Was the Civil War about Slavery?

Acton Institute, Prager University ^ | 8/11/2015 | Joe Carter

[iowamark]

What caused the Civil War? That seems like the sort of simple, straightforward question that any elementary school child should be able to answer. Yet many Americans—including, mostly, my fellow Southerners—claim that that the cause was economic or state’s rights or just about anything other than slavery.

But slavery was indisputably the primary cause, explains Colonel Ty Seidule, Professor of History at the United States Military Academy at West Point.

The abolition of slavery was the single greatest act of liberty-promotion in the history of America. Because of that fact, it’s natural for people who love freedom, love tradition, and love the South to want to believe that the continued enslavement of our neighbors could not have possibly been the motivation for succession. But we should love truth even more than liberty and heritage, which is why we should not only acknowledge the truth about the cause of the war but be thankful that the Confederacy lost and that freedom won.

[Tau Food]

The Congress was dominated by Southern leadership when it passed Lyndon Johnson's Great Society programs. Wilbur Mills, from Arkansas (that's a Southern state), was Chairman of the House Ways & Means Committee throughout the entirety of Johnson's presidency. And, of course, Lyndon Johnson was from Texas (that's another Southern state).

Is it really your argument that Northern liberals somehow passed the Great Society program without the support of Southern politicians? They were running the show back then.

[Salamander]

You forgot the mint juleps.

No good southern veranda stereotype is complete without Mammy serving up mint juleps.

:)

[Pelham]

“Is it really your argument that Northern liberals somehow passed the Great Society program without the support of Southern politicians? They were running the show back then.”

That was Goldwater’s opinion at the time. Goldwater won six states in the 1964 election. His home state of Arizona and five states in the Deep South. Strom Thurmond switched parties that year to support Goldwater.

But it wasn’t just northeastern liberals who helped pass Lyndon Johnson’s legislation. Johnson’s good friend Senate Minority Leader Everett Dirksen helped him to pass some of his bills. The Civil Rights bills and the Voting Rights Act only passed because of Dirksen rounding up Republican votes. I used to enjoy watching the Ev & Charlie Show as Dirksen and Halleck criticized Johnson for the nightly news. But the reality was cooperation off camera with Johnson.

[Salamander]

Every other “group” in America is now a protected species.

The *only* ‘group’ you can openly mock and despise is rednecks/hicks/hillbillies, all of which are associated with “the south”.

Poison has to work its way out of a body, somehow, or the body will die.

That is what this is, at its root.

“Us” -always- needs a “them” to demonize and hate.

It’s the south’s turn, now that all the other “them” have been declared off limits.

It’s just going to get worse.

It’s the nature of “us”.

Convenient for the eternal “us” that the latest “them” just happens to be the last bastion of Bible Belt ideology.

Pity the ones who cannot see they are doing the Devil’s/Dems’/Liberals’ work, for them.

[Pelham]

"It’s the south’s turn, now that all the other “them” have been declared off limits."

It's like a replay of the hate campaign against the South in the years before the Late Unpleasantness. You might find this book about that episode interesting.

[Salamander]

The Yankees have always considered themselves superior.

I would not trade my heritage for theirs for *anything*.

God blessed me with my birth.

[wardaddy]

Here in Nashville 11 county metro of around two million we have non southerners streaming in like hood rats to WalMart on Black Friday ...

And I know a number

Most are escaping the putrid liberalism found outside Dixie and other solid pockets....especially right now california

Nashville is a libtard pit poised to elect its fourth yankee born mayor in a row but all else is not

Nashville proper and Memphis proper ....done for

State of Tennessee in pretty decent shape

How many southerners are fleeing the south for the warm embrace of Godless socialism elsewhere?

Unless they want to be a “star”.....none

Case rested

These yankees here hate our heritage but half their kin will be here in another decade or two

Must be a bitter pill for them

[Salamander]

“Most are escaping the putrid liberalism found outside Dixie and other solid pockets”

Problem is, they bring it with them.

Same thing here in The Wastelands.

The powers that be pimped us as a “vast, unspoiled wilderness, devoid of crime”.

And then they came...and crime came, too.

[Tau Food]

Well, if Barry Goldwater said that LBJ and Wilbur Mills were Northerners, then I'd like to see that quote. I really don't believe that Barry Goldwater ever said that.

Listen, the people of this country need to work together on reducing the size and scope of our Federal government. We're not going to get anywhere if the South believes that it isn't part of the problem despite the fact that, on average, Southerners are receiving welfare benefits at higher per capita rates than the rest of the country.

Maybe I'm barking up the wrong tree. I have no right or reason to assume that you see Federal spending as a serious problem and if you don't share my concern, then obviously I'm wasting my time. But, our debts are real and it's my opinion (which you are not required to share) that the receipt of welfare benefits can create a culture of dependency that is destructive to the soul of the recipient, particularly when it extends from generation to generation within the same family. Obviously, some people are going to need some help at some time, but it won't work out if people treat it as a lifestyle.

Again, I'm not suggesting that the South is more responsible than any other section of the country for this problem, but it is certainly as responsible as any other section and, if we're going to turn things around, we're going to need the cooperation of all sections of this country. So, let's recognize reality and work together to fix this crazy situation in which we find ourselves.

Thanks for your time.

[wardaddy]

I'll help you out

It's really two phases of Civil Rights and War on Poverty

The 64 and 65 civil rights and voting acts laid the groundwork for the war on poverty Great Society legislations and the lovely immigration act

Southern democrats as a rule and conservative GOP like Barry Goldwater Bill F Buckley and Ronaldus Magnus (great yankees btw) all opposed those initiatives

They also opposed the immigration act....a very destructive act

The south was split on Poverty Initiatives with a slight majority favoring them....it wasn't just for blacks but also for Appalachia....I can remember the commercials for it showing poor mt whites

So to answer your question the two biggest culprits in that string of legislation were northern democrats and liberal northern GOP....which was a big part of GOP then

They in majority voted for Civil Rights....Voting Rights....Immigration and the Poverty programs...the whole enchilada

Southern democrats are only culpable to a degree for the Poverty war support and at far less levels than the northern Dems and GOP were

The most culpable group is ironically the northern liberal. GOP.......what we used to call Rockefeller republicans....for supporting all that bull that still haunts us today

Hope I've been of help....only the right wing of the GOP....THE ONES CONSIDERED KOOKS THEN....did the right thing thru all that garbage in its entirety

I'm sure you're familiar with the Goldwater map of 64?.....im pinging Bill Flax in case I erred from memory

call in the south haters to stare at this map and tell me again how we ruined the country....my daddy and grandpa helped give those states to Goldwater

today is just like then....we even with our huge black dem voting blocs still hold together to save this nation while those who hate us sit there amongst the swarm trying to take us down....50 frigging years later.....Nothing much has changed except more libtard northerners down here working to turn us left again

has it ever once dawned on Yall that if you took care of your ow business it might save our way of life and take some of the weight off us?

[Pelham]

This was the text of an LBJ commercial quoting, accurately, Barry Goldwater:

‘In a Saturday Evening Post article dated August 31st, 1963, Barry Goldwater said, “Sometimes I think this country would be better off if we could just saw off the Eastern Seaboard and let it float out to sea.”’

The northeastern Republican establishment fought Goldwater more ferociously than the Democrats and in the general election many openly refused to support him. The 1964 electoral map shows where Goldwater’s strongest support was- in the Democratic dominated Deep South.

[central_va]

You live in a dream world, friend. The South is as responsible as any section of this country for the fact that we have a monstrous central government in Washington, DC.

Without the conservative South, the USA would already be a socialist country, on the verge of communism. The Soviet Union would still exist and the world would be a more f-ed up place than it already is. Why do yo think the MSM, liberals, socialists, Democrats and South haters all over the USA (like you) want the South's heritage erased or better yet rewritten to conform with some liberal fantasies?

[DiogenesLamp]

The most culpable group is ironically the northern liberal. GOP.......what we used to call Rockefeller republicans....for supporting all that bull that still haunts us today.

I've been saying that for a long time. They pushed the 24th amendment; The most destructive legislation which ever happened to a country.

Lyndon Johnson retaliated with the "War on Poverty" which was nothing but a vote buying scheme targeted at black voters newly created by removing the tax requirement for voting.

That Johnson's scheme worked, is why we are in such a serious financial crises now. Black voters have kept the vote bribers in power ever since, and the debt just continued to grow. We've spent 21 trillion dollars on this vote buying scheme.

[DiogenesLamp]

‘In a Saturday Evening Post article dated August 31st, 1963, Barry Goldwater said, “Sometimes I think this country would be better off if we could just saw off the Eastern Seaboard and let it float out to sea.”’

And now we can include the West Coast.

What causes the Coasts to be bastions of Liberalism?

Massive amounts of money (Port Cities always become wealthy) and constant contact with foreign people and foreign ideas.

[Ohioan]

Thanks for the implied compliment. Your memory is on the mark.

You might add that it was largely the result of Strom Thurmond's leading a flow of Conservative Southern Democrats into the Republican Party, after 1964, which prevented the "Me Too" variety of Rockefeller Republicans from recapturing the Party after the Goldwater defeat.

Bill Flax

[Tau Food]

I don't have any problem with the people of the South. I have repeatedly said here that they are at least as patriotic as any the people of any section this country.

But, I object to the "notion" that Northerners or Westerners like me have been the exclusive cause of our bloated, ridiculously overactive Federal government and that the rest of us have imposed this huge central government on the Southern people who, unlike anyone else in the country, had nothing to do with the growth of Washington DC, love teeny tiny government and would be living with a teeny tiny central government if only they had won the Civil War. I object to the notion that the rest of us have dragged the Southern people kicking and screaming into the modern welfare state.

That notion is just not supported by the facts. In my opinion, our government could not be nearly the size that it is had we never adopted the 16th Amendment and implemented a monstrous national income tax. Now, if this "notion" described above were correct, we would expect to find that the 16th Amendment was ramrodded into our Constitution over the strenuous objections of the tax-hating, small-government loving South. But, that isn't what we find. Instead, we find that Alabama was the very first state to ratify the 16th Amendment and that eight out of the first ten states to ratify the 16th Amendment were states commonly viewed as part of the South. Clearly, the South (like many other sections of the country) supported the adoption of the 16th Amendment and the implementation of the national income tax, the tax more responsible than any other tax for the huge growth of our central government in the 20th century.

Now, why is the central government so huge? Where is all that money going? I suggest that the vast majority of it is going to two places: national defense and domestic "welfare state" programs.

Does the South oppose spending on national defense? No, of course not! The South is every bit as supportive as other sections of the country when it comes to spending on national defense.

Well, how about domestic "welfare state" programs? Surely, the South has had nothing to do with the growth of those programs. But no. In fact, the Great Society programs were passed by a Southern president (LBJ) with the support of a Southern Chairman of the House Ways & Means Committee (Wilbur Mills). In fact, Southern states are today receiving money from domestic "welfare state" programs at a rate greater than the national average. And, nobody is going to convince me that Social Security and Medicare are unpopular anywhere in this country, North, South, East or West.

I'll say it again. In my opinion, there isn't any section of this country that is exempt from criticism for the growth of central government. Every section of this country is guilty as hell for this mess. And, until we recognize that the problem is us and not just some other them, we're going to remain in this mess.

I think we need to work together.

[PeaRidge]

So you do admit that there was never any declaration of war by the Confederacy.

[PeaRidge]

You said: “So obviously, not everybody in the South agreed that secession was such a great idea.”

That is true, but not a point that I was addressing.

The fact that some citizens of seceded states chose to serve in the Union army is evidence that they were not “stripped of their rights” as you asserted.

You are contradicting yourself.

[PeaRidge]

You misread the newspaper account. You should pay more attention to it since that author of the time understood better the situation then than you do now, 150 years later.

On the very day of that editorial, Southern peace commissioners were still in Washington to negotiate peace. The Virginia Peace conference had just concluded. Lincoln invited a representative from Virginia to visit his office and discuss Ft. Sumter. When that Virginian arrived and advised Lincoln not to send ships to Charleston, Lincoln advised him that he was too late.

At that time, tariffs were not a problem for the Confederacy, but was the problem for Lincoln.

[PeaRidge]

You said: “First of all, the Morrill Tariff only passed after Confederate states walked out of Congress...”

You are setting up a straw man argument.

You have already seen, and ignored the passage of the Morrill Tariff.

The Morrill bill was passed out of committee and brought up for a floor vote near the end of first session of the Congress (December 1859 – June 1860).

The vote was on May 10, 1860; the bill passed by a vote of 105 to 64.
http://www.govtrack.us/congress/votes/36-1/h151

Next March the Senate voted to pass the Morrill Tariff and it became law.

Senate confirmation did not matter to the Southern states. As a result of the elections, they were not able to resist.

One Southern Senator summed it up this way:

Thirty-eight northern Senators you will have upon this floor. We shall have thirty to your thirty-eight. After the 4th of March, the Senator from California, the Senator from Indiana, the Senator from New Jersey, and the Senator from Minnesota will be here. "That reduces the northern phalanx to thirty-four...There are four of the northern Senators upon whom we can rely, whom we know to be friends, whom we have trusted in our days of trial heretofore, and in whom, as Constitution-loving men, we will trust.

"Then we stand thirty-four to thirty-four, and your Black Republican Vice President to give the casting vote. "Mr. Lincoln can make his own nominations with perfect security that they will be confirmed by this body, even if every slaveholding State should remain in the Union, which, thank God, they will not do."

For this leading political figure, the election of the Republicans meant that Congressional re-apportionment would cause the South to lose itself to the North.