Just how the Union could have been dissolved is a tricky question. Congress might have voted to deaccess states from the Union. Or a constitutional amendment could have released them from the United States. Or perhaps the state or federal government could have brought the matter of secession to the Supreme Court. But it's clear that what the Deep South states did in 1860-1 produced a war, as many Americans had forseen.
I don't see how ongoing arguments can prove something that wasn't convincing to people at the time, or make the many objectionable actions of Southern governments -- seizing property, repudiating debts, forming a new nation, calling for an army, firing on federal troops -- acceptable to the rest of the country. Indeed, defenders of the Confederacy often argue that whatever the seceding states did was permissible and right, and that attitude isn't going to win the moral high ground or convince many of the truly undecided.
Thanks for the info. I have no intention of getting sucked into a never-ending "ping-pong game" with N-S. I know the type. Their primary interest is displaying their knowledge. Trouble is, knowledge without understanding is nothing. The entire point about Grant owning slaves (which is true)is to introduce the broader point that there existed many slaves north of the Mason-Dixon line. This fact is unknown to the vast majority of folks today who think that slaves only existed in "those evil southern states", and that the North, being morally superior to the South, executed the war to free those slaves (untrue). Most people also do not realize that the Emancipation Proclamation did not free the slaves in the North. But that's another subject.
Dangerous. What you seem to be arguing is that some politically correct understanding should come before various facts. You've made up your mind in advance and view everything in light of the conclusions you've already decided on.
Perhaps at the bottom of it all is an idea about purity. If you can show that there were slaves in 1860 in Kentucky or Maryland which didn't secede or two dozen remaining slaves in New Jersey, then this means that the North is impure and hypocritical about slavery and it outweighs the thousands of slaves in Mississippi or South Carolina who made up something like half the population. That may be a way of saving one's pride and winning over converts, but really, how valid is it as history? We don't have to believe that Northerners were morally pure to recognize that there was reason for them to be concerned about slavery and pro-slavery militants and the expansion of slavery.
Making everything a matter of who's pure or who's without sin is cheap sophistry. Arguing that because some Northerners had owned slaves or participated in the slave trade years before that they simply had to accept Southern views on slavery and its expansion to the territories, is akin to arguing that today's Americans can't complain about slavery or the treatment of women in Muslim lands because we had slavery, segregation and ill-treatment of women in our own past. It's an argument that people use against all proposed changes. Recognizing that it's hard to have much confidence in that way of arguing.
People don't seem to see this, either because they want the South to be right and the North to be wrong, because they're hung up on the idea of the South as persecuted victim that needs special treatment, or because they really are convinced by some particularly lame arguments. It's easier to argue that because Grant had a slave, the Unionists couldn't be sincerely anti-slavery than it is to go through and look at Southern and Northern generals to see who owned slaves, how many they owned, what their attitudes towards slavery and emancipation were, and whose relatives were slave owners. It's easier to rely on cheap paradoxes.
And even if the whole world knew that Grant owned a slave or that Connecticut or Massachusetts once had slaves, there'd be people to go on pushing the idea that this was some shocking fact that discredited everything that had been said about secession, Southern slavery or the Confederacy. Indeed, we've pretty much reached the point where everbody knows that the Northern colonies had slavery or that Lincoln wasn't in favor of racial equality, and yet people keep on acting as though they'd found out some concealed fact that turns the world on its head, but don't go much further in seeing where such arguments fit into the larger picture.
Tom DiLorenzo is a wretched excuse for a historian. His approach is to project current political debates back on the past, and ignore the differences between epochs. For him there are the "good guys" and the "bad guys" and that's determined in advance. The free traders are the "good guys" even if the support or promote or justify slave labor or are expansionist imperialists. And the protectionists are the "bad guys" even if they oppose the expansion of slavery or disapprove of slavery itself. In his twisted or empty mind it's legitimate to identify 19th century tariffs and railroad building with the 20th century welfare state, but illegitimate to draw the clear connection between slavery and free trade in the Democratic politics of the 19th century. If you want to believe that, you will, but it won't be like you've actually learned anything or had to think about anything seriously.
For DiLorenzo, whatever objectionable thing Lincoln might have said at any given moment has to be taken as his final word, a reflection of his opinion at that time and for all time. With Southern leaders, by contrast, it's assumed that "eventually" or "in time" they would come to change their minds and realize that they were wrong about slavery. So the real progress Lincoln made in his attitudes during his lifetime is ignored, but Confederates are credited with changes of mind that never happened. It's assumed that some day, Southern leaders would come to implement policies that were the opposite of what they'd been advocating all along, and this gives them a moral ace in the hole that they did nothing to deserve. Is that fair? Does it illuminate or obscure things? The thing about DiLorenzo is he doesn't take seriously the things that people at the time were passionate about.
To learn more check out this review of DiLorenzo's book.
all you seem to be is an apologist PARROT for the hypocritical, hateFILLED,arrogant, cruel damnyankees & the statists of the REVISIONIST extreme LEFT.
don't you know that REVISIONIST historiography came out of the socialist (some would say communist) ANTI-USA/ANTI-CSA fringe of northeastern "poison ivy league" academia? don't you care?
free dixie,sw
Only Mr. X could turn a reply to a simple post about Grant owning slaves and popular perceptions of the Emancipation Proclamation into a gazillion word harangue about Tom DiLorenzo. Maybe you and Jim Epperson can collaborate on a book one about him one day and explain, in thirty pages, how he should've used a period somewhere that he used a semicolon.
In the interest of full disclosure, the "review" of DiLorenzo's book, which link you offer, was done for the Abe Lincoln Association. Interesting read, but typical academic drivel and Lincoln apologetics.