Posted on 01/06/2005 8:00:30 AM PST by cougar_mccxxi
Not necessarily. It is not a natural law that the South would have industrialized were there no slavery. It might well have remained an economically undeveloped backwater, in which case the tariff issue would stll have been a serious point of division, probably critical. And without slavery, cotton and tobacco might still have developed pretty much the way it did, on large plantations, but with hired labor and the reliance of the region on foreign trade for its manufactured goods.
Well, when you are as famous a columist, and have his credentials, let me know.......:)
Right...and pigs fly into La Guardia too!
No....they hang traitors to their home, and state.
Your first loyalty should be to your STATE, then so on....
Show me in the Constitution where secession is FORBIDDEN....
I believe that the differences, both culturally, and economically, were so distinct, war would have happened without slavery being an issue. It still wasn't the main issue regardless.....
Jim Crow came after the Civil War.
The damage had been done already. And if a individual state can abridge the rights of a citizen, it has extended beyind Jim Crow.
Look at the anti-gun legislation and "gay" marriages.
That's not really accurate here.
The legally, duly constituted governments of several states, elected by the citizens and reflecting the sentiments of the majority of them, voted to remove themselves from a civil compact they had willingly entered several decades before.
A "Civil War" is more properly a situation as existed in Englan in the 1660's when fighting broke out between Royalist forces and Puritan Parlimentarian forces all over England. In this situation, there was no attempt to establish an independent state, but rather to overthrow an existing government.
Do you believe everything, say, Maureen Dowd says as well? After all, she's a famous columnist as well.
So howcum they tried and executed John Brown for treason to Virginia? He had never ever lived in the state.
Your first loyalty should be to your STATE, then so on....
A stand not supported by some of the better men in our nation's history, thank God.
"The name of American, which belongs to you in your national capacity, must always exalt the just pride of patriotism more than any appellation derived from local discriminations." -- George Washington
You'd be surprised how many yankee types like Hillary and Schumer are armed while disarming the New York State citizens and throwing some in prison even (before arresting criminals).
The perhaps worthy idea of secession became inextricably linked with slavery. If the critical issue had been something other than slavery, they probably would have gotten support from Europe, or maybe the North would not even have cared enough to stop them. Or the even better result is that the mere threat of secession would have acted as a brake on the federal government acquiring more power. We would have stayed a united country, but a far more free one because of the ever present threat of secession.
Instead, secession became tied to slavery, and died the same death. A real tragedy.
Since they lacked the authority to do so then their actions were illegal and constituted a rebellion or a civil war, take you pick.
All men(women) are NOT created equal.
'Secessions' only existence is in the minds of those who oppose our Constitutional principles.
Those principles can be applied to the Federal government, by the States, to force the feds to comply, or vice versa.
The people have never authorized any level of government the power to violate our Constitution, nor to secede.
221 jones
Prof. Williams might be an adequate economist, but he had proven to be a terrible historian.
In a war for Indpendence, like that of 1775-1783, one does not need to resort to sophistic legal arguments. If the acts of the southern insurrectionists were revolutionary, you need no pretense that they were also legal.
Actually, N-S, it is a dead one. That article was published in 1999. I've seen it posted at FR before - a couple of times.
That what historian Shelby Foote noted in the Burns documentary on the Civil War.
I didn't mean to suggest it was.
I only meant to suggest the South would have been considerably different in its social structure and economy.
It might well have remained an economically undeveloped backwater, in which case the tariff issue would stll have been a serious point of division, probably critical. And without slavery, cotton and tobacco might still have developed pretty much the way it did, on large plantations, but with hired labor and the reliance of the region on foreign trade for its manufactured goods.
Slavery made possible the heavy emphasis on cash crops, which are labor intensive. Without that labor force, you almost certainly would have seen a more diverse mix of crops (as today), many of them food staples. Cotton still would have cultivated, but not to the overwhelming extent that it was. It also would have changed the nature of the settlement of the western areas of the South, which were highly sought after because of the way in which exclusive cotton cultivation wore out the soil.
Southern aristocrats could have tried the route you're suggesting: hiring out (white) labor. But that would have entailed different difficulties. It would have been more expensive, for one thing. It also would have created new class tensions that did not exist in the slave-based south. It would mean millions of poor southern whites suddenly turned into sharecroppers or worse rather than small yeoman farmers - because you'd need that to replace the 3 million African slave laborers who constituted the work force for cotton (and tobacco) cultivation.
All of which is not to say that a non-slave South would not have been heavily agrarian. It could have been. And as such it might not be keen on high tariffs. But to the extent that it was less dependent on cash crops for expot markets (as opposed to foodstuffs, which were at that time mostly sold for domestic consumption), that antipathy would have been tempered to a greater degree, just as it was in the Upper Midwest, which was still heavily agrarian, after all, before the Civil War.
So you would have to explain why the very agrarian, non-slave antebellum Midwest did not oppose high tariffs to the degree that the very agrarian, slave-based antebellum South did.
gay marriage comes to mind...
The USA as the lone superpower would not exist if the issue of states' rights had not been resolved.
I do not see the Federal government as a threat, I see liberalism as the threat we face today. Conservatives are now beginning to take a stand vs a group, a mindset, that has had its way for many years, primarily on the social front...and see where that's gotten us today?
We must win the culture war...and we are. It's today's civil war.
Some ex. of issues evident in the culture war: gay marriage, broadcast decency, public referrence to God and Christianity, the War on Terror)
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