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Why did the North want to end slavery?

Posted on 08/12/2020 2:31:56 PM PDT by Jonty30

I think we can agree that it had nothing to do with caring about the slaves.

I was thinking that 4 million sudden extra bodies in the poor southern economy would have the same effect as high immigration, keeping the wages of the poorest workers suppressed and it would keep the South from developing economically, while the North would benefit from their ownership of Southern industries.

Does that sound about right or am I wrong on this?


TOPICS: Agriculture; Books/Literature; Chit/Chat; Education
KEYWORDS: 1619project; anotherstupidvanity; apologist; ibtz; idiot; liberalpropaganda; neoconfederate; vanity; whitesupremacist; worstopusever; zot
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To: rfreedom4u

“I’ve read that Britain was considering joining the war in support of the CSA. Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation which prevented them from joining because it would look as if Britain were supporting slavery.”

That would make sense. I’ve read where the Emancipation Proclamation was done to garner support to continue fighting the war due to the North’s concerns of such a bloody conflict. The proclamation was made almost two years after the start of the war.

I’m guessing their were all sorts of reasons to free the slaves. One of which was to free the slaves.


121 posted on 08/12/2020 4:50:39 PM PDT by 21twelve (Ever Vigilant. Never Fearful!)
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To: DAVEY CROCKETT

” you are not getting it as late as 1932 “
And even later. The South was poverty zone until WW2 brought us some money.
(Our WW1 vets helped some.)

It’s a horrible thing to be conquered in war.


122 posted on 08/12/2020 4:57:35 PM PDT by mrsmith (`(US MEDIA: " Every 'White' cop is a criminal! And all the 'non-white' criminals saints!")
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To: maxwellsmart_agent

Lincoln committed to the war and made up the reason.


123 posted on 08/12/2020 4:57:43 PM PDT by Blood of Tyrants (Where do you find the word "except" in the 2nd Amendment?)
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To: Rockingham
"And the North's view was that ultimately it was primarily the South's responsibility to reform and find ways to accommodate and freely and productively employ her liberated slaves."

What to do with freed former slaves was indeed a dividing issue as the north tried to install policies that would keep them in the south. The north did not want blacks moving north and taking their jobs nor did they want blacks living among them. They were more racist than the south in this regard. The south did not wish to be used in this manner nor should they have.

Both sides knew the problems involved with freeing the slaves and one side, the north, wanted to keep those problems in the south. The north had become rich running the slave trade and using tariffs and dock fees, etc. to chisel out 40 cents out of every dollar earned by the south. They made almost as much profit off of slavery without the headaches of having slaves. These are the kind, benevolent folks who won the war and have been urinating on the U.S. Constitution ever since.

124 posted on 08/12/2020 5:01:06 PM PDT by Uncle Sham
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To: Jonty30
Why did the North want to end slavery?

For the same reason they outlawed it in their own territories to begin with: Because it was evil.

I think we can agree that it had nothing to do with caring about the slaves.

Uh, no, I don't think we can.

I was thinking that 4 million sudden extra bodies in the poor southern economy would have the same effect as high immigration, keeping the wages of the poorest workers suppressed and it would keep the South from developing economically, while the North would benefit from their ownership of Southern industries.

Sudden extra bodies? Those bodies were already there. How much in wages were the slaves paid? The whole point of slavery was to have forced involuntary labor you didn't have to pay one cent to for their work. That obviously drives down and even eliminates the concept of a labor market and wages. Your comments literally contradict themselves.

And slavery made the South poorer and kept it from developing economically - greatly reduced commerce, stifled innovation. Slavery by definition is not free market and certainly don't provide for a labor market. The North vastly outproduced the South on everything including agriculture - innovation in technology and paid workers greatly increased economic activity and tax bases. One of the big reasons the North won the war. Common sense.

125 posted on 08/12/2020 5:02:54 PM PDT by Republican Wildcat
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To: Jonty30

“I think we can agree that it had nothing to do with caring about the slaves.“

.... You would be wrong in that assumption..”. There was a large Abolitionist/anti-slavery movement involving Members of the newly-formed Republican Party, including people like Abraham Lincoln. You might have heard of him. The other motivation was the fact that the South was able to hold undue Political sway in the Congress by way of representation based on slave ownership. A totally inequitable and unfair balance of political power Relying on slave ownership.


126 posted on 08/12/2020 5:05:32 PM PDT by semaj (Death to Traitors!)
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To: crz

Are you saying Northerners objected to only three out of five slaves being counted for apportionment purposes?


127 posted on 08/12/2020 5:14:39 PM PDT by Kickaha (See the glory...of the royal scam)
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To: Jonty30
It was Abraham Lincoln that sponsored the Corwin Amendment. If the Southern states had voted it would've passed as the 14th amendment. Corwin Amendment would've allowed slavery in the US.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corwin_Amendment
128 posted on 08/12/2020 5:15:01 PM PDT by Steve Van Doorn (*in my best Eric Cartman voice* 'I love you, guys')
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To: crz

I just love this simplistic rendition of American history. People today have a cartoon’s knowledge of the past, egged on by opportunists like D’Souza.


129 posted on 08/12/2020 5:17:07 PM PDT by Pelham ( Mary McCord, Sally Yates and Michael Atkinson all belong in prison.)
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To: 21twelve

The proclamation also only freed the slaves in the states that were in rebellion!


130 posted on 08/12/2020 5:24:09 PM PDT by rfreedom4u (The root word of vigilante is vigilant!)
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To: Kickaha

Yes and no. If they are human, they cant be slaves and should all be counted.

If they are not human, then none of them should have been counted.

And there it is isnt it?

The south. In their wisdom, shot themselves right smack in their own foot.


131 posted on 08/12/2020 5:24:14 PM PDT by crz
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To: Jonty30
Why did the north want to end slavery?

Because of the Second Great Awakening in the 19th century. The abolitionist movement was very much a church movement. It was a step up from the First Great Awakening 100 years prior in the 18th century in which the average white Joe was successful in freeing himself and close to but not quite to freeing the blacks. And even that was after a few generations of English speaking Protestants got the Bible translated into their common language, English, in the 17th century. And one of the reasons they pressed for it to happen was because in the 16th century the Anglos embraced the Protestant movement, which includes belief in Sola Scriptura (that all truth about God comes from the Bible).

Believe it or not, there was a time in which our culture was slowly advancing instead of rapidly declining. But now that we've embraced Darwin's Origin of Species: the Preservation of Favored Races, since the mid 20th century we've been in decline.

132 posted on 08/12/2020 5:25:51 PM PDT by Tell It Right (1st Thessalonians 5:21 -- Put everything to the test, hold fast to that which is true.)
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To: ConservativeDude

Thanks for some clear words on this.

Those interested should have a look at Thomas DiLorenzo’s assessment of Lincoln and the reasons behind the civil war.
this might be a good start:
https://youtu.be/nbFty9nZUac

Warning: those anchored in the slaveholder -> democrat trope may find his remarks unsettling.


133 posted on 08/12/2020 5:26:37 PM PDT by tsomer
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To: ModelBreaker
You do a terrible disservice to the very strong abolitionist movement in the pre-civil war North. Look it up on google.

Yeah. Google, they're very good on political issues.

Better you should get your hands on Northern Editorials on Secession. It's about 1100 pages split into two volumes. 495 editorials, selected from 190 different newspapers over a period of ten months beginning in the Fall of 1860, are included. I would estimate than not more than 15% concern themselves directly with slavery and/or Negroes. Of those at least several support Southern Slavery, and still some others are neutral.

A quote from the introduction:

The issues of the campaign [of 1860] were confused. The status of slavery in the territories, supposedly the dominant issue, was subject to the fortunes of the election but also the actions of the Supreme Court. {Emphasis added. I.e. Slavery per se was not the dominant issue.]
ML/NJ
134 posted on 08/12/2020 5:34:26 PM PDT by ml/nj
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To: Republican Wildcat
The whole point of slavery was to have forced involuntary labor you didn't have to pay one cent to for their work.

Southern slaves were paid. They were provided with food, clothing and shelter; perhaps meager, but not free to their owners. They were cared for when they were young and when they were old, again not free; and they were given Sundays off.

ML/NJ

135 posted on 08/12/2020 5:42:35 PM PDT by ml/nj
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To: crz
The number one reason politically? Three fifths of a person.

It's not three fifths of a person, bro. I can't let that one go because it iritates the hell out of me when someone says that. For purposes of the Representation and taxation they were including only three fifths of the slave population in calculating the total population of the state. It was done to minimize the political power of the Southern states because the number of Representatives in the House is determined by the population of the state. Read the damn language for yourself.

Representatives and direct Taxes shall be apportioned among the several States which may be included within this Union, according to their respective Numbers, which shall be determined by adding to the whole Number of free Persons, including those bound to Service for a Term of Years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three fifths of all other Persons.

136 posted on 08/12/2020 5:50:42 PM PDT by FroedrickVonFreepenstein
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To: Pelham

Might be simplistic but I will tell you what friend.

The democrat party always has, and always will be, a den of traitors and thieves, liars and perverts.

To defend the very notion of the support of their lying thieving perversion should be repugnant to any liberty loving citizen of this nation.

We have now entered another period of American history where the evil again rears its ugly head. And that head has democrat stamped all over it.


137 posted on 08/12/2020 5:52:20 PM PDT by crz
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To: Jonty30

By contrast, the Northern textile plant owners didn’t particularly want to see an end to slavery since that would disrupt cotton supplies. While there was undeniably a good bit of support for abolition in the North, it was certainly not a consensus position prior to the war. There were also many in the North who were perfectly fine with the status quo. Unskilled laborers, and immigrants in particular, probably would have been opposed to ending it — more potential competition for jobs. (Or just as likely they were too busy working 14 hour days to really care that much). Opinion in the North was most definitely split on the matter. Even amongst abolitionists, there were many who by today’s standards would be looked upon as blatant racists. Even Lincoln, for instance, initially wanted freed slaves to return to Africa and thought that blacks could never be socially equal to whites.

When the Southern states seceded, this still was the case. The Northern states went to war to preserve the union, not to end slavery. Lincoln personally opposed slavery but also believed he had no authority to end it. Famously, he said that (paraphrasing) he would do whatever he needed to do regarding slavery if it helped restore the Union.

The Emancipation Proclamation was the first step toward the transformation of the war into a fight to end slavery. Ironically, as a practical matter, it freed exactly zero slaves. It excluded slaves in the border states and those in areas of the Confederacy under Federal control at the time. It did however change the focus of the war. Probably though had Lincoln lived, there may not have been an end to slavery even upon the South’s defeat. Lincoln favored relatively mild terms for readmission of the Southern states. Formation of new state governments and 10% of the population taking a loyalty oath to the US were his intended requirements.

We’ll never know, of course, how it would have played out in that scenario. Lincoln was assassinated and the popular opinion changed sharply. The assassination was seen not as an isolated act of a small conspiracy, but as a last gasp attempt by the Confederacy to preserve its lost cause. The popular opinion in the North changed to the notion that the seceding states needed to be punished harshly. Not only was slavery ended as a result, but Sourhern states were militarily occupied and the Reconstruction program begun to further punish the South by promoting legal equality for freed blacks.

The sad irony of the whole thing is that the South seceded from the union to preserve slavery, but that very act of secession undoubtedly hastened the end of slavery. Without secession and the ensuing war, who knows how long it might have lasted.


138 posted on 08/12/2020 5:53:27 PM PDT by stremba
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To: FroedrickVonFreepenstein

Better get to the democrat message boards.
BRO!


139 posted on 08/12/2020 5:53:40 PM PDT by crz
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To: Jonty30
I don't think we can agree. There were other reasons than slavery, but the concept of slavery was repulsive to a great many people, even many slave-owning Southeners. The importation of slaves was made illegal early in our history. Read the discussion about the slave-ship, La Amistad.
140 posted on 08/12/2020 6:00:47 PM PDT by Hiddigeigei ("Talk sense to a fool and he calls you foolish," said Dionysus - Euripides)
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