Posted on 08/11/2015 1:11:21 PM PDT by 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.
(Excerpt) Read more at blog.acton.org ...
For communities of freedpeople across the South, grief washed through like a tidal wave. From Norfolk and Portsmouth, Beaufort and Charleston came the most “heartfelt sorrow,” “troubled countenances,” and “very great” grief. Everywhere children cried audibly and grown-ups wept bitterly. Some cried all night, others just felt numb. One woman described herself as “nearly deranged” with grief. Black soldiers were utterly bereft. Edgar Dinsmore of the 54th Massachusetts felt “a loss irreparable.” One man compared the circumstances to a horrific scene he had witnessed as a slave: a mother whipped forty lashes for weeping when white people took away her children. The violence had traumatized him, “but not half so much as the death of President Lincoln,” he confessed. Some white officers in black regiments felt the sense of loss magnified. “Oh how Sad, How Melancholy,” James Moore wrote to his wife. Such intense sorrow overcame him that it seemed “an impossibility to rally from it.” In Petersburg, Thomas Morris Chester saw both “unfeigned grief” and an “undisguised feeling of horror,” for the question hadn’t gone away: Would they “have to be slaves again”? African Americans claimed for themselves a special place in the outpouring of sorrow, and the prayers and sermons of Easter Sunday magnified Lincoln’s role as the Great Emancipator. A New Orleans minister asserted that his people felt “deeper sorrow for the friend of the colored man,” and black clergymen in the North allowed that their people felt the loss “more keenly” and “more than all others.” Journalists singled out the “dusky-skinned men of our own race” as the “chief—the truest mourners,” and black soldiers maintained that “as a people none could deplore his loss more than we.” Frederick Douglass, speaking extemporaneously in Rochester on Saturday, told the overflowing crowd that he felt the loss “as a personal as well as national calamity” because of “the race to which I belong.” Even the most stricken white mourners conceded the point. Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles thought the “colored people” to be the “truer mourners.” In the words of one minister, “We who are white know little of the emotions which thrill the black man’s heart to-day,” and as another told his congregation, “intense as is our grief,” no white person could “fathom the sorrow” of black people. White mourners also pondered this difference in their personal writings. “How I pity the poor colored people,” wrote one, “who share perhaps most deeply in our great calamity!
For communities of freedpeople across the South, grief washed through like a tidal wave. From Norfolk and Portsmouth, Beaufort and Charleston came the most “heartfelt sorrow,” “troubled countenances,” and “very great” grief. Everywhere children cried audibly and grown-ups wept bitterly. Some cried all night, others just felt numb. One woman described herself as “nearly deranged” with grief. Black soldiers were utterly bereft. Edgar Dinsmore of the 54th Massachusetts felt “a loss irreparable.” One man compared the circumstances to a horrific scene he had witnessed as a slave: a mother whipped forty lashes for weeping when white people took away her children. The violence had traumatized him, “but not half so much as the death of President Lincoln,” he confessed. Some white officers in black regiments felt the sense of loss magnified. “Oh how Sad, How Melancholy,” James Moore wrote to his wife. Such intense sorrow overcame him that it seemed “an impossibility to rally from it.” In Petersburg, Thomas Morris Chester saw both “unfeigned grief” and an “undisguised feeling of horror,” for the question hadn’t gone away: Would they “have to be slaves again”?
African Americans claimed for themselves a special place in the outpouring of sorrow, and the prayers and sermons of Easter Sunday magnified Lincoln’s role as the Great Emancipator. A New Orleans minister asserted that his people felt “deeper sorrow for the friend of the colored man,” and black clergymen in the North allowed that their people felt the loss “more keenly” and “more than all others.” Journalists singled out the “dusky-skinned men of our own race” as the “chief—the truest mourners,” and black soldiers maintained that “as a people none could deplore his loss more than we.” Frederick Douglass, speaking extemporaneously in Rochester on Saturday, told the overflowing crowd that he felt the loss “as a personal as well as national calamity” because of “the race to which I belong.” Even the most stricken white mourners conceded the point. Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles thought the “colored people” to be the “truer mourners.” In the words of one minister, “We who are white know little of the emotions which thrill the black man’s heart to-day,” and as another told his congregation, “intense as is our grief,” no white person could “fathom the sorrow” of black people. White mourners also pondered this difference in their personal writings. “How I pity the poor colored people,” wrote one, “who share perhaps most deeply in our great calamity!
As for central_va, I don't want to reconstruct him. I think he's just fine the way he is. In fact, I like him. Several times, I've seen some flashes of humor, even though he probably thinks that interferes with this rebel image that he's been working on. I know he likes "Dixie" and I'll just bet he likes some other music, too. We'd get along. In my book, he's okay.
He was when he tried to leave. The Laws of the State in which he was held in bondage recognize him as such I am sure. That brings into effect the above provision from Article IV.
Prior to the Scott decision State courts in Slave States did in fact award freedom to slaves in cases identical to Scott's. Taney ignored that president
The "precedents" set by state courts are not binding on the Federal Courts, which I would say have jurisdiction in the case of Dred Scott and a dispute between states.
and then went even further overturning the Northwest Ordinance and the Missouri Compromise,
Nothing but a constitutional Amendment can nullify the effect of article IV. No "ordinance" and No "compromise" can render inoperative that clause.
and then somewhere divining that the Framers did not intend people of African descent to become citizens even though those framers themselves recognized such people as citizens.
And I agree with you that he erred there. I know of about a dozen Black Citizens from the revolutionary war period. Yes they were recognized as citizens, and therefore Tanney was simply projecting his own incorrect opinion.
But the larger holding was legally correct for the time. It wasn't overturned with a subsequent Supreme Court ruling, it was overturned by the passage of constitutional amendments that rendered that decision moot.
Scott did not attempt to leave anywhere. He did not run away or even attempt to run away. The State circuit court, in a slave state said that based on the facts of the case, Scott was free. He never tried to run away and the Fugitive Slave Clause never was a factor in the case.
You still don't comprehend what the case was about and why Taney's decision was such a disaster.
He did not try to flee in the physical sense, but he did in the legal sense. Obviously the case got appealed until it reached Federal court and eventually the supreme, and then it was decided in accordance with the existing law of that time.
State courts do not control precedent for Federal courts.
You still don't comprehend what the case was about and why Taney's decision was such a disaster.
The disaster was that provision in article IV which the Northern states voluntarily agreed to, and then used every trick of which they could think to get out of that devil's bargain.
They either should have not agreed with it, or not Unionized with Slave states.
Again, you are simply wrong. Taney did not cite Article IV in his decision. His decision was based on his legal and historical fiction that no black was or ever could be a citizen and therefore Scott had no right to appeal to a Federal Court.
He did so indirectly. He focused more on states being required to respect the laws of other states. Article IV is implicit in his legal reasoning.
You can lead a jackass to water....
Alright then, as long as you say so. But I just don't like when he speaks Latin.
Which is exactly what the lower state court did in awarding Scott his freedom! The Missouri Supreme court with a majority pro slavery bench overturned that verdict and said in effect that we used to respect other states laws, but times have changed and we will no longer respect them even though Article IV says we have to.
Slavery became a non issue for the Union as of February, 1861....in their own words.
I can tell that this is horribly important - to you at least - but when you use the all-encompassing generic “they” you are being inaccurate. I have no doubt that for some people this was true, but not for most and certainly not for all.
Thanks for sharing.
At this time there were 20 Union states, all with stable legislatures and courts. Their commerce was continuing and there was business as usual. In northern ports such as Boston and New York, ships were sailing their regular routes to Europe, and many continued their commerce with Southern ports. Newspapers were printing, banks were lending, legislators were occupied, roads and canals were operating, and the Federal government was operating.
On March 2, the Morrill Tariff was signed into law by outgoing President Buchanan. This tariff raised the taxation rate to 37.5% with a greatly expanded list of covered items. This effectively tripled the taxation rate on imported goods. The law allowed a second additional rate averaging 47% for iron.
Simultaneously news reached the North that the Confederacy was enacting a much lower tariff. This led the New York Herald to say: “The effect of these two tariffs, then, upon our trade with the best, and most reliable part of the country will most disastrously be felt in all the Northern cities. We learn that even now some of the largest houses in the Southern trade in this city, who have not already failed, are preparing to wind up their affairs and abandon business entirely”.
The US Treasury had on deposit $$6,000,000, enough to finance the government for a month and a half. Tariff revenue from the imports of goods purchased with the proceeds of the sales of Southern cotton had ceased. Secretary of the Treasury Salmon Chase increased the national debt to over $80,000,000, and was borrowing more.
On March 11, the Confederacy published its tariff rates. The average tariff rate to be collected on dutiable goods was 13.3%.
A few weeks later, he results of the secession and the impact on trade were reported in the Richmond Dispatch: “The total amount of imports at the port of New York for the week ending on the 18th, was $2,328,479; for the same week in 1860, $5,517,58 . This was a decrease of 57%.
An article in the Charleston Mercury described the early effects of secession on the business interests: “The business men of Charleston are already beginning to reap the advantages of the independent position which the South has taken.
“The results of the last few weeks have demonstrated commercial prosperity. Business of all kinds has increased at an amazing pace; customers are thronging the city from all quarters of the South, and the indications are that Charleston is destined to become the commercial metropolis of the Confederate States.
“In dry goods and fancy goods the operations have been very large, and the purchasers, we are informed, are principally composed of those who used to patronize New York.’
Without Southern states’ cotton and tobacco exports, more than 70% of the Northern import market would cease to exist. Domestic and overseas financiers, having already loaned large amounts to the government at extremely high interest rates for the past 4 years were not likely to continue to lend money to a government that was losing more than seventy percent of its annual revenue due to loss of tax revenue on imports.
A Washington newspaper learned that a meeting of over 100 New York City merchants had placed great emphasis on the tariff issue and that it was destroying trade and legitimate business. The newspaper said that “it is a singular fact that the merchants who, two months ago were fiercely shouting ‘no coercion’ now are for anything rather than inaction.”
That is when Northern businessmen and politicians began to visit Lincoln’s office. By mid-March, President Lincoln had been visited by a number of governors of the Northern and Western States. Among these men were Governor William Sprague of Rhode Island, Governor Oliver Perry Morton of Indiana, Governor John A. Andrew of Massachusetts, Governor Andrew Curtain of Pennsylvania, and Governor Austin Blair of Michigan They offered him money and militia.
3/22/1861 The economic editor of the New York Times said, “At once shut down every Southern port, destroy its commerce, and bring utter ruin on the Confederate States.”
On April 4, the Lincoln government supplied this quote to the press:
“It would be contrary to the spirit of the American Government to use armed force to subjugate the South. If the people of the South want to stay out of the Union, if they desire independence, let them have it.
while giving this order:
HEADQUARTERS OF THE ARMY, Washington, D. C., April 4, 1861.
Lieutenant Colonel HENRY L. SCOTT, A. D. C., New York:
SIR: This letter will be landed to you by Captain G. V. Fox... He is charged by high authority here with the command of an expedition, under cover of certain ships of war, whose object is to re-enforce Fort Sumter.
To embark with Captain Fox you will cause a detachment of recruits, say about two hundred, to be immediately organized at Fort Columbus, with a competent number of officers, arms, ammunition, and subsistence. A large surplus of the latter-indeed, as great as the vessels of the expedition can take-with other necessaries, will be needed for the augmented garrison of Fort Sumter.
Consult Captain Fox and Major Eaton on the subject, and give all necessary orders in my name to fit out the expedition, except that the hiring of vessels will be left to others.
Some fuel must be shipped. Oil, artillery implements, fuses, cordage, slow-march, mechanical levers, and gins, &c., should also be put on board.
Consult, also, if necessary, confidentially, Colonel Tompkins and Major Thornton.
Respectfully, yours,
WINFIELD SCOTT.
Who wrote all of that? It’s very nice but doesn’t refute a single thing that I said (if that was what you were hoping for).
“Who wrote all of that? “
With the exception of one sentence, all of that comes from period newspapers, books, federal treasury records, and the OR.
Article IV says states have to respect other states slave laws. I take that to mean that in a contest between freedom laws of a free state, and slave laws of a slave state, the slave laws must always prevail.
Yeah, that's ugly, but that's what it says, and if Northern states didn't agree to it, they wouldn't have had to abide by it.
The lower courts were apparently unaware that laws freeing slaves, and laws holding them in bondage were inherently unequal in the requirements of the Constitution, with the slave laws having the superior legal position.
Again, don't blame me for pointing this out, but that was the law of that era.
Indeed, if I understand correctly, during the Civil War, millions of slaves which had previously produced the world's greatest supply of cotton, switched over to producing food for Confederate military & civilians, freeing up equivalent numbers of white men to serve.
And Confederate armies themselves consisted to a large percentage (circa 25% I think) of slaves who performed every function you can think of, except actual fighting.
So there's no doubt that slaves were critical to the Confederate war effort, and Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation struck a blow at the heart of Slave Power.
But the key point to understand here is that Emancipation struck simultaneously in three different areas:
But no challenge was ever made in the Supreme Court on constitutional grounds, to the Compromise of 1850 Law, which moved responsibility for returning Fugitive Slaves from Northern States to the Federal Government.
Slave states which objected to the Compromise of 1850 could easily have challenged it in Court, and with Judge Roger Tanney its Chief Justice, likely have succeeded.
But of course, they did not, since it was a Compromise they heartily supported.
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