Leonard Pitts:Civil War was all about slavery

News-Record.com ^ | 4.14.2010 | Leonard Pitts

[smug]

What you and others are missing here is the overall picture. The "Union" was fragile from the very beginning. The Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union were anything thing but, and on the verge of dissolution. The original colonies were basically divided into three fractions; The New England States, The Mid Atlantic States, and The Deep South.

After The Constitution was ratified; in an attempt to fix the fragile "Union", Trouble was not far away, The New England States threatened to secede in 1814. Next South Carolina threatened secession in 1832 during the Nullification Crisis, over tariffs. They probably would have had the other Deep South states stepped up and had their back.

Now neither of these two examples show any connection to slavery, just a tedious alliance of States. What I am trying to say is that Slavery may have been the excuse in 1861 but not the roots of the cause. I believe that these roots are now putting forth new shoots without race/creed/religion/ or national origin having anything to do with it.

[Non-Sequitur]

Or what would have happened if John C. Fremont had won the presidency in 1856 instead of James Buchanan? Would much of anything have been different or would his administration, presumably setting as policy the expansion of slavery, have hastened the inevitable southern secession and Civil War?

It may well have. The 1856 Republican Platform contained a plank against the expansion of slavery in the territories.

[Non-Sequitur]

What I am trying to say is that Slavery may have been the excuse in 1861 but not the roots of the cause.

I would disagree

[Non-Sequitur]

Unfortunately, most people are as misinformed on the beginning of the war as are you. Firing of weapons, whether in serious hostility or not, does not mean war has been declared.

So just because the Japanese bombed the crap out of Pearl Harbor doesn't mean that war had been declared?

Under international law of the era, declaration of a blockade is an act of war...

A blockade against the ports of a foreign country may well be an act of war. A blockade against ports within your own country is not. Unless you are declaring war upon yourself.

...and thus after the conflict the United States Supreme Court held the institution of the blockade to constitute the legal commencement of the Civil War.

Which case are you citing please?

[Idabilly]

Idaho’s Fight For State’s Rights
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U-QAoz5u1Z8&sns=em

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks rustbucket. I think I’ll grab that one as well, or use that instead of the other text on AZ.

[SunkenCiv]

The shooting to spread slavery into western territories had begun before 1860. Lincoln's party platform pledged to prevent slavery's further spread. The so-called The Crittenden Compromise included this disturbing language, which should ring a familiar bell to those who followed the Obamacare debate, in particular some proposals mentioned by Harry Reid et al:

Article 6: No future amendment of the Constitution shall affect the five preceding articles; nor the third paragraph of the second section of the first article of the Constitution; nor the third paragraph of the second section of the fourth article of said Constitution; and no amendment will be made to the Constitution which shall authorize or give to Congress any power to abolish or interfere with slavery in any of the States by whose laws it is, or may be, allowed or permitted.

Even this so-called compromise turned out to be too little to interest the pro-slavery elements who created the various ordinances of secession and started the Civil War. It was also a repudiation of the rather mild and moderate plank about preventing slavery's further spread. Lincoln stated that he'd been elected on the basis of the platform, and that plank in particular.

[SunkenCiv]

:’)

[Idabilly]

I would disagree

-----------------------------------------------------

Surprise,surprise!

Lord Russell:

"The North fought for empire which was not and never had been hers; the South for an independence she had won by the sword, and had enjoyed in law and fact ever since the recognition of the thirteen 'sovereign and independent States,' if not since the foundation of Virginia. Slavery was but the occasion of the rupture, in no sense the object of the war."

[BiggieLittle]

There are few, I believe, in this enlightened age, who will not acknowledge that slavery as an institution is a moral and political evil. It is idle to expatiate on its disadvantages. I think it is a greater evil to the white than to the colored race.

Robert E. Lee in a letter written in 1856.

[Idabilly]

The North has nothing to do with the Negroes. I have no more concern for them than I have for the Hottentots. . . . They are not of our race.

Abraham Lincoln

[BiggieLittle]

The slaves were definitely in second place. Lincoln’s prime goal was preserving the Union not freeing the slaves but slavery was still a key issue in the war. Decent men like Lee saw slavery for the great evil it was.

[Idabilly]

Most Southerners didn't own/fight for slaves. They fought against a power mad General Government.

I personally take the view, in which the Southern States had a Right and Lincoln did not.

The Federal Government was not or is not Sovereign. It was a creation of the States. They exercised their sovereign authority, and voted with their feet as we should today.

JOHN TAYLOR of Caroline:

Sovereignty is the highest degree of political power, and the establishment of a form of government, the highest proof which can be given of its existence. The states could not have reserved any rights by the articles of their union, if they had not been sovereign, because they could have no rights, unless they flowed from that source. In the creation of the federal government, the states exercised the highest act of sovereignty, and they may, if they please, repeat the proof of their sovereignty, by its annihilation.

Good day

[rustbucket]

FYI, my source for the February 3, 1861 New Mexico secession document was the February 23, 1861 State Gazette newspaper of Austin, Texas. The old newspapers contain lots of information.

[Halgr]

They need this fiction to continue their hate of the white man.

The biggest racists on the planet are the black people themselves.

I know because I lived with them for 3 years....my girlfriend.

Yeah I haven’t always been smart.

[Non-Sequitur]

"Considering the relation of master and slave, controlled by humane laws and influenced by Christianity and an enlightened public sentiment, as the best that can exist between the white and black races while intermingled as at present in this country, I would deprecate any sudden disturbance of that relation unless it be necessary to avert a greater calamity to both. I should therefore prefer to rely upon our white population to preserve the ratio between our forces and those of the enemy, which experience has shown to be safe. But in view of the preparations of our enemies, it is our duty to provide for continued war and not for a battle or a campaign, and I fear that we cannot accomplish this without overtaxing the capacity of our white population."

Robert E. Lee in a letter written in 1865.

[LorenC]

Others have already provided quotes from Alexander Stephens and references to the Articles of Secession, so here are a few more direct quotes from Confederate leaders (leaning heavily on Georgia, because that’s where I live) on the subject of what secession was all about.

Confederate President Jefferson Davis’s Congressional compromise proposal of December 1860, offered to avert secession, consisted entirely of a Constitutional Amendment to protect slavery forever. In his first message to the Confederate congress, shortly after Fort Sumter, he reflected upon the circumstances that led to secession, and cited only slavery as motivation.

On Dec. 7, 1860, Georgia Gov. Joseph E. Brown delivered an open letter to the people of Georgia endorsing secession solely because of the threat of abolition.

He said that Georgians “can never again live in peace with the Northern abolitionists, unless we can have new constitutional guarantees, which will … effectually stop the discussion of the slavery question in Congress.”

Since slavery was widely seen as benefiting only the rich, fully half of the letter was directed specifically at poor non-slave-holding whites, warning them of the consequences if slaves were made their equals.

Four Confederate states issued declarations of cause that explained their reasons for seceding. Every one identified slavery. “Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery — the greatest material interest of the world,” declared Mississippi, the bluntest of the four.

Georgia’s declaration began: “The people of Georgia having dissolved their political connection with the Government of the United States of America, present to their confederates and the world the causes which have led to the separation. For the last ten years we have had numerous and serious causes of complaint against our non-slave-holding confederate States with reference to the subject of African slavery.”

Texas’s read: “Texas abandoned her separate national existence and consented to become one of the Confederated Union to promote her welfare, insure domestic tranquility and secure more substantially the blessings of peace and liberty to her people.... She was received as a commonwealth holding, maintaining and protecting the institution known as negro slavery— the servitude of the African to the white race within her limits— a relation that had existed from the first settlement of her wilderness by the white race, and which her people intended should exist in all future time.”

Henry Benning was Georgia’s commissioner to the Virginia Secession Convention, and on Feb. 18, 1861, he encouraged Virginia to secede as Georgia had: “What was the reason that induced Georgia to take the step of secession? … It was a conviction, a deep conviction on the part of Georgia, that a separation from the North was the only thing that could prevent the abolition of her slavery. This conviction was the main cause.”

Georgia’s Robert Toombs resigned from the U.S. Senate on Jan. 7, 1861, and gave a farewell speech in which he identified four Southern demands, all protecting slavery. The month prior, Toombs had proposed a similar seven-point constitutional compromise to avoid secession; all seven points concerned slavery.

All of these admissions came at the time of secession; after the war was lost and the Confederacy ended, Southern apologists retroactively declared that their motivating causes were broader and more sympathetic. It was claimed that secession was about “states’ rights,” except that they tend to be very vague about what “rights” that weren’t slavery-related. This is why modern-day Confederate apologists lean heavily on statements made by Confederate politicians AFTER the war rather than BEFORE it.

The other most common denialist tactic is to attempt to frame the issue in terms of the North’s motivation rather than the South’s. The simple truth is this: the war was fought to keep the Southern states from seceding. Not to end slavery; just to keep the union whole. And why did the Southern states secede and form the Confederacy? Because of slavery. And as the above quotes demonstrate, at the time they were seceding, they weren’t ashamed to admit it.

[r9etb]

Greetings from reality:

I merely posted the historical documents, which -- being primary sources -- have a lot more going for them than your silly blather.

Go away, li'l feller, until you can learn to argue like a grown-up.

[Ditto]

Yes, slavery was AN issue, but ultimately it was an issue of the southern states attempting to exert their sovereignty as states against increasing federal encroachment.

Exactly what Federal encroachments were there in 1860?