Posted on 10/26/2004 4:28:59 AM PDT by stainlessbanner
The recent flurry of letters from neo-Confederates asserting that slavery had no role in the Civil War is troubling, as they seem doggedly determined to force counterfactual information on the public. The trend towards "true Southern history," minimizing the slavery issue by insisting that all of America was racist, and that slaves fought for the Confederacy is a spurious and disingenuous argument. Using half-truths and outright misinformation, they try to avoid what any serious historian of the Civil War recognizes as a major issue of the war.
Having studied the Civil War since my early teens and teaching it on a college level here in Hagerstown and at George Mason University, I feel qualified to point out a few holes in their argument. First of all, yes, much of America was racist, at least by today's standards, but that does not mean that slavery was not an issue in the war.
The controversy was not on a humanitarian basis, but was political and economic. Many states outlawed slavery soon after the Revolutionary War, and slave-state representatives were determined to "force" slavery into the newly acquired western territories. There was no political effort to eradicate in existing states, but a strong attempt to halt the spread of it to the new territories in the West.
The much-cited proposed 13th amendment in 1861 was intended as a compromise to reassure the southern states that their property rights were not in jeopardy due to Lincoln's election, and it did pass in Congress. Because of their insistence of spreading slavery, southern states chose to leave the Union and fire upon Fort Sumter rather than take that assurance. The actual 13th amendment did indeed outlaw slavery and end the institution, but the claim that three southern states ratified it before Lee surrendered is disingenuous.
The three state legislatures cited by the author of a recent letter were not the same ones that had decided to secede. They were Union-occupational legislatures dominated by Unionists that had little connection to Confederate states. Surely the author does not suggest that the Richmond legislature was approving United States Constitution amendments while still maintaining their Confederate independence!
Another writer cites a large number of blacks who aided the Confederate cause, some in combat. This too is stretching a point. Prof. Smith's estimate of 90,000 blacks who served the Confederacy in one way or another is just that, an estimate. Since the author who cites this number then states that there were 250,000 free blacks in the South, these numbers present a problem. Either there was an unusually high rate of volunteerism, 90,000 men out of 250,000 men, women and children, or many of these 90,000 blacks serving the Confederacy were slaves. If most of them were slaves, which most historians think is the case, then they are not exactly willing participants. Even if a couple of thousand free blacks did volunteer and did participate in armed conflicts, it is still a miniscule proportion of the roughly 1 million men who served the Confederacy. Most references to blacks in the Confederate army cite them as servants, cooks, teamsters, etc. Many of them were, and remained, slaves and unless someone can find testimony from them stating their willingness to do so, we must consider the possibility of them being forced labor.
As for Robert E. Lee being "an abolitionist," as Michelle Hamlin stated, the notion is ludicrous. The term abolitionist was a highly pejorative and emotionally charged word, and Lee would have been very insulted to have it applied to him. He did indeed free the slaves inherited from his father-in-law, as required by his father-in-law's will. It is not a true indicator of Lee's personal feelings, although we know he stated he disliked the institution.
This manumission does not make him an abolitionist because he never advocated freeing anyone else's slaves, and is unclear whether he would have freed these particular slaves if it were not required.
If Lee and the South were not fighting for slavery, why in the world did Lee's army hunt down hundreds of free blacks in Pennsylvania and drag them southward in chains? This is an established and accepted fact of the Gettysburg campaign, and taken with Confederate Vice President Alexander H. Stephens' famous speech where he described slavery as the "cornerstone" of southern society, makes any logical person wonder how the South could not be fighting for slavery while fighting to preserve that society. If nothing else, Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation was designed to make slavery an issue of the war, not on humanitarian terms, but on political, military and economic terms. If the South was not fighting for slavery before January 1, 1863, at which time the proclamation went into effect, they certainly were doing so after that date.
Latter day denials of the facts will not change them. Slavery was part of the war, deeply intertwined in Southern economy and society, and the focal point of much of the debate that led to the war. While it is incorrect to attribute the entire cause of the war to slavery, it is equally incorrect to deny its influence.
[Nonsense #64] Mississippi did. Florida did. Alabama, Louisiana, and Arkansas did. Texas did. And on and on and on.
FALSE.
For example, Texas was annexed. That did not require a unanimous vote.
The Massachusetts legislature of 1844-45 resolved that the annexation of Texas would have no binding effect upon Massachusetts.
In 1803, Massachusetts resolved to the notion that the annexation of Louisiana was unconstitutional, and, as it created a new confederation, Massachusetts, as a party to the old compact, was absolved from adhering to the latter.
Nonsense follows the Constitutional perversions of Lincoln.
In his Cooper Institute speech, Lincoln perverted the Constitution by posing the question as follows:
What is the question which, according to the text, those fathers understood "just as well, and even better than we do now?"It is this: Does the proper division of local from federal authority, or anything in the Constitution, forbid our Federal Government to control as to slavery in our Federal Territories?
And Lincoln makes this Constitutionally perverted pronouncement:
This shows that, in their understanding, no line dividing local from federal authority, nor anything in the Constitution, properly forbade Congress to prohibit slavery in the federal territory; else both their fidelity to correct principle, and their oath to support the Constitution, would have constrained them to oppose the prohibition.
Again, the proper Constitutional question is whether anything in the Constitution affirmatively empowered Congress. Lincoln, and Nonsense, choose to pervert and reverse the question, and assert that silence in the Constitution on a subject gives Congress power to control it.
Nothing at all in the Constitution or any of the first 12 amendments to it prevents Congress from defining marriage. According to the Lincoln/Nonsense theory, this empowers Congress to define marriage as existing only between a man and a man, or between a woman and a woman.
On any matter upon with the Constitution is silent, Congress is omnipotent, according to the Lincoln/Nonsense theory of Constitutional interpretation.
No it wasn't. The content you attribute exists only in your imagination.
[Nonsense #98] It's amazing how quickly they toss 'states rights' out the window when it suits their agenda, isn't it?
It is amazing what a vivid imagination can do. Here a vivid imagination has brought to life a whole new historical "principle of American law."
At the time the Constitution was adopted, there was no territory belonging to the United States other than that called the Northwest Territory. The Constitution gave authority to make needful rules and regulations to administer the territories, not territories generically, but the territories, the Northwest Territories, the only territories in existence.
Northwest Ordinance; July 13, 1787An Ordinance for the government of the Territory of the United States northwest of the River Ohio.
* * *
Art. 5. There shall be formed in the said territory, not less than three nor more than five States; and the boundaries of the States, as soon as Virginia shall alter her act of cession, and consent to the same, shall become fixed and established as follows, to wit: The western State in the said territory, shall be bounded by the Mississippi, the Ohio, and Wabash Rivers; a direct line drawn from the Wabash and Post Vincents, due North, to the territorial line between the United States and Canada; and, by the said territorial line, to the Lake of the Woods and Mississippi. The middle State shall be bounded by the said direct line, the Wabash from Post Vincents to the Ohio, by the Ohio, by a direct line, drawn due north from the mouth of the Great Miami, to the said territorial line, and by the said territorial line. The eastern State shall be bounded by the last mentioned direct line, the Ohio, Pennsylvania, and the said territorial line: Provided, however, and it is further understood and declared, that the boundaries of these three States shall be subject so far to be altered, that, if Congress shall hereafter find it expedient, they shall have authority to form one or two States in that part of the said territory which lies north of an east and west line drawn through the southerly bend or extreme of Lake Michigan. And, whenever any of the said States shall have sixty thousand free inhabitants therein, such State shall be admitted, by its delegates, into the Congress of the United States, on an equal footing with the original States in all respects whatever, and shall be at liberty to form a permanent constitution and State government: Provided, the constitution and government so to be formed, shall be republican, and in conformity to the principles contained in these articles; and, so far as it can be consistent with the general interest of the confederacy, such admission shall be allowed at an earlier period, and when there may be a less number of free inhabitants in the State than sixty thousand.
Art. 6. There shall be neither slavery nor involuntary servitude in the said territory, otherwise than in the punishment of crimes whereof the party shall have been duly convicted: Provided, always, That any person escaping into the same, from whom labor or service is lawfully claimed in any one of the original States, such fugitive may be lawfully reclaimed and conveyed to the person claiming his or her labor or service as aforesaid.
Be it ordained by the authority aforesaid, That the resolutions of the 23rd of April, 1784, relative to the subject of this ordinance, be, and the same are hereby repealed and declared null and void.
Done by the United States, in Congress assembled, the 13th day of July, in the year of our Lord 1787, and of their soveriegnty and independence the twelfth.
This territory was ceded by Virginia with the condition that slavery not be permitted. Pursuant to the cession agreement with Virginia, the legislature was prohibited from permitting slavery in the ceded territory.
Slavery was not forbidden to induce Blacks migrate there and settle. Slavery was forbidden to keep Blacks out.
So you say.
Well I'm certainly not going to try and dispute you on the subject of perversion.
Especially considering you are the Minister of Propaganda for the Brigade, and the Brigade Commander is, well, uh... different.
But hey, he's your guy. I mean, who knew? (Outside your very tight little group, of course.)
Which is at least as much as you said.
A Nolu Chan post of less than 10 words. I need to mark this date down.
You've skipped some posts, otherwise you would know that I don't want to see slavery recrudesce, however much it may be beginning to rise again in the Third World and creep in under the doorsill in these obscure clauses in H-1B workers' contracts.
And my "scholarly" POV is as good as yours, pal, unless you can whip out a PhD in U.S. history and throw it on the table.
And then I'd take you on anyway.
Congress had the power to regulate the Territories. But not to exclude clauses of the BoR.
You addressed your question to N-S, but I'll answer.
Your quotations are selective and therefore fallacious.
The full record shows that their concern was much more general than just the institution of slavery, which was a great concern (I disagree with some other Southerners on this) of course, since their economy rested on it as surely as Illinois's economy rested on the ability of families to run freehold farms.
Their threatened inability to sustain slavery meant that they would be unable to sustain anything under a regime that made entire regions of the country playthings of a faction. This was what Madison and Calhoun had both been concerned about -- and what Hamilton had been working for all along, until the day he was shot dead. It was the taking of the country into receivership by the industrial and business classes.
I've told you what you can do with your triumphalist teleology. Where the sun don't shine.
Suffice it here to note for the record, again, your appetite for this particular kind of fallacy, which you relish the way aarvarks enjoy maggots.
"Lincoln wasn't going to start it" is contradicted by his stealthy and mendacious activities immediately prior to Sumter.
On any matter upon with the Constitution is silent, Congress is omnipotent, according to the Lincoln/Nonsense theory of Constitutional interpretation.
Excellent post. Concurring bump. You smoked him out -- well, you smoked both of them out.
Well done -- good find and well argued.
And no attempt at controversion, I see.
You've just put your finger on the folly of Lincolnism. Or rather, it would be a folly if its pursuit and consequences hadn't been so bloodsoaked.
And truth be told, we really have Hamilton and the New York businessmen to blame for all this. To this very day, they insist that every principle must succumb to their interests, narrowly construed but always supported by constitutional theories and lawyerly arguments. Which is a joke, because it's always about the money, in the end.
Besides the points you make, there are a couple of other interesting things to note about the NWO:
1. The Article IV clause on fugitive slaves is incorporated into the statute, and not by reference only. This means the antislavery statutes of the Northern States in the old NWT were in conflict with the NWO.
2. The NWO creates provisions for the States that are to be created, and calls them States, even before they had sufficient inhabitants to apply for admission to the Union. This appears constitutionally problematic.
Like notifying the Governor of South Carolina he was sending food, but not arms or reinforcements, to Fort Sumter?
You must never have been a Boy Scout. Lincoln was well aware of the many aggressive southern provocations, such as seizing federal arsenals and revenue vessels, which had already occurred. That Lincoln was preparing for a likely conflict does not mean that he intended to start a shooting war; only that he was ready to respond to one.
"As you throw your bad language around, the reader will profit by remembering that the legitimacy of the United States was far, far less in the brave days of the Revolutionary War."
The United States was the product of the exercise of fundamental human rights. The philosophical parentage of the CSA is ... well ... doubtful. "Bastard republic" is entirely accurate.
When the confederates had the opportunity to write a constitution for their bastard republic, what did they do? Pervert the Constitution of the United States by adding a bunch of explicit slavery protections.
In the United States Senate, did the southern senators permit the open discussion and debate on the issue of slavery? No, for decades they instituted gag rules.
Did the federal post offices allow the deleivery a mail and newspapers which carried abolitionist ideas? No, they censored that material.
Did the courts in the south uphold the right to free speech? No. They permitted no dissent.
From this pre-election (1860) Louisiana broadside:
"The slavery agitation will soon make the North and the South two separate nations, unless it can cease, of which we have little hope.... We can never submit to a Lincoln inauguration; the shades of revolutionary sires will rise up to shame us if we shall do that.... Let us drop all discussions and form a Union of the South." (from William C. Davis, Look Away, pg 26)
Open your mind, pequeño.
Congress, as in the previous sentence. The Congress of the Confederation had outlawed slavery in the Northwest Territory (which eventually became all or part of six states). This was in the Northwest Ordinance of 1787, which is pre-constitutional law. In fact, elements of that law are still in effect today, although those areas have long since ceased to be territories.
The Congress of the Confederation, containing in one body the legislative and executive functions in that form of government, established a legal precedent with that legislation, so far as organized territories were involved. One cannot correctly claim that the Northwest Ordinance was "unconstitutional," as it preceded that document. Nor can one claim that subsequent law, such as the Constitution and its amendments, were intended to overturn the precedent of congressional control of the territories. Indeed, many of the same people involved with the development of the Constitution in 1787, and the 1st Congress of the Constitutional Union in 1789, were involved in drafting and passing the Northwest Ordinance. It was a given that Congress had the power to regulate slavery in the territories, and no amendment proposed in the 1st Congress was intended to address that issue.
You are the one who seems to be on the horns of a dilemma.
Not even close and not in my field. But that is why I chose to quote from the best and the brightest ... the acknowledged authorities on the subject.
"And then I'd take you on anyway."
I'm sure you would. Knuckleheads tend not to learn from experience.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.