Slavery was less economically viable in the upper Southern states and the Border States than in the Deep South. There were strong Unionist sentiments in all these states. Both Lee and Jackson were Union men before their native Virginia seceded. Would the seven state Confederacy have prospered as a separate country? Hard to say, but the development of cotton plantation in India would have placed cheaper cotton to the British textile mills than what the reduced Confederacy could have produced, even with slavery. The Union would have placed tariffs on Confederate cotton, thus protecting cotton growers in North Carolina, Tennessee, Arkansas, and Missouri. Ditto for tobacco, not as much an issue as this crop was more prevalent in the Upper South and the Border states than in the Deep South. The Texas cattle industry would never have developed, as the Union would have placed tariffs on imported cattle to benefit cattlemen in the Midwest.
In short, a reduced independent Confederacy may have been a financial failure. However, Lincoln did not have the desire or patience to let the seceding states alone.
“The upper Southern states joined the Confederacy because Lincoln challenged state authority over Fort Sumter.”
The proximate “cause” was Lincoln’s order for 75,000 “volunteer” state militia to help suppress the rebellious states. Before that proclamation, the Virginia legislature was deeply divided over the issue of secession and the governor had stated his intention for the state to remain neutral. After Lincoln’s initial order for three regiments from Virginia (about 5,500 men), the governor wrote to Lincoln that since the president had “chosen to inaugurate civil war, he would be sent no troops from the Old Dominion.” Lincoln’s order turned the tide in the Virginia legislature, and a vote in favor of secession quickly followed.
Recently read or heard something that indicated it was the Civil War that basically gave birth to the Indian industry. Not sure if that is true?
I don’t understand why “preserving the union” was anything more than a platitude. Once one accepts this platitude as being the most noble of causes, then it follows logically that secession must be evil, since it is a threat to what is most noble, namely, “preserving the union”.
Yet, arguably preserving the union is not the be-all and end-all of noble causes. The argument would go something like this: after recently declaring and fighting for independence from a central authority, the colonies called themselves states and ratified the constitution as willing participants, with the condition of that the federal government had authority over the states only to the extent of their ongoing consent. This implies that at any time should their consent be undeserved, their willing participation could be severed - i. e., secession.
If a state is not free to quit the union, has it not been lured to join under false pretenses of Liberty? Has it not fallen prey to the tyranny it so recently threw off?
And if secession is not necessarily a bad thing, then “preserving the union” is not necessarily a good thing.
I submit that had states been allowed to secede and rejoin freely without prejudice, the consideration of costs and benefits of being a member of the union would have resulted in better compromises and less state-on-state legislative abuse (which the south was arguably suffering) and the union may have been preserved, but without war.
I don’t want my wife to divorce me, but the fact that we are free to sever the bond makes us each more respectful of the other’s grievances and more mindful of the benefits of marriage. If it was made illegal to divorce, I suspect the rate of spousal abuse and the rate of “spousicide” would increase dramatically.
Is not this the essence of a constitutional republic - that the collective has limited authority to impose central authority over the separate states? If the north had heeded that lesson and resisted the temptation to coerce the southern states into remaining (at gunpoint no less), wouldn’t we now be enjoying the blessings and liberties of a limited federal government, instead of (again) facing extinction at the hands of this tyrannical monstrosity the federal government has become?