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.

[Pelham]

” But, George III lost the War of Independence in America. “

Evidently your judgement on the merits of a secession/independence movement depend upon the success or failure of that movement. Had the Founding Fathers been defeated they would be having the same abuse heaped on their heads that is now reserved for the Confederates.

“And today, nearly every American (North, South, East and West) is grateful that Lincoln preserved the Union....One nation, under God, indivisible. We’re so lucky to be here.”

Well I’ve heard more than a few Americans think it didn’t turn out so great. A powerful centralized national government impervious to outside correction is part of Lincoln’s legacy. States are now mere administrative districts of the federal Leviathan.

So when the vast array of executive agencies dictates rules affecting the tiniest aspects of American daily life, from the size of flush toilets to the kind of light bulbs we can use, Americans must accept it. And when that central government orders every American to honor gay marriage we have to obey. That’s the legacy that came wrapped inside of indivisible union.

“One nation, under God, indivisible. We’re so lucky to be here.”

It’s hardly fair to blame God for what goes on in this country. The spirit of anti-Christ would be a better fit.

[Pelham]

“Robert E Lee also indicated that it was a rebellion. It was a rebellion. The mystery is why anyone would want to now change the terminology. “

I don’t. I just point out that it’s the same descriptor used by the lawful British government at the time of the American Revolution. I just ask for consistency. It was rebellion and secession in both cases.

[Pelham]

My point is that he was using force to compel the states to remain in the Union, not to end slavery. He wasn’t sending his army out with the mission of freeing the slaves, which is most likely what my high school civics class was teaching.

While Lincoln hated slavery he also respected the rule of law, at least occasionally, and he repeatedly said that he didn’t have the authority to order slaves to be set free. He eventually did it as a war measure affecting only the States which were in rebellion, which of course the British had also done during the American Revolution. But slaves in the states that remained loyal to the Union remained slaves.

Frederick Douglass did a good job of describing Lincoln’s opinion of blacks and slavery in a speech he gave on the 10th anniversary of Lincoln’s death. Douglass knew Lincoln personally. Douglass said that he and his fellow blacks were afterthoughts in Lincoln’s decisions. And while he was eternally grateful for what Lincoln did he harbored no illusions that the war or any other great decisions made by Lincoln were done with blacks first and foremost in his mind.

[Pelham]

You may want to take a look at this before you buy into the legend of Jones county.

[BroJoeK]

wardaddy: "SOUTHERN WHITES ARE THE LAST REDOUBT IN AMERICA ALONG WITH SPOTS IN THE MIDWEST AND MOUNTAIN STATES"

That is a fundamental misunderstanding of the American political landscape.
In fact, every state, without exception, has conservative rural & small town counties.
And every big city has many conservatives, though almost never the majority.

So a state's overall political color -- red, purple or blue -- depends on the population's numbers of city versus country citizens.
Where cities are relatively small and country populations healthy, there you have a more conservative state -- today called "red".
Where cities are large and country populations small, there you have a more liberal "purple" or "blue" state.

And the proof of it is: look at the political map.
Most blue states still vote conservative in more rural counties, and most "red states" still vote Democrat in cities and other minority regions.

This is the 2012 election by congressional district:

[miss marmelstein]

I have no opinion on the name of the Civil War. Call it whatever you want. I prefer to call it the Civil War.

[miss marmelstein]

Why do so many people avoid personal references? I dislike that intensely and wish that JR had one rule: you must post your state or country in which you reside. Some of the worst folks on FR do not give their state. I find that suspicious.

[BroJoeK]

miss marmelstein: "... Michael Medved who claims that something like 93% of southerners owned slaves.
Well, I may be exaggerating a bit but not by much."

rockrr: "We talked about this on another thread. He claimed 30%."

It all depends on who & how you count them.

In 1860, there were about 400,000 total slave-holders, about half in the seven Deep South states which first declared secession, another third in the four Upper South states which followed after Fort Sumter, and 20% in the Border States which remained loyal Unionists.

• In the Deep South, slaveholders represented 7% of the white population -- 180,000 out of 2.5 million.
  
• In the Upper South, slaveholders represented 5% of the white population -- 135,000 out of 3 million.
  
• In Border South states, slaveholders represented 3% of the white population -- 80,000 out of 2.7 million.
  
• So the overall average in 15 slave-states was 5% of individuals holding slaves -- 400,000 out of 8 million Southern whites.

So people who wish to minimize slavery can cite such numbers claiming: "it's no big deal".

But the fact is that individuals did not own slaves in a family vacuum -- they lived in families & households which shared in the benefits of slaveholding.
So, if you estimate the numbers of slaveholding families, now you get a much different picture:

• In Deep South states, on average 37% of white families held slaves, with nearly 50% in South Carolina and Mississippi, 28% in Texas.
  
• In the Upper South, 25% of white families owned slaves,
  
• In Border South states, 16% of white families owned slaves, ranging from 23% in Kentucky to 3% in Delaware.
  
• So the overall average in 15 states in 1860 was 26%, or 400,000 white families out of 1.5 million total.

The overall average was 10 slaves per slaveholding family -- 4 million total slaves -- but that is certainly skewed by large Deep South plantations with hundreds each.
So the median number of slaves per slaveholding family was closer to five.

On the question of black slaveholders, yes there were some: in 1830 about 4,000 blacks, most of mixed race, owned 13,000 slaves. That is fewer than one half of one percent.

Finally, it's often said that Confederate soldiers did not fight for slavery, but in fact, studies show about half came from slaveholding families.
Why so many?
Because in large areas of the South (see map below), slavery was rare to non-existent, and those areas sent their young men to serve the Union Army.
So, Confederate soldiers came from those areas with relatively higher percents of slaveholder families.

Growth of slavery, 1790 to 1860:

[BroJoeK]

PeaRidge: "For starters, you didn’t answer the question."

Of course I did, see post #876.
If you don't like the answer, I "get" that.
Still, it is the answer.

So which part do you disagree with?

[miss marmelstein]

Personally, I don’t care if everyone in the ante-bellum South owned slaves - although just as the casualties of the Civil War grow by leaps and bounds (what is it up to now? 700,000?) so do the slave owners grow by leaps and bounds. These may be accurate statistics or may be cooked statistics to make southerners feel guilty all day long. Perhaps another extension of cultural Marxism and I say Phooey! to that.

[BroJoeK]

Tau Food post 913 to miss marmelstein: "Thanks in part to people like Robert E Lee, slavery is gone now - gone for good- and no amount of arguing is going to bring it back.

DiogenesLamp misaddressing to BroJoeK: "I beg to differ.
While we are arguing, that is exactly what they have been doing."

Of course, you can re-define almost anything as "slavery".
Government "enslavement" of long-term welfare recipients is commonly intended, since they no longer do what used to be called "free labor" -- work for wages or salary.
Instead, their only essential work consists of voting for more Democrats.

Government "enslavement" of taxpayers, and of course, police-state surveillance of citizens, all sometimes referred to as "slavery".

But compared to the real thing before Civil War, it's just pure political hyperbole.

Yes, real enslavement does happen today -- immigrants, sex-trafficking, Muslim enslavement of "infidels", often children.
But, doubtless, none of that real enslavement is what DiogenesLamp means here.

[BroJoeK]

Pelham: "Lincoln didn’t claim the right to burn out and kill Americans who engaged in slavery.
He did believe that he had the right to use violence to prevent States from leaving the Union.
Preserving the Union was his causus belli.
People ought to read his own words."

Yes, you should certainly read Lincoln's First Inaugural words, since they are key to understanding what happen next.

Lincoln promised Confederates that he would not interfere with them beyond what was required by Federal law (i.e., mail, tariffs), and they could not have war unless they themselves started it.
Those were Lincoln's peace terms in March, 1861: don't start a war, and you can't have a war.

But the Confederacy took Lincoln's terms as a declaration of war, and ordered up troops and preparations for military assault on Fort Sumter, a unequivocal act of war against the United States Army.

So, six months after December 1860, when the Confederacy first provoked, later started and then formally declared war on the United States, raising up a 500,000 man army, sending military aid to pro-Confederates in Union Missouri, then, finally Lincoln directly confronted that existential threat.

Remember: by June 10, 1861, when that first Confederate soldier (Pvt. Henry Wyatt of North Carolina), was killed at the Battle of Big Bethel, dozens of Union troops had already died, over 100 wounded and 500 captured and held as POWs.
So the Confederacy was waging war against the United States for months before Lincoln seriously confronted it.

Of course, once Lincoln began to respond to Confederates' war, he devised a long-range plan to utterly defeat and destroy the rebellion.

Perhaps the most foresighted politician of the time was Lincoln's rival and Secretary of State, William Seward, who came to hugely admire Lincoln, writing in June 1861:

"Executive skill and vigor are rare qualities.
The President is the best of us, but he needs constant and assiduous cooperation."

Had Seward himself been elected President, the outcome of secession and Confederacy would certainly have been different, but Seward came to admire and fully supported Lincoln's leadership.

[BroJoeK]

Tau Food: "Now, not all of those who participated in the rebellion called it a rebellion right away.
In May of 1865, Lieutenant General Nathan Bedford Forrest was calling it a civil war..."

Thanks again for great work.
I have related on these threads before that when Forrest captured my great-grandfather's unit in December 1862, he released them on "parole" and they were eventually returned unharmed in exchange for Confederate POWs.
So my opinion of Forrest is quite high, not only for his military prowess, but also for basic decency at a time of huge stress.

[rockrr]

The mystery is why anyone would want to now change the terminology.

No mystery - people like pelly are sore losers who don't like our nation and wish it were something else than it is.

[rockrr]

And I wrote that before I read #961

[iowamark]

I never knew when I posted this thread that we would get a thousand replies!

[BroJoeK]

CatherineofAragon: "I echo the person upthread (sorry, forgot the name) who wondered why on earth people continue to dig this stuff up and fight over it."

Even in 1865, when defeat became certain Confederate leaders like Jefferson Davis were busy working to concoct a Lost-Cause mythology, explaining and justifying their actions -- and the terrible deaths of hundreds of thousands of our nation's best young men.

The resulting Lost-Cause mythology is pretty simple, consistent, beautifully tragic, and has been taught to many young Southerners along with their mother's milk.
The problem is: it's pure historical fantasy, bearing little relationship to what factually happened, and why.

But the old Lost Cause mythology served a serious purpose for generations, especially the 100+ years when most Southerners were also Democrats, and easily they found sympathy among Northern Democrats for their anti-Republican beliefs.
But today, anti-Republican mythology is never going to wash with fellow Republican descendants of those who were actually there, and those who really care about history over propaganda.
We will always object and push-back to the best of our abilities.

But many of those children from long ago who learned the Lost Cause mythology today just can't let go of it, won't let go of it, and often become angry and abusive when challenged by real facts.
So they come on threads like this to vent their beliefs & frustrations.

The rest of us volunteer, at our best, to provide historical facts, reasons and hopefully tough-love comfort to people who grew up believing a Big Lie.

Of course, they seldom see it that way, and we are often more tough than love -- hence the friction, heat and even flames you sometimes see erupt.

So, the short answer to your question is: we're here because Lost Causers are here, and we try to stay as long as they do.

[spintreebob]

Well said

[rockrr]

Ben Shapiro was recently on TV debating four or five lefties. They were using all the usual lefty tactics in substitution for honest debate when one of them played the feelings card ("you're not respecting my feelings"). Ben replied saying,

"The truth doesn't care about your feelings."

It was brash and blunt and utterly true. I can assure you that, despite the liberal tactic that some choose to employ of asserting that any criticism of the confederacy is a condemnation of southerners, none of us are here to "make southerners feel guilty". Actually the notion is rather preposterous - how can an event that took place 150 years ago and in which not a single one of us participated cause you guilt?

The reason why I replied to you a month ago and then reminded you on this thread is because of the importance of intellectual honesty that we not pull the numbers out of our nethers. It's wrong whether Michael Medved does it, I do it, or you do it.

It's not about shame, or guilt, or "cultural marxism" - it's about striving for the truth.

[HandyDandy]

That helps me understand what is going on here a little better. I guess as things get worse (in the real world, outside of this thread) and people begin to question what the h*ll happened to America, the finger pointing starts. Obviously there is a faction that will point the finger at Abe Lincoln. I am going to try harder to see the issue from their perspective, but they are going to have to build a much much better case than they have so far.

I am coming from a position that Slave Power held sway over the country from the beginning. People like Davis and Stephens could see the writing on the wall. If they wanted to keep and expand their Slave Empire, they had to get away from the new and growing Republican Anti-Slave Power. They had made all their travel plans and had already packed their bags before the horror of Lincoln's election.