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]

The numbers in all three states -- Kentucky, Missouri & Maryland -- were no less than two to one Unionists, and often much more.

Before or after the troops showed up?

Southern states voted to abolish slavery *after* Troops seized them.

The Maryland state legislature voted massively (53-13) AGAINST secession **before** Confederates formally declared war on the United States.

Once again, *AFTER* the troops showed up and arrested everyone Lincoln's people thought might vote otherwise.

Not how the "will of the people" is supposed to work.

[DiogenesLamp]

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.

I get Anderson's actions. He did everything his honor demanded he do. I don't get Porter's actions, unless he was told to do what he did by Lincoln.

If he wasn't, he was a dangerous loose cannon.

[DiogenesLamp]

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.

Orders to deliberately start a war? Wouldn't the military men of that time been duty bound to not only object, but to let it be known the President was deliberately starting a war?

Your argument does not dispel the notion that Porter was acting on confidential orders to trigger a war.

[Bull Snipe]

Show me the secret orders

[DiogenesLamp]

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.

I guess that depends on where the HQ was, but this was in early morning, probably during dead silence. I would bet you can hear a cannon shot from 7-8 miles away in the dead of night. Certainly the people on the shore surrounding the entrance should have done.

[BroJoeK]

DiogenesLamp: "Second Point. Slavery was not going to "expand." There was no place where plantation slavery could go to add new cotton crops beyond where it already existed."

And yet, in the 1850s slavery was lawful in several western territories, including Kansas, Oklahoma, New Mexico/Arizona, Nebraska & Utah.
How many of those were admitted as "slave states" would effect the voting powers of Democrats in Washington, DC.

DiogenesLamp: "No. Without duress, it was impossible to reach the required 3/4ths majority to pass the 13th amendment.
All the Southern states which voted for it were simply puppets of the DC government, and they were voting as they were ordered to do instead of espousing the actual will of the people."

Here's the real truth: there was no "duress" or "coersion" because all of those who had declared themselves no longer US citizens were not permitted to vote to elect representatives to ratify the 13th, 14th & 15th Amendments.
A few years later, when those self-declared Confederates were again permitted to vote, they elected Democrats who effectively nullified those amendments for most of the next 100 years.

[the OlLine Rebel]

I admire many things about Jackson, and some, not.

[DiogenesLamp]

Link or you stink!

Didn't I already give you a link to the Star of the West incident? Are you wanting a link to the fact that Lincoln sent warships?

I'll have to look one up, but it will have to wait. I am going through the messages replying to them.

I would like to see a link about your take of Charleston harbor. Never heard that one before.

What part?

[DiogenesLamp]

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.

What part can you not find?

[DiogenesLamp]

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.

Agree. Vital industries should be kept domestic. It's not about "fair" in trade when certain items are essential for a nation to survive.

Do you know that 80% of our pharmaceuticals come from China? How insane is that?

I have long been disgusted about how much we buy from communist China.

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.

Yup.

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.

Yup.

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.

People had more common sense back then. They had to. Stupid foolish people tended not to survive.

[DiogenesLamp]

Republicans were indeed the anti-slavery party -- they wanted to abolish slavery in US territories, ...

Why? No one will like a truthful answer to this question.

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.

And again, Why? Not for the reasons most people have been led to believe.

Lincoln was not willing to break what he understood the laws to be, to abolish slavery.

But he did. No due process and continued confiscation after the war. Also the intimidation of states to force them to vote for an amendment they did not want.

[DiogenesLamp]

Good post. Exactly right.

[BroJoeK]

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

DiogenesLamp: "Not quite. He simply wasn't as willing to get so many people killed as was Lincoln."

No, in fact the British put relatively as much effort into their war effort as the Union put into the Civil War.
The difference was that the British war effort was spread over a much larger battlefield -- from India to the Caribbean, and against several countries allied to Americans, including the French, Spanish and Dutch.

And in 1861 many Confederates realized they needed foreign allies to win independence.
But in 1861 no foreign powers were willing to support a nation dedicated to the proposition that:

"Its foundations are laid, its cornerstone rests upon the great truth, that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery—subordination to the superior race—is his natural condition.
This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth.[3]"

So, the Civil War was lost by Confederates before it even began.

[DiogenesLamp]

The Fifth Amendment did not apply to people in rebellion, or otherwise at war, against the United States.

Who's to say who's in Rebellion? Earlier in the thread someone posted about Mayland. They wanted nothing to do with secession, but Union forces attacked them anyway. So did Confederate forces.

They were not in "rebellion" and were denied due process.

Does declaring a region in "rebellion" allow you to kill anyone you find in that region without trial? Is it the land that is in rebellion, or is it individuals who are in rebellion?

Collective punishments are wrong.

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]"

Now you are engaging in hair splitting sophistry. The war was over when Lee Surrendered. Yes, elements fought in Texas later, but word had not yet reached them. This was like the Battle of New Orleans happening long after the war had concluded.

Once the states had stopped resisting, the war was done, and there was no further legal authority allowing them to do what they did.

[DiogenesLamp]

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?

"Keep giving us 60% of all your money." *THAT* is what they were telling them to do.

[odawg]

“The whole issue was & is bogus Democrat propaganda!”

No it is not. Lincoln referenced the government’s loss of revenue were the Southern states to secede.

[DiogenesLamp]

Federal tariff taxes covered imports, whether they were purchased by Northerners, Westerners or Southerners, those tariff rates were the same for every region.

Which is exactly why the South wanted out. With a tariff rate of 13%, much traffic would have avoided New York and headed for Charleston.

Those tariffs were paid in the city where imports landed and were warehoused, and the vast majority went to New York City.

This is absolutely correct. They controlled the trade both ways.

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.

Because protectionist policies of the US made it uneconomical to buy mundane products from Europe. That would have changed with independence.

So 99% of Southerners in 1860 never saw or directly paid a Federal tariff.

But 60% of their earnings were taken before they ever saw them. That's why most of them never "directly paid a Federal Tax." New York and Washington DC were working hand in glove to make certain they got their cut before the money ever reached the people who produced it.

Same corrupt dynamic going on with New York and DC today.

[DiogenesLamp]

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

And once again, *you* don't get to decide what is necessary for other people. *They* get to decide what they consider necessary.

The British government didn't regard any of the colonists complaints as "necessary." Canadian Brits certainly didn't agree with the Colonists, and they were under the same conditions.

[DiogenesLamp]

Show me the secret orders

If they existed, they were never released. They may have been verbal, but Porter certainly acted like he had a mandate to start a war.

He literally came into the harbor with the intent of attacking the Confederates on the shore, and was only stopped by Meigs putting his own ship in the way.

Porter even said he felt like ramming Meigs ship and running it down.

If Meigs hadn't been there, there is no question Porter would have started the Civil War in Pensacola.

[DiogenesLamp]

And yet, in the 1850s slavery was lawful in several western territories, including Kansas, Oklahoma, New Mexico/Arizona, Nebraska & Utah.

And if you look up the Wikipedia entry on "New Mexico Territory" (which is mostly the area you are talking about.)You will discover it says that there were less than a dozen slaves in the entire region.

Millions in the cotton growing regions, yet less than a dozen in the entire region between Texas and California?

It wasn't going to expand.

How many of those were admitted as "slave states" would effect the voting powers of Democrats in Washington, DC.

And *THAT* was the real issue. The worries of all those anti-slave state legislators was that they would lose power in DC, not that there would actually be people forced to work without pay in the territories.

Even today, the liberals are constantly trying to increase their power and stop conservatives from having power. This is the essential fight, and the issue is never the real issue. The issue is always power, because Northeastern Liberals make a lot of money from government policy, and they have been since Alexander Hamilton walked the earth.

Here's the real truth: there was no "duress" or "coersion" because all of those who had declared themselves no longer US citizens were not permitted to vote to elect representatives to ratify the 13th, 14th & 15th Amendments.

Lincoln said they never left. It was the entire legal justification for his invasion, so you can't call them "citizens" when you want them to vote for something you want, and "non citizens" when you want to attack them.

You don't get to revoke people's citizenship because you don't agree with them politically.