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.

[PeaRidge]

You are hiding behind grammar, loose logic, and assumptions rather than placing his actions in context.

Too much mental gymnastics. See the records of his actions, not what you think could mean this or that.

[DiogenesLamp]

I think what happens is that the reasons for secession and the war get conflated.

Deliberately, and with malice aforethought.

And while Lincoln wanted slavery to end, his announced reason for going to war was to preserve the Union, something which he reiterated many times. But in the modern mind the Civil War becomes a war launched with the intended goal of ending slavery.

Again, the deliberately intended effect. It does not make one look good to posterity to announce you slapped chains on a group of people who wanted independence. Claiming that you freed people sounds much better, even if that wasn't the purpose for which you started the war.

So many participated in the oppression of the South that they have an emotional need for rationalizing what they did, and their only claim to "goodness" is making the South into monsters which they defeated because they are the "good guys".

They simply refuse to accept that they are actually "the bad guys."

Thirdly, the absolute command of Congress over the militia may be destructive of public liberty; for under the guidance of an arbitrary government, they may be made the unwilling instruments of tyranny. The militia of Pennsylvania may be marched to New England or Virginia to quell an insurrection occasioned by the most galling oppression, and aided by the standing army, they will no doubt be successful in subduing their liberty and independency. But in so doing, although the magnanimity of their minds will be extinguished, yet the meaner passions of resentment and revenge will be increased, and these in turn will be the ready and obedient instruments of despotism to enslave the others; and that with an irritated vengeance. Thus may the militia be made the instruments of crushing the last efforts of expiring liberty, of riveting the chains of despotism on their fellow-citizens, and on one another. This power can be exercised not only without violating the Constitution, but in strict conformity with it; it is calculated for this express purpose, and will doubtless be executed accordingly.

Wow. The guy was a prophet. He got a few bits wrong, but most of it he got right.

And with respect to Lincoln and Obama I've been trying to figure out if the emancipation proclamation is any different from an executive order. But I digress.

No, it is not.

Both of those were exercises in the national government using military force against territorial and state governments to compel compliance with already existing law, they weren't attempts at using military force as the means to change already existing law, which is what a war started to end slavery would have been.

All points too subtle and too far away in time to be meaningful to most modern Union apologists. The only thing they know for certain is that they want to be "the good guys". That is literally their motivation and level of intellect in these discussions.

Any point you put forth is met with a variation of "But we're the good guys!" That is literally all you can get them to say on the issue. "We're the good guys!"

They have a mental block against accepting that they weren't. With that as their starting premise, discussions usually don't get very deep or even honest. But I suspect you are well aware of that.

[DiogenesLamp]

Thanks for getting down in tall grass and mud with our FRiend Diogenes Lamp. There's no doubt in my mind that DiogenesLamp is one sick puppy, whose overheated imagination has rendered his mind delusional, as you suggested earlier.

How very "Soviet" of you. Their normal rebuttal to dissidents were "They must be mentally ill, because no sane person could disagree with the Party line. "

I think the Nazis also used this tactic. Good Provenance you have there.

In contrast, I don't consider a one of you to be insane, I consider you to have the same herd mentality that you were taught, and to simply lack the necessary intellectual honesty to put aside pleasant untruths for unpleasant truths.

You have an emotional stake in your position, and it bothers you greatly for anyone to suggest that something you grew up believing, something that actually made you feel proud, is not actually the accurate truth.

That your god has clay feet, and that your heroes must fall from their pedestals, is something which most people would rather not experience, and some deal with the problem by simply closing their eyes and ears and repeating their taught mantras.

Back to you and your mantra.

[BroJoeK]

DiogenesLamp: "Since Southern Agriculture products made up 75% of exports, where did the Northern states get their European money?"

But the number is not 75%, it's 58% consisting of:

1. + $192 million raw cotton = 54%
2. + $16 million tobacco = 4%

3. = $208 million total Southern cash exports = 58%

4. $46 million manufactured products = 13%
5. $25 million wheat & breadstuffs =7%
6. $17 million meat & dairy products = 5%
7. $14 million forestry, fishery & mining =4%
8. $11 million manufactured cotton =3%
9. $ 2 million hogs, sheep, cattle
10. $34 million other exports = 10%

11. = $149 million exports from East, North & West = 42%

12. = $357 total US 1859 exports

Sources here, here and here

Bottom line: Exports of Southern slave-grown cotton & tobacco were certainly important to the nation's well-being, but they were far from 75% or 80%, or even 90% as some pro-Confederate posters have claimed.

More important, as it happened, when Confederate states halted production and export of cotton, both the world itself and the US Union economy quickly adjusted and found other ways to make a living.

So those slave-power planters turned out to be less important than they had imagined themselves.

[BroJoeK]

DiogenesLamp: "You are portraying the abolition of slavery as "optional" rather than the purpose of the war. You made my case for me. Thank you."

Here's the bottom line: the Confederate Slave Power wanted to destroy the Union to preserve their "peculiar institution" of slavery.

Lincoln was willing, when the opportunity presented, to destroy slavery to preserve the Union.
That opportunity presented itself as a military classification called "contraband of war", which Lincoln used from the beginning in 1861, but formally published as his Emancipation Proclamation in 1862.
This was followed in 1863 with proposed constitutional amendments to abolish slavery, passed & ratified in 1865.

That's a long story made short.

[rockrr]

You’re welcome to call “Godwin’s law” on the shiiteheel ;’)

[DiogenesLamp]

Well, with regards to the "critical mass", yes, there is probably a critical mass necessary to SUCCESSFULLY assert independence.

In a country that is founded on the Principle of "Perpetual Allegiance" to the King who rules by "Divine Right" and that to oppose these ideas is a crime against God, this is probably so, but in a country founded on the principle

That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

One wouldn't think it would be so difficult.

Without the French on our side, assisting us both here in the Colonies and elsewhere in the world, independence would probably have been a much dicier prospect.

Probably wouldn't have happened at all but it would not have disproved their claim that men have a natural right to independence though.

Since neither did, I would postulate that your "critical mass" was not achieved in the case of the 1861-1865 War.

The "Critical Mass" to which *I* refer is that quantity of people which has sufficient population to declare independence from a larger nation in accordance with the principles espoused in the Declaration of Independence. I am not suggesting any "critical mass" of population necessary to defeat armies. If everyone is in agreement on the foundational principle of the United States, what need would anyone have of armies?

Must you have an army to exercise your freedom of speech? Must you have an army to worship as you chose? Must you have an army to be secure from illegal search?

Why must an army be necessary to exercise an acknowledged right? How about people simply follow the meaning expressed in the first legal document of the United States?

The 13 Colonies enjoyed the great distance of the Atlantic between them and the British and, when France entered the war, put their ally and a British enemy right on the English doorstep.

You are expressing examples of luck regarding how the colonists gained independence from a country with no known or previously asserted right of "Independence", and you are implying that it is perfectly reasonable to assume that our country should not follow our own principles when the roles are reversed.

You are implying that all that " Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them" stuff is just hokum, not meant to be taken seriously.

I would have preferred to believe that our Nation honored it's own principles, but I suppose that is just a naive thing to believe.

[PeaRidge]

Your "Here's what really happened" is a school lesson plan concerning Lincoln's involvement in quelling citizen unrest in Baltimore.

The section concerning his tariff comments was left out of the lesson, and by virtue of that makes it an unreliable source. You tried to dress it up with lots of quotes and trimming, but you failed to present a reliable source for the forum.

Here is the exact quote from a contemporary source here.

In case you do not want to search for it, the source is Robert Reid Howison, "History of the War", excerpted in Southern Literary Messenger, Vol. 34, Issue 8, August 1862, Richmond, VA., pp. 420-421.

It appears that the person or persons that compiled the lesson plan you referenced actually used that source as theirs, while leaving out the Lincoln tariff quote.

The word for word quote from Lincoln re: Revenues (meeting with Dr. Fuller) is also substantiated by Benson Lossing, in his "Pictorial Field Book of the Civil War: Journeys Through the Battlefields in the Wake of Conflict", Johns Hopkins Univ Press (Reprint edition), 1997, Vol. 1, p. 420 (reprinted 1997)

These two historical resources, plus the aforementioned newspaper accounts puts the lie to your comment: "This is why the story alleging Lincoln's response expressed concerns over Federal revenues is not accepted as genuine by historians."

SUPPORTING SOURCES:
[ONE]

"The picturesque hills of New England were dotted with costly mansions, erected with money, of which the Southern planters had been despoiled, by means of the tariffs of which Mr. Benton spoke. Her harbors frowned with fortifications, constructed by the same means. Every cove and inlet had its lighthouse, for the benefit of New England shipping, three fourths of the expense of erecting which had been paid by the South, and even the cod, and mackerel fisheries of New England were bountied, on the bald pretext, that they were nurseries for manning the navy. The South resisted this wholesale robbery, to the best of her ability. Some few of the more generous of the Northern representatives in Congress came to her aid, but still she was overborne; and the curious reader, who will take the pains to consult the "Statutes at Large," of the American Congress, will find on an average,a tariff for every five years recorded on their pages; the cormorants increasing in rapacity, the more they devoured. No wonder that Mr. Lincoln when asked, "why not let the South go?" replied, "Let the South go! where then shall we get our revenue?"

Admiral Raphael Semmes, "Memoirs of Service Afloat, During the War Between The States", Baltimore: Kelly, Piet & Co., 1869, p. 59.

[TWO]

When asked, as President of the United States, "why not let the South go?" his simple, direct, and honest answer revealed one secret of the wise policy of the Washington Cabinet. "Let the South go!" said he, "where, then, shall we get our revenue?"

Albert Taylor Bledsoe, "Is Davis a traitor; or, Was secession a constitutional right previous to the war of 1861?", Baltimore: Innes & Company, 1866, pp. 143-144.


[THREE]

"But," said Mr. Lincoln, "what am I to do?" "Why, sir, let the country know that you are disposed to recognize the Independence of the Southern States. I say nothing of secession; recognize the fact that they have formed a government of their own; that they will never be united again with the North, and and peace will instantly take the place of anxiety and suspense, and war may be averted."

"And what is to become of the revenue?" was the reply. "I shall have no government - no revenues."

Evert A. Duyckinck, National History of the War For the Union, Civil, Military and Naval. Founded on official and other authentic documents, New York: Johnson Fry & Co., 1861, Vol. I, p. 173.

[FOUR]

In 1861, if the erring sisters had been allowed to go in peace, was not the disturbing question of the hour: Whence is to come national revenue? Had not this very consideration much to do with the policy of coercion?

"Thus," said Mr. Lincoln, "if we allow the Southern States to depart from the Union, where shall we get the money with which to carry on the Government?"

James Battle Avirett, The Old Plantation: How We Lived in Great House and Cabin Before the War, New York: F. Tennyson Neely Co., 1901, p. 18.

[FIVE]

It seems obvious that Lincoln's concern over secession, "What then will become of my tariff?" was a serious matter.

When in the Course of Human Events, Charles Adams, 2000, p. 27.

Footnoted to: Robert L. Dabny, Memoir of a Narrative Received of Colonel John B. Baldwin, in Secular (1897; reprint, Harrisburg, VA.: Sprinkle, 1994), 94, 100.

Reported in the Baltimore Sun 23 Apr 1861 edition.


credit to 4CJ for research.

[DiogenesLamp]

I'm delighted to see we agree on this, FRiend.

I do not agree when you deviously and falsely conflate one thing with another and call them the same.

Real Property located within the confines of a Independent Nation is the property of that nation despite other people's claims to it.

There is no legitimate purpose for one nation to have fortresses inside of another without the express consent, and for the purpose of protecting the interests of that host nation.

[PeaRidge]

BroJoe, as I have told you several times, you are not understanding your own data or correctly using it. You have confused export products, specie, and re-exports while failing to quote the entire export picture. Here is the information on export contributions:................................U. S. Department of Commerce
................................Agricultural Production of the South
........................................Yearly Detail 1859

Value of Total U.S. Exports ..........$278,902,000

Value of Raw Southern Products:

....................Cotton .....................$161,435,000
....................Tobacco .....................21,074,000
....................Rice ............................2,207,000
....................Naval stores .................3,696,000
....................Sugar ..........................197,000
....................Molasses ........................76,000
....................Hemp .............................9,000
....................Other ........................9,615,000
________
Total ( 71% ) $198,309,000

Value of Southern manufactured Cotton exports ............4,989,000
Value of cotton component of Northern Manufactured cotton exports (60%) ......3,669,000
___________
Total ( 74% ) $205,459,000

Value of Processed Foods:
.............Bread-stuffs/processed fish/meats/corn...........$36,640,000

Total Southern Products ( 87% ) $242,099,000

Export Specie for Purchase or debts: ........$57,502,000 assume 20% for overseas purchase.

Total Southern Contribution ....................$252,000,000

U.S. Department of Commerce, U. S. Treasury, Report of L. E. Chittenden, Howell Cobb, Treasurer, Annual State of the Union Address, James Buchanan, J. D. B. DeBow, Charles Adams, Thomas Kettel, W. F. Taussig, Thomas Huertas, Historical Statistics of the United States Department of Commerce, pg. 106,432.

[BroJoeK]

DiogenesLamp: "I'd say Occam's razor points towards Lincoln lying."

DoodleDawg: "I'd say you see only what you want to see. You always have."

In fact, the referenced post is all about Fort Pickens near Pensacola, nothing to do with Fort Sumter, and there is nothing in the post which says anybody was ordered to attack any Confederate forces anywhere.

So it's a total, dare I use the word: non sequitur.

[DiogenesLamp]

In fact, in early 1861, it was the Confederacy which was assaulting, "raping" and attempting to murder the United States of America, to the point of starting and formally declaring war against it.

Stop mainlining your own propaganda.

You are going to hurt yourself. If anybody got raped in the Civil war, it was the South. You've got to be some sort of first class loon to think the Union got raped.

[DiogenesLamp]

All of Lincoln's troops were under orders not to fight unless attacked.

Porter filed this report:

I had disguised the ship, so that she deceived those who had known her, and was standing in (unnoticed), when the Wyandotte commenced making signals, which I did not answer, but stood on.

The steamer then put herself in my way and Captain Meigs, who was aboard, hailed me and I stopped.

In twenty minutes more I should have been inside (Pensacola harbor) or sunk.

Signed: D.D. Porter

Doesn't sound like they were ordered not to fight. So now which is it, is Lincoln the Liar, or are you the liar?

This is where, if I were you, I would plead ignorance of that message, because if you knew about it, that would appear to make you into the liar.

Here, you can read up on the topic further before you reply.

[PeaRidge]

Lincoln, through General Scott, fails to mention your favorite caveat "...unless attacked.." in this direct order to land and take the fort.

These same orders were given to Lt. Fox, with no record of Lincoln saying to his officers what he was saying to the Governor of South Carolina or to the newspapers.

RECORDS OF REBELLION, VOLUME 1, CHAPTER 4
Page 360

OPERATIONS IN FLORIDA.
[CHAP. IV.
HEADQUARTERS OF THE ARMY,

Washington, March 12, 1861.
Captain VOGDES, U. S. Army,
On board U. S. sloop-of-war Brooklyn, lying off Port Pickens:

SIR: At the first favorable moment you will land with your company, reinforce Fort Pickens, and hold the same till further orders. Report frequently, if opportunities present themselves, on the condition of the fort and the circumstances around you.

I write by command of Lieutenant-General Scott.

I am, sir, very respectfully, your obedient servant,
E. D. TOWNSEND,

Assistant Adjutant-General.

[DiogenesLamp]

But the number is not 75%, it's 58% consisting of:

Let us just accept your 58% number for the moment. What is an additional 17% among friends? :)

Do you think it is reasonable that 20% of the population should be paying 58% of the Federal Revenue?

Are you sure you're not a Democrat?

[DiogenesLamp]

Here's the bottom line: the Confederate Slave Power wanted to destroy the Union to preserve their "peculiar institution" of slavery.

If by "Destroy the Union" you mean they wanted their independence, then yeah, they wanted their independence. Funny thing is, four score and seven years earlier the Nation was all awash with the idea that people were entitled to Independence. Funny what they could forget in "four score and seven years."

Oh, and by the way, the remaining "Union" wouldn't have been "destroyed" anymore than the English "Union" was. As a matter of fact, The United Kingdom rose to the height of it's power after it stopped playing patty cake with us.

"Quite."

[BroJoeK]

PeaRidge rehearsing the March-April 1861 sequence of events: "Within 8 days of taking office, orders of March 12, 1861 issued from the Lincoln administration to reinforce Fort Pickens and thereby violate the armistice that was in effect."

Note the key word there, armistice.
Does not that word "armistice" imply a state of war preexisted Lincoln's inauguration, in which an informal "armistice" had prevented bloodshed?

And if a state of war pre-existed Lincoln's inauguration, who initiated that?
Who made surrender demands on Union forces in Union forts throughout the seceding states?
In what conceivable sense were such demands not in and of themselves acts of war?

The truth of this matter is that Lincoln in March-April 1861 only ordered what President Buchanan had previously done in January 1861 -- sent ships to resupply or reinforce Union troops in the two remaining Union forts, Sumter and Pickens.

The difference was that Buchanan's January resupply ship to Fort Sumter was fired on by secessionist forces, and so went home, mission not accomplished.
Lincoln's ships in April triggered Jefferson Davis to demand immediate surrender of Fort Sumter, and when Major Anderson temporarily refused, Davis launched a military assault which soon forced the surrender.

So Lincoln did nothing basically different from Buchanan, but Davis took the opportunity to start war, and soon after formally declare war on the United States.

[BroJoeK]

DiogenesLamp: "My Black History-Major Friend who obsessed over the Civil War and Racism was the one who talked me into believing that Lincoln deliberately engineered the civil war.
He himself certainly believes that."

What Lincoln deliberately "engineered" was the resupply of Union troops in two Union forts.
That is no more an "act of war" than sending reinforcements to our troops in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, regardless of what the Communists there may say about it.

The decision to use Lincoln's pre-announced resupply mission as his excuse to start war was strictly Jefferson Davis'.
Nobody "engineered" Davis, he was his own man, morally responsible for his own decisions, and for the deaths of some 750,000 Americans.

[BroJoeK]

DiogenesLamp: "Why would anyone in their position want to start a fight with someone at five times the population and 10 times the industrial might?"

In early 1861, the first seven Deep South seceding states had a combined population of about 2.5 million whites and 2.3 million slaves.

The Union then still had 25 million whites, but of those, another six million were in the Upper South and Border slave states.
All of them had voted not to join the Deep South's Confederacy.

Only one thing could force those slave-state Unionists to change their minds and join the Confederacy, and that was war.

What Davis hoped to accomplish by starting Civil War was to double the number of states and triple their white population so that the odds, Confederacy vs. Union, were reduced from ten to one to a more doable two to one.
If successful, the new Confederacy would have over 8 million whites, facing fewer than 20 million Northerners.

And Davis' war was highly successful -- four Upper South states soon switched from Union to Confederacy, and pro-Confederates in three more Border States did everything they could think of, including war, to make them change.

But ultimately, the Border States remained majority Union, so when the dust settled, the Confederacy included about 5.5 million whites with 3.5 million slaves versus a Union of around 22 million whites with hundreds of thousands of free blacks, some of whom even voted.

Lincoln himself said that if he had lost the Border States, he might not win the war.
But Border slave states were, in fact, about two to one Unionists, and there was no way they would support the Deep South Slavocracy.

Bottom line: Davis started war at Fort Sumter in hope of tripling the Confederacy's population.
In that effort he successfully doubled its population, but still left it with overwhelming negative odds.

So, the real question is not "why did Davis start a war", but rather, why didn't Davis soon move to end the war, instead of fighting on to the bitter end of Unconditional Surrender?

The answer, in a word: slavery.

[x]

Ultimately I agree with you - no rational reason existed for the South to secede.

Rationality means you accept prevailing conditions and try to work within them.

Sometimes people come to see the current condition as so unpleasant or the possibility of a radical break with it as so promising that they decide to take the gamble and spin the dice. It's irrational, sure, but at the time people think the break is so bold that it just has to work.

Northern fear about the spread of slavery west was rational. There was no reason slaves couldn't have been used in mining or ranching, and look at where we actually do grow cotton today Southern fear about the threat to slavery was likewise rational. As new free states entered the union it would be harder to keep the country half slave.

It's been said that slavery was more secure within the Union than outside of it, so secession was irrational. There's a lot of truth in that. But I suspect slave owners were so mesmerized by possibility that their world was eventually coming to an end that they decided to risk the gamble of independence.

Something similar happens often enough in history. A country sees itself in a position of power that it knows won't last, so it decides to take advantage of its momentary power to get rid of its enemies while it can.