What Should a First-Time Visitor to America Read?

Now here your crazy train leaves the rails at two points as it careens down the mainline of the revisionist express.

First, just because they COULD have kept slavery doesn’t mean secesh THOUGHT that way. Southern Democrats viewed the Republican Party as such a threat to the institution of slavery that they, as I pointed out in a previous post, had already threatened secession if the GOP won in 1856.

Now in fairness to Johnny Reb, imagine how Second Amendment supports would react today to the election of a Democrat to the White House who openly supported the end of private gun ownership by any means necessary? Not representing any one region, gun owners would not likely move for secession but there would be hell to pay. The difference of course between these two scenarios is that Republicans really didn’t want to outlaw slavery in the Southern states by force at that time, and Americans don’t have the same easily offended mentality that Southerners had then. Plus the Second Amendment is not a morally indefensible abomination like slavery. But if it came down to gun confiscation today I’m sure violence would ensue.

Lincoln said over and over again including in his inaugural address he had no desire to interfere with slavery where it existed. He even promised strengthened fugitive slave laws by the federal government. The Northern dominated Congress passed the Corwin Amendment which would have enshrined slavery in the constitution expressly and protected it effectively forever. Even after the war started the US Congress passed a resolution saying they were not fighting over slavery. Its very clear that SLAVERY WAS NOT THREATENED.

The second place you jump the tracks is suggesting that Southerners only wanted to preserve slavery. They planned on expanding its reach. That’s what drove the Compromise of 1850. Oh, by the way, the Feds took over the public debt of the State of a Texas in that act. Damnation on those scurrilous Yankees for always financially oppressing those poor beleaguered gentlemen of Dixie! But I digress. Southerns wished to spread slavery into new territories, be they within existing American borders or into Carribean islands, or even parts of Mexico.

Southern secession resembled nothing less than a personal duel writ large. The honor and virtue of the South was at stake, and no low down, cotton pickin’, scaliwag mudsill was going to walk all over us!

Ah the whole spread of slavery gambit. SO your argument is that they seceded because they could not have spread slavery to the territories.

Oh but wait! When those original 7 states seceded they made no claim to US territory. The left with only their own sovereign territory.

Thus by the very act of seceding, they were giving up any chance to spread slavery.

OOPS! Your argument just fell apart.

Oh but wait! When those original 7 states seceded they made no claim to US territory. The left with only their own sovereign territory.

Bullcrap. The soil of those 7 states was UNITED STATES territory - before "secession" during and after. It was never not US soil.

If the insurrectionists wanted to leave so badly they should have gotten on a boat to somewhere else. Instead they launched a bloody civil war that cost hundreds of thousands of American lives.

No it didn’t. No amount of facts stops you from stomping your feet and screaming with your fingers in your ears, but I’ll keep posting them anyway.

Southrens were that cheap?

FLT-bird: "In the beginning the population was more balanced though of course blacks did not have the vote be they free or slave so the South had less votes than the North from the start and that got steadily worse over time as the North’s population grew faster due to immigration."

Sure, but from the beginning it was never a question of just North vs. South.
As early as 1800 there were two distinct parties, the old Federalists and Jefferson's new Democratic-Republicans.
Both parties had voters North & South, but Democrats were by far the stronger, their constant victories first driving Federalists out of business and later Whigs, though in both cases internal factors also broke them apart.

Pick almost any presidential election you wish and you'll see the nearly solid Democrat South in alliance with some Northern states carried their party to victory.
The only exceptions were the very confused 1824 election and the elections of popular Whig generals in 1842 and 1848.
And in those cases the opposition put together a winning alliance of Southern & Northern states.
Indeed, both Harrison & Tyler were Southerners and slave-holders, so they were in no way threatening to the South.

So, if you study the Presidents, Congresses and Supreme Court from, say 1800 until secession in 1861, what you'll see is that Democrats were almost never totally out of power, very frequently controlled all branches of Federal government, and were always themselves controlled by their majority faction: Southern Democrats.

FLT-bird: "Democrats were the dominant party.
Your claim however that Southerners always ran things and could just snap their fingers and Northern Democrats would do their bidding is absurd."

You're right, they couldn't just "snap their fingers", sometimes they had to crack their whips, sometimes (i.e., Brooks) they raised cain, and who knows, sometimes they might have to schmooze their Doughfaced Northern allies.
So what do you think, was that too much to ask?

FLT-bird: "Things like the grossly unequal federal expenditures and the tariff of Abominations never would have passed at all had Southerners been that influential in Washington DC."

Wrong again.
The so-called Tariff of Abominations only passed in 1828 because of the strong initial backing from Vice President Calhoun (South Carolina) and future President Jackson (Tennessee).
And it was opposed by the vast majority of New Englanders.
So it was not a simple issue of North vs. South, rather there were many complex issues at play, and the most important to President Jackson was his intention to abolish the National Bank and pay off the national debt (Jackson was the only president ever to do that), and for that he needed very high tariffs.
Jackson also wanted to "make America great", the first time, and so favored protecting US manufacturing, North, South, East & West.

After 1830 Southerners were the driving force behind a steady reduction in overall tariffs which by 1860 brought them near their lowest levels ever.

As for alleged "unequal Federal spending", here again is the data I have on that and it shows: long term, there was no such thing.
Sure, if you carefully pick & chose your data points, you can "prove" most anything, but in the big picture the South received its "fair share" and then some.

FLT-bird: "Even after it was agreed to lower tariffs as part of the compromise that ended the Nullification Crisis, the rates were still considerably higher than would have been ideal for Southern economic interests."

Yes, but Southerners steadily and drastically reduced those tariffs over the following 30 years.

FLT-bird: "Then as the North steadily grew bigger and bigger it sought to impose sky high tariffs once again and this time the Southern states saw they weren’t going to be able to stop it so they seceded."

But the initial Morrill proposal, the one Southerners defeated in 1860, was far from "sky high", it merely returned average rates to roughly their levels of 1850.
And Morrill only passed Congress in 1861 after Southern Democrats walked out.

Further, both Morrill's passage and secession were results of Democrat party self destruction engineered by Fire Eaters in their 1860 presidential conventions.
So Southern Democrats had only themselves to blame for both the passage and higher rates in the 1861 Morrill tariff.

FLT-bird: "Seeing their cash cows departing was intolerable to Lincoln and his corporate fatcat supporters."

So our Lost Cause mythologizers keep posting, but Lincoln himself was focused on other issues, specifically what to do about Confederate demands for the surrender of Fort Sumter, and other Federal properties.

FLT-bird: "More rubbish, nonsense and economic illiteracy.
Where a cargo lands and thus where the tariff is paid is irrelevant.
WHO owns the goods and thus pays the tariff is what is relevant.
Likewise who buys those manufactured goods is irrelevant.
Who owned those goods?
Southerners."

And you have data somewhere to support your claim that "Southerners" owned all (or nearly all) US imports?

FLT-bird: "They were the ones who contracted with the shipping companies to ship their cash crops across the Atlantic.
They were the ones who had to find something to fill the cargo holds of those ships with to help pay for the cost on the return journey.
Obviously the thing that made sense to fill the cargo holds with was manufactured goods..."

Now you've stumbled into DiogenesLamp's self-proclaimed "expertise" and I doubt if he agrees with you.
In DiogenesLamp's world-view, Southerners themselves owned nothing, it was all those evil, nasty, greedy "New York power brokers" who owned everything, extracted their pound of flesh from every transaction and oppressed the pooooor, poooor Southern planters.
That's why they had to secede, says DiogenesLamp, to get out from under the thumbs of evil New Yorkers.

So here we see FLT-bird claiming, no, it wasn't New Yorkers in charge, it was actually the Southern planters themselves.
Hmmmmm...

FLT-bird: "Your claim that because Northern shipping companies were still able to export decent quantities of rice, indigo, sugar and tobacco that means that the North somehow produced these goods is laughable.
Firstly things do get stored in warehouses.
You realize that right?
Secondly even during the war there was trade going on between both sides.
Gee....what’s the South going to be offering in trade?"

Sure, warehousing does explain the fact that cotton exports fell only 80%, not 100%, I get that.
But warehousing cannot possibly explain:

rice fell only 46%
turpentine fell only 40%
manufactured cotton products fell only 25%
tobacco fell only 14%
clover seed increased 85%
brown sugar increased 178%
hops multiplied 60 times!

So clearly, it's all about factors other than warehousing.

As for your alleged "trade between both sides", no, I don't think so.
For one thing, the vast Mississippi River watershed (over a million square miles!) was cut off from trade from New Orleans north to almost St. Louis.
So exporters were forced to extra expense & trouble of using railroads to transport products to Eastern seaboard cities.
That does not sound to me conducive to "trade between both sides".

So what I think happened was products like, say, tobacco were grown in Confederate Virginia, but also in Union regions of Kentucky, Tennessee, Missouri, Indiana & Ohio.
In 1861 those regions planted enough extra tobacco to almost entirely offset the loss of Virginia tobacco.
So my point here is that all this talk about "Southern products" accounting for, what, 80% or 90% of US exports is just bogus nonsense.
Yes cotton did amount to 50% (including specie), but everything else could be and was produced in regions outside the Confederate South.

FLT-bird: "I can cite any of a number of Northern newspapers at the time which also openly admitted the South was providing the vast majority of exports for the whole country and when we look at what was exported its not difficult to see that cash crops comprise most of it."

Sure, I "get" that, but am thinking those people could not see the forest for the trees.
Once again, this site breaks down the actual products of each region.
It does show "Southern products" predominate, but it also shows just what I posted above.
When Confederate exports were deleted in 1861, "Southern exports" excluding cotton net-net fell only $3 million.
So even if those were "Southern products" they weren't Confederate products.

FLT-bird: "There was some trading between both sides during the war as well.
The vast majority of the exports were provided by the Southern states though (including border states)."

But certainly not by Confederate states, which is my point here.
Plus, at the same time that "Southern products" (excluding cotton) net-net fell only $3 million in 1861, Western and Northern exports increased $61 million or almost 60%.
So the whole claim that the 1860 US economy was somehow dependent on "Southern products" is just bogus to the max.
When push came to shove, the US economy got along perfectly well without Confederate exports.

FLT-bird: "As for federal expenditures, those were totally unbalanced in favor of Northern states and had been since the beginning.
For example: From 1789 to 1845, the North received five times the amount of money that was spent on southern projects.
More than twice as many lighthouses were built in the North as in the South, and northern states received twice the southern appropriations for coastal defense."

Sure, if you cherry pick your data, you can "prove" pretty much anything.
But when you look at the whole picture here, it turns out Federal spending balanced out, over time.
For examples, over time the South got nearly 40% more in fortifications, 20% less in lighthouses and 30% less in internal improvements.
But for any particular time period, i.e., 1834 - 1847 the South got more in internal improvements.
Overall, by my calculations, the South got 52% and the North 48% of Federal spending, not including pensions.

FLT-bird: "The fact that NONE of the 6 who openly supported and financed a terrorist who launched an attack with the express aim of killing Southern civilians were arrested says it all."

No, it says nothing except Democrats playing politics, as usual.
Federal marshals were only sent to arrest one of the six, Sanborn, and they were so clumsy about it, a crowd of 150 friends & neighbors gathered to protect him, so they gave up.
No attempts were even made to arrest the others, and whose fault is that?
The Feds of course, and who controlled the Feds?
Washington, DC, Democrat administration under substantial control of Southern Democrats.
For examples, President Buchanan's cabinet Southerners included V.P., Secretaries of Treasury, War, Interior & Postmaster General.
Buchanan's Attorney General was his fellow Pennsylvania Democrat, Jeremiah Black.
So it seems to me that had serious demands been made to arrest all six Brown backers, it would happen, but they weren't.

FLT-bird: "Firstly you don’t know that no compromise offered after secession would have been sufficient to entice the original 7 seceding states to come back.
What we know is that the slavery with massively high tariffs carrot was offered and they refused it."

We know for certain that Confederates in 1861 never asked for terms & conditions of return.
And we know they never seriously considered anything the Union did as enticement to return.
Indeed it has been argued that one reason Jefferson Davis needed war in April, 1861, was to cement the loyalties of any Southerners who might be somehow tempted to reunite with their Northern brethren.
Once the Confederacy declared war on the United States, May 6, 1861, then any such talk would be treasonous.

FLT-bird: "That both the North was willing to offer it and that the Southern states rejected it says a lot.
Slavery was simply not what was motivating most people on either side."

Sure, once secession was declared, then other matters became primary in the Confederacy.
But the fact remains that protecting slavery was the number one reason given by all secessionists, and for many the only reason.

FLT-bird: "Wrong.
Georgia talked extensively about both the tariffs and the unequal federal expenditures. "

OK, one more time: the Georgia "Reasons for Secession" document has 14 paragraphs, with 3,300 words.
Only the second paragraph with 111 words is devoted to tariffs, and even it ends with the following words:

"...the act of 1846 was passed.
It avoided sudden change, but the principle was settled, and free trade, low duties, and economy in public expenditures was the verdict of the American people.
The South and the Northwestern States sustained this policy.
There was but small hope of its reversal; upon the direct issue, none at all."

Sure, "duties" are mentioned, briefly, and "protection", but neither "tariff" nor "Morrill" are.
By contrast slavery is mentioned in every paragraph except the second.

As for alleged "unequal expenditures", those are not mentioned at all by Georgia.

So any claims that Georgia's "Reasons for Secession" document is not "all about slavery" is simply bogus to the max.

FLT-bird: "Texas talked about that as well as the failure to provide border security as well as the Northern states refusing to act against terrorists based there who had attacked the South."

OK, Texas: In 22 shorter reasons paragraphs, 1,644 words, two of those paragraphs (#6 & 19) refer to RE Lee's failure to protect Texans against "Indian savages" and "banditti".
One (#18) does briefly mention "unequal legislation".
None mention tariffs, taxes, duties, bounties, or protections for Northern industries.

All the rest which give reasons talk about slavery.
So there's no way you can seriously claim that Texans were not, first & foremost, concerned to protect slavery.

FLT-bird: "South Carolina attached Rhett’s address which talked extensively about tariffs and unequal federal expenditures."

OK, once again, on Rhett's address to the slave-holding states, 14 long paragraphs with 4,200 words, the first eight paragraphs do indeed discuss taxes and compare 1861 to 1776, making out the North to be the new Great Britain.
It's all nonsense, of course, because there was zero actual similarities, none.
Rhett does complain briefly of "duties on imports", but Morrill is not mentioned, nor is even a threat of higher duties.

But where Rhett spends only 1,400 words comparing the North & taxes to 1776 Britain, when he starts in paragraph 9 to discuss slavery, then his natural verbosity comes out and it takes him twice the number, 2,800 words, to tell us his concerns to protect slavery.
So, even where, exceptionally, Rhett makes slavery play second fiddle to taxes, slavery still plays twice as long & loud as all other issues combined.

FLT-bird: "I’m saying that’s laughable BS and that Rhett had said he would support secession on economic grounds alone."

Maybe he did, maybe he didn't, but if he did, it wasn't in this document.
It's a simple fact: economic issues were not extensively used to sell secession, but slavery certainly was.

FLT-bird: "His claim is clearly true.
By 1860, the South’s wealth was only on par with that of the North even though it was the South which produced the vast majority of the valuable exports.
Clearly a lot of money had been drained out of Southerners’ pockets over the years for that to happen.
Such numbers were true as I have demonstrated from multiple sources from all sides."

Certainly not just "on a par" among Deep South planters.
Statistically they were on average far and away the wealthiest people ever, to that time.
Of course, if you average them in with, for example, Appalachian mountain people, then overall the South was indeed "on a par".
But it was the Deep South planters who called all the political shots and they were far better off than, for examples, average farmers up North.

Yes, some Northern industrialists might be compared to Southern planters, but there were a lot more planters and they were, along with their neighbors, on average better off.

So all claims that Southern wealth was somehow being "drained" are simply hokum.
As for your alleged "multiple sources", none of them -- not one -- provides actual verifiable data.
But scholars who have studied 1850s era economics tell us the Deep South especially was doing very well, thank you.

FLT-bird: "Lincoln....brace yourself.....I hope you are sitting down for this......Lied!
I know it will come as a great shock to you to learn that... "

No "shock" here because you've offered no evidence, merely an unsupported assertion.

FLT-bird on Corwin: "Nope!
I’m right on both counts.
The Northern dominated Congress passed it, The Northern president signed it and multiple states ratified it.
It was a bona fide offer."

Sorry, but you're wrong on both counts.
There was no "offer" to Confederate states, they weren't even recognized.
Rather, the Corwin Amendment was intended to hold the loyalties of Union slave states, like Kentucky & Maryland.
And it helped do just that.

FLT-bird: "You just claim the original 7 seceding states were not going to come back no matter what.
You don’t know that. "

But of course we do know it, because no seceding state ever suggested a willingness to rejoin the Union short of Unconditional Surrender.

FLT-bird: "But its not because multiple Northern states passed state laws forbidding cooperation with the feds over return of escaped slaves.
In several cases mobs had prevented federal agents from capturing escaped slaves and state courts had excused all of it.
The breech of faith was by the Northern states as they have long bragged about."

Maybe, but consider our situation today with so-called sanctuary cities or state.
Despite the Constitution's clear language giving primacy to Federal law, they defy it, so what do we do?
If you answer, "well, we must declare secession", that's absurd, insane.
What we must do is enforce Federal laws and that's what should also have happened during the 1850s.

FLT-bird: "Most certainly did not.
As I’ve already shown, your 50% claims are pure BS.
What we know is that slave ownership was in the single digit percentages among the white population."

No, you've "shown" nothing, zero, nada.
You've only claimed what you don't know and is certainly false: that no slave holders were heads of large families and therefore slave ownership was single digits. Nonsense.
The far more realistic model is that one person per family owned all the slaves and the family sizes averaged four people, totally reasonable assumptions.
It means that in Deep South states like South Carolina and Mississippi nearly 50% of families owned slaves.

In Upper South states like Virginia & Tennessee about 25% of families owned slaves and in Border states like Kentucky & Maryland, fewer than 15%.
And that explains why those states did not secede with the others.

FLT-bird: "Missouri did eventually secede and Maryland was occupied and its legislature jailed by Lincoln without charge or trial before they could vote on the matter."

No Border State ever voted for secession.
Yes, the Confederacy did claim Kentucky and Missouri, but it was totally bogus, nothing more than a few slaveholders who got together and said, "we're Confederates".
But neither the voters nor legislatures of either state ever voted for secession, just the opposite.
And all the Border States, including Maryland & Delaware, provided more Union troops than confederates by a factor of at least two to one.
So Border states not only said they wanted to be Union, they were willing to fight & die for it.

And like Kentucky & Missouri, Maryland's legislature also voted decisively against secession, while it was still lawful to do so.
But once Confederates formally declared war on the United States, May 6, 1861, then it became, by definition, an act of treason for Marylanders to "provide aid & comfort" or vote for secession.

FLT-bird quoting: "Why did this war come?
There was a widely shared feeling among many in the Confederacy that their liberty and way of life were being overpowered by northern political, industrial, and banking powers." (Davis, Don’t Know Much About the Civil War, p. 152)"

Sure, but "Liberty and way of life" is code-talk for slavery.

FLT-bird quoting: "The decision to allow free states to join the Confederacy reflected a hope that much of the old Union could be reconstituted under southern direction.” (Robert A. Divine..."

Which is what DiogenesLamp most curiously claims would have happened, had not that evil Lincoln started war to prevent it.
But it's all total BS, cockamamie nonsense because the new Confederate constitution was dedicated first & foremost to protecting slavery, and no state or territory would ever be allowed to join without recognizing full "rights" in African slavery.

FLT-bird quoting: "...no protective tariff was to be passed..."

Which implies that unless Confederates intended to industrialize with slave labor, there would be no industrialization period.
Of course, slaves did serve very well in Southern factories which means there was no reason not to use them, and no possibility that slavery would ever become obsolete in the Confederacy.

FLT-bird: "and you want to just scream 'slavery slavery slavery!!!' like a wind up doll whose string has been pulled.
Don’t tell me these people did not care about the overcentralization of power, wasteful expenditures under a broad interpretation of the 'general welfare' clause exactly as Patrick Henry had warned about when he urged rejection of the Constitution..."

But of course it was all about "slavery, slavery, slavery".
Explicit protections for slavery were first & foremost in the Confederate constitution.
Then they got down to saying, "how can we improve on our forefathers' constitution," and yes, they did devise some minor changes, which may have improved something, or not.
My own opinion is that such specific forms of government are, in the end, far less important than the good will, honesty and honorable intentions of its members.

FLT-bird: "All true - just inconvenient for you to admit.
The motives of the federal government and the special interests who backed them was the same as it is everywhere......money and power."

Only to the most cynical, and I'm not one.
Consider our current President.
He earned all the money, power & prestige anyone could want, but he won election at least in part for saying he wouldn't accept his government salary and would devote 100% of his efforts to make America great again by putting Americans first.

That has been the Federalist, Whig and Republican message from Day One of the Republic.
The Democrat message was always different and went, in one expression or another of it: vote for us, we'll make those other people pay for your free stuff.

Confederates were all, to a man, Democrats.
That's my case in a nutshell.

Bullcrap. The soil of those 7 states was UNITED STATES territory - before “secession” during and after. It was never not US soil.

If the insurrectionists wanted to leave so badly they should have gotten on a boat to somewhere else. Instead they launched a bloody civil war that cost hundreds of thousands of American lives.

Nope! States are sovereign. They lawfully seceded.

No it didn’t. No amount of facts stops you from stomping your feet and screaming with your fingers in your ears, but I’ll keep posting them anyway.

yes it did. And its quit the reverse. And I’ll just keep posting them for as long as it takes.

Southrens were that cheap?

Yankees were that money grubbing.

rockrr: "Argue with it all you wish but you’ll never penetrate its cold hard shell."

Thanks, I agree.
But I do enjoy it, no better way to learn history! ;-)

SoCal Pubbie quoting on 1856 election: "in the event of Fremont’s election the South should not postpone but at once proceed to ‘immediate, absolute, and eternal separation'
Jefferson Davis of Mississippi"

Thanks for those quotes, I never knew that about 1856, though am not in the least surprised.

“the moment this House undertakes to legislate upon this subject [slavery], it dissolves the Union. Should it be my fortune to have a seat upon this floor, I will abandon it the instant the first decisive step is taken looking towards legislation of this subject. I will go home to preach, and if I can, practice, disunion, and civil war, if needs be. A revolution must ensue, and this republic sink in blood.”

James H. Hammond, Congressman from South Carolina, during the Congressional Gag Rule controversy in the 1830’s

“First then, it is apparent, horribly apparent, that the slavery question rides insolently over every other everywhere — in fact that is the only question which in the least affects the results of the elections.”

Henry L. Benning, Georgia politician and future Confederate general, 1849

“Democratic liberty exists solely because we have slaves . . . freedom is not possible without slavery.”

Richmond Enquirer, 1856

“I want a foothold in Central America... because I want to plant slavery there.... I want Cuba,... Tamaulipas, Potosi, and one or two other Mexican States; and I want them all for the same reason - for the planting or spreading of slavery.”

Albert Gallatin Brown, U.S. Senator from Mississippi, 1858

“The South is invaded. It is time for all patriots to be united, to be under military organization, to be advancing to the conflict determined to live or die in defence of the God given right to own the African”

Richard Thompson Archer, Mississippi planter, 1859

“If the Republican party with its platform of principles, the main feature of which is the abolition of slavery and, therefore, the destruction of the South, carries the country at the next Presidential election, shall we remain in the Union, or form a separate Confederacy? This is the great, grave issue. It is not who shall be President, it is not which party shall rule -— it is a question of political and social existence.”

Alfred P. Aldrich, South Carolina legislator from Barnwell, prior to the 1860 election

“We regard every man in our midst an enemy to the institutions of the South, who does not boldly declare that he believes African slavery to be a social, moral, and political blessing.”

Atlanta Confederacy, 1860

“Gentlemen of the Convention: We meet together under no ordinary circumstances.The rapid spread of Northern fanaticism has endangered our liberties and institutions, and the election of Abraham Lincoln, a wily abolitionist, to the Presidency of the United States, destroys all hope for the future.”

John C. Pelot, delegate from Alachua County to the Florida secession convention, 1861

“The question of Slavery is the rock upon which the Old Government split: it is the cause of secession.”

G. T. Yelverton, of Coffee County, Alabama, speaking to the Alabama Secession Convention, 1861

“African slavery is the corner-stone of the industrial, social, and political fabric of the South; and whatever wars against it, wars against her very existence. Strike down the institution of African slavery and you reduce the South to depopulation and barbarism.”

“Our people have come to this on the question of slavery. I am willing, in that address to rest it upon that question. I think it is the great central point from which we are now proceeding, and I am not willing to divert the public attention from it.”

Lawrence Keitt, Congressman from South Carolina, 1860

“The area of slavery must be extended correlative with its antagonism, or it will be put speedily in the ‘course of ultimate extinction.’....The extension of slavery is the vital point of the whole controversy between the North and the South...Amendments to the federal constitution are urged by some as a panacea for all the ills that beset us. That instrument is amply sufficient as it now stands, for the protection of Southern rights, if it was only enforced. The South wants practical evidence of good faith from the North, not mere paper agreements and compromises. They believe slavery a sin, we do not, and there lies the trouble.”

Henry M. Rector, Governor of Arkansas, 1861

“Sir, the great question which is now uprooting this Government to its foundation-—the great question which underlies all our deliberations here, is the question of African slavery…”

Thomas F. Goode, Mecklenburg County, Virginia, 1861

“The triumphs of Christianity rest this very hour upon slavery; and slavery depends on the triumphs of the South . . . This war is the servant of slavery.”

Methodist Rev. John T. Wightman, South Carolina, 1861

They have declared, by the election of Lincoln, “There shall be no more slave territory–no more slave States.” To this the Cotton States have responded by acts of secession and a Southern Confederacy; which is but a solemn declaration of these States, that they will not submit to the Northern idea of restricting slavery to its present limits, and confining it to the slave States.”

S. C. Posey, Lauderdale County, Alabama, speaking to the Alabama Secession Convention, 1861

“The Confederate States may acquire new territory . . . In all such territory, the institution of negro slavery, as it now exists in the Confederate States, shall be recognized and protected by Congress and the territorial government.”

Article IV, Section 3, Paragraph 3, CSA Constitution, 1861

“The General Assembly shall have no power to pass laws for the emancipation of slaves.”

Article 2, Sec. VII, Paragraph 3, Georgia Constitution, 1861

“I say, then, that viewed from that standpoint, there is but one single subject of complaint which Virginia has to make against the government under which we live; a complaint made by the whole South, and that is on the subject of African slavery….”

John B. Baldwin, Augusta County delegate to the Virginia Secession Convention, 1861

“We must never despair, for death is preferable to a life spent under the gaulling [sic] yoke of abolition rule.”

Pvt. Jonathan Doyle, 4th La., 1863

This country without slave labor would be completely worthless. We can only live & exist by that species of labor; and hence I am willing to fight for the last.”

William Nugent, CSA soldier, 1863

“If slavery is to be abolished then I take no more interest in our fight.

CSA Brigadier General Clement Stevens, 1864

The Golden Circle (Spanish: Círculo Dorado) was an unrealized 1850s proposal by the Knights of the Golden Circle to expand the number of slave states. It envisioned the annexation of several areas—Mexico, Central America, northern South America, Cuba, and the rest of the Caribbean—into the United States in order to vastly increase the number of slave states (it was proposed that Mexico alone be divided into 25 new slave states) and thus the power of the slave holding Southern upper classes. After the Dred Scott Decision (1857) increased anti-slavery agitation, it was advocated by the Knights of the Golden Circle that the Southern United States should secede in their own confederation and invade and annex the area of the golden circle to vastly expand the power of the South.

Wikipedia, from Woodward, Colin American Nations: A History of the Eleven Rival Regional Cultures of North America New York:2011 Penguin Page 207

“During this period directly following the Mexican War, Manifest Destiny became “Sectional Destiny,” with Southerners leading the fight for increased Caribbean possessions. May points out that it is remarkable that Cuba did not become a U.S. possession during these years; almost every president elected during this time period favored annexation and three attempted to outright buy the island from Spain. Furthermore, the Spanish gave Southerners the pretext they wanted in February, 1854 when the American steamer Black Hawk entered Havana Harbor with nine hundred bales of cotton on board. Spanish authorities seized the vessel on the pretext that it had not complied with harbor regulations. President Pierce could have used this as a pretext for war, or he could have endorsed the gathering filibustering expedition of John A. Quitman of Mississippi to seize the island.

John Quitman led the Cuba movement of 1854-55 to wrest the island from Spain. In 1850 Quitman felt the South should secede, but short of that, he viewed the annexation of Cuba as the next best thing to strengthen states rights in the Union. Quitman’s planned expedition elicited a great deal of excitement among Southerners; almost all the prominent Texans of the time, including John S. Ford, Hugh McLeod, John Marshall, James P. Henderson and Hiram Waller all endorsed the plan, as did U.S. Senator from Mississippi Jefferson Davis and President Pierce...

The next major filibustering expedition in the Caribbean came in 1856 when the native Tennessean William Walker raised an army and actually conquered and occupied Nicaragua for a short time...
Throughout the 1850s Southerners, especially Texans, advocated the annexation of Mexican territory as well. It seemed to them a logical outgrowth of the Manifest Destiny that had already added half of Mexico’s national territory to the U.S. in 1848. President James Buchanan especially pushed hard on a protectorate treaty, known as the Lane Treaty that reached the Senate for a vote in 1860. Of course, the treaty failed because of the opposition by the Republican Party, but Buchanan’s commitment to annexation did not end with Mexico.

In 1859 Buchanan authorized $30 million to purchase Cuba from Spain. Senator James Slidell of Louisiana sponsored the bill in the senate, and even though the bill went down to defeat in a highly charged political atmosphere, it illustrates the fact that James Buchanan aspired to every bit as much territorial acquisition as had President James K. Polk, the quintessential expansionist.

This expansionist tendency is not to say that some Southerners did not oppose expansion, because many, primarily South Carolinians, did just that. James Henry Hammond, John C. Calhoun and others opposed annexation on the grounds that it obscured other, more pressing matters of Southern rights within the Union. Calhoun also opposed the acquisition of Mexico because along with it would come millions of Mexicans.”

John R. Lundberg, Texas Christian University

http://personal.tcu.edu/swoodworth/May.htm

So, if you study the Presidents, Congresses and Supreme Court from, say 1800 until secession in 1861, what you’ll see is that Democrats were almost never totally out of power, very frequently controlled all branches of Federal government, and were always themselves controlled by their majority faction: Southern Democrats.

The Democrats did not even exist until 1828. Learn some history.

You’re right, they couldn’t just “snap their fingers”, sometimes they had to crack their whips, sometimes (i.e., Brooks) they raised cain, and who knows, sometimes they might have to schmooze their Doughfaced Northern allies.
So what do you think, was that too much to ask?

I think your claim is laughable and you have offered zero evidence for it. Brooks caning Sumner had everything to do with Sumner being a complete jerk and attacking Brooks’ cousin mocking him for just having had a stroke.

Wrong again.
The so-called Tariff of Abominations only passed in 1828 because of the strong initial backing from Vice President Calhoun (South Carolina) and future President Jackson (Tennessee).
And it was opposed by the vast majority of New Englanders.
So it was not a simple issue of North vs. South, rather there were many complex issues at play, and the most important to President Jackson was his intention to abolish the National Bank and pay off the national debt (Jackson was the only president ever to do that), and for that he needed very high tariffs.
Jackson also wanted to “make America great”, the first time, and so favored protecting US manufacturing, North, South, East & West.

After 1830 Southerners were the driving force behind a steady reduction in overall tariffs which by 1860 brought them near their lowest levels ever.

As for alleged “unequal Federal spending”, here again is the data I have on that and it shows: long term, there was no such thing.
Sure, if you carefully pick & chose your data points, you can “prove” most anything, but in the big picture the South received its “fair share” and then some.

Wrong. I am right again. The Tariff of Abominations was hugely destructive to the Southern economy. Not surprisingly, Yankees came to love it even if some had not supported it initially. It was so destructive in fact that South Carolina nullified it and prepared to fight about it. As for the unequal federal spending, I have provided ample evidence that it was indeed quite unequal and I have done so from a variety of sources. You meanwhile cling desperately to one 1928 book.

The South did not receive its fair share of federal spending - not even close.

Yes, but Southerners steadily and drastically reduced those tariffs over the following 30 years.

Yes and? Lower tariffs were what was in the South’s economic interest. Even the “lowest ever” tariffs were still about twice the maximum the CSA allowed. That says a lot about how disadvantageous the Tariff of Abominations had been and the Morrill Tariff would be.

But the initial Morrill proposal, the one Southerners defeated in 1860, was far from “sky high”, it merely returned average rates to roughly their levels of 1850.
And Morrill only passed Congress in 1861 after Southern Democrats walked out.

Further, both Morrill’s passage and secession were results of Democrat party self destruction engineered by Fire Eaters in their 1860 presidential conventions.
So Southern Democrats had only themselves to blame for both the passage and higher rates in the 1861 Morrill tariff.

It DOUBLE the rates. That was obviously extremely damaging to the Southern economy. Remember the Confederate Constitution just about set HALF the rate of the Walker tariff as the MAXIMUM. Meanwhile the Morill Tariff DOUBLED the Walker Tariff rate...and as everybody knew this would just be the first bite of the apple. They eventually TRIPLED the rate and kept it there for 50 years.

Of course, everybody knew the Morrill tariff was going to pass. All that was required was to flip a Senator or two.

So our Lost Cause mythologizers keep posting, but Lincoln himself was focused on other issues, specifically what to do about Confederate demands for the surrender of Fort Sumter, and other Federal properties.

Laughable BS from our resident PC Revisionists. Lincoln was entirely focused on collecting the tariff....the one what had just been doubled..... the one who campaigned on and told audiences was THE single most important issue. He and his corporate backers could not afford to see the big cash generators - ie the Southern states - leave. That’s why he started a war to prevent it.

And you have data somewhere to support your claim that “Southerners” owned all (or nearly all) US imports?

Yes and I’ve posted it many times already. Even Northerners admitted it openly. Its in the editorials of numerous Northern Newspapers explaining how they’d be economically ruined if the Southern states went their own way.

Now you’ve stumbled into DiogenesLamp’s self-proclaimed “expertise” and I doubt if he agrees with you.
In DiogenesLamp’s world-view, Southerners themselves owned nothing, it was all those evil, nasty, greedy “New York power brokers” who owned everything, extracted their pound of flesh from every transaction and oppressed the pooooor, poooor Southern planters.
That’s why they had to secede, says DiogenesLamp, to get out from under the thumbs of evil New Yorkers.

So here we see FLT-bird claiming, no, it wasn’t New Yorkers in charge, it was actually the Southern planters themselves.
Hmmmmm...

an intentional misreading on your part. Southerners owned the goods to be imported. Northerners made a lot of profit servicing the export of Southern Cash crops.

But warehousing cannot possibly explain:

rice fell only 46%
turpentine fell only 40%
manufactured cotton products fell only 25%
tobacco fell only 14%
clover seed increased 85%
brown sugar increased 178%
hops multiplied 60 times!

So clearly, it’s all about factors other than warehousing.

As for your alleged “trade between both sides”, no, I don’t think so.
For one thing, the vast Mississippi River watershed (over a million square miles!) was cut off from trade from New Orleans north to almost St. Louis.
So exporters were forced to extra expense & trouble of using railroads to transport products to Eastern seaboard cities.
That does not sound to me conducive to “trade between both sides”.

So what I think happened was products like, say, tobacco were grown in Confederate Virginia, but also in Union regions of Kentucky, Tennessee, Missouri, Indiana & Ohio.
In 1861 those regions planted enough extra tobacco to almost entirely offset the loss of Virginia tobacco.
So my point here is that all this talk about “Southern products” accounting for, what, 80% or 90% of US exports is just bogus nonsense.
Yes cotton did amount to 50% (including specie), but everything else could be and was produced in regions outside the Confederate South.

LOL! and I do mean that I’m not just typing that every time. I am actually laughing at the BS you spew. Anyway....you think YOU know better than all the commentators at the time North, South and Foreign where the cash crops that provided the bulk of US exports came from? Furthermore, you think you know this based on one year’s data?

and yes trading did occur during the war. Try reading some history some time.

Sure, I “get” that, but am thinking those people could not see the forest for the trees.
Once again, this site breaks down the actual products of each region.
It does show “Southern products” predominate, but it also shows just what I posted above.
When Confederate exports were deleted in 1861, “Southern exports” excluding cotton net-net fell only $3 million.
So even if those were “Southern products” they weren’t Confederate products

Your position is “I have one year’s worth of data, therefore everything everybody was saying at the time was false - they didn’t know anyway - and I know better....150+ years later....based on one year of export data.”

LOL!

But certainly not by Confederate states, which is my point here.
Plus, at the same time that “Southern products” (excluding cotton) net-net fell only $3 million in 1861, Western and Northern exports increased $61 million or almost 60%.
So the whole claim that the 1860 US economy was somehow dependent on “Southern products” is just bogus to the max.
When push came to shove, the US economy got along perfectly well without Confederate exports.

Yes by Confederate states - which is my point here. annnnd you’re back to trying to use one year of data to explain away what everybody else observed at the time. Ridiculous.

Sure, if you cherry pick your data, you can “prove” pretty much anything.
But when you look at the whole picture here, it turns out Federal spending balanced out, over time.
For examples, over time the South got nearly 40% more in fortifications, 20% less in lighthouses and 30% less in internal improvements.
But for any particular time period, i.e., 1834 - 1847 the South got more in internal improvements.
Overall, by my calculations, the South got 52% and the North 48% of Federal spending, not including pensions.

Hello pot! I’m kettle! You’re black! Talk about cherrypicking data....holy chit! That’s all you do.

Your calculations are self interested horse crap. Everybody at the time admitted the North got far more in federal payments. Buchanan the Pennsylvanian openly said the South had not gotten its fair share. There was a long history of Southerners complaining about it. Various Northern newspapers also openly said it.

No, it says nothing except Democrats playing politics, as usual.
Federal marshals were only sent to arrest one of the six, Sanborn, and they were so clumsy about it, a crowd of 150 friends & neighbors gathered to protect him, so they gave up.
No attempts were even made to arrest the others, and whose fault is that?
The Feds of course, and who controlled the Feds?
Washington, DC, Democrat administration under substantial control of Southern Democrats.
For examples, President Buchanan’s cabinet Southerners included V.P., Secretaries of Treasury, War, Interior & Postmaster General.
Buchanan’s Attorney General was his fellow Pennsylvania Democrat, Jeremiah Black.
So it seems to me that had serious demands been made to arrest all six Brown backers, it would happen, but they weren’t.

There was only a half hearted attempt to arrest even one of the 6 and he was not arrested thanks to mob violence backed by state judges and legislators colluding with the mobs to prevent it. That alone showed Southerners that Northerners sympathized with terrorism directed against the South.

And once again your pet theory that Southerners controlled the federal government is complete horse crap unsupported by any evidence.

We know for certain that Confederates in 1861 never asked for terms & conditions of return.
And we know they never seriously considered anything the Union did as enticement to return.
Indeed it has been argued that one reason Jefferson Davis needed war in April, 1861, was to cement the loyalties of any Southerners who might be somehow tempted to reunite with their Northern brethren.
Once the Confederacy declared war on the United States, May 6, 1861, then any such talk would be treasonous.

We know they rejected the Corwin amendment and the high Morrill Tariff. Jefferson Davis did not need war. Indeed he sent representatives to Washington DC to negotiate terms of separation including taking on a share of the national debt as well as compensation for federal property that had been nationalized by various Southern states. It was the Lincoln administration that refused to meet with them.

Oh and the Lincoln declared hostilities in April 15th 1861 when he called for 75,000 volunteers to invade the CSA. This is yet more BS you simply spew without any evidence to support it hoping it will pass without challenge. It won’t.

Sure, once secession was declared, then other matters became primary in the Confederacy.
But the fact remains that protecting slavery was the number one reason given by all secessionists, and for many the only reason.

Sure violation of the compact over slavery by the Northern states was the legal means of saying the Northern states had violated the compact. However once offered slavery forever by express constitutional amendment to return, they rejected it.

OK, one more time: the Georgia “Reasons for Secession” document has 14 paragraphs, with 3,300 words.
Only the second paragraph with 111 words is devoted to tariffs, and even it ends with the following words:

“...the act of 1846 was passed.
It avoided sudden change, but the principle was settled, and free trade, low duties, and economy in public expenditures was the verdict of the American people.
The South and the Northwestern States sustained this policy.
There was but small hope of its reversal; upon the direct issue, none at all.”

Sure, “duties” are mentioned, briefly, and “protection”, but neither “tariff” nor “Morrill” are.
By contrast slavery is mentioned in every paragraph except the second.

As for alleged “unequal expenditures”, those are not mentioned at all by Georgia.

So any claims that Georgia’s “Reasons for Secession” document is not “all about slavery” is simply bogus to the max.

Yet more tapdancing. Georgia laid out the economic case EVEN THOUGH this was NOT unconstitutional. That says a lot about how much they were upset by it. They also laid out the case for saying the northern states had violated the compact over slavery.

I note you left out the part in the Georgia declaration where they said each side started casting about for new allies and that Northern protectionists settled on the slavery issue to use as a wedge issue to unite the Northern states against the South in order to get high tariffs back in place.

Duties and Tariff are the same thing.

Any claim that Georgia’s declaration was “all about slavery” is patently false as anybody who reads it can see quite quickly.

OK, Texas: In 22 shorter reasons paragraphs, 1,644 words, two of those paragraphs (#6 & 19) refer to RE Lee’s failure to protect Texans against “Indian savages” and “banditti”.
One (#18) does briefly mention “unequal legislation”.
None mention tariffs, taxes, duties, bounties, or protections for Northern industries.

All the rest which give reasons talk about slavery.
So there’s no way you can seriously claim that Texans were not, first & foremost, concerned to protect slavery.

No it does not talk about “RE Lee’s Failure”. That is a LIE born of your irrational hatred of all things Southern. It talks about the federal government’s failure. RE Lee the LT Col. of one federal brigade and thus the 2nd in command of that brigade was not mentioned.

Texas also talks about partisan legislation which “drains their substance”....ie squeezes money out of their pockets.

It also talks about how the Northern states supported terrorists sent to attack the South.

Any claim that the Texas declaration of causes was “all about slavery” is just a laughable lie.

OK, once again, on Rhett’s address to the slave-holding states, 14 long paragraphs with 4,200 words, the first eight paragraphs do indeed discuss taxes and compare 1861 to 1776, making out the North to be the new Great Britain.
It’s all nonsense, of course, because there was zero actual similarities, none.
Rhett does complain briefly of “duties on imports”, but Morrill is not mentioned, nor is even a threat of higher duties.

But where Rhett spends only 1,400 words comparing the North & taxes to 1776 Britain, when he starts in paragraph 9 to discuss slavery, then his natural verbosity comes out and it takes him twice the number, 2,800 words, to tell us his concerns to protect slavery.
So, even where, exceptionally, Rhett makes slavery play second fiddle to taxes, slavery still plays twice as long & loud as all other issues combined.

OK once again, Rhett talked about the economics first. Therefore that is what was most important. What? Its not more ridiculous than your word count?

Rhett had long talked about how the Southern states were being exploited economically. Once again, he said he would have supported secession on economic grounds alone.

Clearly it was all about tariffs and unequal federal government expenditures.

Maybe he did, maybe he didn’t, but if he did, it wasn’t in this document.
It’s a simple fact: economic issues were not extensively used to sell secession, but slavery certainly was.

He did. The fact remains that economic issues were extensively used to persuade Southerners that they would be better off independent. Had anybody been worried about the preservation of slavery, Lincoln and the Northern states made it crystal clear they need have no concerns about that.

Certainly not just “on a par” among Deep South planters.
Statistically they were on average far and away the wealthiest people ever, to that time.
Of course, if you average them in with, for example, Appalachian mountain people, then overall the South was indeed “on a par”.
But it was the Deep South planters who called all the political shots and they were far better off than, for examples, average farmers up North.

Yes, some Northern industrialists might be compared to Southern planters, but there were a lot more planters and they were, along with their neighbors, on average better off.

So all claims that Southern wealth was somehow being “drained” are simply hokum.
As for your alleged “multiple sources”, none of them — not one — provides actual verifiable data.
But scholars who have studied 1850s era economics tell us the Deep South especially was doing very well, thank you.

Yes the rich people in the South were quite rich. Guess what. The rich people in the North were quite rich too. Yes there were poor people. Again guess what. There were poor people in the North too. In fact there were probably more people in dire poverty in the north judging from the horrid conditions they lived in and the terribly unsafe factories they were forced to work in - this was one of Southerners’ criticisms of industrialization. The rich no more called all the shots politically in the South than the rich called all the shots politically in the North.

The fact that there were some rich people in the South in no way invalidates the accurate claim that the Northern states had via federal government policy, drained a lot of wealth out of the Southern states. They just hadn’t managed to drain all of it. Did everybody in the Southern states have to be destitute in order to “prove” the case that they were getting a bad deal? Certainly not.

Several of my sources have provided verifiable data. Charles Adams wrote two books on the subject. Try reading them and you’ll find plenty of verifiable data.

No “shock” here because you’ve offered no evidence, merely an unsupported assertion.

Even his sycophants say he orchestrated the Corwin Amendment. They praise him at length for it.

Sorry, but you’re wrong on both counts.
There was no “offer” to Confederate states, they weren’t even recognized.
Rather, the Corwin Amendment was intended to hold the loyalties of Union slave states, like Kentucky & Maryland.
And it helped do just that.

Nah. I’m right on both counts. Lincoln and the Northern Dominated Congress passed the Corwin amendment. Lincoln offered it in order to entice the original 7 seceding states to come back in his inaugural address. It failed to do that. Had it been for the purposes of holding slaves states in which had not left, then they would have gone ahead and passed it because some slave states did not leave.

But of course we do know it, because no seceding state ever suggested a willingness to rejoin the Union short of Unconditional Surrender.

Were they offered much lower tariffs and equal federal government expenditures? No they were not. They were offered slavery forever and they turned that down. You don’t know that they would not have accepted had economic policy been better suited to their needs. That was never offered.

Maybe, but consider our situation today with so-called sanctuary cities or state.
Despite the Constitution’s clear language giving primacy to Federal law, they defy it, so what do we do?
If you answer, “well, we must declare secession”, that’s absurd, insane.
What we must do is enforce Federal laws and that’s what should also have happened during the 1850s.

Firstly the federal government was nowhere near as powerful in the 1850s. Secondly that was not the real reason the original 7 seceding states left - that was merely the pretext.

No, you’ve “shown” nothing, zero, nada.
You’ve only claimed what you don’t know and is certainly false: that no slave holders were heads of large families and therefore slave ownership was single digits. Nonsense.
The far more realistic model is that one person per family owned all the slaves and the family sizes averaged four people, totally reasonable assumptions.
It means that in Deep South states like South Carolina and Mississippi nearly 50% of families owned slaves.

In Upper South states like Virginia & Tennessee about 25% of families owned slaves and in Border states like Kentucky & Maryland, fewer than 15%.
And that explains why those states did not secede with the others.

You’ve shown nothing. You’ve simply claimed based on some BS back on the envelope estimates that just so happen to suit your politics. Don’t expect anybody who is not a PC Revisionist to buy this crock of crap. BTW, I never said no slave holders were heads of large families. YOU CLAIMED that heads of large families were the ONLY slaveholders. That you do not know and have not proven. You’ve made the ASSUMPTION that there could only be one owner per family because that happens to suit your politics. Anecdotally, I know of many examples of multiple owners in one family.

What we actually know is that slave owners comprised a total of 5.63% of the total free population in the states which seceded....meaning 94.37% did not own slaves.

No Border State ever voted for secession.
Yes, the Confederacy did claim Kentucky and Missouri, but it was totally bogus, nothing more than a few slaveholders who got together and said, “we’re Confederates”.
But neither the voters nor legislatures of either state ever voted for secession, just the opposite.
And all the Border States, including Maryland & Delaware, provided more Union troops than confederates by a factor of at least two to one.
So Border states not only said they wanted to be Union, they were willing to fight & die for it.

And like Kentucky & Missouri, Maryland’s legislature also voted decisively against secession, while it was still lawful to do so.
But once Confederates formally declared war on the United States, May 6, 1861, then it became, by definition, an act of treason for Marylanders to “provide aid & comfort” or vote for secession.

Missouri’s Governor and a part of its legislature voted for secession. They were prevented from meeting and voting on the matter in full like the Maryland Legislature had been when Lincoln threw a bunch of them in a federal gulag without charge or trial before they could vote.

Oh and Lincoln declared war when he called up 75,000 volunteers to invade the Southern states on April 15th.

“With the suspension of habeas corpus [the right not to be arrested without reasonable charges being presented], Lincoln authorized General Scott to make arrests without specific charges to protect secessionist Marylanders from interfering with communications between Washington and the rest of the Union. In the next few months, Baltimore’s Mayor William Brown, the police chief, and nine members of the Maryland legislature were arrested to prevent them from voting to secede from the Union. . . .

“Twice more during the war Lincoln suspended habeas corpus, including the suspension ‘throughout the United States’ on September 24, 1862. Although the records are somewhat unclear, more than thirteen thousand Americans, most of them opposition Democrats, were arrested during the war years, giving rise to the charge that Lincoln was a tyrant and a dictator.” (Davis, Don’t Know Much About the Civil War, pp. 182-183)

One of those imprisoned for fourteen months for simply questioning the unconstitutional suspension of habeas corpus was Francis Key Howard, the grandson of Francis Scott Key and editor of the Baltimore Exchange newspaper. In response to an editorial in his newspaper that was critical of the fact that the Lincoln administration had imprisoned without due process the mayor of Baltimore, Congressman Henry May, and some twenty members of the Maryland legislature, he was imprisoned near the very spot where his grandfather composed the Star Spangled Banner. After his release, he noted the deep irony of his grandfather’s beloved flag flying over “the victims of as vulgar and brutal a despotism as modern times have witnessed” (John Marshall, American Bastile, pp. 645—646).

After his release, Francis Key Howard wrote a book about his experiences entitled Fourteen Months in American Bastilles in which he described daily life as “a constant agony, the jailers as modified monsters and the government as an unfeeling persecutor which took delight in abusing its political prisoners” (Sprague, p. 284). In his defense and whitewashing of Lincoln’s civil liberties abuses even Lincoln apologist Mark Neely, Jr., author of The Fate of Liberty, noted that in Fort Lafayette (aka “the American Bastille”) and in other dungeons where political prisoners where held, “Handcuffs and hanging by the wrists were rare [but not nonexistent], but in the summer of 1863 the army had developed a water torture that came to be used routinely” (p. 110) Repeatedly, whenever Congress asked for information on the arrests, he replied that it was not in the public interest to furnish the information (p. 302).

Wait don’t tell me. These quotes are damned inconvenient. Therefore they must be fake! LOL!

Sure, but “Liberty and way of life” is code-talk for slavery.

No its not. Had slavery been the concern, the Corwin Amendment would have allayed those concerns.

Which is what DiogenesLamp most curiously claims would have happened, had not that evil Lincoln started war to prevent it.
But it’s all total BS, cockamamie nonsense because the new Confederate constitution was dedicated first & foremost to protecting slavery, and no state or territory would ever be allowed to join without recognizing full “rights” in African slavery.

They were fully prepared to recognize it anyway.....remember the Corwin Amendment?

Oh and the Confederate Constitution is very similar to the US Constitution except that it has provisions to limit spending and graft. So your claims about it being first and foremost about slavery are just your usual BS.

Which implies that unless Confederates intended to industrialize with slave labor, there would be no industrialization period.
Of course, slaves did serve very well in Southern factories which means there was no reason not to use them, and no possibility that slavery would ever become obsolete in the Confederacy.

It implies no such thing. This is just more of your self serving BS. It is not necessary to have a huge tariff barrier in order to industrialize. Those areas of the South that were most industrialized had the highest percentage of freedmen in the population. Industrialization is incompatible with slavery. Industrialization is why slavery died out in the entire western world over the course of about 75 years in the 19th century.

But of course it was all about “slavery, slavery, slavery”.
Explicit protections for slavery were first & foremost in the Confederate constitution.
Then they got down to saying, “how can we improve on our forefathers’ constitution,” and yes, they did devise some minor changes, which may have improved something, or not.
My own opinion is that such specific forms of government are, in the end, far less important than the good will, honesty and honorable intentions of its members

But of course it wasn’t and this is just self serving BS. Only 4 states issued declarations of causes. 3 of the 4 listed causes other than slavery even though those other causes were not unconstitutional and refusal to enforce the fugitive slave clause of the constitution was. The north offered slavery forever. The original 7 seceding states turned that down. The northern dominated congress then expressly said it was not fighting over slavery. The Upper South seceded over Lincoln starting a war to impose a government by force without consent.

Not slavery.

Only to the most cynical, and I’m not one.
Consider our current President.
He earned all the money, power & prestige anyone could want, but he won election at least in part for saying he wouldn’t accept his government salary and would devote 100% of his efforts to make America great again by putting Americans first.

That has been the Federalist, Whig and Republican message from Day One of the Republic.
The Democrat message was always different and went, in one expression or another of it: vote for us, we’ll make those other people pay for your free stuff.

Confederates were all, to a man, Democrats.
That’s my case in a nutshell.

To the realistic. You are fixate on parties and have the erroneous notion that they have always been the same. That is simply false.

There were certainly some in the South who felt slavery of great importance. The CSA was a democracy and not a monolith.

Of course there were plenty who did not believe that.

In any case, I think slave property will be lost eventually.” Jefferson Davis 1861

Beginning in late 1862, James Phelan, Joseph Bradford, and Reuben Davis wrote to Jefferson Davis to express concern that some opponents were claiming the war “was for the defense of the institution of slavery” (Cooper, Jefferson Davis, American, pp. 479-480, 765). They called those who were making this claim “demagogues.” Cooper notes that when two Northerners visited Jefferson Davis during the war, Davis insisted “the Confederates were not battling for slavery” and that “slavery had never been the key issue” (Jefferson Davis, American, p. 524).

Precious few textbooks mention the fact that by 1864 key Confederate leaders, including Jefferson Davis, were prepared to abolish slavery. As early as 1862 some Confederate leaders supported various forms of emancipation. In 1864 Jefferson Davis officially recommended that slaves who performed faithful service in non-combat positions in the Confederate army should be freed. Robert E. Lee and many other Confederate generals favored emancipating slaves who served in the Confederate army. In fact, Lee had long favored the abolition of slavery and had called the institution a “moral and political evil” years before the war (Recollections and Letters of Robert E. Lee, New York: Barnes and Noble Books, 2003, reprint, pp. 231-232). By late 1864, Davis was prepared to abolish slavery in order to gain European diplomatic recognition and thus save the Confederacy. Duncan Kenner, one of the biggest slaveholders in the South and the chairman of the Ways and Means Committee of the Confederate House of Representatives, strongly supported this proposal. So did the Confederate Secretary of State, Judah Benjamin. Davis informed congressional leaders of his intentions, and then sent Kenner to Europe to make the proposal. Davis even made Kenner a minister plenipotentiary so as to ensure he could make the proposal to the British and French governments and that it would be taken seriously.

“I tried all in my power to avert this war. I saw it coming, for twelve years I worked night and day to prevent it, but I could not. The North was mad and blind; it would not let us govern ourselves, and so the war came, and now it must go on till the last man of this generation falls in his tracks, and his children seize the musket and fight our battle, unless you acknowledge our right to self government. We are not fighting for slavery. We are fighting for Independence, and that, or extermination.” - President Jefferson Davis The Atlantic Monthly Volume 14, Number 83

“And slavery, you say, is no longer an element in the contest.” Union Colonel James Jaquess

“No, it is not, it never was an essential element. It was only a means of bringing other conflicting elements to an earlier culmination. It fired the musket which was already capped and loaded. There are essential differences between the North and the South that will, however this war may end, make them two nations.” Jefferson Davis

Davis rejects peace with reunion
https://cwcrossroads.wordpress.com/2013/03/03/jefferson-davis-rejects-peace-with-reunion-1864/

“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” Robert E. Lee

“Slavery as an institution, is a moral and political evil in any Country”. Robert E Lee in an 1856 letter to his daughter Mary

“I love the Union and the Constitution,’’ he said, ``but I would rather leave the Union with the Constitution than remain in the Union without it.” Jefferson Davis

“Those who advocated the right of secession alleged in their own justification that we had no regard for law and that the rights of property, life, and liberty would not be safe under the Constitution as administered by us. If we now verify their assertion we prove that they were in truth fighting for their liberty, and instead of branding their leaders as traitors against a righteous and legal government, we elevate them in history to the rank of self-sacrificing patriots, consecrate them to the admiration of the works, and place them by the side of Washington, Hampden and Sidney.” President Andrew Johnson on Radical Reconstruction

“Candor compels me to declare that at this time there is no Union as our fathers understood the term, and as they meant it to be understood by us. The Union which they established can exist only where all the States are represented in both Houses of Congress; where one state is as free as another to regulate its internal concerns according to its own will, and where the laws of the central Government, strictly confined to matters of national jurisdiction, apply with equal force to the people of every section.” President Andrew Johnson 3rd annual message to the Union

In his book What They Fought For, 1861-1865, historian James McPherson reported on his reading of more than 25,000 letters and more than 100 diaries of soldiers who fought on both sides of the War for Southern Independence and concluded that Confederate soldiers “fought for liberty and independence from what they regarded as a tyrannical government.” The letters and diaries of many Confederate soldiers “bristled with the rhetoric of liberty and self government,” writes McPherson, and spoke of a fear of being “subjugated” and “enslaved” by a tyrannical federal government. Sound familiar?

“. . . it was clear from the actions of the Montgomery convention that the goal of the new converts to secessionism was not to establish a slaveholders’ reactionary utopia. What they really wanted was to recreate the Union as it had been before the rise of the new Republican Party, and they opted for secession only when it seemed clear that separation was the only way to achieve their aim. The decision to allow free states to join the Confederacy reflected a hope that much of the old Union could be reconstituted under southern direction.” (Robert A. Divine, T. H. Bren, George Fredrickson, and R. Hal Williams, America Past and Present, Fifth Edition, New York: Longman, 1998, pp. 444-445, emphasis added)

“Every man should endeavor to understand the meaning of subjugation before it is too late… It means the history of this heroic struggle will be written by the enemy; that our youth will be trained by Northern schoolteachers; will learn from Northern school books their version of the war; will be impressed by the influences of history and education to regard our gallant dead as traitors, and our maimed veterans as fit objects for derision… It is said slavery is all we are fighting for, and if we give it up we give up all. Even if this were true, which we deny, slavery is not all our enemies are fighting for. It is merely the pretense to establish sectional superiority and a more centralized form of government, and to deprive us of our rights and liberties.” Maj. General Patrick R. Cleburne, CSA, January 1864

We will never know what would have happened to Southern slavery if the North had allowed the South to go in peace. The Confederacy was never given the chance to outgrow slavery. There were plenty of people in the South who did not like slavery and/or who wanted to see the slaves freed, including Confederate generals Robert E. Lee, Stonewall Jackson, Confederate Congressman Duncan Kenner, and James Spence, the Confederate financial agent in Europe, who criticized slavery in his book The American Union (Patrick, Jefferson Davis and His Cabinet, p. 196). There were also Confederate leaders who supported emancipating slaves who served in the Confederate army, such as Confederate generals Patrick Cleburne, Joseph E. Johnston, Daniel Govan, John H. Kelly, and Marc Lowrey, Governor William Smith of Virginia, Confederate Secretary of State Judah Benjamin, and the Confederate president himself, Jefferson Davis. As mentioned, at least some 75 percent of Southerners did not own slaves. I believe the Confederacy would have eventually abolished slavery. There is evidence that suggests slavery was beginning to die out on its own. For example, the percentage of Southern whites who belonged to slaveholding families dropped by 5 percent from 1850-1860 (Robert Divine, T. H. Bren, George Fredrickson, and R. Hal Williams, America Past and Present, Fifth Edition, New York: Longman, 1999, p. 389). Nevins noted that “slavery was dying all around the edges of its domain” (The Emergence of Lincoln, Volume 2, p. 469).

“But slavery was far from being the sole cause of the prolonged conflict. Neither its destruction on the one hand, nor its defence on the other, was the energizing force that held the contending armies to four years of bloody work. I apprehend that if all living Union soldiers were summoned to the witness-stand, every one of them would testify that it was the preservation of the American Union and not the destruction of Southern slavery that induced him to volunteer at the call of his country. As for the South, it is enough to say that perhaps eighty percent of her armies were neither slave-holders, nor had the remotest interest in the institution. No other proof, however, is needed than the undeniable fact that at any period of the war from its beginning to near its close the South could have saved slavery by simply laying down its arms and returning to the Union.” —General John B. Gordon, from Reminiscences of the Civil War, page 19

“As for the unequal federal spending, I have provided ample evidence that it was indeed quite unequal and I have done so from a variety of sources.”

Anything other than BMW from the Southrons? You know, something with actual numbers? Oh, and I gave you the government sources for the numbers in that 1928 book.

“Confederate soldiers “bristled with the rhetoric of liberty and self government,” writes McPherson, and spoke of a fear of being “subjugated” and “enslaved” by a tyrannical federal government. Sound familiar?”

Yeah, from revisionists like you. The idea that the South was “subjugated” is nonsense. Posters like BroJoeK, x, rockrr, and myself have demonstrated beyond any objective standard that the usual excuses don’t wash.

The South was NOT politically subjugated.

The South was NOT economically subjugated.

The federal government was not tyrannical.

Tariffs were NOT high in 1860.

The South was NOT overly taxed or tariffed.

Federal expenditures did NOT favor the North.

The main difference between regions of the country was slavery.

Slavery had been accommodated from the founding to the Corwin Amendment.

Southern Democrats were so obsessed the the Republican Party that they refused to work with it (sound familiar?). They were ready to walk out in 1856 if they didn’t get their way (sound familiar?).

The vast majority of Southern secession rhetoric in 1860/1861 listed the preservation of slavery as the main motivation for disunion.

You have no legs to stand on.

We’ve gone over the 1928 book y’all cling to so desperately many times. I’ve provided both of Charles Adams’ books as well as numerous quotations from political leaders and newspapers on both sides.

We can go back and forth repeating this as many times as you like.

Yeah, from revisionists like you. The idea that the South was “subjugated” is nonsense. Posters like BroJoeK, x, rockrr, and myself have demonstrated beyond any objective standard that the usual excuses don’t wash.

The South was NOT politically subjugated.

The South was NOT economically subjugated.

The federal government was not tyrannical.

Tariffs were NOT high in 1860.

The South was NOT overly taxed or tariffed.

Federal expenditures did NOT favor the North.

The main difference between regions of the country was slavery.

Slavery had been accommodated from the founding to the Corwin Amendment.

Southern Democrats were so obsessed the the Republican Party that they refused to work with it (sound familiar?). They were ready to walk out in 1856 if they didn’t get their way (sound familiar?).

The vast majority of Southern secession rhetoric in 1860/1861 listed the preservation of slavery as the main motivation for disunion.

You have no legs to stand on.

You haven’t demonstrated anything.

The Southern states WERE being economically exploited.

The South DID NOT have enough votes in Congress to stop it.

It WAS going to get worse.

Lincoln WAS a tyrant.

The Morrill Tariff DID jack rates up to crushingly high levels and leave them there for 50 years.

The South DID pay the majority of the tariffs.

Federal expenditures DID favor the North.

The regions were totally different economically with the Southern economy being geared for export.

Slavery was NOT threatened within the US.

The North DID offer slavery forever via express constitutional amendment.

The Original 7 seceding states DID reject that.

You have no leg to stand on.

Wow, I never heard that dodge before.