the heart of the discussion. The South's reason for starting the war were, as you yourself have said, were pretty stupid.
bttt
In all, thirteen states had Articles of Secession (though only eleven ever actually ratified them, and they became the eleven states of the Confederate States of America). In those eleven Articles of Secession, only four specifically mentioned slavery as a cause (note: just one of many causes): South Carolina; Mississippi; Texas; and Georgia. Virginia’s only mention of it was to effect it expressed solidarity with the slave states that had seceded. The day after Virginia ratified its Articles of Secession (May 23, 1861), Union troops marched into Northern Virginia (May 24, 1861).
So, of thirteen Articles of Secession; only four expressly mentioned slavery as a reason. But they ALL cited self-determination as a reason.
I find it amusing that so many Lincoln apologists cite Clause 5, Article III, Sec. 3 of the U.S. Constitution to support their conclusion that the seceded states committed treason simply by seceding. However, a close reading of that authority does not support such a conclusion. It states, rather, that treason against the United States shall consist only in levying war against them.
Also, if we accept Lincoln’s and his apologists’ argument that the seceded states were not, in fact, legally divorced from the United States, but were still part of the United States, then Lincoln was a war criminal for invading Virginia when Virginia had never made any martial acts against ANY state or union of states.
Now, don’t get me wrong: I wish there had never been any secession (read my profile page). But I also know that the victors generally get to write the histories, with their own bias, and the North certainly did that.
So we have public sentiment, pretty much the entire GOP political structure and multiple Southern governors saying stop flying the flag.
An intellectually honest person would say the time has come to let it go. Claiming that it's tyranny does an injustice to those who have actually suffered under the same.
Exactly who is imposing the tyranny here?
“Maybe if we had hung all the leaders, the history would be more clear and we wouldn’t have all this nonsense about a flag.”
Lenin would approve.
Yes, that's quite a discrepancy. I wonder where he got his number? Still, to make the history come out the way everyone claims, that number should still be zero.
“I never had to explain to my sons why the South fought. The’ve met enough Yankees to know why we fought.”
Well said.
I hear you. They may remove the flag from Dixie, but they will never remove Dixie from our hearts.
Is the GOP still the party of Lincoln?
Resolved: That the Constitution confers upon Congress sovereign powers over the Territories of the United States for their government; and that in the exercise of this power, it is both the right and the imperative duty of Congress to prohibit in the Territories those twin relics of barbarism — Polygamy, and Slavery.
Republican platform of 1856.
http://www.ushistory.org/gop/convention_1856republicanplatform.htm
The Republican party was the party of abolition...period.
No, the South's reason for leaving is simply what the ex post facto rationalizers want to talk about. They want to get the History out of sequence because it makes what they did look better.
The South's reasons for leaving are immaterial to the larger point. Did they have a right to leave?
Which were left to his daughter in his will. Yet you claim Lee owned none.
However the family owned four others under his wife's name, although Grant himself was responsible for supervising them.
For the sake of this argument let's assume that is true. What you are saying is that Lee's wife inherits close to 200 slaves but Lee doesn't own them. Grant's wife is given several slaves by her father and all of a sudden they belong to Grant?
In reality, Grant's wife had the use of four slaves. Title to the slaves do not appear to have been passed on to Julia Grant, much less her husband. The Dent family slaves were, according to Julia Dent Grant's autobiography, freed shortly after the Emancipation Proclamation. There is reason to believe that this was a bit of an exaggeration on Julia Grant's part. Evidence indicates that the Dent family slaves just ran off over time after the Emancipation Proclamation, and that includes the slaves that Julia Grant had use of. In any case there are no accounts of any slaves accompanying Mrs. Grant on her visits to her husband or on any of her other travels after early 1863.
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