COLLEGE STUDENT REACTS | Facts About Slavery Never Mentioned In School

COLLEGE STUDENT REACTS | Facts About Slavery Never Mentioned In School | Thomas Sowell

You are both partially right. The war was about slavery in large part; but it was not solely about slavery; it was also largely about economics and politics. It’s fair to say that the war was about both the ethics and the practicality of slavery, and whether it would sustain or undermine our Constitutional republic. Less than a century after our unprecedented Revolution, the developing American experiment was fragile.

There are parallels to today’s exploitation of illegal immigration and foreign proxy wars enabled by the corrupted government and the taxes extracted from all of us. Whether individual citizens agree with these conditions or not, we are coerced to support them economically. Our consciences are insultated because for the time being, our nation is wealthier, so that we don’t regard our double standards quite as guiltfully as we regard 19th century American chattel slavery—but future generations may not agree.

However, as regards the CW—no one reason, but rather a complex stew of human impulses from best to worst drove both the North and the South into war.

Once it broke out, decent people in both regions were forced to take sides with the “least worse” side, according to their situation (like our presidential elections today). The poor, as always, have the narrowest range of choices. Many ended up cannon fodder, or widows and orphans.

Bellicose opponents always try to paint the other side with the worst accusations, but the side that “won” the war gets to write the history books, and have their narratives regarded as more true. Eventually, cooler heads evaluate a wider range of factors.

But not always.

One reason you never heard of it is because the way DiogenesLamp tells it, it's all lies.

The amendment speaks for itself.

"No amendment shall be made to the Constitution which will authorize or give to Congress power to abolish or interfere, within any State, with the domestic institutions thereof, including that of persons held to labor or service by the laws of said State."

Your attempt to present it differently is the lie.

On great occasions, people tend to say what they are thinking because they want to create a clear record for posterity. That was so for the Confederate Articles of Secession, which were modeled on the Declaration of Independence. And those documents and the speeches and opinion articles by secession advocates make abundantly clear that preserving slavery was the reason for secession.

As for the claimed "right" to secede, it fails basic law and logic in that it supposed the Constitution was a contract subject to an unwritten right to secede based on the election of Lincoln because he was against slavery. Yet the contract analogy fails because Lincoln had not acted against slavery, so there was no breach of contract that justified secession as a remedy. Of course, to the degree that the Constitution was a contract, entry into it was a one time thing, not a gate that could be opened or closed as circumstances dictated.

No serious historian buys into the Lost Cause myth that secession was prompted by tariffs and other economic issues. The historical record is plainly to the contrary, with Confederate secession based on the determination of the South's slave owning elite to maintain slavery.

By the way, Paul Craig Roberts is an economist, not a historian. Accepting his opinion on the subject of slavery and secession is like relying on an airplane mechanic for guidance on cancer diagnosis and treatment.

If slavery never existed would there have been a Confederacy and Civil War? No.

This is a fun game! Let me play!

If George Washington never existed, would there have been a United States?

If Virginia and the other Southern states had not joined the War for Independence, would there have been a United States?

If Southern states hadn't been paying 72% of the total taxation in the nation, would they have left?

Would *YOU* like to pay 72% of the taxes while 5 of your Neighbors together (relative population difference between North and South) Paid 28%?

Your argument is asinine and ignores the fact the North wanted that slave money too, and that slave money is *WHY* they wouldn't let the South go.

The Founding Document of the United States was the Declaration of Independence,...

I absolutely agree, and what does it say? It says that people have a right to secede. That is in fact the central thesis of the document.

-- but still possessions of the United States.

Okay, you lost me. Where do you get that from? Many of those states existed before the United States existed. How does this later created country suddenly own these prior existing states?

Yes, I meant that they go back to being a State outside of the Constitution,but I think I meant to imply that if one state leaves the Union, that dissolves the Union for all.

When the 13 colonies left the United Kingdom, the United Kingdom or "Union" (Union of the Crowns of England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland) remained intact.

Since that time, Canada and Australia have also left the Union, yet the Union remains.

That's what Madison meant by the right to secede is also the right of the many to oust. One state leaving breaks the Union for all.

And this is where I tell you that the US Congress had to threaten Rhode Island to force it to join the Union. It kept rejecting ratification and the Congress finally said they would blockade trade with it if it didn't ratify the Constitution.

Do you believe coercing people into a Union is right and proper? So did the Soviet "Union."

In spite of the Corwin Amendment, the abolitionists would have kept pushing.

Think of the Indian treaties.

What is signed doesn’t always hold.

Slavery was eventually going to go away on it's own. The social pressures were building in the ruling class of the South, and eventually they would all just want to get out of it so they could be accepted in the rest of rich society in the other states.

Charles Dickens talks about this in his "notes on America". In it he details conversations he had with wealthy slave owning families who wanted out, but were not sure how to do it without causing a disaster for themselves and their communities.

Rest assured, the social pressure would have never stopped, and if anything would have increased over time, while the economic benefit of having slaves was decreasing with each passing year.

Once mechanical equipment came available that could replace the vast majority of slave labor, it would have quickly rendered slavery obsolete and embarrassing.

In fact, it would have only lingered as an embarrassment in the Constitution known as the 13th amendment.

If the Old South and the Confederacy were not for slavery, then why didn't they get rid of it? Again and again, proposals to do so were rejected, with the terms of slavery in the years leading up to the Civil War tightened in order to bar education for slaves and make emancipation more difficult or even illegal. Indeed, if slavery was not the issue, then why was the South so agitated over the issue of fugitive slaves?

Your view of the Klan as a political ploy against Republican governments after the Civil War is entirely too benign. And the Klan era after the Civil War saw not just the political disenfranchisement of blacks but also the adoption of segregation and general racial oppression against them.

Notably, when Klan co-founder Nathan Bedford Forrest rejected the Klan due to its wanton violence and became a public advocate for racial reconciliation, he was widely denounced by rabid race-haters in the Southern press on the same reasoning of white superiority as Alexander Stephens used.

Why devote such attention to this subject? Simply put, realism and historical accuracy matter. Without them, people tend toward fantasy and mythologizing. That is part of how the Old South foolishly let slavery define its future, leading it to Civil War and devastation for its preservation, with an enduring race issue in the aftermath. We ought to see that clearly as a discipline toward seeing the present and future clearly as well.

It says that people have a right to secede.

No, it doesn't. It says the collective "People," not individual states, have a right to separate the collective from another "destructive" foreign entity.

It says "When... it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another..."

It says "it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it [current form of government], and to institute new Government..."

The Declaration of Independence was speaking of the unanimous colonies as "one people" in relation to "another," namely England. It was not speaking of, say, New York in relation to Virginia.

It wasn't speaking of future generations splitting from the collective, it was speaking of "abolishing" the form of government and creating a new one. It was not abolishing the Union and creating a new one.

Okay, you lost me. Where do you get that from?

I withdrew that comment. I had an early-morning brain fart.

-PJ

...United Kingdom or "Union" (Union of the Crowns of England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland) remained intact. ince that time, Canada and Australia have also left the Union, yet the Union remains.

We fought a war to reject the laws of England. I wouldn't use United Kingdom examples to explain United States situations. But if we must, isn't it true that the provinces of Canada broke away as one nation, and the Supreme Court of Canada ruled that unilateral secession in Canada was unconstitutional, but a deliberated secession was possible? Should the United States ratify an amendment laying out a deliberated mechanism for a state to appeal for secession, to be approved or rejected by Congress or the states, but reject the idea of unilateral secession as Canada did?

I think this is a gross misstatement of what happened.

First, this is a false statement: "US Congress had to threaten Rhode Island to force it to join the Union". Rhode Island was the first colony to separate from England. I think you are conflating Independence with ratification of the Constitution (which was NOT "joining the Union," but forming "a more perfect Union").

Second, "It kept rejecting ratification" because it was Rhode Island that demanded a guarantee that the Bill of Rights would be included in the Constitution. To paraphrase your words, Do you believe holding out for the Bill of Rights was right and proper?

-PJ

Here is a fact about slavery they never mention. The Northern controlled Congress voted by a 3/4ths majority to keep slavery by passing an amendment that would guarantee slavery in the United States indefinitely.

Because it's not a fact. It only takes a 2/3rds majority of each House to get a constitutional amendment through Congress (3/4 of state legislatures are required to ratify), and that's what this proposed amendment received -- exactly 2/3 in the Senate and 2/3 plus 2 votes in the House. Congress had considered and rejected 57 compromise attempts, and the Corwin Amendment was viewed as the last chance to save the Union -- or rather, to keep the Upper South from joining the Lower South in the Confederacy.

Virtually all Democrats voted for the Amendment (one lone dissenter apparently didn't think it went far enough to safeguard slavery). A majority of Republicans opposed it. Only enough Republicans voted for the Amendment to ensure its passage by the narrowest of margins. It was late and they felt they had to do something to save what was left of the union.

Passage and ratifiction of the Corwin Amendment would never have won back the Deep South states which had already seceded, but it was believed that it could have pursuaded those in the Upper South to remain in the union. There was no guarantee that the amendment would be ratified, though. Congress was doing what legislatures do best: kick the can down the road and expect somebody else to decide what to do.

You and I will never have to make such difficult and weighty decisions as those in the past did, so it's best not to speak to lightly about the choices that they made when constrained by circumstances we will never have to face.

Here is what the North would NOT agree to: Expansion of slavery into the new states forming in the West.

I have addressed this particular point so many times, I need to just write up an essay and link to it.

In summary, I have found a lot of evidence to indicate this was just a lie told for propaganda purposes. There was never going to be any significant slave presence in the "territories." It was economically nonviable.

It also opposed returning slaves from the North to the South ...

It could oppose it all it wanted, but as that particular requirement was written into the US constitution in Article IV, Section 2. It was constitutional *LAW* that required escaped slaves to be returned. Look it up.

...and letting Southern slave-owners bring slaved into the North.

George Washington kept a slave plantation in Pennsylvania long after Pennsylvania declared itself to be a "free" state. I will also point out that telling American citizens they could not travel with their "property" was a violation of the privileges and immunities clause of the Constitution. States were required to accept the laws of other states regarding private "property."

But consider why Texas fought:

I looked up your source. It was dated February 2nd, 1861, which I believe was BEFORE the civil war. I'm not going to say you are trying to deceive us, but you may be unintentionally misleading people here. You are offering up a statement from the convention delegates regarding SECESSION, not fighting.

Texas fought because their sister states were invaded. Would you have fought if your sister states had been invaded or would you say "not my problem." ?

So you are offering up a reason alleged by a bunch of convention delegates as to why Texas left but this is different from giving a reason why they fought.

Do you have any statements from Texans who fought regarding why they fought?

You apparently think the northeast is responsible for all bad things

Not the common people but the wealthy elite in the "Empire State" are still causing grief to all the rest of us with their greed and their influence on the government.

Your reading and understanding of the civil war lacks the current writings of the times

I have read much of the writings of that time and from various sources, but what people write, and what financial numbers show patterns of, are two different things.

Let me show you a map that may give you an idea of what was going on.

72% of the money represented by those stacks of coins came from the South.

Your comments make even more sense when it is known that Lincoln was the railroad’s chief attorney. He wasn’t planning on running for office but his railroad buddies needed the union to stay together, so they put up Lincoln.

This was an angle that I hadn't considered when I first started studying the beginning of the civil war, but it fit with other evidence about corporate pressure to initiate a war to stop the south from leaving.

And the Railways act of 1862 was probably the largest corporate give away in history.

Another thing that people don't know is that during the Chicago convention, Lincoln used his railroad connections to bring in thousands of his agents to antagonize, intimidate, bribe, and block delegates in an effort to stop Seward from getting the nomination.

Lincoln was using brownshirt like methods before the brownshirts were ever thought of.

https://chicagohistorytoday.wordpress.com/2017/05/18/dirty-tricks-at-the-wigwam-5-18-1860/

So your argument is that people can't "evolve" their thinking, that we are all locked into the things we said 40 years ago?

My argument is that Madison can think what he wants, but his evolution in thinking won't change what the legislature did in 1788. Madison was part of the body that wrote Virginia could leave. If he changes his mind about it later, so what? The legislature has already spoken.

Didn't the Framers admit that the Constitution wasn't perfect and they may not have gotten it all correct, hence the amendment process to enable it to adapt to growth, technology advances, and social change?

Do you know of an amendment that prevents secession? If there isn't one, then the constitution allows it.

What about SCOTUS with Texas vs. White (1868)?

What about it? One arm of the government is justifying what another arm of the government wants. Did you think they would do otherwise?

I recall what chief Justice Salmon P. Chase said to federal prosecutors attempting to convict Jefferson Davis of "treason." He advised them against it.

"You will lose in court everything you won on the battlefield." and "Secession is not rebellion."

Of course he was presiding in Texas vs White so he was probably just bluffing about reversing what the army had gained.

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