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.

[BroJoeK]

higgmeister: "So it was fine for our Original Thirteen Colonies to release themselves from the oppressive British government but when the Federal Union became oppressive, it's fair game to kill the treasonous "Rebs.""

jmacusa: "A revolution against a monarchy an ocean away is entirely different from armed , illegal secession against a duly and freely elected government put in office in a free and open election Reb."

Right, and it's important to remember that more than a year before the American Declaration on July 4, 1776, the Brits had already effectively declared war and begun waging war against Americans.
That was the reason for the 1776 Declaration saying, among other items:

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

Nothing remotely resembling such necessary conditions for "secession" existed in 1860 when Southern Fire Eaters began organizing to declare secession, Confederacy and eventually war on the United States.
Nor did anything exist resembling the mutual consent achieved by our Founders 1788 -- in "seceding" from the old Articles of Confederation to their new Constitution.

So, Confederates first seceded at pleasure and then provoked, started & formally declared war against the United States (May 6, 1861).
Confederates hoped for & expected aid from European allies, just as 1776 revolutionaries received.
But Europeans could not stomach supporting the Southern slavocracy, and so the Confederacy was defeated militarily, just as our 1776 Revolutionaries would have been, without major help from such countries as France, Spain and the Netherlands, among others.

[BroJoeK]

higgmeister: "The comparison is exactly the same circumstance because secession was not illegal, it was an understood right."

Our Founders believed in a "right of secession" under two, but only two conditions:

1. Secession from necessity as existed in 1776, more than a year after the Brits had, in effect, declared war and begun waging war against Americans.

2. Secession by mutual consent as existed in 1788 when the colonies all voted to "secede" from the old Articles of Confederation to their new Constitution.

Neither condition existed in 1860 and so Southern Fire Eaters declared secession at pleasure, which our Founders would consider nothing more than rebellion & treason.
No Founder ever supported such actions, and all opposed them, for examples:

1. Shay's Rebellion -- 1786, lead to the new Constitutional Convention of 1787.

2. Whiskey Rebellion -- under Pres. Washington, who raised up a large army, to be lead by Virginia's Light Horse Harry Lee, to suppress the rebels in Western PA.

3. Alien & Sedition Acts -- aimed at potential French sympathizers under Pres. Adams during the Quazi War against France.

4. Former VP Aaron Burr's attempted secession of Louisiana, which lead to Pres. Jefferson hunting Burr down, arresting and trying him for treason.

5. The New England Hartford Convention -- threatened secession under Pres. Monroe, leading Monroe to move troops to invade New England, if necessary.

So, bottom line: our Founders well understood unjustified secession and rebellion and all opposed it.

[BroJoeK]

jmacusa: "The bastards opened fire on Ft. Sumter ..."

DiogenesLamp: "Because Lincoln sent a fleet of warships to attack them. Tell the whole truth."

The whole truth is, it didn't matter to Jefferson Davis if Lincoln sent only a rowboat, manned by missionaries, Davis would demand Fort Sumter's surrender and "reduce" it if Major Anderson refused:

"It is scarcely to be doubted that for political reasons the U.S. govt. will avoid making an attack so long as the hope of retaining the border states remains.
There would be to us an advantage in so placing them that an attack by them would be a necessity, but when we are ready to relieve our territory and jurisdiction of the presence of a foreign garrison that advantage is overbalanced by other considerations."
[Jefferson Davis to Braxton Bragg, 3 Apr 1861]

Those "other considerations" included prominently, Virginia's promise to secede & join the Confederacy:

"Virginian Roger Pryor, who, speaking to a Charleston audience on April 10, 1861, said,
'But I assure you that just as certain as tomorrow's sun will rise upon us, just so certain will Virginia be a member of the Southern Confederacy; and I will tell your Governor what will put her in the Southern Confederacy in less than an hour by Shrewsbury clock. Strike a blow!'

[W. A. Swanberg, _First Blood: The Story of Fort Sumter,_ p. 289]"

And, just in case Davis couldn't get war started at Fort Sumter, he had a backup plan for Fort Pickens at Pensacola, Florida:

"The case of Pensacola then is reduced [to] the more palpable elements of a military problem and your measures may without disturbing views be directed to the capture of Fort Pickens and the defence of the harbor. You will soon have I hope a force sufficient to occupy all the points necessary for that end. As many additional troops as may be required can be promptly furnished."
[Jefferson Davis to Braxton Bragg, 3 Apr 1861]"

[BroJoeK]

DiogenesLamp: "Not illegal. Specifically authorized by the Declaration of Independence which declares it a right given by God.
The right to Independence is a human right."

And from the same provenance as an unlimited "right" to abortion -- meaning no Founder ever proposed or supported such an unlimited "right".
Our 1776 Declaration of Independence authorizes no unlimited "right of secession".

What our Founders did support & practice was a "right" to "secede" under two, but only two conditions:

1. From necessity as in 1776 and

2. By mutual consent as in 1788.

Any other form of "secession" they considered rebellion & treason and strongly opposed them.

[Lazamataz]

I *KNEW* this thread was gonna blow up when I saw the title!

The REAL cause of the Civil War

Someday I'm going to write a thread titled

HEY! ALL YOU CIVIL WAR DEBATERS! ARGUE HERE!

Guarenteed it makes it to over 1000 posts. LOL

[GranTorino]

Carrying troops and being armed are two different things.
They call those transports.

[BroJoeK]

Bull Snipe: "The census every ten years lists the agricultural outputs of the States. So it is easy to see how much wheat is grown in Indiana, how much tobacco in Virginia and how much cotton in Alabama."

higgmeister: "As you found those records and I couldn't please state how much Indiana wheat was exported to other nations.
That was the question related to trade strictures."

I do have numbers on US exports at the time, by region, not by state.
All US grain exports are called "Western Products", meaning from the US Midwest.
All grain products, including wheat, flour, corn, rye, oats & bread totaled:

1. In 1860 -- $25 million
2. In 1861 -- $72 million

These numbers mean that combined Midwestern grain exports were greater than the $19 million in tobacco exports in 1860; and, in 1861 Midwestern grain exports exceeded cotton exports by more than double.

On the question of tobacco, I believe the vast majority of tobacco in 1860 was grown in Union, not Confederate, states, because in 1861, when Confederate exports were eliminated from Union numbers, tobacco exports only fell from $19 million to $17 million.
So Confederate state tobacco accounted for only 10% of US tobacco exports.

[GranTorino]

“The Harriot Lane immediately fired on the Nashville.” is part of the 10% I couldn’t find.
I know Buchanan sent the ships. And the reason.
The published reason for Lincoln invading the South was to rescue the Union families that were stuck in rebel territory. At least that is why troops were sent into Western Virginia at the outset of the war.
Ft Sumter was still considered federal property.
Anderson did not maliciously sneak there.
He took his men to Sumter for their own safty. They were getting ready to be overrun by a mob.

[BroJoeK]

DiogenesLamp: "It [secession] was so very *NOT* illegal, that New York, Virginia, and Rhode Island all claimed a right to secede in their own ratification statements.
None of the framers said "You can't do that. It's illegal."
They all simply accepted those state's ratifications and did not see a conflict."

Every Founders' expression of a "right to secede" was couched within the term "necessary" or, as Virginians said, powers "may be resumed by them whensoever the same shall be perverted to their injury or oppression...".

"Injury or oppression" as spelled out in, for example, our 1776 Declaration of Independence.
No Founder ever proposed or supported an unlimited "right of secession" at pleasure.

[GranTorino]

Many southerners will tell you it is only half-time.

[GranTorino]

Nice post explaining leaving an oppressive government.

[Lower Deck]

Many southerners will tell you it is only half-time.

South Postpones Rising Again For Yet Another Year

[GranTorino]

Thank you for staying so civil throughout this “civil” thread.

[BroJoeK]

livius: "Many people in the Union Army, btw, weren’t even Northerners, but Irish or other immigrants hired off the docks by wealthy people to take their places in the draft."

The usual number for total Union Army is around 2.1 million men.
Of those, roughly 25% were foreign born =~525,000.
Foreign born troops came primarily from Germany, Ireland & Britain.
Another 200,000 were Union colored troops = about 200 regiments.
Around 150,000 Union troops were conscripts.

The usual number for total Confederate Army is around 1.0 million men.
Of those no more than 5% were foreign born = ~50,000.
There were no Confederate colored regiments, but the numbers of slaves serving Confederate armies in non-combat roles could easily match the 200,000 Union colored troops.
Around 120,000 Confederate troops were conscripts.

[BroJoeK]

livius: "Northern people didn’t particularly hate blacks,..."

DiogenesLamp: "To the contrary. They hated black people with a passion bordering on insanity."

You always have to translate DiogenesLamp's words from Democrat-speak to truthful English.
What DiogenesLamp truly means by those words is: "I, DiogenesLamp hate black people with a passion bordering on insanity, but since I'm a Democrat and Democrats always lie about such things, I am projecting my own hatreds onto Republicans that I don't know, never met, have no understanding of who or what they are, but who just must, must be evil, evil because otherwise who could I project my own wickedness onto?"

With Democrats it's always the lie, and the bigger the lie, the better.

[jeffersondem]

“I'm a conservative, an American through and through.”

Perhaps aspirationally.

But you reject the theory in the Declaration of Independence.

And you reject the provisions of the Constitution.

[x]

Yes, the way that Diogenes insists on things like that does "border on insanity." It's hard for him to admit that things were more complicated than he imagines. Some Northerners did hate Blacks. Some pitied them. Some sympathized with them and helped them. Many of them just didn't think of them much al all. Even in states that "officially" forbade African-American settlement, free blacks lived without much trouble from their neighbors.

"Racism" as a concept didn't really exist back then. Everybody in those days was by our standards somewhat racist. But there was a way in which they weren't so different from today. Zoning regulations keep certain types of people from living in certain neighborhoods. Does that mean people living there hate the people they don't want to live with? Sometimes, but mostly not, I think. It was more blatantly a matter of race in those days, but it wasn't necessarily hatred.

[DiogenesLamp]

You don’t pay attention to detail. The Navigation Act applied to shipping between US ports, so Southerners could send cotton to Europe on whatever ships they wanted.

Am very much aware of that. Several years ago was involved in a discussion with someone who said their family was involved in the shipping business in the Northeast, and they explained how the whole thing worked. I think it may have been rust bucket.

Disallowing ships to go from port to port made it uneconomical for an oceangoing vessel because they could only take on a full cargo at ports like New Orleans. The packet shipping system which was ran by New York, would move from port to port acquiring enough cargo which they would then deliver to an ocean crossing vessel. Alternatively it could be an ocean crossing vessel going from port to port collecting cargo, though my reading indicates the packet system was the dominant method.

With foreign ships unable to do this, it wasn't cost effective to go anywhere but New Orleans, and of course all those contracts were bought up by New York interests.

Indeed most cotton that went overseas did go out through Southern ports.

Through New Orleans mostly. New Orleans was the primary shipping hub for all cotton produced anywhere near the Mississippi river, which was a vast area.

All of it was controlled by New York.

[Albion Wilde]

No one is on here worshipping southern Democrats, big shot. The majority of white people in the south both before and after the CW were as cowed by whomever was in power just as most of us are today by our evil government—they were poor-to-middling sharecroppers, local tradespeople or farmers. Planters who owned slaves were a very small percentage of the population, just as today’s majority of Americans are not Silicon Valley titans and do not approve of the tech titans’ anti-Americanism; but they continue to use computers, just as the southerners had to put up with an inherited slave system and its aftermath, taking all the blame for the exploitation of its products by the north. Whites as well as blacks chopped cotton and ate what northerners consider the leftover parts of the hog.

I have an Ivy grad degree, and read history well before the Great Revision as well as ever after, and have lived for extended periods in both the north and the south, so you can stop your pissing contest.

My question is, what’s in it for you to feel so superior to people whose land was invaded and despoiled, and who were subjected to what amounts to an occupation for the next century? Is is the liberal moral preening over your captive audience of sophomores?

[BroJoeK]

DiogenesLamp: "Wrong assumption right off the bat.
Grossly overpriced goods and services that were made to appear cheaper than imports because of Washington DC policies favoring the North."

That's a wrong assumption right off the bat.
There was/is nothing "overpriced" about American goods produced in a free market.
US import tariffs protected all American manufacturers, and their workers, whether Northern, Eastern, Western or Southern.

DiogenesLamp: "Remember American Buyers versus American Sellers?
The Government was favoring the sellers... who also were wealthy and had great influence in Washington DC and the "elite" social circles.
Same then as today."

First off, in 1860 there were far more of wealthy Southern planters than there were of wealthy Northern industrialists.
Second, by 1860 those wealthy Southern planters (slavocrats) had ruled over Washington, DC, for nearly the entire 60 years, since the election Jefferson's Democrats in 1800.
Third, who 1860 Republicans favored & protected were their middle-class industrial worker voters.

DiogenesLamp: "And the tariff money obtained by people buying European goods was also sown right back into the North."

And that is yet another Southern Democrat Big Lie.
Of course, it's true, if you live in, say, South Carolina or Georgia and consider everywhere north of you to be "The North".
but for everyone else, that's just another typical Democrat Big Lie.

DiogenesLamp: "Funny how profit drives everything. As i've said before, if they could have figured out a way to make a profit off of slavery, the Northern states would have kept it.
They didn't seem to realize it was a great moral crises until it was no longer profitable.
And people wonder why i'm so cynical."

Naw... you're not "cynical", you're just a Democrat and Democrats always lie about everything, it's what you do to get through life.

The real truth is, whether slavery was "profitable" or not, Northern states began abolishing slavery within just a few years of the 1776 Declaration.
By 1860 there were only a handful of old-time "servants" among 22 million Northern whites & freedmen.

As for Americans' "great moral crisis" over slavery, that began at roughly the same time as Great Britain & other European powers abolished slavery in their own empires.
The "moral crisis" began in our churches, and included economic & political elements.

DiogenesLamp: "We are still financing slavery in China today!"

Democrats! It's always the Democrats. Don't be like them!