Posted on 12/27/2023 11:47:50 PM PST by Jonty30
South Carolina was ALWAYS the agitator
Which is why Sherman thought it humility.
Thier were penalties for trying to rend the United States.
In 1861, where were the penalties?
My understanding is that the Federal government, in 1861, could set the conditions for the entry of new states into the union, but it could not stop a state from leaving the union because all power that was not reserved for the federal government belonged to the state. I think the Founding Fathers knew what the phrase, All Power” when they wrote that down.
Ah. Thank you. A bit more nuanced but still NOT Ulysses S. Grant’s slaves, which is a (false) point liberals often bring to the table in this discussion.
If you can point out people who were also "power interests" at the time (who were not politicians) who had the power to influence the start of the war and the means to buy up cheap southern land afterwards, please enlighten me.
-PJ
The notion that the Civil War was caused by the desire of nothern banks to end slavery so they could buy up the south on the cheap — defies history and logic.
Northern banks made money off of slavery.
Slaves were often literally the collateral for loans to plantation owners. Ending slavery would cause loss of capital. Northern banks also financed external trade of southern slave-produced agricultural products, internal trade, and northern manufacturing.
Agricultural land without labor has little value. Slavery was the prevalent source of labor in the antebellum South. For the northern banks to profit from buying up southern lands, they would need a new source of labor — and fast to void disrupting trade and manufacturing interests.
British Isles/European immigrants were flooding into The North and what was then the West of the US, where they found their dream of lands to own and work as free farmers. Compared to that, immigating to the South to compete with blacks free or otherwise, for work-intensive crops like cotton, tobacco, rice, sugar cane, indigo, etc., help little attraction. Much better to grow wheat and corn further north and west.
Internal and eternal immigration revised the allocation of political power within the US, populating new States with free farmers who tended to oppose slavery morally, but did not want to compete with it enomically. New States even completed for immigrants by extending voting rights to all free men, etc. The whole dynamic of political power in the US disfavored the South and slavery. Southern oligarchs who owned vast numbers of surplus slaves needed new slave territories/states so they could sell off their human capital. The US was clearly not going to accommodate that, so they oligarchs sought alternatives (in particular, they lusted after Central America aand the Caribbean).
You are leaving out the immense opposition to slavery for the evil that it was, by trying to make it economic issue .
The vast majority of Americans saw the evil of owning humans and were strongly opposed to it.
People in small Ohio towns didn’t elect Lincoln so they could buy cheap plantation land .
But good and evil are not legal topics. Socialism is a great evil, the most evil thing in the history of mankind, but it’s law in many countries.
You may hate drugs with a fervency, because its’ evil, but it’s legal to use.
I’m just pointing out that good and evil are not legal concepts.
The Migration or Importation of such Persons as any of the States now existing shall think proper to admit, shall not be prohibited by the Congress prior to the Year one thousand eight hundred and eight... Article 1 sec.9 cl.1...U.S. Constitution
As I see it, the South left the Union primarily to expand slavery. Whether or not that right and the right to secede were guaranteed by the Constitution was settled by a terrible war.
Both Grant and George Thomas owned slaves. Grant’s father in law gave him a young male slave. Grant owned the man for about a year then gave that person his freedom. This was several years before the war. Thomas bought a young lady in 1858 to help his wife around the house. He retained ownership of this slave until the XIII Amendment was ratified. Then kept her on for pay.
No doubt in my mind the Biden Obama Marx regime, backed by powerful police forces, the FIBs, and the military, would kill tens of millions of ‘us’ for their revolution. The only problem is how many firearms ‘we the people’ have hence their diabolical plan to eliminate private citizens from owning firearms.
Yet when the Northern states passed personal liberty laws withdrawing all support for the Fugitive Slave Act Southern states complained they were forced to secede over the North getting away with this illegal nullification epitomized by the rise of Lincoln and the Republicans. You just need to look at the Confederate Constitution which was an exact copy of the US Constitution except when it came to slavery it gave more power to the federal government. Slaveholders only became friends of centralized power only when a question arose of extending or protecting slavery. Slavery was clearly the issue that caused the argument over states rights to escalate to war.
Sir: I do not believe you got your allotted dose of Yankee propaganda.
Phlyer wrote: "What is your evidence for this? I have never seen this in contemporary Southern writings."
Interjecting here. Southern states put their reason for secession in writing in official declarations and resolutions. Those official documents gave slavery as the reason for secession.
I forget who the quote was attributed to, but some northern Congressman was asked by a reporter before the commencement of hostilities why Lincoln didn’t just let the South secede and be done with it, he reply was, “and then who shall pay the taxes to fund the government, sir?”
Actually, Lonesome in Massachussets, it was much cheaper to employ Irish immigrants than to keep slaves. You damn Yankees could just fire them and let them starve in the streets when they weren’t profitable. Which you did.
Yes, Thomas Jefferson wrote this passage because he believed in ending the economic disaster to be that was slavery. He was, of course, a polymath. And it was notably Benjamin Franklin who engineered the removal of the passage. Benjamin Franklin from the Quaker state of permanent indentured servitude by William Penn and many others. The same Quakers who with rare exception, refused to help the American Revolution, and sold their farm good to the British Army (war profiteers as they were known then, and sanctimonious with their Quakerism.
Thomas Jefferson- repeatedly blasted about slaves he was not allowed to free (by Virginia State Law) until he was finally able to do so. So now these revisionists invent even more lies about the genius who was the brightest of our Founders.
Here you go-— the post war takeover of nearly every river location for building industrial textile mills throughout the South. Provides the economic reality to your question— it was always in their mind to both force the Morrill Tariff as well as prevent export of Southern cotton keeping the price high for NE mills. So yes—it was one outcome of the post war poverty (and elimination of a vast number of the male population).
These same mills, converted to steam driven and further- and then, thanks to LABOR expenses and organizing— shut them all down and moved the industry overseas— like to Indonesia. Bibb Mills in Macon, GA did the same, and many more.
Here’s a museum town in NC, Glencoe Mill as an example= a water driven mill:
https://www.ncpedia.org/glencoe
Yes- the motives were quite different. And in the end, the Radical Republicans got rid of their “hero” Abraham Lincoln— who wanted to quickly re-unite the Union (while these Radicals wanted the spoils of “war”, like land and industry and selective laws to prevent entire groups of people from keeping their heritage and business ownerships, changed as they were).
The assassination of Lincoln and the attempt to remove his Southern VP Johnson who maintained Lincoln’s Reconstruction goals which Radicals definitely did not want, is one more proof to your observations.
Beard series of books are excellent. Reality of economic drivers and... greed. All true.
Should be noted that the financial sectors of Philadelphia, NYC and even Boston— who made millions- all supported the South, from generations of business arrangements which, until the Industrial Revolution were enormously profitable.
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