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.
Same sort of thinking the Federalists engaged in with their monopoly of the press in 1788, when the country was trying to deliberate the new Constitution, instead of letting Hamilton and the other New York lawyers hooraw them into it.
William Randolph Hearst was in a direct line, ideologically, from Hamilton through Lincoln. He was a card-carrying "National Greatness" Republican.
"Prove"? By whose lights? You've repeatedly refused to believe anything that didn't come from the pen of James McPherson or one of his knockoffs.
You just keep parrotting "your opinion" whenever you see something you don't like or which doesn't fit your prejudice.
You wouldn't believe a golden passport signed by God, if it was presented by the wrong guy.
Or when you present something as fact when it is your opinion.
You wouldn't believe a golden passport signed by God, if it was presented by the wrong guy.
Nor do I believe that you have some kind of burning bush in your backyard which magically turns your opinion into fact. Nor will I ever believe that. You've presented your opinion on the Consitution, usually at the top of your lungs and with a few names directed at those who dare to disagree with you tossed it. And it is your opinion, different from mine. Yet you demand that people recognize your opinion as the only valid one. Sorry, but that's not going to happen.
So you respond to what you see as his lie with a few lies of your own? Not surprising. Not surprising at all.
"So you respond to what you see as [weasel #1] his lie with a few lies [weasel #2] of your own[weasel #3]? Not surprising. Not surprising at all.
Weasel #1: I didn't call what he said a lie, I called it an epithet, by which non-weaselly readers will understand that his purpose in using it was not to mislead, but to wound, underhandedly. I also noticed that you left the door open for the possibility that his statement might be "correct", whereas mine you condemned out-of-hand. Tsk, tsk, such bias.
Weasel #2: To show that the people who post that site are posting witting lies, you have rather a good bit of ground to cover, as they have their shaky sources and you, Mr. Rushmore-idolater, have your own shaky sources, or should I say non-sources, with which to conduct a searching, exhaustive inquiry into Mr. Lincoln's roots -- including the question of whether, heraldically, he didn't have any. Either way, it's not at all in your province, since you haven't even reached elenchus in your argument with the site's owners, to call them liars. Even after you achieve elenchus, you then would have to prove that they had the same information you did, and had come to the same ineluctable conclusion (you say) you have -- and lied about it anyway. You've got a lot of work to do!
Weasel #3: It is not incumbent on me to buy into any argument I post on this board for discussion. After all, in dealing with controversial subjects like "Who shot Kennedy?", one is necessarily aware of the fact that the existence of controversy is a pretty good indicator of a lack of an open-and-shut case for one side or the other, and ought to proceed cautiously. I don't "own" the controversy I posted about -- but I'm certainly within my rights in responding to abuse, with a little creative posting of my own, to give your side something to defend -- since you've decided, self-righteously, to get nasty about things.
Too bad you stepped into a punji hole intended for someone else, but that's the way it crumbles sometimes.
I get it.
Did your family live in the same place for generations or did they move around the country? It's a lot easier to know about your relatives when you all live in the same town.
Given the movement of Abe Lincoln's family from the time of his birth, it is not surprizing he didn't have firsthand knowlege of his grand parents.
Because I don't claim "expertise" in a particular subject matter, does not mean that I don't know what I am talking about. Who were the "red diaper" historians I quote from? Jaffa? West? Wood?
One of the reasons Dred Scott was called a "self-inflicted wound." And also why a dissenting justice refered to the decision as "extrajudicial."
As there was no national judiciary, the laws of Congress were to be enforced by the states. But enforcement of laws are not the only executive functions of government. Others include the direction and adminstration of those departments of the government that were "national" in scope. Those included entities such as the post office, the army, the navy, and the diplomatic service. Just as the Executive Branch today directs the Departments of the federal government, so too did the committees of the confederal Congress under the Articles.
As usual, your imprecis post misrepresents that actual state of affairs. It was a nice try, and pointed out a severe weakness in government under the Articles, but failed to pass the smell test.
As you well know, the slavery issue represented a compromise in the Philadelphia convention. The Framers were too embarrassed to mention slavery by name. As we know from their words and writing at the time, many of them truly hoped the institution would die out on its own right.
In colonial New England and the mid-Atlantic region it was dying. In the original draft of the Declaration, Jefferson had written a cluase condemning the British involvement in bringing slavery to the New World. Prof. Thomas West of the University Dallas has documented what the Founders and Framers thought of slavery:
George Washington: "[T]here is not a man living who wishes more sincerely than I do, to see a plan adopted for the abolition of it."
John Adams: "Every measure of prudence, therefore, ought to be assumed for the eventual total extirpation of slavery from the United States .... I have, through my whole life, held the practice of slavery in abhorrence."
James Madison: "We have seen the mere distinction of colour made in the most enlightened period of time, a ground of the most oppressive dominion ever exercised by man over man."
Benjamin Franklin: "Slavery is ... an atrocious debasement of human nature."
Alexander Hamilton: "The laws of certain states …give an ownership in the service of negroes as personal property .... But being men, by the laws of God and nature, they were capable of acquiring liberty — and when the captor in war ... thought fit to give them liberty, the gift was not only valid, but irrevocable."
It seems that you view the incidental inclusion of slavery in the Constitution as an endorsement of the institution. Calhoun seemed to think so as well. But then again, Calhoun, like you, also denied the priciples of the Declaration.
You are the guys with your implicitly racist, pro-slavery posts, and your obnoxious anti-Lincoln (gay, marxist, syphlitic, illegitimate, etc) tirades that have caught the attention of the owner.
Actually, Wilson made his observation as an academic, long before he arrived on the national political scene. Unless you have something to back up your rank speculation, I suggest you just let it be.
Question - are participatiing in the election two days from now, in the "no-longer-free" United States? This contention of yours is more obnoxious than anything Whiskey Papa is purported to have posted.
First of all, brainiac, learn how to spell. I know exactly when I worked for the Reagan Administration, but the issue in regard to the Hatch Act is about participation in partisan political campaigns. Since I seriously doubt you have any idea what the Hatch Act is, and how it has changed over the years, I let your little piece of stupidity stand on its own merits.
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