Posted on 09/16/2015 9:27:36 AM PDT by Theoria
The Civil War began over a simple question: Did the Constitution of the United States recognize slavery — property in humans — in national law? Southern slaveholders, inspired by Senator John C. Calhoun of South Carolina, charged that it did and that the Constitution was proslavery; Northern Republicans, led by Abraham Lincoln, and joined by abolitionists including Frederick Douglass, resolutely denied it. After Lincoln’s election to the presidency, 11 Southern states seceded to protect what the South Carolina secessionists called their constitutional “right of property in slaves.”
The war settled this central question on the side of Lincoln and Douglass. Yet the myth that the United States was founded on racial slavery persists, notably among scholars and activists on the left who are rightly angry at America’s racist past. The myth, ironically, has led advocates for social justice to reject Lincoln’s and Douglass’s view of the Constitution in favor of Calhoun’s. And now the myth threatens to poison the current presidential campaign. The United States, Bernie Sanders has charged, “in many ways was created, and I’m sorry to have to say this, from way back, on racist principles, that’s a fact.”
But as far as the nation’s founding is concerned, it is not a fact, as Lincoln and Douglass explained. It is one of the most destructive falsehoods in all of American history.
Yes, slavery was a powerful institution in 1787. Yes, most white Americans presumed African inferiority. And in 1787, proslavery delegates to the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia fought to inscribe the principle of property in humans in the Constitution. But on this matter the slaveholders were crushed.
James Madison (himself a slaveholder) opposed the ardent proslavery delegates and stated that it would be “wrong to admit in the Constitution the idea that there could be property in men.”
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
...And the NYT has no clue what that simple question was.
Yeah, yeah, we’re all bad people, America is still a slave state and all whites should DDIIIIEEEEE!!!
America NEVER had a “Civil” war.
If the Dred Scott decision had been about fudgepacking, Sean Wilentz and the NYT would be lecturing us all about judicial review and our obligations thereunder.
Whether you think slavery was an issue in the War Between the States depends on which side of the Mason Dixon line you live.
Surprising this coming from the times, but after reading in it’s entirety, I noticed how carefully the writer avoided applying any political affiliations to the parties involved.
Or who wrote the history book you learned from.
Or whether or not you can read and are intellectually honest. Here it is, straight from the horses mouth.
If there be those who would not save the Union unless they could at the same time destroy slavery, I do not agree with them. My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that. What I do about slavery, and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save the Union; and what I forbear, I forbear because I do not believe it would help to save the Union.
Article IV, Section 2.
No Person held to Service or Labour 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 Labour, but shall be delivered up on Claim of the Party to whom such Service or Labour may be due.
What that means is that States must respect the compelled labor laws of other states, meaning Slavery.
Calhoun was right. That clause forces all states to respect the slave laws of other states, meaning people can go into free states with their slaves, and the free state laws cannot free them.
“the Mason Dixon line”, HAD NOTHING to do w/ “Slavery”.
,,,,,, perhaps I say ,,,, but over 80% of the Confederate soldiers who fought in this war came from homes with no slaves and had no real interest in the slavery issue .
That quote from Lincoln is not the end-all-be-all of the motivation for the Civil War. That only shows Lincoln’s attitude, but as to what got the States, and their people, to the point of being ready to kill their own brothers was the only thing that could have gotten them to that point: the addressing of a great wrong and the correction of a great evil. What made Kansas into “Bleeding Kansas” ? It was only the fight over slavery. I don’t believe that the people of the United States in those days would have agreed to go and kill their own countrymen over mere secession. The motivation had to be propped up by the battle over a great moral question, regardless of what Lincoln wanted.
“If there be those who would not save the Union unless they could at the same time destroy slavery, I do not agree with them. My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that. What I do about slavery, and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save the Union; and what I forbear, I forbear because I do not believe it would help to save the Union.”
Never should have elected this RINO!
Washington rotated his slave out of Philly because of such laws[Pennsylvania’s Gradual Abolition Act of 1780.] in respect to the time that he could keep them in Pennsylvania[6 months or longer in the state they would be automatically free].
Lincoln is the only man who could have stopped it. All he had to do is say "stand down" and that would have been it.
Therefore, his opinion on the issue is the only one that mattered. He was willing to continue slavery, and he had the power to do so, therefore the Union was not fighting the war to end slavery. Q.E.D.
I don’t believe that the people of the United States in those days would have agreed to go and kill their own countrymen over mere secession.
You don't believe so? Then what was Brig. Gen. Irvin McDowell marching towards Richmond for? If he had orders to free any slaves, I have not heard of it.
That he respected the views of Pennsylvania, and that he did not wish to test the legality of keeping them their longer than six months, does not mean that he did not have the better legal argument should the issue ever need to be litigated in court.
That he had them there at all indicated that he believed he could continue slavery in Pennsylvania, even if it required him to jump through some legal technicality hoops.
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