Posted on 10/03/2015 1:28:14 PM PDT by Kaslin
Although the American Revolution resulted in independence for the United States and World War II made it an international power, the American Civil War was arguably the most important war in American history. It truly was an American watershed.
In order to appreciate that war’s significance, it must be understood what the Civil War was about. Contrary to all-too-popular opinion, the Civil War was not about states’ rights. Instead it was all about slavery and white supremacy. As shown in my just-released book, The Myth of the Lost Cause: Why the South Fought the Civil War and Why the North Won, there is compelling evidence that secession and the Confederacy were the result of Southerners’ desire to preserve slavery and white supremacy – not to promote states’ rights.
The evidence of the seceders’ motivations is clear-cut and convincing. Only slave states seceded, and the greater the percentage of slaves and the percentage of slave-owning families the more likely a slave state was to secede. Those states complained that the Federal Government was doing not too much but too little – Southerners wanted the central government to more aggressively enforce slavery, especially to return runaway slaves. They also were upset that other states were passing “liberty laws” to make it more difficult to retrieve runaways. The issue was not who had the power to do what but instead whether their powers were being used to promote slavery. Far from respecting individual states’ rights, they wanted to compel the Federal and other state governments to enforce slaveholders’ rights and preserve slavery.
The strongest evidence of seceders’ motivations is the language they used in their own secession documents. What could be more telling? Six of the seven early seceding states provided clear statements of their reasons for seceding. Their reasons included the election of Abraham Lincoln, who opposed extension of slavery into territories; the runaway slave issue; the threat to slavery’s existence with the possible loss of four to six billion dollars in slave property (the largest component of Southern wealth); the perceived end of white supremacy and the resultant political and social equality of blacks and whites, and desperate warnings of the effect all this change would have on Southern Womanhood.
South Carolina’s declaration of the reasons for secession said, “an increasing hostility on the part of the non-slaveholding States to the institution of slavery, has led to a disregard of their obligations, and the laws of the General Government have ceased to effect the objects of the Constitution [runaway slave return provision].”
As he called for a secession convention, Mississippi’s governor declared, “The existence or the abolition of African slavery in the Southern States is now up for a final settlement.” Citing only slavery-protection reasons, that state’s legislature convened a secession convention. The latter’s declaration of the causes of secession got right to the point in its opening line: “Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery – the greatest material interest of the world.”
Not only did their own secession resolutions reveal slavery and white supremacy as their causation, but the seven states who seceded even before Lincoln’s inauguration immediately began an outreach campaign to other slave states. Their correspondence and speeches relied only on slavery-related issues to encourage other slave states’ secession. They only lobbied slave states.
Much other evidence demonstrates that slavery and white supremacy preservation were the causes of secession and even trumped possible Confederate victory in the war. All efforts to avoid war by compromise focused only on slavery issues. Confederate Vice President Alexander Stephens said slavery was the “cornerstone” of the Confederacy and Thomas Jefferson and the Founding Fathers had erred in stating that all men were created equal.
Even though it had a tremendous manpower shortage, the Confederacy officially rejected the use of slaves as soldiers (as inconsistent with its white supremacy views) and rejected one-on-one prisoner exchanges for captured black Union soldiers. Just as American colonists needed European intervention to win the Revolutionary War, the Confederates were desperate for British and French intervention; however, they declined to end slavery in order to achieve involvement by the slavery-hating Europeans.
Union victory ended slavery and kept America from being an international pariah. It also resulted in passage of the 13th, 14th and 15th constitutional amendments; these provided the legal basis for ending legal segregation and providing blacks with voting and other civil rights.
Despite the compelling evidence of slavery’s and white supremacy’s roles in fomenting secession, the Confederacy, and the Civil War, too many contemporary Americans cling to the myth that somehow states’ rights were at the root of the Civil War. We need to accept the reality of the racial underpinnings of that critical war in order to contemplate, confront, and overcome the continuing racial tensions in America.
What tyranny?
So then you're saying the whole reason for separation was slavery?
The Vast bulk of European trade went through New York.
Imports yes. But the vast bulk of Southern exports, which made up the large majority of U.S. exports as a whole, left from New Orleans, Mobile, Savannah, and Charleston.
In addition, laws were in effect to more or less force trade to go through New York. Foreign ships were not permitted to carry goods between American ports. Only American ships were permitted to do that.
True, just like only British ships could carry goods between British ports. But that restriction did not apply to ships bringing goods into the U.S. from abroad, or ships taking goods from the U.S. directly to foreign ports.
Point of trivia, that law is still in effect. Which is why if you take a cruise from Los Angeles or San Diego to Hawaii and back the ship makes a brief stop in Mexico.
New Orleans and Mobile were busier because people HAD to go to these ports to get Cotton/Agriculture Shipments from them. Transporting these cargoes overland wasn't practical, so those ports had to be used to access that territory's products.
They were busier because they were the most convenient port to export cotton and other agricultural products from.
Going independent would allow foreign trade ships to stop in New York, and then go on to Charleston, and the packet shipping, (which mostly benefited New York) would have taken less of a cut of the trade traffic.
Nothing stopped foreign ships to go directly to Charleston or New Orleans with imports prior to the separation.
Also the reduced import duties that would have been available from Charleston would have boosted traffic there dramatically.
That makes no sense at all. If they were separate countries then what difference would Confederate tariff rates have on U.S. imports?
An Independent South would have made Charleston (and surrounding area) a far more wealthy city, and it would have come at the expense of New York and to a lesser extent Boston and Philadelphia.
And I don't think you make your case at all. In an independent Confederacy the same exports that left from Mobile and New Orleans would continue to leave from there; Charleston wouldn't take from them so if any cities expanded and grew more important in an independent South it would likely be those two. And imports destined for the North would continue to flow through Boston, New York and Boston. Separation wouldn't change that.
And again, they disagreed because it wasn't "Federal Law", it was Constitutional Law. The US Constitution, you know, that thing that makes "The UNION", require all member states of the UNION to return fugitive slaves. It is a specific written clause in the US Constitution that requires this.
Not returning fugitive slaves is breaking the requirements of the Union.
Wouldn’t slavery have been considered one of several state rights issues of 1850/1860’s?
Because the Law required Foreign ships to only carry goods to one US port. New York was the easiest.
Since Southern products made up 75% of all exports at this time, the returning trade had to balance those exports in money and goods.
Payment for Southern Products always ended up in New York, where the Feds took their cut.
New York was collecting the tariffs because the laws (and geography) were set up in such a way that favored the New York port usage, but most of the money coming into New York still came from Southern Export products.
Unless you happen to be the property of a Democrat of course.....then not so much.
The south paid no tariffs, tariffs are paid by foreign exporters. The south controlled the tariff issue in the 1850s.
Nope not tariffs, it was slavery, as their Declarations of Secession make clear.
The South was still two and a half years away from realizing their cause was lost. Lincoln was under no illusion that the war was close to being over.
I've seen it asserted that the Emancipation was primarily a tool for weakening the South's attempts to get foreign support and to boost the moral of his supporters, plus laying the political ground work for stealing all the money the South invested in slavery by taking them without recompense.
I think there were several reasons for the Emancipation Proclamation. Certainly it was for foreign consumption. It was an economic tool against the South. And it prepped the way for total emancipation.
The CW was about secession, or preserving the Union, depending on which side you were on. One should read Lincoln’s first inaugural address or Grant’s Paducah Proclamation if they have any doubts. Or note that there were slave states in the Union.
Now the issue that led to secession was slavery. No doubt about it.
THE GOOD OLD REBEL
(James Randolph, 1914)
O, I’m a good old Rebel,
Now that’s just what I am,
I won’t be reconstructed, and
I do not give a damn;
I’m glad I fit against it —
I only wish we’d won,
And I don’t want no pardon
For anything I done.
I hates the Constitution,
This Great Republic too,
I hates the Freedman’s Bureau,
The uniforms of blue;
I hates the nasty eagle,
With all his brags and fuss,
The lyin’, thievin’ Yankees,
I hates ‘em wuss and wuss.
I hates the Yankee nation
And everything they do,
I hates the Declaration
Of Independence too;
I hates the glorious Union —
‘Tis dripping with our blood —
I hates their striped banner,
I fit it all I could.
I followed old mass’ Robert
For four year, near about,
Got wounded in three places
And starved at Point Lookout;
I cotch the rheumatism
A campin’ in the snow,
But I killed a chance of Yankees,
I’d like to kill some mo’.
Three hundred thousand Yankees
Is stiff in Southern dust;
We got three hundred thousand
Before they conquered us;
They died of Southern fever
And Southern steel and shot,
I wish they was three million
Instead of what we got.
I can’t take up my musket
And fight ‘em now no more,
But I ain’t going to love ‘em,
Now that is certain sure;
And I don’t want no pardon
For what I was and am,
I won’t be reconstructed
And I don’t care a damn.
O, I’m a good old Rebel,
Now that’s just what I am,
And for this Yankee nation,
I do not give a damn;
I’m glad I fit against it —
I only wish we’d won,
And I don’t want no pardon
For anything I done.
I have never lived in St. Louis, but I’m 64 now, and have lived in many states, and ALL of my federal taxes have been paid (i.e., mailed to) St. Louis.
You aren't grasping the meaning of the Declaration of Independence. Independence is always lawful.
England had a law against independence too. Our founders declared that "the laws of nature, and of nature's God" over rode the laws of England. They also override the US Constitution.
Tariffs are paid by foreign exporters, not states. The south paid no tariffs. The south controlled the tariff issue in the 1850s.
Secession was about slavery, as their Declarations of Secession clearly state.
The South suddenly attacked without warning, killed 3000 of our soldiers and did 500 billion in damage, and thereafter threatened all our shipping interests in countless other countries?
Wow! I didn't know that.
Of course it was...Some would have you believe civil war happened in a vacuum....as though there hadnt already been blood spilled in support of slavery in the territories.
They didnt call it bleeding kansas for nothing.
And that's exactly what I think would have happened. Also, New York would not be the sole massive power center that it now is. Wealth would be better distributed rather than being concentrated in New York/New England.
I think that alone would have prevented much of our current troubles.
You do know, I hope, that Ft. Sumter is in South Carolina, don’t you? And that South Carolina had seceded, and was no longer a part of the United States; and that Lincoln not only refused to peacefully leave Ft. Sumter, but instead had ordered it be reinforced and resupplied? THAT was an act of war, and before Beauregard ordered the bombardment of Sumter.
Are you trying to say there were tariffs on interstate commerce? lol
So you're saying that instead of taking those 75% of the imported goods destined for Southern consumers directly to them, they were taken to New York, landed, taxed, loaded on ships again, and sent south? Finding any economic sense in that is beyond my abilities.
Since Southern products made up 75% of all exports at this time, the returning trade had to balance those exports in money and goods.
And amazingly enough the vast majority of those exports left from southern ports and went directly to Europe. So why the need for the stop in New York coming and not going?
But if exports had to balance imports then what did the North do during the war when there were no Southern exports?
New York was collecting the tariffs because the laws (and geography) were set up in such a way that favored the New York port usage, but most of the money coming into New York still came from Southern Export products.
The money came from tariffs. Tariffs are placed on imports and not exports.
You're kidding, right?
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