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.
I know you thought you were right. That's why I corrected you, to help balance and rectify the record.
In your opinion.
Call it states rights or second-class citizenship it you want, the underlying issue was slavery and the protection of it at all costs as a viable institution in the U.S. The south, correctly, viewed slavery as the cornerstone of their economic well-being, and the fabric of their southern society. They viewed the election of the Republican administration as a threat to that institution, and as their reason for rebellion.
Taney's judicial activism aside, where are their rights to take their slaves to the territories outlined in the Constitution?
You sound like Quick John, or Hanoi John Kerry. Was the war in Iraq the right thing to do? "It depends on how it turns out." The South fought for the right of State's to determine their own internal issues as guaranteed by the 9th and 10th Amendments. It was right, the North fought to forcibly retain the South in the Union. They were wrong. No more, no less!
Thomas Jefferson: "On every occasion...[of Constitutional interpretation] let us carry ourselves back to the time when the Constitution was adopted, recollect the spirit manifested in the debates, and instead of trying [to force] what meaning may be squeezed out of the text, or invented against it, [instead let us] conform to the probable one in which it was passed." (June 12 1823, Letter to William Johnson)
"With respect to the words general welfare, I have always regarded them as qualified by the detail of powers connected with them. To take them in a literal and unlimited sense would be a metamorphosis of the Constitution into a character which there is a host of proofs was not contemplated by its creators."- James Madison
The North fought because the south bombarded Fort Sumter and initiated the war.
Please clarify your question.
You really expect us to believe there wasn't going to be a war at all, except that that happened?
Try another.
Jeff Davis misplayed his hand -- but Abe was playing for war, and playing for keeps. No way he wasn't going to get his war. Everything depended on war, for Abe.
Blame the South some more if you want -- you can't blink that.
"The southern rebellion was in response to what they saw as a threat to their right of self-determination, their state sovereignty, and the relationship of federal to state government, as well as their property rights, and their right to emigrate to the Territories and take their property with them."
I would like to know what gave them a right to take slaves into the territories.
No, not in my opinion. I did correct you.
Call it states rights or second-class citizenship it you want, the underlying issue was slavery
BZZZZTTT!! States' rights and self-determination. IOW, the whole ball of wax. That's what Abe Lincoln attacked -- legally, politically, militarily, every way he could.
One president. One outcome. One vision.
Everyone else was wrong. Anyone who stood up, went to prison or was killed on the battlefield.
and the protection of it at all costs as a viable institution in the U.S. The south, correctly, viewed slavery as the cornerstone of their economic well-being, and the fabric of their southern society. They viewed the election of the Republican administration as a threat to that institution, and as their reason for rebellion.
[You] .....and the protection of it at all costs as a viable institution in the U.S. The south, correctly, viewed slavery as the cornerstone of their economic well-being, and the fabric of their southern society. They viewed the election of the Republican administration as a threat to that institution, and as their reason for rebellion.
All correct, down to the last clause, which is incorrect both in argument and in diction.
First, there was no rebellion. The States were within their right to leave the Union -- and don't give me "light and transient causes" when 13 States leave the Union and two more try to follow, all with the threat of war hanging over their heads. There was nothing "light and transient", nothing of "velleities" in secession.
Second, their reason for seceding was their impending total loss of any ability to affect their future -- of being trapped in a majoritarian dictatorship that hated them.
That isn't about slavery. It's about survival. Congress wouldn't even appropriate money to fight the Comanches in Texas -- how bad does it have to get?
You're still singing in the Red Chorus with those a capella Communists, McPherson and Foner. "It was all about slavery" -- that propaganda slogan has been refuted and stomped flatter than a crisp tortilla, and you are engaging in the worst kind of ideological bloodymindedness to bring it back in here after you've been pounded flat about it.
You are confuted utterly on that Marxian argument, Non-Sequitur. I'm not even going to discuss it with you any more. You are dead wrong, flat wrong , and your flat-wrongness has been pointed out to you in arguments and proofs that only a case-hardened and triple-annealed ideologue would reject.
McPherson is wrong, Foner is wrong, and you are wrong -- and all three of you know it!
Stop it!
We'll never know for sure, because it did happen.
Jeff Davis misplayed his hand...
He did more than that. He knew that firing on Sumter would mean war. Any fool could see that, his cabinet warned him of it, and yet he went ahead anyway. Why would he do that unless he wanted the war that would follow?
Wrong question. What law gave the Government power to deprive them of their right?
A right which was supported by the Fourth Amendment and by the due process and just compensation clauses of the Fifth Amendment.
Slaves, no matter what people think of the idea now, were legal property, and the Congress could no more deprive these settlers of their property than they could deprive them of their firearms or their tools.
We're not talking about a legislature invading people's Ninth Amendment rights with due process and proper legislation written for compelling public purposes. We're talking uncompensated and systematic deprivation of real and/or personal property which could not be taken without an amendment to the Constitution (as, for example, the Eighteenth Amendment, which was required before the Government could declare the possession of alcohol illegal).
Due process would have required an amendment to the Constitution to exclude slaves from the Territories. There was no due process, even under Douglas's Kansas-Nebraska Act, which was only a statute.
In your opinion. In fact there was no right to unilaterally leave, so the southern actions were indeed a rebellion.
Second, their reason for seceding was their impending total loss of any ability to affect their future -- of being trapped in a majoritarian dictatorship that hated them.
The Constitution, which they all agreed to abide by, guaranteed them a voice in how the country was run. It did not guarantee them that they would have their own way regardless of the wishes of the majority.
That isn't about slavery. It's about survival. Congress wouldn't even appropriate money to fight the Comanches in Texas -- how bad does it have to get?
It was, first and foremost, about slavery. Defense of slavery was by far the single most often mentioned reason for the rebellion, it was the one common identifying trait that all the rebellious states used to describe themselves. Any other reason paled in comparison.
You're still singing in the Red Chorus with those a capella Communists, McPherson and Fone...
Yadda, yadda, yadda. Blah, blah, blah.
Evasion. The original question was, to rephrase it, what entitles you to imply that, absent Fort Sumter, Lincoln and the South would have continued at peace?
Lincoln wanted a war and you know it. He was going for it.
I'm not going to get sucked into defending Jeff Davis so you can play moral-equivalency games and cry "tu quoque! -- Jeff Davis did 'X'!!!". I can't defend Jeff Davis's shortsightedness.
Now let's get back to Lincoln. Do you mean to suggest for as long as a nanosecond, that Lincoln would not have gone to war with the Confederacy, if Davis had foreborne at Fort Sumter?
Never mind Lincoln's baiting Davis. Never mind the lying messages he sent through Ward Lamon and others, the deviousness, and the chicanery of his sending ships off in every direction under secret orders.
Just tell me -- I want to hear you say it, like Landslide Lyndon said -- that Lincoln was not totally committed to war, and would not have gone to war with the Confederacy, if only Davis had left Sumter alone.
Answer the question, please.
The Constitution. Article III, Section 3. "The Congress shall have Power to dispose of and make all needful Rules and Regulations respecting the Territory or other Property belonging to the United States; and nothing in this Constitution shall be so construed as to Prejudice any Claims of the United States, or of any particular State."
A right which was supported by the Fourth Amendment and by the due process and just compensation clauses of the Fifth Amendment.
Completely irrelevant. Congress was not depriving the slave-owner of his slave. He was free to reside in any state in the Union which allowed slavery. He was free to move to any terriitory he wanted. He was not, however, free to take his chattel with him if Congress passed a law preventing it, any more than he was free to take his chattel into any state if that state had passed a law preventing it.
We're talking uncompensated and systematic deprivation of real and/or personal property which could not be taken without an amendment to the Constitution (as, for example, the Eighteenth Amendment, which was required before the Government could declare the possession of alcohol illegal).
Nonsense. Congress was depriving them of no property, Congress was seizing nothing. Congress may not have had the power to interfere with the ownership of slaves in the individual states but the Constitution clearly gave Congress the right to legislate activities in the territories. And since there wasn't any explicit Constitutional protection for slavery then there was nothing that prevented Congress from outlawing in territories under their legislative jurisdiction.
Blah yourself, Seinfeld. You just used a Marxist propaganda ploy, and I'm calling you on it.
Like you told someone else, "lie down with dogs, get up with fleas."
Keep posting like a Marxist, and I'm going to keep calling you down for it.
Lack of any hostile actions on Lincoln's part, and his declared promise that there would be no war unless the South initiated one. Which they did.
Now let's get back to Lincoln. Do you mean to suggest for as long as a nanosecond, that Lincoln would not have gone to war with the Confederacy, if Davis had foreborne at Fort Sumter?
Yes. Why should he? He had sworn that he would retain posession of the property of the U.S. So long as he did then he felt that he could wait out the southern rebellion and it would fall apart, sooner rather than later. In that he may have underestimated his opponent, but we'll never know.
Just tell me -- I want to hear you say it, like Landslide Lyndon said -- that Lincoln was not totally committed to war, and would not have gone to war with the Confederacy, if only Davis had left Sumter alone.
I just did.
You're just repeating yourself for propaganda effect, now.
And there was no rebellion. I told you.
Ah yes, the old 'when in doubt call them a commie' dodge. Why didn't I see that coming?
There most certainly was.
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.