The REAL cause of the Civil War.

Vanity | 1957 | Ayn Rand

[DiogenesLamp]

For some time I have wondered how to explain the cause of the Civil War in simple terms that are easy to understand. I now see that Ayn Rand did it years ago. Laws passed by a Northern controlled Congress routed all the money produced by the South into Northern "elite" pockets.

[DiogenesLamp]

During the War, Kentucky provided 44 infantry regiments, 17 cavalry regiments and 5 artillery batteries to the Union Army. The state provided 9 infantry regiment, 16 cavalry regiments and 8 artillery batteries to the Confederate Army

I have long observed that you are far more into the military part of the war than I ever was. I have only been interested in the cause of the war, the politics of it, and the social dynamics.

About the fighting I have never had much interest. It is not a debate of principles or ideas at that point.

[Bull Snipe]

He was also engaged in a major war with France. A far more powerful opponent then the Colonies. He didn’t seem to have an issue getting lots of soldiers and sailors killed by the French.

[jmacusa]

The North did not ‘’invade’’ the South. The South opened fire on Ft. Sumter. The South Did invade Maryland in 1863 and then moved into Pennsylvania.

Face it Reb, you’re arguing a negative.

[BroJoeK]

DiogenesLamp: "Well especially after the Union troops showed up and told them how they ought to think. Same thing in Missouri.
Even so, it's my understanding that Kentucky had a lot of men go fight for the Confederacy."

The numbers in all three states -- Kentucky, Missouri & Maryland -- were no less than two to one Unionists, and often much more.
Union troops in Kentucky only arrived **after** Confederates invaded, and pro-Confederates had been massively voted out of office by Kentucky voters.

The Maryland state legislature voted massively (53-13) AGAINST secession **before** Confederates formally declared war on the United States. After Confederates declared war, then any pro-Confederate actions became subject to the US Constitution's definition of treason.

Similarly, in Missouri, their state convention voted massively (99-1 iirc) AGAINST secession, and Missourians supported the Union cause by several to one during the war.

[Bull Snipe]

To an extent that is true.
Sometimes a knowledge of how the armed services functioned is useful in understanding events that led to war, such as Porter’s actions at Pensacola or Andersons action at Charleston.

[Bull Snipe]

Judging by Porters actions, he either exceeded them greatly in his efforts to antagonize the Confederates (shooting at their ships) or we haven’t seen all of his orders.

IMO Porter’s actions at Pensacola are driven by Porter’s ambitions. If he had “secret” orders from the President of the United States, he would have not been the least bit reluctant to show them to Meigs when he was prevented from entering Pensacola harbor.

[Bull Snipe]

The action took place 7-8 miles off the entrance to Charleston harbor. Doubt that Beauregard’s HQ could hear a cannon shot at that distance.

[GranTorino]

Link or you stink!
You can’t make up your own history, even if you have no dog in the fight.
There were many factual causes of the war. No need to make any up.
The south had as much propaganda as the North. Did you know the South started a counterfeit currency campaign years before the war started? Why would they do this if they were going to peacefully seced from the Union?
The north was about keeping the Union and could care less about slavery until they realized it could be used as a tool to hurt the south. There were many pro Union people left stranded in the southern states to try and rescue. Meanwhile, most Southerners who had to fight were doing so to protect themselves and families, not for political reasons.
Northerners fought to keep our country United.
It doesn’t matter who fired first. It would of happened anyway.
I would like to see a link about your take of Charleston harbor. Never heard that one before. Northern suppression couldn’t hide eye witness accounts.

[GranTorino]

Sorry to make you type so much as I already know 90% of what you typed. I just can’t find the 10% that you insist is written history.

[Albion Wilde]

Texas v. White, 1869 declared secession unconstitutional.

We just went through a situation where a so-called "constitutional right" was found invalid at the SCOTUS level. A lot of laws have been passed lately to take elections out of the hands of the people, and abridge many other constitutional rights. Should we fail to continue upholding the intentions of the Founders because someone passed a law of political intentions?

Surely the governments of the 1860s were aware of the threat of secession, which (as has been explained many times upthread) was more about the North's financial exploitation of the South than any other consideration. Perhaps the legislators of the late 1860s thought a "law" would stop secession from happening, the same way today's officials think "gun-free zone" laws stop shootings.

[BroJoeK]

DiogenesLamp: "I find myself constantly wrestling with this idea.
Which Americans get put first? The ones buying or the ones selling?...
...Protectionism made a sort of sense in the 19th century because the Nation was trying to grow it's industry and economy, but it still favored American sellers over American buyers."

Surely, FRiend, if the last few years have taught us anything, it's the extreme danger of making America dependent on countries which loathe & despise us -- whether those be raw materials exporters (i.e., oil, rare earths), hi-tech chip manufacturers or pharmaceuticals.
Do you know that 80% of our pharmaceuticals come from China?
How insane is that?

So the whole Democrat idea of exporting America's manufacturing base to other countries, putting middle class Americans out of work so the upper classes can make gazillions of dollars on imports -- it's just nuts, and why any rational person would want that is defies any explanation I can see.

Of course, some international trade is good & necessary, especially with friendly, like-minded countries. But making ourselves dependent on our enemies is just as wrong as can be.

In 1860 about half of US imports were raw materials for US manufacturers (i.e., iron, wool, even cotton), the other half were bulk commodities the US could not produce (i.e., brown sugar, coffee, tea). There was nothing we imported that we could not, if necessary, do without.

Unlike today.

[BroJoeK]

HandyDandy: "You keep mentioning the proposed Corwin Amendment."

DiogenesLamp: "I keep mentioning it because it proves the Federalists had no intent of abolishing slavery.
Their intent was all about control, not human rights."

"Federalists"? Are you even in the right century?
Republicans were a different, though successor, party.
Republicans were indeed the anti-slavery party -- they wanted to abolish slavery in US territories, they supported abolition in Northern states and in international imports of slaves.
Most Republicans in 1860 had no intention of abolishing slavery where it was already lawful, but they did not want to see it expanded anywhere and wanted it abolished wherever possible.

Civil War vastly expanded the range of "wherever possible" and so Republicans did what they legally could, i.e., "contraband of war".

DiogenesLamp: "I think Lincoln genuinely abhorred slavery, but not enough to get rid of it unless it was politically beneficial to him."

Lincoln was not willing to break what he understood the laws to be, to abolish slavery.
But anywhere he could legally do so -- i.e., in Washington, DC, he did.

[Albion Wilde]

the first successful cotton harvesting machine did not come about until the late 1920s.

So it was an economic pincer effect -- the south was defamed for having a slavery economy; but the north was profiting from the south's products and taking more money from the south than fair -- rather like the way the U.S. has been paying for NATO or the UN greatly more than the other nations who expect to benefit by them.

If the south could have retained more of the profit from their crops, they may have been able to free or indenture their enslaved workers, paying, housing and feeding them for the season. Instead, southern agriproducers were being gouged by northern profiteers whose preachers and editors grabbed the moral high ground, the same way today's power-thieves yell "racist!" whenever they don't get their way.

We can't go back and do it again. But the north can stop moral preening over the history of U.S. slavery. The north contributed greatly to the racism that characterized the post-CW era, but had fewer black residents with which to live alongside. The vast majority of blacks continued to live in the south until the late middle of the last century when the autoworks and government agencies started to siphon black workers into the northern cities. Whereupon northerners passed red line real estate laws, segregation schemes and all kinds of mess that helped us get to where we are today -- a large subculture of angry, lawless, fatherless people constantly spoiling for a fight. But all the racism is blamed on the south.

[BroJoeK]

DiogenesLamp: "Fifth amendment doesn't allow that. Congress can make no law overriding the Constitution."

The Fifth Amendment did not apply to people in rebellion, or otherwise at war, against the United States.
That's why the Emancipation Proclamation covered only those states & regions which were at war against the USA.

DiogenesLamp: "But even saying you could, they were still freeing slaves after the war was over.
Where was their authority to do that once the "rebellion" was quashed?"

And the Civil War was declared officially "over" by whom, on what date?

"Legally, the war did not end until August 20, 1866, when President Andrew Johnson issued a proclamation that declared "that the said insurrection is at an end and that peace, order, tranquillity, and civil authority now exist in and throughout the whole of the United States of America."[297][298]"

[x]

Don't be obtuse.

Somebody as resistant to evidence as you are shouldn't use words like that. The argument was that the slave states wanted to leave because they didn't want Northerners telling them what to do. What was it that Northerners were telling them to do? Get rid of slavery. It doesn't matter if it was only a minority of Northerners telling them to do that. Their perception was that the North wanted to get rid of slavery, a fundament of their economy and society. All the rest was just excuses to cover for the real fear.

[BroJoeK]

odawg: "It has been a while since college, a little hazy, but the Northerners had some deal whereby the Southerners had to pay some kind of tax to the Federal government and it was used by the Northern states.
In fact, Lincoln mentioned it as reason not to negotiate with the Southerners.
It was one of the causes of the South leaving."

Theodore R.: "The tariffs hurt the South but enriched the North."

Total rubbish!
Federal tariff taxes covered imports, whether they were purchased by Northerners, Westerners or Southerners, those tariff rates were the same for every region.
Those tariffs were paid in the city where imports landed and were warehoused, and the vast majority went to New York City.
The entire South, including New Orleans, paid well under 10% of Federal import tariffs.

Of course, some of the goods landed in New York did eventually ship to Southern customers, but the total was no more than 15% of all imports. All the rest went to customers in the North, East and West.

But... but... didn't Southern exports, especially cotton, "pay for" all those imports which went to Northern customers?
Sure, but the vast wealth earned by Southern slavocrats was not spent on luxury imports from abroad but rather on mundane products manufactured in the North.

So 99% of Southerners in 1860 never saw or directly paid a Federal tariff.
The whole issue was & is bogus Democrat propaganda!

[BroJoeK]

Pelham: "The British North American Colonies ‘unilaterally left’ 90 years earlier.
King George reacted the same way that Lincoln did."

Complete rubbish!
In fact, there was a vast difference between the 1776 Declaration of Independence and 1861 Declarations of Secession.
First & foremost, by July 1776 the British King & Parliament had already effectively declared war against the colonies and had been waging war for well over a year, hence the Declaration's indictment:

"He has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people."

Nothing remotely resembling such necessary conditions existed in 1860 when Southern Fire Eaters began organizing to declare secession at pleasure.

[BroJoeK]

Bruce Campbells Chin: "There wasn’t yet a majority for abolition, but the lines had definitely shifted to the point where there was no longer an acceptable middle ground."

In 1860 the "middle ground" for Republicans was: there will be no expansion of slavery, period, not into western territories nor into Northern states via SCOTUS Dred Scott type rulings. Fugitive slaves were the responsibility of Federal government, which could compel (and pay) local authorities to comply with Federal laws.

Southern slavocrats saw this "middle ground" as an existential threat to their "way of life" and reacted accordingly.

[DiogenesLamp]

He was also engaged in a major war with France. A far more powerful opponent then the Colonies. He didn’t seem to have an issue getting lots of soldiers and sailors killed by the French.

People take actual threats very seriously. The colonies were never a threat to Britain.

[DiogenesLamp]

The North did not ‘’invade’’ the South. The South opened fire on Ft. Sumter.

*After* Lincoln launched a naval attack against them. Till the ships showed up, all the negotiations were going to result in a peaceful settlement with Anderson evacuating the fort.

Stop trying to cover up the truth.